Why Recruiters Exist (and what to do about it) | Hacker News Reader

Why Recruiters Exist (and what to do about it)

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I feel the need to chip in here, as I've been a lurker for a year or so. I'm a recruitment consultant. I recruit for front end web developers. In my spare time I've been teaching myself Javascript and (with the help of my flatmate, who is a software developer) C#. I do this because I enjoy it, and consider it a valuable skill to have as technology becomes more and more integral to my life. But I also do it because it makes me better at my job. If I can understand a company's requirements better than 90% of other recruiters ringing them up, then that benefits them, the candidate whose CV I'm representing, and me.

Now, I know that a lot of developers have had bad experiences with recruiters. I've had bad experiences with recruiters, when I was looking for a job out of university. You see, in the UK at least, a lot of recruitment consultants are graduates like me who couldn't find a relevant job in their field of interest, or one that bore any relationship to their degree. So instead we got caught up in the recruitment industry, which offers a salary, office experience, and the potential to (allegedly)earn some money. The majority of us are as confused as you are as to why we're here, but those of us who are still doing it after 3 months are probably doing it because there's something in it they enjoy, or they've been lucky enough to keep it.

I get that there's bastards in the industry. There's bastards in every industry. And the tech industry isn't the only one beset by recruiters. I used to work in social housing recruitment, where we were actually liked by those people we were trying to find jobs for. To go from that, to an industry where we are seen as 'the scum of the earth' (which I saw on this site), 'evil bottom feeders' and 'fucking idiots' came as a shock to me.

I'm not asking you to all suddenly start getting lovey dovey with us. This won't change many peoples mind. But be aware that on the other end of the phone is probably a young graduate, terrified out of his mind, who has been thrust into an industry he doesn't know anything about, and expected to hit some ridiculous targets in order to keep his job. A lot of the time, his only mistake has been accepting a job when he didn't have one. Recruitment preys on the desperate, lost demographic of graduates.

So yes, every industry has its shits. But for the most part a lot of recruiters have nothing but respect for developers and designers in the tech industry. Hell, we're scared of you most of the time. You guys possess talent that we can only dream of having, and pretty much make the world go round. All we're doing is helping you find a job.

tl;dr Recruiters are people too. Not all of us are the 'scum of the earth'. Some of us are just trying to get by until we either get better at this job or find another one. We're not all out to screw you over.

It's a bit like the pity I have on people that make phone calls for telemarketers. The position itself is a fiction, designed to maximize placement ("hard sell") at the expense of honesty. Yes, there are people stuck in those jobs. I have pity on the people stuck there. But the position itself is inherently corrupt.

The whole move of hiring away from people with some technical knowledge (enough to even _read_ resumes) towards impersonal, technically uneducated HR departments, out to tech recruiters who often are even worse at keyword searching than the HR departments, has been to the detriment of the job market.

I completely agree. The industry itself has become more and more corrupt over the years. However, I think it is a case of the acts of a few tarring everyone with the same brush. There are people within the industry who are genuinely well versed and technically minded, and benefit from this. That's what I aspire to be like for however long I'm in this job for. But it's an uphill struggle.

We're salespeople. No one grows up wanting to be a salesperson. I've got a degree in Classical Civilization. I have no idea why I've ended up as a salesperson. But I don't think that should make me a bad person just because I put as much effort as possible into my current job. I'm not looking to completely change the view of the industry, just to show more of a human side to it. Besides, I've built relationships with managers who I now consider friends, and I've made placements with people who have ended up absolutely loving their jobs. There are positives to it, and that's what keeps me going.

However, I think it is a case of the acts of a few tarring everyone with the same brush.

I honestly used to think the exact same thing however I've quickly come to realise that the opposite is true. There are infinitely more shitty recruiters than decent ones but that's not to mean the shitty approach works.

The very fact that you frequent HN is a big plus in your favour. HN was incredibly helpful and supportive of me during my quest to prove all recruiters aren't scum so hopefully if you stick with your job and continue to contribute here, they'll show you the same respect you show them.

I've read your blog and agree wholeheartedly with the points you've made about the industry. I think it's a case of being the underdog if you want to do the job properly. In an ideal world, I'd be recruiting for one of the clients I deal with. That'd be the perfect solution to the problems I have with the job right now. I'd be building my tech knowledge without (I assume) such aggressive targets and the constant barrage of failure (to put a bleak spin on it).

