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Comment by qrohlf | Hacker News Reader

> Recruiters love phone calls and don’t like doing things over email or text. This means that it is very easy to get overwhelmed by the number of recruiters trying to call you, and we will explore time management a little further down the text.

This has been my experience as well, and while I understand the desire for introductory "sales mode" type calls, I think it's progressed past that point to something nearly pathological.

As an example, I recently had a recruiter that I was previously in contact with over email cold-call me while I was skiing, trying to schedule a meeting with a hiring manager (I picked up the call because I thought it might be one of the people in my group that I didn't have in my contacts). When I requested she please send me an email to schedule the meeting, as I was out of the office, I got an email where she sent an email to schedule the phone call, to then schedule the meeting over the phone. It was 100% the least efficient way to do this, and only happened because of this illogically strong preference for phone calls that recruiters seem to have...

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I have a feeling it's a sales tactic which seeks to purposely use up a candidate's time with the hope that the candidate falls victim to the sunk cost fallacy.

Desired inner monologue I think they hope to generate in us: "I've already spent 3 calls and a couple of hours talking to <recruiter>, so I might as well continue on with the process lest I end up wasting all that time."

disclosure: I'm a dev and not a recruiter, so take this with a grain of salt.

It's weird to imagine devious hidden motives like this, when recruiters already have obvious natural reasons to want to do a phone call.

Example 1: they need to get a rough idea of whether you're a jerk, whether you can communicate in the required language, whether your resume is BS, etc. Remember, nobody's paying the recruiter to find you a job - somebody's paying them to find high-quality candidates. Their job is to sell you, so naturally they want to know what they're selling.

Example 2: simple context switching. If your job required you to be involved in dozens or hundreds of simultaneous ongoing negotiations, wouldn't you find it more efficient to block out 30-minute calls with each stakeholder, rather than jumping around between a hundred different email threads full of single-question emails?

One could probably come up with more straightforward reasons. As a general rule though, nobody is ever consciously trying to waste your time. They're trying not to waste their own.

Another element to a phone call is commitment. If you are casually looking and only entertaining emails then you're probably not an active candidate and are a waste of their time. I don't even respond to recruiter emails anymore since I assume they are email bots.

Side discussion: Why is it that they have to find someone for the company? Why can't I instead have an agent that goes around and sells me to potential companies?

Right now recruiting is Yet Another Dysfunctional Industry with non-optimal behavior that favors job creation and useless busy-work instead of finding optimal solutions.

The value that recruiters offer is delivering good candidates. If you convince a recruiter that you're a good candidate, then they will run around selling you to companies! And companies will listen, because the recruiter has build a reputation by delivering good candidates in the past - that's how recruiting works.

But if you just pay an agent to run around selling you, there's no longer any value being added. Why would companies listen to a recruiter that just refers any old candidate that pays them?

I mean you could if you wanted. But why would you want to pay someone to line up interviews for you? Agents don’t get you jobs. They get you visibility.

In particular, scheduling over the phone avoids a lot of back-and-forth about which time works for whom.

There is also a legal concern - phone calls often times cannot be recorded so one can be more loose with their language.

I would tend to agree. My intuition is also that (1) some headhunters might use time-spent-on-the-phone as a metric linked to bonuses (think: click as a proxy for sales in online advertising) and (2) the phone lets headhunter gather intel that you end up leaking in the discussion and that you would not leak via email. Some have great tactics to make you speak “now that you’re on the call”.

I think the time on the phone metric is a big thing, especially when the recruiters were working in office. I've been in the offices of recruiters and it's very much a bullpen-type situation and there's a manager on the side somewhere who's watching and will view those not on the phone as not working.

Thinking about my most recent job search (in 2021), I think that this is very much the case—I had a lot more email and text-based interactions this time around than anytime before.

The latter is a negotiation tactic given in "Never Split the Difference". Essentially communicating over text/email allows you to carefully think about your words, whereas over a call or video call you can read tone of voice, body language, etc. and throw people off balance and reveal info.

I’ve seen recruiters “leak” a lot of “confidential” information from their clients saying “I’ve been asked not to share this but…”. I’ve always taken such messages with a pinch of cynicism but typically such messages are corresponded by phone where an audit trail is less more easily deniable.

So I definitely think phones are used because it allows the rules to be bent in a multitude of ways with a lower risk of consequence.

Plus it’s easier to pressure people when you’re on the phone than it is when they’re emailing.

