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"If I can't introduce myself to the guy, how am I ever meant to prove I'm not one of the many useless bottom-feeders he deals with on a daily basis?"

Networking, word-of-mouth, recommendations and referrals, social media, via your website, advertising...

The same way everyone grows their business without spamming and cold-calling.

Yes! Show up at a few local users groups, attend some conferences, actually understand the technology you're recruiting for.

Absolutely right however that process takes forever. I gained most of my clients through those methods but some potential clients aren't always available through those methods.

> "Absolutely right however that process takes forever."

I mean this in the least aggressive and judgmental tone I can muster...

... How is this our problem, and how does the fact that feet-on-ground networking takes a lot of effort justify spamming and cold-calling?

Bottom line: Recruiters will piss of a lot of people in the process of cold-calling but the absolute reality is that they will place more candidates in 1 month of cold-calling than they would in 6 months of networking. Unfortunately, it really is a numbers game.

You can build a decent business through better methods such as networking and building a reputation for yourself (my chosen method when I was in the business) however some of my colleagues who wouldn't know a tech meet-up if it slapped them in the face were making twice the bonus I made exclusively through cold calling.

I get that part. I think mostly everyone here is familiar with the how and the why of recruiter behavior.

The question is why we should be expected to put up with it.

419 scams also get a tremendous amount of traction, and selling things via spam is also surprisingly profitable.

How are recruiters different, and why should they be not be treated as cancerous perversions of the system, and why should we adopt any stance other than complete hostility towards these cold-calling, spammy recruiters?

The question is why we should be expected to put up with it.

You shouldn't and I'll never say otherwise. My original point is that moaning about it is pointless. This is one of the most innovative communities I'm aware of and despite the fact that HN constantly bemoans the recruitment industry (and rightfully so) these discussions rarely, if ever focus on potential solutions to the problem.

If I can't introduce myself to the guy, how am I ever meant to prove I'm not one of the many useless bottom-feeders he deals with on a daily basis?

If you're not going to show me qualified applicants without me signing a contract then you can't. Thats the point. There's no way for you to distinguish yourself within the current system of cold calls. I hate these calls, I get a few a week and in the 20-30 I've gotten in the last few months not one has convinced me they're worth putting paper in place with.

If you're not going to show me qualified applicants without me signing a contract then you can't. Thats the point.

A perfectly valid point. If it helps (it probably doesn't) the reasoning for this is generally straightforward:

1. Every rec COMPANY I've seen has a blanket ban on revealing candidate details prior to a signed contract.

2. If I send you someone amazing prior to getting a signed contract and someone else comes along a few days later and sends the same guy, you get the problem of agencies fighting over legal ownership. Happens all the time and I know quite a few companies that have a regular income from claiming ownership of other agencies candidates.

3. Recruiters are perpetually afraid of you cutting us out of the loop. They are absolutely aware of the fact that they are purely an introduction service. If they provide the introduction without having any guarantee of payment for that service they assume you'll go to the candidate directly and a lot of companies go out of their way to cut the recruiter out of the equation.

And this response, for me at least, captures the problem perfectly.

#1 - that ban won't exist on the disruptive company. The point is that if you are willing to trust the hiring company that will partner with you, then you don't need that ban.

#2 - "claiming ownership" is really sad, it shows the mindset of "owning" the candidate like the slave trade not introductions. If you can let go of the notion of "owning" you can say "Oh, did xyy bring them to your attention first, ok thanks." and move on.

#3 - Crappy recruiters should be afraid, a good recruiter should not. Yes there are companies that go out of their way to screw recruiters, choose not to work with them. You know if the second or third candidate they hire that you introduce them to was mysteriously introduced by someone else, just stop talking to them. There are other fish.

You're living the prisoner's dilemma in real time and it sucks, been there done that. Have a frank conversation with the company, make a relationship (you can start that with #1 and disclosing details early rather than later) and trust.

May be that it is completely naive to think one could partner with a recruiter, I hope not.

Optics are a big part of the problem. We have job boards all over; here, SO, 37signals, etc...

Everyone makes their own job board and wants $500 for employers to post there. So instead of giving gobs of money to the individual who successfully gets you a candidate, employers have to hand over gobs of money to feature their job on these boards (NumBoards x $500).

Seems more like a human problem where fixing the optics of payment on successful completion changes to something that better gauges quality.

Yep. Valid point. Our site is 100% free for now and the topic of monetisation is one we are hammering to death on a daily basis. We have multiple concepts of what we feel might work and we're edging closer to a system that will make us an obvious first choice for employers... we think.

What could a job listing do or implement other than listing the job description?

I run a similar website to hackerjobs.co.uk (http://roundabout.io/about) and I'm starting to realise that's not the way forward.

Job listings are the MVP. Take a look at any of the major job boards. They are used by millions daily and turn over a very real profit. Problem the majority of them have is that they primarily cater to recruiters. We're taking a slightly different approach by eliminating recruiter listings, blogging about relevant topics and interviewing people who hire developers on a regular basis to help job seekers get an insight into what does and does not work.

It'd be interesting to know if those profitable job boards are profitable because of recruiters paying and re-posting the same jobs (changing few words here and there) in order to gather CVs.

I was looking for some statistics about the ratio of a real (as posted by a company) vs recruiter job post on those job boards, but I couldn't find anything.

A huge chunk of their revenue comes from selling access to the candidate database to recruiters specifically.

Recruiter (and blogger of jobtipsforgeeks.com where I advise engineers on career/interview/resume) here, and that is pretty interesting that you take recruiter listings out of the job postings. Although you might think otherwise, I like that idea quite a bit from a pure biz standpoint. I'd think candidates would be more willing to go to a site where they knew recruiters weren't posting, as there is some 'danger' when going to sites where you could potentially apply to the same job (via recruiter listings) multiple times. Good luck with that!

Thanks!

I'd think candidates would be more willing to go to a site where they knew recruiters weren't posting

We completely agree (obviously) and our analytics tend to confirm our theory. So far so good. As we roll out more features it will be interesting to see how sustainable it is.

so you don't let recruiters list jobs ? how do u restrict that ?

Manually. It's pretty obvious if you read our blog posts but occasionally a recruiter will slip in a listing. We get emailed every time there is a new post and if it's a recruiter post we manually remove them ASAP. The longest a recruiter job has ever appeared on the site is 23 minutes. That was a bad day.

The solution simply isn't another database. The candidates simply don't exist.

The only solution is to make more talented candidates. Go and invent http://hackerschool.com/ UK.

the industry is worth hundreds of billions globally

Source, please?

Seriously? I worked for two different recruitment companies during my time as a recruiter. One had an operating revenue of just under $4billion dollars and the other over $6billion. That's 2 companies and they aren't even the largest. A quick google search will provide any proof you deem necessary.

You used to be a professional recruiter, but you can't think of any way to get introduced to developers besides cold-calling them? Seriously?

Peroni has been attending Hacker News online and offline, I do not think HE does not know...

Correct. I'm also one of the co-organisers of HN London, an event I attended religiously as a recruiter (mainly because of the free beer & pizza). I address the networking V cold calling approach in another comment above.

I'm just going by what he says here: "How, exactly, does that fit in with I certainly don't want cold-calls or cold emails, ever. If I can't introduce myself to the guy, how am I ever meant to prove I'm not one of the many useless bottom-feeders he deals with on a daily basis?"