Alternatively, I'll just continue to learn to code until I get a job doing that with wherever I've made a placement. That's been a serious consideration of mine for a while now, but we're looking at another couple of years of working at it, and I don't think I've got it in me to stay in this job for that long!!

I doubt it is the case of the few -- it is much more likely to be the case of the vast, vast majority. If not, you would hear from the good ones far more often.

There are definitely good ones out there. And those that take the time to learn to write a little code have a much better chance of being on that list. We know a few good ones too. Few and far between, but clearly possible.

One thing I didn't mention in the post is that, in a lot of cases, the incentive system for recruiters isn't necessarily aligned with the best interests of the companies and developers they work with. Recruiters are a bit like sell side realtors. The incentive for them is to push a lot of product. So, as a sell side realtor, my financial incentive pushes me to accept the first offer that comes through, whether it's a low ball or not, and move along. Only rarely do I dismiss that financial incentive for the benefit of my client, because 6% of $300k isn't much different than 6% of $320k.

So, it's actually irrational for recruiters to spend a lot of time finding the perfect employee for their client, or the perfect job for their recruit, if it takes more time than normal.

Unless, of course, you take a longer term view. Longer term, highly successful placements mean that you get more clients and more high quality recruits. But, again, it's hard to think long term when we change careers so often.

Glad to know you're one of the good ones.

That's an interesting point. The way to combat that is with long term relationships.

For example, I work as a software developer for a real estate brokerage, and have mentioned the sell side realtor scenario you bring up.

The answer is always: yes, it is in the short term interest of the realtor to take the first offer. But in the long term (as they screw more and more people) they will be hurt by this behavior.

In fact, there is long term incentive (because, in the US at least, people buy and sell homes multiple times over a lifetime) to get the best deal for the seller, so that they will: * refer the realtor * use the realtor again

To bring it back to recruiting, if you had a relationship with the recruiter, and they knew you were going to go back to them in 1 or 5 years when you were ready to move on to your next job, they would have a rational interest in finding you the right job (and the same interests hold true if employers have a relationship with the recruiter).

This relationship, if it exists, really turns the recruiter into a headhunter. (Aside, here's my favorite headhunter/recruiting information source: http://asktheheadhunter.com/ )

I agree with most of your points bar one: But for the most part a lot of recruiters have nothing but respect for developers and designers in the tech industry

I worked as a tech recruiter in the UK for a number of years and that statement is categorically false. For the most part, recruiters haven't the first clue what developers do or how they can demand the salaries and contracting rates the market offers. For the most part recruiters view developers & designers as arrogant and self-righteous. Only recruiters who genuinely understand the divide between recruiters & developers and understand what developers face on a day to day basis tend to show or possess any respect.

We call the latter 'the good ones' and they are incredibly rare but they do exist.

Yeah, upon reflection, realising I was the only person who knew the difference between Java and Javascript was one of the more horrifying moments....

Great reply, and [official] welcome to HN!

I have a question, so here's some backstory: I went to a design and development 'placement' agency because they touted a technical prowess unlike others in the area, but when I sat down with them, they had absolutely no clue what they were talking about. Because of this, they didn't so much as go to bat for me with the resumé I had because they couldn't parse it (I should also add that this lowly piece of paper is all they used to determine whether or not to represent me). Being as I'm merely front-end, this made me question their ability to do this for anyone with an even deeper development background. They didn't care about anything besides seniority levels, and being that titles can be deceiving/confusing in this industry to begin with, I found it pretty incompetent that they'd base your experience on those keywords alone.

I could just as easily avoid them, but knowing all it takes to get into their database is to throw in a fancy title (and knowing how often people round up on resumés), should I say something (to them, or maybe as a Buyer Beware)? It rubs me the wrong way that qualified people are being turned away, and worse that companies are paying for this 'expertise'.

Maybe this is just the unfortunate truth of the technical recruiter industry as a whole?

Hi (thanks for the welcome. Long time listener first time caller and all that!). Tbh, your experience is symptomatic of many places in the industry. The consultants know next to nothing about the tech industry, cant tell their C from their C++ and think Ruby gems are literally precious stones. As for your point about not recognising seniority levels, I can't begin to tell you how many times this has come up in conversation, especially with my manager. It is keyword/buzzword recruitment at its finest. If the words on the job spec don't match the words on your CV, most people will just disregard it.

