A Note About Recruiters
batsov.com
batsov.com
Unfortunately, this is entirely incorrect. The reason random bullshit occurs at all is precisely because it CAN produce meaningful results. The fact that it more often does compared to any other method is the reason why it is characteristic of tech recruiter behaviour.
It is matter of energy conservation.
Think of it like this: Recruiters can go one of two paths.
A)Carefully read resumes / profiles, up-level on tech know-how, even do a bit of programming as OP recommended. This is a ton of up front cost and therefore only those who can afford to risk the energy would do it.
or
B) Send lots of random shit, with low up front cost, accept low ratio return and only deal with the positives that come back.
The risk is front loaded in Option A, which is why it rarely happens. The recruiters that do do this, will basically be popular for the short time, but not last long as they get outcompeted by recruiters doing Option B.
It's not ideal but neither is global warming
I'm fine with ignoring unsolicited emails and politely declining phone calls.
Why then are recruiters not using this strategy, do you think?
Oh, but you can, if you do it enough!
1. Select good candidates based on relevant criteria.
2. Spend 1 or 2 minutes reviewing each candidate with the Technical Hiring Manager who needs to fill a role.
3. Send the filtered candidates a templated message asking if they are interested.Huh, isn't that the way nature works?
My thoughts precisely.
That being said, for senior engineers surely it's more likely that recruitment will be more driven by referrals by trusted colleagues? I don't think I've seen referral bonuses rising at a commensurate rate.
Unfortunately the referral bonuses I've seen have always been somewhere between 'insulting' and 'why bother?'. The only place I know that does decent referral rates is using it to get around their reputation for churn.
> built the technical recruitment operations in the last 3 start-ups I worked for, so I feel I’m somewhat qualified in the subject matter
Sure, your startup might have some very tight requirements for a position and the ability to research candidates before conversations. That's precisely what you should do since time is limited and (presumably) you're not hiring for a TON of positions
But an external recruiter needs to match X jobs to Y candidates. It almost doesn't matter what the tech stack is at that point, you probably have an open position to fill that'll match that person. It's a numbers game and it's a "Please respond to me at any cost" game.
And often, even if you did research, there are so many false negatives that it didn't even matter to begin with. I've had targeted recruiters reach out to me that are amazed when my current position doing $CURRENT_TECH isn't completely representative of my skills and I'm actually a viable candidate for $NEW_JOB_WITH_OTHER_TECH
The only real response here is to cut em some slack or ignore them. Guides like these don't help
Now saying its a numbers game also makes sence yet they (recriuters) are ignorimg the fact that each one of those "numbers" they turn into an interview will require 2 or 3 hours from the developers who will actually serve as a filter... I (personally) am tired of having to interview people who from the first 10 minutes I know won't be a good fit just because the recruiter is playing the "numbers game"
I also get these spammy job ads every day but I understand why and I can't offer a better method that actually works better. If you were in their shoes, would you do differently? Only if it worked to be different. So far it doesn't seem to work.
Just today I got an email from a recruiter with her playlist so I would know her mood. So yeah. Recruiters try all sorts of things but it's very hard.
Anyway, in order to meet that placement goal it’s common to hear a sourcer contacted 300 people per week on LinkedIn and via select other channels.
This is usually NOT a blast to 500 people without targeting… you’re usually looking at source companies, levels of experience, geographic location, degrees of separation from individuals in the hiring organization, keyword matching, education or certifications.
About 5% of contacts will respond to these efforts. About 15% will respond when the initial contact is made by someone who has an Engineering Manager title instead. Those response rates don’t change dramatically when you alter the messaging (this is somewhat usual to A/B test when recruiting at scale). Title of the EM matters when recruiting somewhat, e.g. a junior manager may see < 15% response rates if they’re trying to hire at senior (Staff+) levels. Someone with a Director or VP title will see better response rates when hiring for Staff+ levels, this is the “Could I see myself working for this person?” test, I guess.
At a certain career level you’re also out of “Professional Recruiting” / “Industry Recruiting” and you’re into “Executive Recruiting” which is a somewhat substantially different process.
There’s also “College/Campus Recruiting” which has its own quirks and differences!
Several startups have tried and are trying to change this model but I’ve yet to see a move away from ‘brute force’ hiring in huge enterprises, YEMV.
Nice sentiment, but it's never gonna happen.
Recruiters are spam bots, period. Their job is to smash square pegs into round holes. Use them or don't use them... but the sooner everyone on both sides of the hiring equation realizes this extremely basic and obvious fact, the better.
There's 3 types/market for recruiters and they almost never overlap.
The first are "body shop style" recruiters. It's basically a numbers game where they try to cold-call as much people with githubs/linkedin or blogs that reference programming. They don't know programming (not even what's the difference between languages or front-end/back-end) and are looking for a list of buzzwords. They'll send copy-pasted messages (you can tell because it references tech you never used or never even claimed to have used). If you respond (and really you shouldn't) you won't be able to get any relevant information about the position because... they don't have it. These recruiters are often contracted by external firms in "best value countries" and are given canned response to message you. That's probably what the author encountered.
Second type are professional recruiters. Their salary is by commissions will often be a percentage of your salary. They are knowledgeable about programming and tech (often former engineers who wanted a break from coding!). They typically are looking to match specific profiles to specific jobs at client companies. This goes all the way to recruiters specialized in C-Suite executives (and you can picture the commission finding a CEO will bring in). Their messages will be personalized and you shouldn't hesitate to reply back even if you aren't looking for a job. They know that most great software engineers are almost never openly looking for a job so their goal is to be on good terms with a large number of talented developers so that the minute they start looking for a job they can match them with positions. You'll know when you encounter one.
Third type is basically referrals. A players attract A players, smart companies know it. Make sure your referral bonus is a percentage of total comp. It's probably the most effective way of recruiting (it has an insane signal to noise ratio). But you only get access to that type of network by... bringing value and being part of it in the first place!
I agree that referrals often yield the best results, but that's quite orthogonal to the problem I wanted to tackle with my article.
> Learn the Basics...Ideally you should learn the basics of programming, but at the very least you should understand what different technology stacks are used for.
This is the entire problem with tech recruiters: that they try to act as if they understand something about programming and software engineering. They don't, and the more they try to pretend they do, the more embarrassing they are.
So what they should do is the opposite: contact us, with the explicit understanding that they don't know our technical domain, but that they are hoping to match us up with an employer. Then at least we can have conversations based on mutual respect.
The only time I've ever been really angry at a recruiter was when I came across a snarky LinkedIn post written by a recruiter (and upvoted by many others) that went something along the lines of "Joe contacted me because he had found himself out of work. However, I checked our internal database and found that we had reached out to him many times and he had never once responded to our inquiries. It was with great satisfaction that I told Joe, 'I'm sorry but we have nothing for you at this time...'"
I try not to put negative thoughts out there but I wish... very very bad misfortune on this particular recruiter.
If you have any talent at all, reaching out through your professional network is the way to go.
My current job was from a cold e-mail.
Though FWIW, I was actively looking for new work at the time, so the recruiter just had good timing.
But the recruiter also had a good e-mail, including the salary range, which was slightly above the band I was expecting.
It won’t change :)
"built technical recruiting" - give me a break hun. you should know the reason why most companies do not offer post-interview feedback