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Comment by davedx | Hacker News Reader

My partner works at a recruitment company. Here's the thing: most recruiters are not very good at what they do and are only chasing placements. To get the most out of recruiters you need to be more pro-active, and find a recruiter or two who really understand your skill set and career ambitions. Build a relationship with them, and don't waste time with the other 90% of batch mailed crapshoots.

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> Here's the thing: most recruiters are not very good at what they do and are only chasing placements.

Related anecdote: There was a technology recruiter that was constantly calling me at work, despite the fact that my work number is not listed anywhere* and my LinkedIn profile having clear instructions not to do that.

I decided to look him up on LinkedIn. Guess what his previous job was? Debt collector.

* I figure the recruiters get around that by calling the front desk and asking to be transferred to me.

HAhahahaha debt collector. We all gotta eat somehow. Tech industry casts a wide, frothy net when business is booming!

This is true. I'm an engineer that started recruiting six months ago part-time and was able to bill six figures pretty quickly. I realized that colleagues in recruiting had a really tough time making efficient matches.

The best recruiters can not only make efficient matches, but they also connect the dots to reach out to matches in the pool of passive candidates they talked to when a new role opens up.

Even better than that is when I'm able to actual push back with companies and make an impact on the hiring process to get someone hired.

How'd you get started doing recruiting? I've been talking with recruiters lately and I find myself doing enough tech explaining to recruiters that I've wondered if I could consult for them. Interested to hear about your experience.

Feel free to e-mail (in profile). Started by trying to build tools for recruiters and interviewing recruiters for customer feedback. Found a good fit with a recruiter who placed my whole NY team before our startup got acquired and he offered me a consultant gig. Really enjoying it so far. Great way to monetize a mix of engineering career consulting + staying on top of startup trends.

Interesting! Do you feel like as you get further and further from having done the actual work (that you're helping recruit for) that you'll still be as effective?

I'm still coding professionally (js eng) and stay on top of trends! But, I don't think coding in the trenches will make me more effective. I've had a few eng. jobs, most of my friends are engineers, and I'm really passionate about job trends, job satisfaction, and employee retention.

With that foundation I'm more effective as I see more career trajectory data points when I talk to candidates that specialize (data, security, devops, ml) or ladder up (vp, manager, cto). Then I can provide even more value to new candidates with the career counseling approach.

I don't doubt that this is the way to find a good recruiter. However, if I am going to put in the time to vet multiple recruiters in order to find one worth working with, why would I not just spend that time finding a job?

It's hard to get an accurate pulse of the market if you spend only a month every few years searching through angelist/indeed/etc.

I work with about 70 companies (only in NYC) from pre-launch to almost IPO and a new role opens up to a us every week. It's helpful to find a recruiter who knows you & the market well enough to curate jobs you want and tell you about opportunities that might not even be listed or on your radar.

Yup, we need Meta-recruiters: recruiters that can find the right recruiter for you!

But how to keep out the spammy Meta-recruiters? We'll need Meta-Meta recruiters!

Quis recruitiet ipsos recrutes?

Ah yes, good o'l Juvenal. Meta Poet himself.

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