I'm on a literal quest to try and get people in my company to be able to at least recognise code on Github, or recognise the importance of things like Stack Overflow, but they don't want to. The harsh point is that really good technically able people who would suit a role we come across won't be on the job boards, or have their CV registered with us. They'll be on online communities like these, or at tech meetups etc. A lot of the CV's we get through aren't the sort of CV's that our clients want to see. Hell, they don't even want to see a CV. They want to see code samples, HN profiles etc. But it's an uphill battle for me.

I think that if consultants DID do this, they'd be a lot more reputable and respected in the market. As it is, more focus is put on speed rather than quality/customer service unfortunately.

If I were you, if you don't think they'll represent you properly, I'd cut and run, and make a point of NOT recommending them on further. Anything you say in complaint will most likely be ignored. Just ensure that they're not putting you in front of companies you might actually like to work for, as they obviously won't be doing a very good job.

My takeaways:

(disclaimer: I work two floors up from these guys)

- Employees gravitate toward the best jobs available to them. Be honest with yourself about your employees' prospects and desires. While you may temporarily benefit from an information asymmetry such as an underpaid employee whose skills exceed her resume or a work environment that is worse than it appears at first glance, things will sort themselves out in the end.

- Corollary to the above: Employees and jobs grow at different rates, so things will inevitably drift from an initial good match to a mismatch. If your employee manages to outgrow her job, it actually reflects well on your environment. Ideally you'll be able to move her into a position matching her improved capabilities, but it's okay if she winds up looking elsewhere for her next step.

- Networking is an all-the-time thing, not just an on-demand thing. Anyone leading a successful group probably already understands this instinctively but it helps to be reminded.

Recruiting and hiring isn’t considered a core activity

Previously maybe. The trend towards acquiring internal recruitment teams is growing dramatically. Despite not actively looking for work, I've had four job offers for internal recruitment roles in the last 6-8 months.

Remember that oftentimes by the time an employee comes to tell you he’s leaving it’s too late to retain him.

I have to disagree. It's difficult to convince an employee to stay when they inform you they want to leave and quite often it's not worthwhile as their motivation to leave will resurface again in a few months but it can and has been done successfully if you know how to go about it and actually listen and understand your employees needs.

The rise of internal recruiting teams is definitely promising. We work with a lot of companies that are smaller and/or growing at a slower rate and therefore can't justify a full time equivalent for recruiting. They're hiring maybe three or four people a year. For those kinds of orgs I think "making it a core activity" is just as important, and perhaps more difficult because they can't justify full time help.

Good on you if you've figured out the formula for retaining employees that are potentially on their way out the door. I'll stand by my statement that it doesn't happen often. I'd love to read a blog post about how to do it successfully! :)

I'd love to read a blog post about how to do it successfully!

I've been looking for inspiration for my next blog post and now I've got it!

You might be interested in my own musings on the recruitment industry: http://hackerjobs.co.uk/blog/2012/6/15/all-that-is-wrong-wit...

The trick, when you can't afford good full time help is to look part time, or hire somebody on a retainer (which would be the best in your case, given that they probaly do need help at least full time when they are hiring).

And yes, you will pay more per hour going that route than the traditional full time. But lets be serious -- if you are hiring people the difference between 20k and 25k isn't that much.

Steve, I read all over the place that employees who take counter-offers are usually gone within the year anyway. Is this because the employees talked themselves to into staying in an unhealthy situation or because the employers are simply keeping them around long enough to replace them with someone without the demonstrated propensity to shop around? I've never actually been in this situation so I'm curious what insight you can share.

Thanks!

Steve, I read all over the place that employees who take counter-offers are usually gone within the year anyway.

More often than not this is usually the case. It's all contextual but if you take one of the more common reasons for leaving (being offered a better salary/opportunity elsewhere) the employers reaction tends to be an instant promotion and a reasonable salary increase to match.

Money is rarely the sole factor in peoples decision to move on and over time the underlying issues become more and more prominent.

As mentioned below, I'm going to put together a blog on the issue tomorrow as it's a bit too lengthy to get into it here so keep an eye out.

In every "job advice" article I've ever read, the employee is warned NEVER to accept an offer to stay at the same job, for ANY reason at all, because the employer will no longer see the employee as "loyal".