Yes this. I see a lot of elaborate ideas about why recruiters prefer the phone, but it's simply playing to their strengths. It doesn't even need to be nefarious, everyone in the world plays to their own strengths in life.

I think this is an unnecessarily cynical view. A phone call is just warmer, and recruiters probably close more often by going to a phone call.

You're saying the same thing in different words. "Warmer" in sales means "more influence on the recipient to agree".

Too cynical. Having been through dozens of these over the last couple years, it genuinely seems like most are just trying to make sure they aren't referring an asshole. One of the many personality filters.

I don't think assholes are common enough to warrant a blanket filtering process. I think this is just a common way to justify closer contact, whether it be phone or video. It really is just sales, and the more personal, the better.

You will be surprised. The absolute worst candidates can stay very long in market and appear everywhere. Someone can look good on paper but a short call can tell you right away that you do not want to deal with them.

Ok, remove any cynicism. I just don't want the phone call, I don't care how 'warm' the other party finds it.

Up-thread they said they explicitly asked for email instead after taking the cold-call. What's the good faith reason for insisting on a warm phone call when it's not wanted?

A 'warmer' (aka 'qualification') means finding out if there is likely a material, beneficial connection between the parties.

In almost 100% of the cases, if a Recruiter is able to get someone a job, it's immensely beneficial to the new employee, far more so than for the recruiter.

While that may be true, the recruiter doesn't get paid if you don't get hired. And even if it is a bad match for you, they still want you to get hired so they get paid.

There is no such thing as a perfect alignment of incentives but there is such a thing as 'no alignment of incentives' and it's better for parties to know that straight up.

It's a bit more complex than that in my experience, think Dale Carnegie's tactics. They want to build "rapport" by making you to talk about yourself and then use that to make you to commit. It probably worked much better 20 years ago, when people actually talked to their friends on the phone but, I guess, they still get bites since they stick to this so hard.

Human connection counts for something, for some people more consciously than others.

When you know the name and fact of the person you are working with, you're much more likely to have it stand out in your thoughts as something material.

Sometimes that might feel a bit odd with our view of efficiency and rightly so by some measures ... but it's a bit cynical to wrap everything up in a 'sales tactic'.

If recruiters didn't show value I don't think they would be used so they're not just 'selling' something, they are ostensibly 'providing' something.

It's been a while since I've worked on that front, but I do remember job hunting as a lot of 'empty time' I wonder if it's worth contemplating those direct connections as being material to the mechanics of the system overall.

I don’t think it’s so complicated. It’s more that everyone in a sales oriented profession knows that phone calls are where deals get done. Almost impossible to close a deal over email.

In tech a lot of deals get done over email and text

Details get hashed out that way. But I've never seen a multi-million dollar deal closed anywhere but in the crypto space without at least a call, and much more often a video call.

Thats a multimillion dollar deal, not the intermediary for a hiring deal who gets a low %age.

You must not do a lot of large deals.

If a large deal ($25,000+), this is only the case with the largest tech companies (most customers would order $25k of Apple products online but not buy new expense management software without a call).

Yeah this is a backwards way to think about things. The vast majority of "deals" that I do on the buy side are done with significantly less friction than even email, and I place a high premium on that convenience. If every newsletter I subscribed to required a phone call to close the deal with me, none of them would have my business.

Yes but those are small deals. Most people will not buy a car or a house this way, although that is changing slowly.

Are you going to go work a job without ever talking face to face with someone there?

If not, then getting you on the phone is an absolute necessity along the path to you accepting an offer. It's also practical for covering items like salary expectations, how serious you are about job hunting, outlining the role, etc.

All of those items can be accomplished over email. I think the recruiter/employer might have more of an advantage of discussing items like salary over the phone but that's all the more reason to prefer email as the potential employee.

Nevertheless, every step prior to discussing salary and interview with the actual employer/team can be done over email. Recruiters are typically less informed on the tech side anyway so there's really little reason to phone call type interviews/discussions.

I'm happy to spend a lot of time talking interactively with hiring managers and prospective teams. Recruiters aren't hiring managers and I think the entirety of my interactions with them can be managed successfully and efficiently asynchronously.

It's true, you would want to talk to some people eventually but the current state of the affairs is that the recruiters insist on communicating over the phone only. E.g. you get a message on Linked in "Hi, I have a software engineer job, interested? Let's hop on a quick call!", if you reply with something like: where is this job? what kind of industry? what is the compensation? etc. 90% of the times will be "Let's schedule a call". If you insist - they will either keep replying the same or disappear.

