Why do so many technical recruiters suck? | Hacker News Reader

Why do so many technical recruiters suck?

mikebz.com

72 pointsezxs57 comments

For the same reason most (if not all) real estate agents are worthless. There's no barrier to entry and there's the allure of easy money. Until the profits collapse the market will be inundated with wannabes.

Until the profits collapse the market will be inundated with wannabes.

When will this happen?

The guy the poster was talking to sounds like a younger brother of some guys I dealt with in the 90s.

That said, I've dealt with a handful of 'okay' recruiters, as a job-seeker. At least two.

There's also relatively little feedback reinforcement for the good (quality) recruiters.

Since remunerative reward is based on quantity, not quality, market incentives are diametrically at odds with what both hiring managers and talent would benefit by.

One solution is to not do business with or encourage the idiots in any manner whatsoever.

I also jealously guard my time. If you're wasting, it, particularly on the phone, assuming you've reached me in the first place (I'm increasingly extremely phone-hostile), I'll respond with "Thanks, not interested, have a nice day. <click>". That's a single sentence, punctuated with the call termination.

I've only got in a fight with one recruiter over that -- he called back. I noted that he was wasting both of our time and tarnishing his (and his employer's) reputation by the second. He didn't call a second time.

I am waiting for Google Voice or something similar to get here so that I can have all calls from an unknown number go straight to voicemail (including not actually ringing).

It is not even that I get that many calls but it would be nice to know that you won't have some guy call you.

I can't even imagine how annoying it must be for people who have business cards out there.

FWIW, we're considering getting one of these for similar reasons:

http://www.truecall.co.uk/

Not sure if it's available for use outside the UK, but we'll settle for just stopping calls to our phone from outside the UK from ringing given that 100% of them are junk. (In theory, BT can block them on request. In practice, that request has not been effective, so we're looking for a more direct approach.)

Wait, if they get 20k per candidate hired, and the turnover is 90 days, what kind of schlock does go back to them? And what kind does not sure them when its obvious the candidate did not have any of the advertised qualifications?

As a Tech Recruiter and former Developer I've been first-hand witness to the incredible hypocrisy and mind-boggling anti-logic perpetrated by the recruitment industry and I've attempted to answer your question at length in my blog post 'All that's wrong with the recruitment industry' http://voltsteve.blogspot.com/2011/07/all-that-is-wrong-with...

Someone in the comments below mentioned how they don't feel that the recruitment industry can be disrupted whereas I completely disagree. The industry is already suffering and multiple different factors are playing a part. As PG mentioned in a recent comment on a similar post, more and more companies are investing in building internal recruitment teams.

For the record, I agree that most tech recruiters suck. Even if you find a decent one, chances are they work for an organisation that imparts a vast amount of KPI's and compliance issues that generally restrict their capabilities and creativity.

Is it hard finding staff that have sufficient technical knowledge?

It feels like the recruitment industry in general is very cut throat and has high turnover.

And in an industry that has a shortage of skilled people to begin with, that's probably not a good thing.

Is it hard finding staff that have sufficient technical knowledge?

Absolutely. It's also very low on the priority list of most hiring managers within the recruitment industry. The number 1 priority is finding people with solid recruitment experience, priority number 2 is finding people who can bring existing client relationships with them, priority number 3 is finding people who are incredibly driven and want to make a lot of money. Technical capability struggles to break the top ten in terms of priority.

It feels like the recruitment industry in general is very cut throat and has high turnover.

100% accurate. I've never worked in a career where I've felt as insecure as I do in recruitment. Despite making my company a lot of money this year I am constantly looking over my shoulder as the age old adage is that you are only as good as your last deal. My technical competency counts for very little when it comes to my bosses perspective on how valuable I am to the business despite the fact that my technical competence is what sets me ahead of most other recruiters.

The problem with recruiters is that they're the only (potential) vendor/service provider to your business that doesn't actually understand the product they are delivering to you.

* My hosting partner knows how operate servers and datacenters

* My employee payroll + benefits partner knows employee laws.

* My lawyer knows corporate law

* My CPA knows accountancy and tax rules.

