Never Trust what Recruiters Say
blog.nimblegecko.com
blog.nimblegecko.com
Don't give recruiters access to your reference contacts before an interview. If they are looking for them, there's a high chance that they are simply looking to use them for leads; in fact the job advert that you looked at is most likely a fake. If asked for reference information, politely tell the recruiter that it would be best to follow up on references after the interview process; if you feel awkward about being pressured, explain that you don't want to exhaust your contacts until there's a high probability that you take the job.
I think recruiters are a decent way to find some of the jobs that aren't found via indeed.com alerts, fog creek's careers 2.0, top*jobs.com, dice (nasty), execunet, HN, etc.
But on the bad side:
Once you are on the list, they will look up your work number and call you if you just put your employer's name on your resume. The only way to get them not to do this is to remove employer names from linkedin.com experience, which you shouldn't do, so it is inevitable. They will not pay attention to requests not to do this.
They equate pay rate without benefits for short-term contract to salary rate full-time with lots of benefits. If you decide to give them pay rate expectation (not always a good idea), give them both your salary expectation and a much higher contract rate that assumes a 3-6 month contract- divide your annual salary expectation by 1000 and that is your per hour, in general.
Why they are what they are:
Average larger sized recruiting companies take almost anymore to get on the phones, and those companies burn them up and move to the next, so it isn't the actual person's fault in many cases. They are given visions of dollar signs when hired and see us like an untapped oil field, and they don't know what they are doing. They want to make the "sale", so they are going to fudge it, and when they later feel used and like the scum of the earth because they got stepped on by us, they quit and someone takes their place. The ones that can justify running through us like we are numbers to be manipulated stay, so it is natural evolution that is not in our best interest.
Advice for those really serious about using a recruiter:
Don't treat them like scum and spend the time with them, even though it might take 10x or more of your time. Let them take you to free lunches and breakfasts. Don't lie to them, but don't tell them everything. They will remember and appreciate the love and will at least maybe write good notes on you and keep you on the hot list so when something comes up, they might call you first.
What I do:
I am an introvert, so I push all conversation to email that I can and don't take calls, ever, until there is an opp I'm interested in that I know is in the right salary range, right location (not just city), and right job description. They still email positions that don't match all the time, but I don't like the idea of lunches, etc. with someone I don't know about positions I might never want.
In the UK I'm taking home enough from a contractor rate that I would need to nearly double the salary part of calculation to have the same income.
At least not for any contractor I know.
I'm actually a little under the salary/1000 rate in my contracting as compared to my last permanent role, but bring home about 50% more.
--edit-- I understand this is because I have no trouble getting work, but that seems a weird thing to include.
Paid vacation and holidays is a significant part of compensation that contractors don't get.
Also, if you don't have insurance from your spouse you will need to buy it yourself at much higher rate. Even if your spouse is covering you there is a value in backup insurance when one of you loses their job.
The salary/1000 estimate is accounting for the above and not for the possible lack of work. If you don't expect to work 2000 hours per year on contract you should charge even higher rate.
As an example, uh, last time I contracted full-time, I got $72/hr on a corp to corp basis. Right before that I was getting around $105K/year as a full time W2. (Last I looked, I was offered $95/hr, but had to back out 'cause one of my employees left for a better job, so I no longer had the time to rent myself out full time, and they didn't want me part-time. It was a good gig, too- just my thing. The company had just been bought and gutted, everyone that could had left. Just the sort of smoldering heap that I like.) I mean, obviously, if you value job security (I don't) then moving from $105K/year to $72/hr is a really stupid move... but I don't value job security, and I wanted to dump money into my hosting operation, so it was a reasonable choice for me. It's likely that I tipped my hand, though, and acted a bit too eager during the negotiations, and left some money on the table, but I don't think I could have pulled off $100/hr at the time. that was before I was published.
But yeah; from what I see with the agencies? They have lower expectations... much lower expectations than someone hiring on direct to the client, but they don't pay all that much better. On the upside, standards are low and if you are good, they keep you in easy work.
(It's also possible that I simply haven't fount the right agencies.)
It's different if you are going direct with a large corporation, but that's very hard to do. Usually large corporations want a buffer corporation between you and them (and a corporation you set up that derives all it's revenue from your consulting doesn't seem to count)
The rules are much loser for smaller clients, but smaller clients, generally speaking, don't pay nearly as much.
Where I am? It's difficult to get most agencies to do 1099 or corp to corp these days; most want you as a W2, which means you are taxed exactly as an employee. There's some law that essentially prohibits one-person consulting corporations, or something like that.
I've always negotiated a corp to corp deal, as I have a corporation that does other stuff, and when I consult, it's for venture capital, so for me, the tax benefits are very real (e.g. I get to spend the money on servers or support salary pre-tax) of course, any money I want to pass through to me, I've gotta pay the 15% on, as you point out.
Here in the UK you don't need health insurance, and the tax situation is much better for a contractor/consultant than an employee. Paid vacation obviously till holds.