Exactly what this is. Also the more you’re spending time on them the less you have left for the competition

> falls victim to the sunk cost fallacy.

I think I did this in reverse with a recruiter when I turned down a job with JP Morgan. He didn't like my reason for turning the job down and kept trying to give me a proper answer and kept calling several times as well as others in the firm calling.

What was the “bad” reason you turned them down?

It was an application support position with shifts and I was looking for a software dev position and I just didn’t feel any good vibes in the interview. It didn’t seem like the kind of place I wanted to work.

only very smart recruiters would think to do this, most are likely just trying to expedite the process against competition (other recruiters, other candidates represented by those recruiters)

however, not an unknown tactic!

It's more about objection handling and not letting prospects fall out of their funnel. In email, if someone has an objection and they are an avoidant type (most people), they will ignore the email thread for a long time and potentially forget about the thread completely. This can drag out communications for a weeks as the sales person is constantly having to revive the thread after it is apparent the prospect is avoiding. On a phone call, they can sense the apprehension, elicit the objection and handle it in minutes rather than days of silence. For this reason phone calls feel more efficient and safe to them.

This is 100% accurate

I always thought the preference for phone calls over e-mails is so there's no written account of anything that might be convenient to backtrack on in the future.

Not really. No recruiter is trying to avoid a paper trail, that's not their gig. It's a reputation based industry, there's no limited liability like with corporations.

There's three reasons:

#1: The phone call allows them to get a read on your personality by listening to your tone of voice and your attentiveness.

#2: There's a whole body of research that says building rapport etc means the deal is more likely to get over the line, basic sales.

#3: Recruiters like to talk on the phone. The primary reason people get into recruiting is that talking on the phone all day sounds like a swell time to them.

Having worked with recruiters on the other side, I think the biggest contributor is a version of number 2 - they think they will get a better result via their amazing powers of verbal persuasion and charm.

In reality they are probably applying selection bias and only moving forward on the people sufficiently interested that they actually pick up the phone.

That sounds effective, they are probably happy with that bias. If people aren't interested enough to talk to them for half an hour then the outcome will probably be so-so.

I really disagree, it selects people with high tolerance for others wasting their time, so it chases away the most high value candidates.

Even if the selection part is true, it chases away people who cannot be bothered to interact with a human being for 20 minutes or so. High value is a different set of people with unknown intersection.

No, it is not people who can't interact with a human being for 20 minutes, but with tens of them. If it were an agent / talent model, where it is a somewhat large amount of interaction with a single individual, that would be one thing. But interactively sharing the same information with 20 different recruiters is just a waste of time that has nothing to do with an inability to be bothered to interact with people.

When I get 10 LinkedIn messages a day, no, I cannot be bothered to interact with each of them for 20 minutes. And since they all refuse to send along any relevant details whatsoever, I can't even cull that to the subset that's plausibly interesting.

> via their amazing powers of verbal persuasion and charm.

Not really. Just the mere act of talking to a human being is a more invested act than an email.

I'll add that sales is about overcoming objections. This is done most effectively in real-time. Sales of all variants have a preference for real-time discussions because they can get people to agree with things and navigate the turning no into yes.

The reason they like real time is that they can offer the bare minimum, and then if I don't like it they can then ramp up the offer.

If it's done via email it's basically a silent auction.

So your first offer HAS to be good, because you don't know what the other bidders are bidding.

Right, this makes sense for the person doing the selling. And it's why it makes sense to have a strong bias against people treating one's career as a sales engagement.

I don't think that is true anymore now that several jurisdictions says that the recruiter must mention a number first on the salary. They would never do that if they can at all avoid doing so. At any cost.

Which jurisdictions?

Seems like a weird rule, since the compensation is often subject to negotiation.

https://www.brodyandassociates.com/blog/growing-number-of-st...

Pedantically, That's a range and not a single number. There's a big difference, depending on the size of that range!

When I was a recruiter, mostly I wanted to make sure you could speak English well enough to hold a conversation, make sure you were interested enough to go through the process, and make sure you weren’t an asshole. Also I could help sell you to the hiring manager by getting details I know the manager is looking for, and getting that information over email can take too much back & forth. But really just making sure you could hold a conversation was big, as so many applicants cannot.

I've heard many people, often project managers, mention 'fit' and filtering out assholes, but my definition of an asshole is one who's mean, uncaring, and arrogant. But I've never seen that kind of person in the 10 years I've worked in software development.