* My recruiter is unlikely to understand very much about developers, the types of people developer I need to hire into my specific role, the needs of an engineering hiring manager, etc.

Why, therefore, people continue to use them is beyond me.

It seems like you've just rephrased the original question.

You just answered your own question. People who understand very much about developers and the types of developers for specific roles are the requirements of a good technical manager.

A recruiter who's very good with technology and who can program is better off being a developer financially.

A recruiter who's very good with people and navigating the intricacies of a project is better off financially being an internal HR manager or project manager.

As an aside, I hate this post for one reason and one reason only: the hyperlink at the bottom alluring like-minded techies for a job in his/her company.

And that is not just in this post. Almost every such post that talks about something that strongly resonates with a techie and then drops the..."oh...btw...we are hiring..." at the fag end.

Please do mention if you require a green card or a H1-B or something related to residence status required of the position. I am forced to open up the line of communication with a are-you-willing-to-sponsor-a-H1-B. Only two out of a whole bunch I emailed had the courtesy to reply.

I would say the visa problem is probably the biggest contributor to the current lack of available developer talent.

If the US ever relaxes its visa laws, I foresee a big drop-off in the demand for recruiters…

Isn't the job post going to explain that information? Why would he put all the terms/conditions of employment at the bottom of the post. And when you're recruiting for your company and write something related, a simple "We're hiring" link really doesn't do much harm. He didn't put a banner across the top, just a simple link.

Also, you can't really expect too much courtesy when people are inundated with resumes. If you're following up and opening those lines of communication, you're showing a lot more initiative than a lot of people

For anyone else who raised an eyebrow or chuckled at the tweeness of "the fag end" like I did:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fag%20end

Nicely captures my issues with tech recruiters. The other big disconnect is that since tech is in so much flux, you want to hire smart generalists who can pick up new technologies in a few days if necessary.

Most recruiters have no clue how to find "smart developers". So instead they do a google search for "Java developer looking for job" and spam you with the top 10 hits with some great insights like "OMG this guy's great... he's only done Java for the last 20 years!!!1!". They don't understand why that's NOT a good thing in tech.

As someone who's more of a generalist than not, it's almost impossible to arrange interviews through recruiters -- most of them are only looking to match up acronym/skill/buzzword X with length of time Y. A big part of that comes from missing the technical background to properly appraise the value of those technical skills.

I find that's one of the worst things about recruiters, not only do they have a really high number of false positives, they are awful at picking out non-traditional candidates that any engineer would say "wow" to. The only possible function I can think of for recruiters is to shuffle around mediocre, faceless programmers from one large company to another.

It's worse than that. I started as a DBA, moved into development, spent time as an architect, and now am mainly a Project Manager though I do dip back into architecture occasionally. I do try to describe the types of projects I've run, and that usually leads to a discussion of the technologies we've used. So if you're looking for a PM with enough Python to be dangerous, ok. If you're looking for a heads down Python developer... then I have to question if your read ANYTHING in my resume or just had an automated bot send emails to any address where the resume had that keyword. Most folks send out enough of these that I can just ignore them. But at least a couple times a week I get calls following up and asking why I didn't respond. Um... Hello? I was not aware that I had accepted any responsibility to help you just because I have an email address. Of course those are also the folks who say "well, you must know some people who can do this." Yes, yes I do. But why on earth would I give you their info (or give them yours)?

My more than .02 worth :-)

This is like complaining "Why is so much spam email irrelevant to me?" If someone cold-calls you their business model is to churn through many people who are annoyed before they find one who hires them. The great recruiters aren't going to cold-call you. So there's a selection bias.

It is a classic sales technique to ignore objections and to turn them into new lines of attack.

    - ... You have to go to HR first.
    - Okay…  in that case why don’t we have coffee or lunch next week?

Bam. Objection ignored.

A classic bad sales technique. I'll put up with a lot of things, and under some circumstances I'll accept someone acknowledging what I've said and saying they can't provide that, but if you give me the impression that you just plain don't listen at all, you've just ended the conversation, permanently.

Think it through. It's a good sales technique.

