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Comment by Peroni | Hacker News Reader

London, UK

Firstly, I am a recruiter but I'm one of the honest few, have a look at previous submissions for any doubts.

The following are permanent positions in London that I am recruiting for. Mention HN when you contact me & I'll happily disclose the company details once I confirm you're not another recruiter!

* Ruby Developers (Back-end mainly)

* Magento Developer

* Python Developers

* ColdFusion Developer (West London)

CONTRACT:

* Android & iOS Devs

My email address is in my profile. Please don't forget to mention HN when contacting me.

View on HN

What part of this post + you saying, on your very own website, "I have not, nor ever will attempt to solicit business on Hacker News," is honest?

As a result of my last few posts there were quite a few people recommending that I use the who's hiring post as an opportunity to make fellow HN'ers aware of roles that might interest them.

This is my first post that is anything remotely related to me sourcing candidates and I am keeping a close eye on it to see if it's well received or universally hated. So far it has a few upvotes and I've received four emails from HN'ers who want me to help.

Count me as someone who doesn't want to see recruiters posting in "Who's hiring" regardless of how good they are.

You people are ridiculous. Peroni has been around on Hacker News for a very long time and has helped numerous - dozens! - of our community out. Stop being so rude. If people are so offended at the parent comment, they'll down vote it.

You know what, even though I've had a lot of positive responses, this will be my first & last 'Who's Hiring' post.

It's generated more noise than I had anticipated and it's taking from the purpose of the thread and that's the last thing I wanted.

It's too late to edit or delete my comment but I assure you it will be my last.

What's wrong with recruiters?

I'm assuming you wouldn't have a problem if someone mentioned that their employer was hiring (ie. non-primary posting in general)

I've actually used "Who's hiring" in the past. Two things made it very useful to me:

1.) It tells me something about the company. At the very least, it tells me that at least one founder/employee/etc. is reading HN.

2.) I can leisurely check out what the company does without making any sort of commitment (even just a phone call/screen).

Both of those advantages go out the window when recruiters are involved.

And BTW, I have nothing against recruiters. I just wish there was one jobs related page on the internet that didn't have them.

Fair enough.

Postive reactions: 9

Negative: 2

I think you will garner significantly different reaction if you give some sense of who you are as a recruiter in your posts, and why you aren't a scumbag (i've read some of your threads/comments).

Disclosure that you're a recruiter is fine if you can articulate how you are going recruiting differently. Link to your blog, talk about your dev experience, etc.

Have a look at my submissions. The last three have adressed exactly that and have had a huge amount of attention here and 99% of the feedback has been incredibly positive.

As for my dev experience, I was highly average and never built anything worth talking about here although a friend & I are working on something pretty cool at the moment that I mentioned briefly in the past. I will be doing a post soon talking about that particular product.

10.

You do seem like a good one, as far as they go, and I don't have anything, in general, against recruiters posting here. I don't think it's the best forum for your type, but there's no rule against it.

What I took issue with was that you are internally inconsistent, yet claim to be "honest." Ha! Whatever it was that made you once say you WILL NEVER attempt to solicit business on Hacker News---well, obviously, you don't believe in that anymore.

Relax.

Surely Peroni has demonstrated sufficient value to the HN community to allow him to post in a "Who's hiring" thread without people getting on their critical high horse.

Would you rather he sat on his hands if he has the perfect job for people here? I for one will be taking him up on his offer...if you have ever dealt with tech recruiters you will appreciate the service he is offering.

I agree with all that generally (and nothing at all against Peroni, or working with a recruiter at all, etc).

I still think it's best if he leaves this thread to direct company postings, though, and finds other ways to let interested HNers to work with him.

The ideal "Who's Hiring" page will have lots of postings, and every post will be as close to "ideal" as possible.

I define an ideal post in this context as one that links to the company involved, is posted by a current technical employee of that company (or a founder), and does a good job describing what they're looking for.

If I'd like to focus more on Ruby, for example, I can search the page for all of the Ruby posts, open all the links, and see what company is doing something of interest to me, and which poster has a tone that appeals to me.

A recruiter post can't possible be an ideal post like this, no matter who the recruiter is, and how good they are.

Retrospect is a wonderful thing. I won't be posting on Who's Hiring again although for the record, out of those that contacted me, I have already arranged interviews for three of them and there are potentially more to come so at least those that read my post in a positive light might actually get something out of it.

I hope I didn't seem like I was piling on, and I wasn't annoyed by your post in the first place -- just thinking in terms of the general trend I'd like to see in these threads. Cheers.

No I do understand your point. I have contacted the HN team to see if there is an option to pay for a formal job post but they don't want to start a trend of recruiter advertising which is understandable.

It was an interesting experiment and instead I may just set up an opt-in monthly mailing list exclusively for HN'ers with opportunities that I feel would be of interest. More on that later.

Given that Hacker News weights posts with comments higher than other comments, you are doing exactly the wrong thing if you do not want to draw attention to recruiters.

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