Munchausen Syndrome by Recruiter

I can name precisely one recruiter who was both honest and knowledgeable. As a rule of thumb, recruiters don't know what the buzzwords mean and can't judge quality. They are salespeople without product knowledge.

I'm not sure recruiters are that malignant. But understanding their role, their incentives, and what you can rationally do about this is an important discussion.

I have been trying to break out of contracting for sometime. The job application process is hell for me. I applied for so many jobs that I knew I would hate, I had this notion that I was gonna have to suffer a terrible employer for a while.

Then I found a perfect position and managed to get the attention of the recruiter. He's a real human, he knows his shit and most importantly he just got me immediately.

Now I'm on the cusp of breaking out of contracting AND the front end, into an amazing full stack position with an awesome company. Good things can happen to quietly competent people! You do have to put yourself out there, which can be difficult. It helps if you have some interesting projects in your back pocket. I reversed engineered a car share app and reimplemented it as a web app. Fortunately they thought that was cool.

If anybody out there is struggling through a similar situation, hang in there and be kind to yourself. Feel free to reach out if you wanna talk it through.

In my most recent job search as a senior front-end developer, I turned my LinkedIn profile to be "seeking work - visible only to recruiters" and I corresponded with over 300 recruiters over the course of 4 months. My initial reply message to every recruiter who contacted me included a greeting, my salary expectations, my phone number, and my schedule during which I am free to chat, as well as a copy of my resume. They all appreciated that I laid my cards on the table since it eliminated 15-30 minutes of pointless back and forth required for them to get this information from me, and they could also cut the conversation short immediately if whatever role they represented wasn't a good match. This kind of job search process took relatively long but ultimately, with little effort, I was able to land a gig that's a perfect fit at the top range of my salary expectations.

Pro-tip: create a dedicated email address for the purpose of your job search and NEVER include your primary phone number on a resume which you share with recruiters or portals such as dice.com.

"[company] does not accept unsolicited resumes from 3rd parties & agencies. [company] will not pay finder's fees for unsolicited resumes that result in employment by [company]."

What's normally done here is that companies hire recruiters to fill a spot. And then those (British, always British agencies) go to LinkedIn and shotgun spam every breathing human being with tech in their resume. And cold call. I've started to not answer and then later block british numbers calling me, but a few minutes later they will just call through a local proxy in Norway. Just as much spam as microsoft-spam-calls from Asia. And if you end up talking with them it's just a waste of time. They won't name the company, the benefits, and can't even answer basic questions about the position. Their only value is to get the open position in front of more eyes, but that value is dubious given that I will never have anything to do with a company hiring these spammers.

Honestly, if you're a tech company you should do your own hiring as the candidates will be your most valuable resources. Outsourcing your moat is bad business.

> A single good recruiter who knows you, your skillset, and what you want will serve you much better than numerous recruiters who just want your resume.

> The best time to develop a good relationship with a recruiter is when you are happily employed. That will be an opportunity for them to leisurely understand you. When the time comes that you will need their services, they will be strategically placed to help you.

I'm not sure this is useful from a candidate's perspective. Just having recruiters as personal connections won't grant you access to some secret network of jobs in the future. So talking to recruiters when you aren't looking for a job is largely a waste of time, better spent updating your LinkedIn profile and filling out your resume.

> When is it ok to send your resume to a recruiter? ... Only after you have spoken with them. A message via LinkedIn or job board is not enough.

I don't think this is accurate. When I do recruiting for clients, I'll typically request the candidate's resume before the initial call so we'll have more to talk about. It may not be standard practice among recruiters, but it works for me.

It's not only against the candidate's best interest to be double-submitted, but against the recruiter's self-interest as well. So I'm not going to submit a candidate unless I know that candidate wants to be submitted by me.

I'll bet $1000 the same would apply to tech.

Most people have no idea what they are worth - which usually means undervaluing themselves, but just as bad, overvaluing.

Having someone who is objective and understands business just look out for you a little bit is probably worth 5% of your income. You'd earn more than that in the end. Esp if they had easy access to lawyers, or could mostly speak the language, etc.

I said, “oh wow, that’s great! Just hold on one second to put on my headphones”. I used that pause to bridge in my former co-founder and say “hey, I have Captain Recruiter in the phone here and he says you want to hire me. Why didn’t you tell me this on our hike yesterday?”

My good friend and business partner fired him on that call. My friend, he is an excellent judge of character and trusted this guy a lot. “captain recruiter” had a great reputation in the SF tech scene, he was also a sociopathic liar.

I have been contacted by about 5,000 recruiters in the past 25 years. 3 of them found me job. 2 of them I referred successful candidates to. The rest ranged from incompetent kids working from IT sweat shops in India, to millionaire sociopaths.

One recruiter asked me out on a date on OkCupid just to pitch me for a job with Dropbox.

Headhunters are scum.

(Edited for typos)

Lo, many years ago, I was working for a small company as their one and only technical author. I decided to leave (something to do with a 50% pay rise to go work for a much larger company that wasn't obviously circling the drain and due to go bust within 3 months). I gave notice, and as my then-employer had no HR policy and no HR department (it was management by autocratic whim: one boss and about twelve technical staff) he asked me to hang around long enough to draft a job description and tidy up some loose ends.

So: job description for technical author duly drafted and sent to recruitment agencies. Whereupon we got CVs back by fax. Wildly inappropriate CVs.

I remember one perplexed phone call that I ended after the recruiter at the other end of the line said, "technical author, technical support engineer -- what's the difference?"

So yeah, watch the quality of your recruiters! (Whichever side of the table you're on.)

Do we have good recruiters? The ones I interact seems to no be interested in my strong and *WEAK* points so I got matched with a good position?

I have a feeling that we don't have recruiters just spammers that throw 100's CVs in company an latter claim their "reward$" (1 month or 2months) for their effort.

I know it is kind of blanket statement.

But I am ignoring all recruiters that came from X "Talent" companies. And right now I am tweaking my filter more.

I don't think I will have any recruiter left after I tweak it.

I don't like to switch jobs neither be in a job that is not suited to me.

A good recruiter in a good position would be able to see it and improve my chances.

It's really inspiring to work on a virtually abandoned procedural code base from 10 years ago written in an OOP language. I think the peak excitement is implementing business logic because that's the closest you'll get to writing algorithms. Cog in the wheel, cog in the wheel.

I like when my boss tells me I take too long whwn the majority of my time is spent debugging broken old code and trying to figure out how anything works.

Yes I'm projecting, and yes I'm depressed.

¹ https://github.com/tommorris/bees

> Job loss is one of the most stressful life events, along with the death of a loved one, divorce, and a significant illness.

It's so sad (and true) that a job loss -- something that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things -- is comparable to the death of a loved one or an illness. End-stage capitalism, indeed. It's probably why a whole bunch of us are attracted to the startup life and doing your own thing -- even though that comes with its own set of (more often worse) downsides.