Absolutely agree. I have 3 recruiters I've worked with for several years - each one has gotten interviews that either ended in an offer or a pass, but none ended up with actual employment. But they've consistently worked to find things that fit my interests over the years, and in turn I give them advice about how to better work with talent. Now I'm off the market as a remote consultant working for a couple startups they all seemed to genuinely wish me well.
Ask you where else you have interviewed, and even get names/contact info from you if they can. Then they call that place and tell them that they have a stack of resumes of way more qualified people than you.
You may never hear back from that place for two reasons: 1) they think you sold them out to a recruiter, 2) they believe the recruiter and start interviewing new people.
Bottom line is that recruiters will sell you out any chance that they can get. As much as they may seem like your friend, you are not their client, you are the product they are selling.
I personally don't use references as a source of candidates and only call a reference when clients request them (most of my candidate pool comes through past candidates that I trust).
Regarding compensation, what the comments here seem to be forgetting is that you as a candidate have every right to turn down a job, and in almost all cases the recruiter makes more money by getting you a higher salary. In contract situations this is usually reversed, where every dollar they can negotiate you down is another in the recruiter's pocket.
Some posting of fake job ads certainly happens by lower end firms, just as hiring companies keep ads up all the time to grow their network of candidates. It's somewhat dishonest, but not sure how it hurts job seekers (not advocating it, but seems a somewhat victimless crime).
Recruiters are trained to ask everyone for referrals, and early in my career I probably did. Now I realize that if you treat candidates well, with honesty and respect, and if you provide candidates with something for free, they will refer their friends (with the friend's permission) without me aging to ask. The free service I choose is information - my blog, a monthly newsletter of tech articles, discounts to conferences and events that I negotiate for my network, inside information on companies, etc.
Many recruiters are simply not good at their job, but every industry has some of that. Find a good one that doesn't ask you for things, and that actually provides you with good information and service, and avoid the bad ones. It really is that simple. Use recruiters that your friends recommend and set parameters and boundaries (don't send my résumé anywhere without permission, only contact me in this way, don't call references until x, etc). If they don't respect your wishes, drop them and don't recommend them to your friends.
You see an advert for tasty doughnuts. Oh boy! You jump in your car / catch the bus etc, and head over to the purveyors of tasty doughnuts to find that instead there are no doughnuts, but you're assured that if you're interested in tasty doughnuts you must have friends that are too, so take some flyers and spread the word. You've wasted your time, effort and money to become an uncompensated advertising agent for purveyors of mythical doughnuts, and you might reasonably reserve a new circle of hell for these people before shredding their flyers with particular zeal.
Similarly, to have answered an advert for a job that doesn't exist, spent time considering what compromises in your life might be necessary to take the position, followed sound advice to tailor your CV to the position, crafted a covering letter, and then found that your time and effort is used to stripmine you of your contacts with no compensation for any time and effort put in on your part before moving onto the next mark, once again you might reserve a new circle of hell for these people. It's clearly fraud and exploitation, hand in hand.
And there is a fixed cost to sending a resume and cover letter. Sure, the first one isn't such a pain, but if you're unemployed and sending out 30 resumes, it's sort of a pain if 10 of them are fake, and another 5-10 are duplicates of different recruiters trying to fill the same position. It increases the work I have to do, and provides an awful lot of false hope.
Again - one recruiter doing that amid a sea of legit openings isn't all that bad, but in larger markets it's not just one recruiter misbehaving.
Where you get screwed is negotiating non-monetary compensation because it doesn't benefit the recruiter. More vacation days, more stock options, that kind of thing.
Additionally, it's a lot like the chapter in Freakonomics about realtors. It's in the recruiters best interest to get you to accept and so, while they will get a little more money if they can get a higher salary for you, the most important thing is to close the deal. A recruiter has little incentive to play hardball for you. Another $1000 in salary for you might only translate to $50 or less for them.
I don't begrudge them because I understand the incentives they're working for but people should be aware of it and think about it before they start working with a recruiter. If you have a salary in mind tell them its firm. Don't believe that they are your best friend and that what they say is max salary truly is.
Max salary - tell a candidate a salary range, and the only number they remember is the ceiling. That is true every time.
In finance, it seems fake jobs are posted by every recruiting firm. And no, this is not the same as a company advertising positions all the time at their website. In the latter case the probability of hiring someone for the position is at least greater than zero.
The initial contact is cordial, there is even some hopeful talk about a position that allegedly exists. And then suddenly, contact is cut off.
Just as bad is the common practice of advertising a phoney job position just to get a pile of resumes and contacts. I suspect that this might even be some kind of fraud, legally-speaking, but I don't know if these people are ever pursued for it.
Recruiters are a waste of time because:
1. They do not know anything relevant about the technologies you are skilled in or the technologies required by the employer.