There are broadly speaking two kinds of sales. There is the kind of sales that takes months -- eg flogging SAP to a sap -- and there are the kinds that take minutes.

Recruiting falls into the second category, along with second-hand cars, door to door encyclopaedias, life insurance and so on.

In the short-sale field, when is the salesman ever going to see you again? If he can help it, never. There is no incentive to favour the long term. The sale is made now or not at all.

Hence high pressure sales tactics like "never take no for an answer".

When you recognise a short-sales technique, the only winning move is not to play. As logical types we want to appear fair and rational and the salesman will use that against us. Stick to your guns. Decide what you want in advance and refuse to negotiate.

I didn't say "ineffective"; I have no doubt it works for people with zero ethics, intent on barraging as many people as possible until they find a sucker. As you suggest, that tactic has no place in a rational discussion. It also seems like yet another indicator of someone entirely too clueless to provide what they claim to provide, as suggested in the original article. So, like I said, try it on me and I'll end the conversation, permanently.

Recruiting, however, shouldn't fall into the short-sales category you described. Personally, I hope I never need recruiters; ideally I'd love to go directly from "exhausted the network of smart people I know and smart people they know" to "no shortage of smart people and no problem enticing them". However, if I ever do need a recruiter, I'd like to have one that I can count on to deliver world-class people that fit perfectly, and who I'll remember for the next dozen hires I need to make. I'd like somebody who I always remember when thinking about how I ended up working with the awesome person they found.

> There is no incentive to favour the long term. The sale is made now or not at all.

As a Tech Recruiter I completely disagree. Granted a significant proportion of the recruiter community tend to favour the short term gain but ultimately the only way to succeed in the industry is to cultivate long term relationships and generate repeat business.

It'd be nice if there were more like you.

couldnt access the article, but fwiw since i'm in the china sw development industry where a significant portion of hires are done through headhunters:

- they don't know the least bit about software development, typically wih english or business degrees - as a result, their search effort is solely based on keyword or company profile matching., i.e. to a certain extent large companies seem to have similar processes and requirements like hp, ibm, so this works some of the time, you could also say that facebook and google have similar requirements - in china, because of the volume of applicants, there's no time to speak or meet with all candidates so you really just have a resume which doesnt say an awful lot

i spend my time mentoring recruiters on how to more effectively search for candidates, usually it's a process of giving them direct feedback on each resume, after developing somewhat of a repoire, it usually gets nominally better.

what would be more effective is if someone like me who's been a developer and now in development management, goes out and opens a headhunter agency, but that wouldnt provide the level of pay that i'm getting nor really interest me to be a broker.

i've dreamed of a social network like github + linkedin where not only actual code is available, but also a strong network of past and present co-workers are able to vouch for you. e.g. this guy worked with werner vogel at amazon and wrote significant portions of ec2 and has a lot of like minded followers of his work, of course an extreme case, but hopefully you get the point. it's about making the world of software developers smaller through social networks so everyone knows who and where the good, bad, and middle performers exist.

They usually suck because they don't understand technology.

To me, a good technical recruiter would be able to take my resume and actually understand (to some degree) what it is I'm doing. From there, when talking about my knowledge and interests, they'd be able to respond and interact, then tell me about actually relevant jobs on their hands.

Instead, the conversation is a like driving the wrong way on a one-way street. They always have the best job for you no matter how wrong of a match it is or how unqualified or even un-interested you may be. At best, most "technical recruiters" are "connectors" as other comments stated. Beyond that it's almost all spam.

Believe it or not a recruiter can do a very good job filling technical positions without a strong understanding of the technology. All you need to know to get started is how to spot a qualified person, and the hiring manager can help with that.

I'll go with "not" when it comes to the recruiters in the Chicago area. I regularly get contacted for roles I have no measurable experience in, such as Django jobs, or really anything web related. While I have extensive Python knowledge, I haven't touched Django outside of a tutorial or two on a rainy day.

They seem to want to extrapolate Python expertise to cover everything that uses Python, but it doesn't work like that. I'd love to talk to a recruiter who understands this.

Successful recruiting is all about having a great process. Domain knowledge in a specific area is helpful, but not required. For example, I might talk to a hiring manager about the following...

