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Comment by curtis | Hacker News Reader

Can we get rid of recruiters altogether?

Yeah, I know that's an absurd idea, and I don't know any way we could really do that. But we are always going to have problems if we continue to insist on having non-technical people serve as the initial point of contact for technical positions.

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Met with a company at a conference last year. They were there at a booth saying "we're hiring people". Met, talked some, they indicated I wouldn't be a good fit. Got a call from a recruiter last week, and... have already had and passed a first call screen, another tech call set up for this week. I realize a lot can change in a 6 month period, but... it's also slightly frustrating. If I was paranoid, I might say it's ageism at play (I have visibly gray hair and certainly couldn't pass for late 20s anymore). But I suspect there's multiple factors at play here which still make 'going through a recruiter' somehow feel like a safer bet for some companies.

As I see it technical people don't want to do the mundane repetitive and boring tasks that a recruiter does. And introverted technical people, which many are, especially don't want to spend significant time socializing with random other people.

You can try to automate the whole process, which various companies are doing, but keeping the spam out is difficult. And bad automation is also even worse to deal with than a human recruiter.

I don’t need them to be technical. I just need them to put me in contact with companies, tell me where I am in the process and tell me the salary range. The last is the hardest to get from job listings.

Better yet, take the %age that goes to the recruiter and give it to the candidate. Seems like a better way to close new hires.

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