Seems funny to me that companies expect loyalty out of us, but provide nowhere to develop. I'd have been glad staying at my past two jobs if they'd continued challenging me. Instead, they started making poor use of my time (getting me to be a data entry monkey despite years of sysadmin and software engineering experience because I was the fastest typist they knew and was "around"). They paid too much for their use of that skill, and we both knew it, and I left, and I hear mumblings and incantations to the effect that they never wanted me to leave. Well, show it.

because the employer will no longer see the employee as "loyal".

Is this really true, though? I've heard it for so long and it's always had the air of received wisdom without facts (or even anecdata) to back it up.

I don't know how prevalent it really is, but I was once labeled "disloyal" for looking around at other internal positions. Needless to say, I got out of that company (though it did take almost a year from that incident to do so).

A year? So even with an actual accusation of disloyalty it didn't affect your employment.

Recruiter here, worked for a bunch of the "bigger" tech companies and now I focus on startups. The biggest problem I see, over and over again is this:

People assume recruiting isn't important, they focus on building a great product, etc. It is only once they get to the point a light seems to turn on that they will need to hire more people to execute the idea they're working on that they actually do anything about recruiting, and by then it is usually a bit too late. The last company I worked for had a recruiter for awhile, let them go and had someone who wasn't really qualified to be recruiting handling things. They hadn't really hired anyone in 8 months. When I came in they had this idea that we would be hiring people from day 1, but that's really not how it works. The process takes some time, so not addressing a need that takes time until the exact second you need it seems to be the biggest problem to me.

Oh and all those contract recruiters, fuck those guys.

Are you in the SF bay area? Please contact me.

One part in the article really caught my attention:

    Recruiting and hiring isn’t considered a core activity

I think that once your company grows beyond a certain size, it must become so. We hired a full time in-house recruiter around 100 people and it has had enormous benefit.

It should become a core activity but in many cases even when a company hires a recruiter they are really hiring a 'seat filler' rather than a recruiter (btw, I have no idea about stevek's company; this is a generalization).

By 'seat filler' I mean someone who is simply there to find a body at the cheapest price they can get away with. More often than not it is to fill a quota or fight attrition rather than find someone worthy.

To anyone who gets harassed by clueless recruiters with doubtful job fillings, I have a much better idea than answering with angry or rude responses.

Simply send them a stock email that tells them that you have had bad experiences with other recruiters and that to filter out the serious job offers from the shots in the dark, ask for 500$ before continuing any conversation.

Do not remove yourself from the market, simply price yourself too highly for them to bother. And asking for money up front sure shuts them up fast. You still maintain "good relations", stay polite, and, in the worst case, you get 500$ to send them your C.V.

You will never, ever get a single recruiter pay $500 to see your CV.

If you really want to reduce the amount of recruiter spam then I suggest you change your linkedin privacy settings and if you have a personal site, make it crystal clear you aren't interested in hearing from recruiters. Any recruiter who continues to contact you after that has done one of two things:

1. Ignored the message on your site

2. Found your old details on their internal database.

There's not much you can do about the first one but the second one is easily fixed. Simply ask them to remove your details and send you confirmation of the fact. They are legally required to do so if requested.

> You will never, ever get a single recruiter pay $500 to see your CV.

Good, then. I have never found a job through a recruiter, always through word of mouth.

I've had similar results by informing recruiters that I'm planning on moving abroad in 2-3 years, and that I really don't want to switch jobs unless it directly furthers that goal. If I get even one recruiter who has contacts in New Zealand or Australia, that's a big win - otherwise, it politely tells them that I'm not on the U.S. job market.

You're not maintaining good relations to ask a recruiter to give you $500.. you're communicating that you have entitlement issues. Here's a possible helpful adjustment, if a recruiter is serious about representing you, ask them to write up a contract guaranteeing that they will donate $500 from the placement fee to the charity of your choice. If they fail to do so within 30 days of your starting date, then they are liable for the entire fee generated from your placement to be sent to the same charity. By doing it this way, you still know if they are serious, it's not about you getting money, and it helps society.

A recruiter improves hist relation with his client for every good C.V. he sends. My time is not worthless, why should I let a recruiter profit from it?

Your premise is incorrect; a recruiter only makes himself vulnerable with every good person (or C.V.) he introduces. If that person has no interest in the role/company or is not a good fit for the role then the recruiter's credibility suffers.

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