"Why do you need REALLY need a Python developer? Is it because you have problems that a great software engineer without Python knowledge can't solve? If so, give me a couple examples of things you need that only a Python whiz could do, and I will make sure applicants can do that. If we can't attract the right applicants, I will ask you will need to dedicate more time to recruiting or refine your expectations."

I may come to you with a Django job, but I will be prepared to tell you why the hiring manager doesn't need Django experience at all.

I cannot see why an employer would not want to hire someone with extensive Python knowledge for a Django position, assuming the candidate also has web development experience. It is not as though Django is especially difficult to learn.

Spotting a qualified person is impossible without domain knowledge.

A good recruiter leverages the hiring manager's domain knowledge.

The author should take his own advice more seriously. He links to his companies job postings, which consist of a long list of mostly boilerplate required qualifications, and little to nothing about what the company may have to offer prospective employees.

Not even a hint that they may be interested in the needs of the people they're looking to hire.

I did some (non-tech) recruiting about 6 years ago, and I always thought that given the time and effort, I could be an awesome tech recruiter. Maybe some day I will, although it currently isn't in my pants. Here's what I'd do:

- I'd want to take a long-term approach, and keep in touch with the people that I worked to place. After 2-3 years, they might just be up for a new position.

- I should know their skills deeply. Forget reading resumes, I'd read Github accounts. I should be able to read what skills they have, not be told them. Obviously not everything a person does ends up on Github, but the things they most enjoy and are best at often do. If a person enjoys working in Ruby, I'm not going to try to shoehorn them into a PHP position because they won't be happy and won't output the best.

- I'd want to deeply understand the actual needs of the placed position. So many Craigslist job postings that are by recruiters clearly don't understand the requirements of the job vs things that are nice to have.

- I also understand tech deeply. I don't be that poorly qualified recruiter who mistakes C# for CSS. I'd be able to talk about what testing frameworks people are using, or how they like to approach a problem in a non-confrontational way.

- While this might sound like marketing-spin, I would want to really think of it as just connecting friends who need jobs to companies of friends who are hiring. I actually do this now a good bit, since I know a lot of qualified tech people and send them emails when I get them about positions that really seem to speak to them. I never ask for money currently, because well... its just helping out friends and I want to see them happy.

How many of these people change employers in a given year? What fraction of them will do so through you? How much can you get for finding those people a new job (on average)?

The product of those three numbers is the amount of money you can make each year with your approach.

Their behavior is just as frustrating from the other side. Since my resume says I've used Python for scientific computing, I must be a Django expert that has experience building scalable e-commerce sites, right?

That's what 90% of the recruiters seem to think, and I get a neverending stream of jobs from them not even remotely related to my experience.

This happens to everyone I think. I had numerous "leads" tossed my way by recruiters and (unfortunately) a few interviews last year that revolved around my experience with <buzzword>.

Since I don't particularly want to work doing <buzzword> it is not anywhere on my CV. Good manners keeps me from saying "Did you arse holes even READ my resume?" when you've pulled me in for an interview for a position I don't want.

I understand that not everyone involved in the selection process will have a deep comprehension of technology, but the department you are hiring for should. Send them your shortlist for vetting, or better yet, let them send YOU the shortlist. If you're a 3rd party recruiter.. ..educate yourself.

It will save a lot of wasted time all around.

/rant

I've generally tried to get the employer to tell me up front exactly what the job entails, before we waste any time actually interviewing. Unfortunately sometimes that doesn't work, because they think they need somebody that knows <X> when they really need an expert in <Y>.

Next time I'm looking for a job, I think I'll scrub most of the mention of languages and technologies from the resume, and see if that helps. :)

all the real estate agents who lost their jobs have gone into recruiting now.

"Subprime recruiting".

"Tech jobs will never go down".

We've never found recruiters useful. Perhaps it was the fact that most of the positions they recruited for were for large companies, and their candidate pool reflected that. Once however, when we were truly desperate, we tried to work with one agency.