2. Part of the 'value' they add for employers is to vet candidates before they are interviewed by the employer. This consists of doing a web page background search, calling your references, and giving you a pee test. Also see #1 for why this is a waste of time.
3. You will be legally bound to a three way relationship between the recruiter co. and your new employer. There are no benefits to you in this binding agreement.
4. You may actually be paid by the recruiting agency's payroll department (contracting). Faxing time sheets to a fax machine no one bothers to fill with paper at the agency office is a waste of time and energy. To put it another way, you won't be able to talk to the payroll department directly if you have any issues.
5. You add another layer of useless management and bureaucratic complexity via the recruiting agency. Rarely do recruiters stay up to date on a project/position's projected end date. Once this resulted in a key card being disabled because the original end date had been reached -- but the project was still active.
I have seen that the recruiters for staff positions are a little better and you get paid direct.
I have also known gifted programmers who just hate to deal with people and negotiate, so recruiters are useful there. But to advance in your career, you are going to need people skills so you might as well start developing them now.
To sum up, there are a lot of bad recruiters who ruin it for everyone.
This... this shocks me, every time. I mean, in my experience, it's usually true, but damn.
What, then, is the value the recruiter brings the client?
I mean, sometimes they function as body shops, where the company pays them and they pay you, and the company then doesn't have to worry about labor laws and stuff, that becomes the body shop's problems, but I fail to see how that would justify the huge markup (and, generally speaking, but not always, lower quality) - Labor laws really aren't that bad. Do the standard things you do when dealing with programmers that get paid $90K+ per year, and you are in compliance with most of it.
I mean, besides that, they are keyword matchers; personally, I don't think keyword matchers are particularly useful, and in any case, they are not particularly difficult to implement.
But then, in defense of the recruiters (or, at least a reason for a developer to use recruiters):
>3. You will be legally bound to a three way relationship between the recruiter co. and your new employer. There are no benefits to you in this binding agreement.
Generally speaking, recruiters bring in a bunch of sub-par recruits. Way worse than if you had asked the people around the office to bring in friends (and worse than having someone in the office go over the resume slush pile.)
What does this mean? this means that if you are a sub-par programmer, and you failed that google interview your buddy got you, or if you are a good programmer who, for whatever reason, looks like a sub-par programmer (say, for instance, that you had a [mental] health issue impacting your performance for the previous year, or just had a run of bad luck and have been unemployed for a while and don't know anyone to get you interviews) then recruiters can be a godsend.
Recruiters are a fairly sure sign that the standards for the job will be low. The competition will be weak. And sometimes? well, comeon, most of us have needed to hit the bunny slope at least once in our career.
>>This... this shocks me, every time.
To be fair, few people are expert on all technologies and few recruiting firms can afford a diverse, expert staff.
One theory is that at some companies, the hiring managers/screening process they have is even worse than what most recruiters use. That would be consistent with my observation that standards seem to be lower when I get a job through a recruiter than through a contact.
But yeah, uh, I guess my continued shock is more a product of incorrect assumptions, then. But man.
Some companies cover all their bases with inside and outside HR recruiting. I often see the same jobs on craigslist offered by the employer and recruiters. indeed.com too.
Edit: Very old nginx/1.0.5... methinks it's time to upgrade. There were a lot of improvements to this version even in 1.1.0/1, including performance
So there probably won't be too much value in a post like that. All I did was setting some sane parameters for Fast CGI stuff in nginx, some for php-fpm and the db.
Of course, no one thinks they are in the bottom 80%...
Like every industry, 80% of the recruiters are lousy, and give the rest of us a bad name, so there is great truth in what is written here. HOWEVER, ask yourself, why is this happening to me? Why are agencies in business if we offer no value? The basic laws of capitalism would have forced us out of business if we did not create value. So if recruiters won't work with you, why is that?
Remember, as a candidate, YOU are getting our work FOR FREE. You invest nothing but your time, and perhaps, some of your knowledge. We are taking a risk on you, risking our ability to earn a living, risking our relationships with our clients in the desparate hope you are not a lousy candidate, all by exposing you to the network of professionals we have invested large quantities of time and money in developing, so yeah, we expect you to give something back in the form of leads or references. What is wrong with that? Perhaps you would prefer to pay for our service? Believe me, we are expensive.
Finding a good recruiter is easy - trust your gut, and find one who has been doing it for at least a year. The lousy ones are generally weeded out by then. Only trust those you are referred to, or are willing to meet you in person, and only those recruiters that partner with you.
Also, help the recruiter help you. If you are confrontational, unprofessional, or otherwise difficult to work with, no good recruiter will invest any effort in you. Why would we take the risk?
I agree that somebody who is seeking your services for free has to be grateful and accommodating your requests. But as somebody who is being offered a service I have not requested I don't care how much you invested.
It's incredible how many people (even on HN) don't know it! You can get Google's cached version of a page fairly easily.
Just type
cache:[url]
cache:http://blog.nimblegecko.com/never-trust-what-recruiters-say/
It should be better now, well, I hope.