What do you define as and asshole, and do you run across many of them?

When you are a recruiter, you talk to all types. You probably have seen many in part because the recruiter filtered them out. And you are right, most people are not assholes. But if a toxic grade-A dip shit applies, it’s my job to make sure that person doesn’t get within 100km of the hiring team, or they will start questioning why I’m even around at all.

> my definition of an asshole is one who's mean, uncaring, and arrogant

By that definition, I've worked with three clear matches and four pretty good runner-ups over the past 20 years. The absolute worst one was not a dev, but a PM.

For obvious reasons I'm not stating even the time frames when I crossed paths with such characters.

> When I was a recruiter, mostly I wanted to make sure you could speak English well enough to hold a conversation, make sure you were interested enough to go through the process, and make sure you weren’t an asshole

that makes sense and I respect that. the problem is that it is a jerky thing for the recruiter to do. and as someone looking for a new job/gig one of my top filters is to avoid/eliminate jerks where I can.

it might feel paradoxical or counter-intuitive to the recruiter, but in trying to weed out jerks, they themselves can behave like a jerk. and thus we will weed you out. ;-)

Strong disagree. As a candidate I want to make sure everyone’s time is being used effectively, and I’m perfectly happy to offer up information that can be used to make sure it’s a good match. It’s not “jerky” to want to know a candidate can hold a conversation: it’s (in my opinion) eminently reasonable due diligence.

understood.

but I didnt say or imply that

what I was saying is that if you as a recruiter demonstrate that you disrespect my time -- important upfront when one is bombarded with hundreds of recruiters a month/week -- then that is jerky behavior. one's "reasons" don't matter, they are indistinguishable from "excuses". only actions and impacts. upfront folks ought to use their time efficiently. treating every random recruiter ping to the red carpet is a recipe for much time wasting and frustration. its more polite to nail down and filter out any showstoppers as upfront as you can. email is much faster and easier at doing that, and less prone to being gamed/abused by the recruiter as a bonus.

once an initial fit is determined, then yes doing a brief call can be nice. but as a candidate, I dont honestly care if the recruiter himself/herself is sane or pleasant to talk to on the phone. I do care much more about the job details, and about whether the hiring company likes me or not, upfront. Anything that is an obstacle to that should be minimized or routed around.

but in a sea of alternative uses of my time the recruiter is competing for my time, the talent candidate's time, just as much as the reverse, and arguably more so

CAVEATS: decades of real world experience, not theory. I'm also talking more about third-party recruiters not in-house. and when I say "recruiter" I dont mean like the CEO of the hiring company, or a senior tech leader -- those folks tend to be MUCH better uses of call time, plus they inherently signal a hiring company is interested in you. and yes you DO want to get a sense for whether those folks are sane and not-jerks -- they are potential bosses afterall -- and calls help with that.

Third-party recruiters are the ones who always waste my time. Before Covid, many would insist on meeting in person at their office. I even had one that wanted to meet me at 4:30pm in downtown Dallas. That was an easy 'no' for me.

In-house recruiters are totally different. They represent the actual hiring company and aren't just submitting your resume to a job posting.

Someone who immediately jumps to calling someone a jerk, not knowing that there are probably good reasons for what a professional recruiter does (like phone calls) probably is a jerk themselves, honestly. I personally appreciated when my recruiter would talk with me on the phone versus email, as they took the time to really listen to me and find out what I wanted from a job, rather than treating me like another dart they had to throw out of twenty darts to try and get a bullseye. Maybe I’ve always talked to good recruiters but I’ve never questioned their methods and gotten several good jobs with great pay raises from them.

I totally agree. The problem isn’t that I don’t want to get on the phone. The problem is that I don’t want to get on the phone for half an hour without even having a job description or a pay range. That makes the recruiter a jerk.

well said, agreed. same camp.

because when recruiters want to do that it feels like they're just fishing for how little they can pay you, or perhaps just collecting PII for <reasons>.

software companies are becoming much too coy about setting pay expectations upfront. its disrespectful of the talent's time. and feels like a growing fad of gaslighters. "Well they get away with it so we'll try as well..."

I always posted the job location, compensation range, and essential requirements.

No. Phone calls are more personal than emails. Some people like that.

For everyone complaining here about getting phone calls, there is another half who'd jibe "Damn, another templatized email. Why should I be interested if you haven't put any time of yours into communicating with me??"

TL;DR: programers are hard to please. No good deed goes unpunished.