I said right away that the only way this would work would be based on a success fee, and they accepted that. Also, I demanded that they send me a sample of anonymized CVs before we signed anything. So a couple of hours later they send me these three CVs, and when I looked at them, I immediately recognized the candidates (it's a small world, isn't it?).

The next step was to call the candidates and ask them if they're were really looking for a job. Turns out not one knew anything about the company in question and none of them were interested in switching jobs.

I agree, most suck. The only ones who don't are ones with many years in the industry they services. There are ex-engineers that make good engineering headhunters. There are ex-brand managers that make good marketing brand managers. Even still, the good ones still have minions running around getting meetings for them, and having lunch, and cold calling, and generally being worthless. The lackeys are in the same league as used car salesmen.

One subtle point the writer may have missed: - I can’t really source candidates from agencies that are not on the vendor list. You have to go to HR first. - Okay… in that case why don’t we have coffee or lunch next week?

The second line wasn't ignoring an exception. It was a subtle was of saying, "If you're not hiring, perhaps I can find you a job."

Despite being 50 years young or so, software still is making the transition from art to science.

You can't recruit for something you don't understand.

- They're not technical - They're not connectors - They don't understand the job as being beyond a list of skills - Education doesn't come close to making up for experience

They violate the worlds shortest and most profound sales course. "Know your stuff, know their stuff"

From the article "I am thinking – does this guy not want to hear me? I am detecting a pattern: not only he doesn’t want to listen, he actually doesn’t care to consume any information at all."

Anybody have experience with Hackruiter or TopProspect as alternatives?

Never heard of them, actually.

But the recruiter space doesn't seem to need disruption, since it fundamentally only makes sense in a pre internet age. Today candidates can find any company they like online and apply right then and there. The same goes for any company which can contact a candidate directly (either through a his/her blog if the prospect has one or through any of a number of aggregator services).

Today recruiters are like travel agents -- mostly useless, except if you don't have the time to look stuff up yourself.

I interviewed for a job as a recruiter once (what can i say, I was desperate). Anyway, during the interview, the recruiter told me that they get hired so that the company can select specific kinds of candidates (national, football player etc). In essence, recruiters can allow companies to discriminate against minorities or whatever without having legal problems. This probably doesn't apply in the tech field but it may be why big companies still use them.

Oh god, interaction with that site is horrible. Looks nice but..

I would say the example recruiter is not actually a connector. Based upon my understanding of the term, a connector has deeper connections than that, and is capable of actually putting people and concepts together in his/her head in a way that is relatively unique.

The recruiter described sounds like a more technologically advanced version of a beggar: ask everyone you ever come across for a handout, and you'll eventually get one.

Idiot recruiter story: in college, I did part-time work for the Corps of Engineers. It was basically an intership program, though with poorer guidance than you'd expect of one. I kept getting recruiter calls to work on Ada projects, despite it being nowhere on my resume. Recruiters refused to acknowledge my very relevant work experience (multithreaded C++) because they don't consider military experience, despite the fact I had nothing to do with the military...

I'm curious how this recruiter would earn $15,000-$20,000. Is that the going rate for a full time hire? Is it usually a percentage of starting salary? Does it vary widely from firm to firm? Is it %20 of the starting salary?

Recruiters typically get 20-25% of first year salary, if their candidate is hired. If you're getting recruiters calling you, go ahead and ask them what their fee is. I've done it, and they do give you an answer.

That said, given such a high % fee, you also get an idea of how often they are actually successful.

This is something we're trying to address at CodeEval.com. We're trying to make it easy for start-ups to hire without needing a recruiting team or contracting a clueless recruiter.

We've created a community of pre-screened developers who are actively or passively looking for jobs at startups. They have proved their programming chomps by solving dozens of programming challenges on our site.

If you're a start-up looking to hire without dealing with recruiters get in touch with us - william@codeeval.com

It seems that every week there's a couple posts complaining about recruiters these days.

It's one of the reasons why I've launched my own site to try and improve recruiting (for designers, at least): http://folyo.me

I would have read with bated breath if you'd explained the problem with recruiting, and how it can be fixed.

But instead, you just shared a link. To your paid service.

I can feel the marketing, and I don't like it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com