Black Hat Recruiter Tactics | Hacker News Reader

Black Hat Recruiter Tactics

blog.nahurst.com

34 pointsnathanh18 comments

     - Posting misleading job descriptions
     - Posting bait-and-switch job descriptions

Tactics once used to recruit for porn. Still used to recruit for prostitution.

Citation needed.

I got that from the last one I hired. (The last one I'm ever going to. I've reformed for my SO.)

Pimp or John?

The probable answer is obvious if you think about it for a moment.

Has anyone here ever had a good experience hiring with a recruiter? This is a recurring topic where I am, and it always seems like a debacle waiting to happen.

I have been on both sides of a recruiter, and don't really see the point. On the employee side, a recruiter placed me at a job that I already knew about and would have applied for myself if it were allowed. All this achieved was costing my employer a ton of money -- I probably cost them about 2x as much as I would have if they didn't have to pay the recruiting agency. Everyone seems happy, and it's not my money, so whatever.

On the other side, the thing about recruiters editing your resume is true. We have interviewed candidates that claim they have some buzzword we are looking for, like TDD, but can't write a simple unit test on the whiteboard. It's nice that you know what TDD is, but not so nice that you don't actually know it. No hire.

(FWIW, my resume was similarly embellished. I intentionally omit things I know so that nobody expects me to do them; TDD is one of those. Lying is in the recruiter's best interest, since they get a lot of money if their candidate is hired. If the candidate's reputation is damaged by their lies, well, oh well, they can just get another candidate.)

recruiters are a filter, if you are a company hiring, you'll get hundreds of resumes most of which don't even apply to the position being listed. By using a recruiter, you only have to deal with the cream of the crop.

Sure some people can bypass a recruiter with bullshit, but you'd still have to deal with those if you were doing the recruiting yourself.

There are also some benefits as an employee. If you have a good recruiter, you can tell them exactly what you are looking for, and they'll be on the lookout for those types of jobs for you.

But as it is with all things, for every good recruiter, there are thousands of shitty ones, who'll send to companies anyone who is stupid enough to give them a resume, and who'll tell you to apply to jobs that aren't even on the same level as what you can actually do.

Every good recruiter experience that people have told me about...involved them finding the recruiter through word of mouth...I don't remember a single positive recruiter story that involved being cold called out of the blue.

But it is your money in a way. If you went to a company that typically uses recruiters, and you came to them without a recruiter, you'd be saving them a bunch of money - money that you might be able to negotiate into a sign-on bonus or a higher salary.

Like real estate agents, most recruiters eventually realize that it's more lucrative to increase the quantity of placements they make, not the quality.

But is that necessarily true? Is it possible that there is a middle ground between predator style recruiting and large staffing companies (not that they can't be evil but in that their placement is often more long term because they manage your contract)?

I've had 3 good experiences plus many horrendous, horrible, and painful experiences that make me totally dubious of all recruiters. As a matter of fact I now carry a copy of my resume to all interviews. However, to answer the question:

- A two guy recruiting shop. They were utterly clueless as to what made a good programmer but they had hearts of gold. They showed you what they were sending over to the companies before they sent it and gave mock interviews to their candidates.

- A nice guy from Aerotek who even tried to help get the other half a job in the neighborhood of an offer letter. He was the 2nd recruiter who didn't "enhance" or "embellish" my resume other than adding the "aerotek" thing they all do.

- A four person shop that pre-screened candidates with knowledgeable questions about programming. I couldn't tell if they understood the answers but I liked the effort. Alas, all they had were .NET jobs and I'm not .NET programmer.

I've also had conversations with another head hunter from a different industry that does his own thing, the same way he's been doing it for 30+ years.

For Smalltalk and OO, Precision Systems has never let me down. Every single other recruiter attempting to provide Smalltalk recruiting has been remarkably clueless.

Disclosure: They are cutting my paycheck on my current job, but I said the same thing when I was vetting their services and on someone else's payroll.

This sort of specialization is probably the right way to do recruiting. Someone that just reads you a list of questions and writes down your answers for the employer is not really adding much value. Someone that knows someone else's work from experience and recommends them for a job is much better.

Incidentally, a branch of my employer is listed as a Precision Systems client. I didn't know we had any Smalltalk!

They also do Java and other OO langs.

Early in my career a small recruiting firm for the UK game industry helped me get a job. Worked out great, they arranged multiple interviews at good firms for positions that fit my skills. I was lacking in 'hustle' back then, so having someone else arrange it all was a big help.

I suspect recruiters are comforting when companies don't know enough about the technology to judge qualification. Of course, rarely do recruiters know much more.

Does anyone know if there are services for performing due diligence on candidates? I know at a CTO level they exist, but what about hiring that one guy who knows iPhone development when the rest of your shop is Java?

Nothing's worse than getting to an interview and finding out that you know COBOL from the hiring manager reading it off your resume.

The rest of the tips seem to be really sleazy, but are pretty surreptitious. However, wouldn't this be extremely obvious to both parties and be so blatantly unethical to end the recruiter's career?

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