I mean, all I expect is a mail written by someone personally, referencing at least any of my work, offering a job I’m actually qualified for and would fit previous experience. Receiving fifty mails for a senior Java developer is pretty jarring if there’s no single Java role on your CV… Is that too much to ask from recruiters?

I got offered an internship recently. 12 years experience. Why?!?

> For everyone complaining here about getting phone calls, there is another half who'd jibe "Damn, another templatized email.

This is a false dichotomy. A non-templated phone call can be replaced with a non-templated email. Incredibly easy to please.

Paper trails are very professional.

Programmers as a group may be hard to please. The programmer in question, though, is not so hard: Send them an email to schedule the meeting with the hiring manager. That's not hard.

And if you're a recruiter and you can't listen to a request like that, how are you going to listen to the rest of what the candidate says?

> The programmer in question, though, is not so hard: Send them an email to schedule the meeting with the hiring manager. That's not hard.

It is not trivial either. Neither side wants to show their full availability immediately and you eventually have to block multiple timeslots till a response comes in. On a call you can give out preferred times at first and if they aren't a match look for alternatives. And you can confirm on both calendars at once without blocking other slots as well. But yes, shouldn't be hard to manage ...

I'll typically give out 3 slots that work for me and "if none of those work, propose a few days next week where you have availability and I'll offer additional slot in those days".

I've only had that go more than a couple rounds when trying to setup meetings with someone incredibly busy (and those people often have assistants that I can work directly with to find a slot). I'm not opposed to getting on a phone call to setup a meeting, but only after the vastly more efficient method has failed twice.

Some people are switching to the “book time with me” apps, which seem to be a better way to handle this.

Sure, if I wanted to offer “take any free time” to the counterparty. It’s more common that I want to offer a slot that’s adjacent to other interruptions in my day. If I have a 4 hour block of focused work time, I’m not offering as an opening bid 30 minutes in the middle of it to my CEO let alone a recruiter.

Now gomand schedule five interviews that way. Makes 15 slots blocked, till responses are in. And then the day not packed in a way that remaining time can be used in meaingful ways.

What happened to the happy middle ground of sending a personal email? Why are the two extremes having someone insist on synchronous voice communication on the one side and a fully automated e-mail on the other?

Who cares if they're more personal. Phone calls are more intrusive than e-mail unless they're pre-scheduled.

I don't think it's that simple really; it seems like people (not just programmers) are hard to please because the circumstances and available time differ from day to day, and different conversations are better sometimes in email and others on a call.

I'm very protective of my time in general because I tend to be involved in many things: sometimes technical, bureaucratic, sometimes internal-political, and so many more. Each category requires a different part of my attention/focus which I'm not always readily able to shift to, or more importantly, would rather not shift to as I'm more preoccupied with a different category.

Most importantly, the majority of the time all these calls have one common denominator; the requestor wants/needs something from me, not the other way around. Wanting/needing my help or input isn't something wrong in and of itself, but if it's not reciprocal and especially if it's not something I'm obligated to do, I absolutely tend to be pretty defensive of my time.

It's perfectly common in modern business to exploit people's tendency towards good faith interpretations and our aversion to conflict, and disengaging from situations/requests that aren't one's responsibility is something many people have difficulty with. (Just think in your work place if you know someone who just has a hard time saying "no" and over-commits themselves constantly) And it's a skill to identify these situations and gracefully disengage depending on the person who is creating the situation in the first place.

When there are complaints about a template email, the opposite of that isn't a phone call, it's taking the time to state a point clearly and directly and showing that it has specific relevance to you and justifying your time/attention. A conversation can be just as "template" as any email, even more so sometimes when you are listening to someone who speaks only in aphorisms but cannot go deeper than that. ("You have a chance to get in on the ground floor of something truly revolutionary!", "It's a high-paced high-reward environment that a 10x-er like you can thrive in, and the growth opportunities are limitless!", or even we can think of the hey-day of descriptions along the lines of "the Uber of _____") If the conversation lacks substance or purpose to someone specific and relies on general advertisement like attention grabs to keep you going, it doesn't matter what the medium is, the conversation simply offers next to no value.

A phone call doesn't mean personal by any means, it just means a slightly higher amount of attention and a situation that is sometimes difficult for people to exit. It has it's time and place, but far too many people exploit the good nature of others to peddle some agenda that serves only themselves. Absolutely, we should be more protective of our time/attention, and we should be more respectful of other people's time/attention

> Each category requires a different part of my attention/focus which I'm not always readily able to shift to, or more importantly, would rather not shift to as I'm more preoccupied with a different category.

