Comment by j79 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by j79 | Hacker News Reader

After moving to California in 2011, I decided I missed the office banter and started looking for a job. I found a listing on a large, tech-based recruiting firm (cybercoders) and the job was perfect for my skills. I applied but heard nothing back.

After a week I reached out to the recruiter, and she replied with a curt, "You're not qualified for this role so we're looking elsewhere." I was a bit surprised as the reqs they described in the job listing were exactly what I had been doing for the last 3 years. But it got me thinking whether the company (HR, Hiring Manager, etc) had made the decision or if the recruiter had?

In addition, there was no additional offer from the recruiter to work with me? It was literally that one line. It got me thinking that maybe my experience(s) wasn't valued by the recruiter as someone worth pursuing, as I may be more "work" to land a job than she would want to invest?

Anyway, with my pride slightly dinged, I immediately wrote off the recruiter (and cybercoders as a whole) as someone I wouldn't want to work with in the future. I got a job at a larger company and a few years later, enjoyed responding to the SAME recruiter asking if I was interested in some jobs she had to offer (nothing bridge-burning worthy, but it felt great saying "NO THANKS")

I've found the recruiting community to be very self-serving and manipulative. Recent example - someone who I had spoken with (shared the stage) at a conference indicated one of her clients needed someone with the my background. Naturally, a resume was on her desk before the end of the afternoon...

A few weeks later, I get a call from a retained recruiter I had worked with previously, after having had my resume sent to her by the company. She basically proceeds to "force me" out of the running for the position by talking it down. She clearly had some firm favorite sitting in the wings...

[in reality, I was out as soon as they asked me to relo my family for a lower total comp package than I was currently receiving. Yeah right.... not that hungry yet...]

Best one a recruiter pulled on me was putting me (a freelancer) in an interview for a full-time position, without me knowing.

They initially contacted me and indicated that they just raised a funding round and now have to staff the position ASAP, potentially with a freelancer for some time. So I thought: "Great, I'll freelance for them for a few months and they can kick me out once the found someone to employ!" This is unironically one of my favourite scenarios, so I went for it, and let the recruiter set up a meeting.

I was a bit surprised that HR was also invited for the meeting, as I usually haven't seen that done when bringing freelancers on in other companies, but tried to not interpret to much into it. So the meeting rolls around, and voilà, it is a full blown job interview! I went with it, acing the interview, but when they asked "Why are you looking to switch away from freelance?", I had to tell them that I don't, and it turned out that the recruiter told them something completely different.

WTF WOULD A RECRUITER THINK THAT THIS WOULD EVER WORK??? Do they think that 1 in 10 freelancers just resigns to his new fate during the interview and accept to work as an employee now? Truly one of my strangest recruiter experiences.

Interesting... "unironically one of my favourite scenarios"

Why? Pricing Leverage? (which makes sense - you can set a shorter term price and most of surprises should be upside)

Pricing leverage is a factor, but the major thing for me is that I usually don't like working with a client for more than 3-4 months. If you go beyond that time frame (in my experience) you usually see dependencies between the freelancer and the company cropping up, which I want to avoid as much as possible, as that often leads to the expectations of either party to be hurt sooner or later. This also puts me in a position where I can transition to a more interesting/lucrative client very quickly, with the old client still being happy.

I had so many similar experiences. People writing me off right after the recession and then work picked back up around 2013. Got tons of offers and job opportunities only to have the same previous recruiters pinging me. "yeah, no thanks, got a job already".

Cybercoders is particularly dysfunctional. Avoid at all costs.

Completely agree. I'm still getting emails from them for positions that have the word "designer" in them. Turns out that there's a lot of positions not in the tech world that have the word "designer" in the job title.

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