...

> but if it's not reciprocal and especially if it's not something I'm obligated to do, I absolutely tend to be pretty defensive of my time.

You have every right to protect your time - I did not state otherwise. For abrupt interruptions on the phone, the simplest way that has worked for me is to not answer the call.

All I stated was that phone calls have their value, and the reason for using them is NOT exclusively to avoid leaving a paper trail. If one of the people on the call wants to leave a paper trail, it is easy to email "Hey, thanks for the call. Just so I totally understand, we agreed XYZ on the phone. Please confirm if that is your understanding too."

Also, if I understood correctly, the person I was replying to was not exclusively talking about phone calls for the first outreach. But your response suggests you are talking about interruptions on the phone.

Former recruiter, current data analyst here… recruiters do that for 2 reasons.. 1) when you call someone it is immediate and you control the process. They aren’t waiting for you to email back. 2) recruiters want your “buy in”. It’s old school bs but if you can’t make time for a phone call then how committed are you to the process. Having said that, I’m currently looking and receive 10+ calls and emails a week. I rarely answer the calls or reply to emails but if the email is interesting to me and looks like a fit then I reply and ask them to call when they can.

Well, you just described the process for most programmers: we want to first see if we are interested and only then schedule a phone call. Pressuring me into a phone call just nets you a generic "let me get back to you" and 90% of the time I never do.

I am not committed to their process, not to the process, you know?

You're right on the money. Plus, most people want to see if the role is actually a fit. 50% of the roles I receive are data pipeline and BI infrastructure roles. I'm on the analytics side but because SQL is on my resume, it comes up in their searches. Majority of recruiters don't know the different so of course I don't want to waste 10-15 minutes on each of these calls.

The worst are the ones that will somehow dig up your company desk phone # and call you in the middle of the day at work.

Is this something unique to the personalities of people that thrive at sales jobs? I've encountered this sort of behavior with real estate agents, car salesmen*, and of course, third party headhunter/recruiters. They love phone calls, will try to get you on the phone no matter what, and actively try to avoid e-mails/text/etc.

* although, I recently purchased a car a few weeks ago, and nearly all my communication with the salesman was done via e-mail and text. Very pleasant experience, but I wonder if this is the new norm, or if he was a unique exception.

Firstly: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

Secondly: Yes, people who like talking with people tend to go into careers that primarily involve talking to people.

I have never heard of this maker vs manager schedule thing before. It really resonates with me. I just finished a rotation as a primary contributor on leave from my manager role and was having a real hard time telling people I had to cancel meetings from my normal job bc I couldn’t switch mental gears like that. This link is so very true it’s scary…I had been wondering if anyone was good at doing both, and if I could exercise my brain muscles to be able to switch between the two during the day. Anyone have any luck at that? I feels really really hard.

My job involves a lot of meetings, and also doing a lot of IC work. What works for me is to take 2-3 hrs every week thinking through all the IC work I need to do and breaking it down into chunks that can be completed in 6-8 1 hour blocks of time. That’s the longest block of time I can hope to find without any interruptions. I break things down to the level that I can write the commit message for the changes I’m about to make. Then I use to time slots to make the changes.

I like this idea. Thanks!

It's hard for most if not all folks. What you can do is put cons calls in the morning, and do your IC work in the afternoon or the other way round.

The mental switch is one part of the issue, and time fragmentation is the other.

Yea, I assume it would be something like cutting the day in half. PG said to put the calls at the end of the day, so it didn't feel like an interruption. I can see how that would work; similar to what you're saying. I wonder if top-of-game CEOs and people like that are better at switching between IC and manager, or if they are just manager from day one. It seems like Elon Musk may be one of these bright people who can concurrently IC and manage.

Hard for me and hard for the author of the blog post.

Because getting someone on the phone is a necessary stop along the path to closing a deal. It's also a high bandwidth form of communication, so it's just plain practical.

Would you buy a car with no return policy without speaking to someone or examining it in person? How about spend $200K on a software bundle? Face to face meetings matter for large size deals, and recruiting a candidate is a huge one.

I absolutely agree a/some phone calls are necessary at some point in the recruiting process between recruiter and candidate.

But a lot of recruiters insist on nearly every single communication be over the phone when an e-mail or text exchange would suffice. In fact they'll leave a text or e-mail with no content other than "yeah, so when can we talk on the phone?"

The correct answer is “no”.

I have “fired” pushy recruiters even at the offer stage by walking away. Trying to sell me a job like a used car salesman at a scummy lot when you’ve made me a large offer is a really strange decision.

I also regret not walking away from some recruitment funnels where bad recruitment vibes were indeed strong signals for bad workplace situations.

Communications like what?

A short screen call is pretty standard. Many "candidates" aren't serious, so they show good faith by hopping on the phone. Text only communication is the path to getting ghosted, especially when it comes to emotional topics like salary.

This isn't "a deal", it's a job that someone will spend a huge portion of their time doing for multiple years. Thinking of it like selling a car is exactly why the approach is so problematic.

In my experience, sales people who have very few reservations about cold calling somebody treat it as a bulk process and depersonalize things.

The idea of sitting down and making dozens of cold calls, outbound, would be my own idea of a personal hell. There is not enough money in the world to get me to do that.

It definitely takes a certain personality type.

I have had many similar experiences. A recruiter contacts me via email regarding an open position, I ask for details in the email reply. They send me an email back saying we should schedule a call so they can answer my questions. I’m not even asking hard questions just “what is the salary range”, “when are you looking to fill the position”, “how many are on the team”, etc.

I usually don’t waste my time with recruiters who don’t answer the most basic questions via email.

Perhaps it's a filter to make sure they don't move further with a candidate who is not serious? And like most things...there are likely few good confluent reasons for it despite none of the reasons influencing eachother. Some that others have mentioned so far.

> Perhaps it's a filter to make sure they don't move further with a candidate who is not serious?

Why is asking basic questions over email considered "not serious", but doing the exact same thing over the phone is considered "serious".

The recruiter is just an asshole for wasting everyone's time by not just answering the basic questions in their email reply. They are already replying to the email, so they might as well answer the questions.

I wish they would operate over sms and email as well...but they have it in their minds that the little games help. I'm sure it right runs people off but for them, answering texts and emails all day is probably not fruitful. It is much more convenient for us but not them and...we are not the customer.

> Perhaps it's a filter to make sure they don't move further with a candidate who is not serious?

That could be. If the candidate isn't willing to take the time for a phone call, can the recruiter be confident they willing to take the time for an interview?

On the other hand, if a recruiter isn't willing to 'work with me' and spend a few minutes on replying an email, are they 'work with me' in the future? Or push their way around for what's best for them?

I enjoy my job and salary...I don't have anything to lose by filtering out non-serious recruiters.

Also a fair point.

This works both ways. If you're unwilling to respond to the most basic questions about the job, how serious are you, and/or why are you concealing that information?

Every call you take is an opportunity for you to bolster your final asking price. Use calls to your advantage.

The recruiter might not be party to the final negotiation, but they’ll be a net positive at hiring meetings if you’ve got them in your corner.

Recruiters will want to talk on the phone at every stage, not necessarily for long periods of time, but certainly frequently. They are constantly gauging how you feel as a candidate, and getting the measure of how to close you once you get an offer.

Dance along to their tune and it will be one more reason you get top market price for your labor.

My experience (mostly on the hiring side) is that an in-house recruiter is indeed trying to close you if they think you'll be a good fit (they're measured/bonused on metrics around their job, after all) and third-party recruiters are just interested in closing the deal and you staying 90 days.

As a hiring manager, I can't recall ever being influenced by a third-party recruiter as they "love" all candidates at a rate equal to 30% of the candidates' first year comp.

Meh

something I've seen referenced elsewhere was to set up a mailing list for incoming recruitment requests:

https://twitter.com/JillWohlner/status/1418568163898368003

"I got my first 'im not looking right now, but please sign up to my mailing list to be notified when I am looking' from a candidate. The market is peak something!"

The goal isn't to maximize efficiency. It is to increase human connection. Why?

1. They want you to feel a sense of trust to increase the probability of taking additional steps in the process.

2. They are mostly extroverts who want to hear someone talk about their career aspirations -- for the same emotional reasons that coaches want to see people learn.

great analysis.

though for 1) in a way, it IS about maximising efficiency. The recruiter wants to place candidates, and those with whom s/he has a strong human connection are more likely to convert into placements. Hence, efficiency is the ultimate driver for this behaviour

I'm deaf and wear hearing aids, so talking on phones or any situation where I can't effectively lip read is an exercise in frustration. I can hear the other side, but the words just aren't coming through in my brain.

So, a couple sentences describing this is a very easy way for me to filter out recruiters like this, and jobs as well. Especially with working remotely.

I made a big point of saying this over and over during a previous job search and people still ignored what I said and called. They'd even acknowledge that I asked them not to call at the beginning of the call.

That makes it easy to filter them out, though.

Phone calls are synchronous. You have each others attention, questions can be answered quickly. Also the big one is that hard to answer questions will die in an async setting. What's your current salary, why did you leave your last job so soon, anything that creates a desire to procrastinate with an answer.

Questions like these may be appropriate¹ to ask in a scheduled interview. It's completely not respectful to pepper a person's week with multiple unscheduled "quick chats" or callbacks. If they want to schedule something that's what calendly is for.

¹The salary question is illegal in some places and kinda shady in the others.

I have the same impression.

But I suspect it's not recruiters who are the weirdos. It might be us!

Many normal people seem to prefer phone calls. Programmers seem to be in the minority of people who prefer written and asynchronous communication.

> This has been my experience as well, and while I understand the desire for introductory "sales mode" type calls, I think it's progressed past that point to something nearly pathological.

I don't pay attention to unsolicited phone calls, so recruiters might as well be yelling at an empty chair when they call. My email is spam filtered, automatically sorted and tagged, so unsolicited recruiting goes directly to the trash. I've had a few really positive interactions that started via SMS and led to an accepted call from a recruiter.

The like the phone so that they can ask questions in passing to find out what other roles they're competing for. You're their commission, so they have a sports coach/psychologist approach to groom and herd you. I pretty much shouted at the recruiter for my current job, finally losing it with all her calls just before I went into the interview - a sheepdog darting left and right of the sheep.

Phone calls are done to prevent paper trails. I just send a list of questions to be answered when such requirements are not meaningful.

Well that just sounds like that particular recruiter had some operational issues. Although she got you on the phone and got you to agree to a meeting so she was doing something right. At any rate, she should have just used a Calendly link or something. But there are many reasons why introductory phone calls (screens) are very necessary.

In the past I have had this problem often, round after round of handshakes back and forth trying to get availability to schedule brief phone calls despite me saying repeatedly “just call me”.

My favorite was when I was contacted by the CEO of a small company asking if I was interested, foisted off on a recruiter who didn’t have time to schedule a call for a week and a half, and then told the position was no longer open.

Annoying, but an important signal in a job search. If they don't have it together when they should be putting their best foot forward, they're going to be a complete disaster on the other side.

Yes, company recruiters are part of the external face of the company. If they are chaotic - don't sign on.

There is, however, one exception to this rule: if recruiting/hiring is outsourced, then one may not interfere too much about the company from recruiters' behavior (there are many corporation where the friendly HR lady next door was replaced by a mailing list in a low cost country).

I used to have recruiters call me daily and I just had to stop answering the phone on random numbers. I can't work for a customer and take recruiter calls at the same time. You would think recruiters would understand this but they just done care and just continue calling about new roles.

Having read some of the comments, I wonder about the challenges with making myself a recruiter that doesn’t do the stupid things such as cold calling and wasting peoples time.

I don’t like wasting time, but I also feel like the biggest hurdle would be just finding people to trust me to help them find a job.

Basic reason for preferring calls over email is that it is more difficult to say no when on call than when responding to an email.

As to scheduling meetings I just give them my Calendly link. They are loving it.

Why care so much about a crappy recruitment experience? - it’s just the first hop/hoop.

Would you not go to a party because your shower’s hot water temperature fluctuated and put you in a bad mood?

The use calls because they can lie on the call without the fear of being called up on it, while in email you are will have a record of the conversation.

It's probably HR that can be completely automated by the AI and scripts, also I bet it would be much more efficient and even cost- efficient.

I like the idea of going through independent headhunters. Does anybody know how to find good headhunters, though?

I generally do not like independent headhunters. My experience with most of them has been mixed.

However a few have been outstanding. The common denominator I've seen with the best third party recruiters is that they tend to work for smaller boutique shops (or even completely on their own) and cultivate good relationships with hiring managers.

I think this is because the recruiting agencies deliberately hire extroverts. As an example, in New York City, Talener. My friends tell me that the company mostly hires young people who engaged in a large number of social activities at college. Sororities, fraternities, soup kitchens, art clubs, music clubs, anything social. It’s a company of extreme extroverts.

How was your skiing trip? And did you schedule the meeting?

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