An Open Letter To Recruiters
paddy.io
paddy.io
Take the recruitment as flattery. If you're not interested, delete it and move on. Better yet, forward it to someone who might be interested.
Totally a first-world problem.
I share feedback with recruiters because I want feedback as an engineer. If they choose to ignore it... well, I'll have to find some way to deal with people trying to give me a job, I guess. Woe.
(But it is still good to treat people considering you as a job prospect as flattery.)
I think this is the part that bothers me most. If a headhunter contacts me, why am I not given the inside-track for the interview?
I'm too young to remember the post-dot-com years, but those weren't a walk in the park either (to put it very mildly).
Also, LinkedIn wasn't all that popular, there was no Hacker News, there was no Twitter, Facebook, etc., meetup didn't have organizers (so often it was just a collection of people showing up at a restaurant and chatting about some subject.)
I noticed that last time I changed jobs I got a flood of e-mails just after I changed my LinkedIn profiles. It was deliberate, too - they'd start "I noticed you just started at X - if it isn't what you had hoped...", which is actually relatively smart in recruiter terms.
My pet peeve: calling me on my work phone number. I don't even know what my work phone number is, but presumably recruiters call the front desk and asked to be put through to me. It's shockingly unprofessional - as if I'm going to discuss an opportunity while I sit near my co-workers and boss.
I've had this happen to me in the past and my jaw almost dropped. Like, REALLY?
Goes to show that these recruiters are all about spray and play, and have no real logical strategies.
Once they called the frontdesk and left a message for me to get back to them(cuz I have no work number).
They also called the frontdesk for a coworker and lied that they were someone that played tennis with him months ago. When the coworker called back, the recruiter admitted he lied because he thought the frontdesk wouldn't relay the message if he said the truth... o_O;
Another thing, is I really wish they'd stop emailing me at work.... or maybe my company should give us the option to stop routing firstname.lastname@companyname.com from external sources. It's terrible to get that "Exciting Job opportunity" email pop-up when other coworkers are looking at my screen. I've disabled that notification-alert in my email client(Thunderbird) because of that. My LinkedIn contact-info says not to contact me with any other medium besides LinkedIn's InMail. It also says the office must be walkable from a BART station and organic food locations must be nearby for lunch(I know, I'm a spoiled bayarea techie).
Nobody reads my LinkedIn conact-info since I always get stuff that misses these requirements. If anyone from LinkedIn is reading this, you should give the option to make the contact-info section very conspicuous. I want mine to be freaking glowing bright red. In fact, just let us have custom CSS like the hatenablog platform.
I feel bad for the decent recruiters because of the image thanks to spammers.
I once had a recruiter phone our office number (it's a small ~5 person tech company), ask to speak to me about a "personal matter" and give a false name. Once I got on the phone, I loudly, so everyone in the office could hear me told them to cop on.
But if, in my entire career, I can help one recruiter suck less, it was all worth it.
I guess I'm just an optimist like that.
I am thoroughly cowed. I've seen the error of my ways. Thank you.
If you want to stump a recruiter just ask "Why does does company X want to talk to me? What did they find so interesting about me?" Bad recruiters have no answer because they're just tossing candidates at roles and hoping something sticks.
This is exactly why recruiters need to do a little bit of research beforehand. If they're recommending you as a candidate for a job, aren't they putting their own reputation on the line a little?
Unfortunately, I realize it doesn't exactly work like that. But isn't that the over-arching flaw in the whole headhunter ecosystem?
The recruiter is only trying to please the hand that feeds them which is the employer. The recruiter only wants to maintain a relationship with each employer. Candidates are the commodity being traded, and therefore candidates are only given enough attention to ascertain their general qualifications for the job and likelihood of getting an offer.
But it goes the other way as well. Why should a company spend a lot of effort on me before finding out if I am at least interested in the job?
What's the equivalent of speed-dating for employment? Job fairs?
The important realization is that it is not the recruiters necessarily but the recruiting ecosystem which is broken. Hiring is broken but not for recruiters. They love the current model of placing someone for a fee. Basically, the bad recruiters exist only because their clients don't give a shit about hiring (well most of them and hence the need for these recruiters). I will say this carefully but again "majority of clients do not give a shit". This translates to "Hey we are too busy with real work and so go find me a fish". Out comes these recruiters and search agents. Thanks to places like linkedin lately, all they have to do is to create an account and start fishing.
What if employers/clients actually invest their own time in recruiting ? What if they ask their team members to recruit actively and even compensate them in some way (may be a boost in performance review ?). But no, we won't do that. We have lot more important shit to worry about.
Recruiting unfortunately is a numbers game (kinda like sales)and recruiters (read: sales people) have no incentive to stop doing what they are doing. The barrier to entry is way too low as well which doesn't help.
There are very good recruiters out there and I do know a few good ones too. Kinda like a needle in a haystack but even they have to compete with the sleazy ones.
Is this how large tech companies operate? I have mostly worked at startups, and am currently employed with a research institution. At no point have I ever gone through a recruiter when switching employers. In my limited experience, team members have always been the ones to directly manage their hiring and recruitment efforts.
I don't work with local recruiters because _I'm not looking for a job_.
That certainly doesn't match the Open Letter.
Recruiters are there doing a job, and it's not an easy one. I have a lot of sympathy for them. Treat them nice, because at some point in your future, you'll be looking for a job too. The ones that you treated well ("This job isn't for me, but try calling X who is looking") will remember it.
It would be unfriendly for me to send recruiters after friends without knowing if the friend is actually a match for the company or not. At least in my opinion.
If I'm being unkind in my feedback, I would love to tweak it to be kinder.
All the rest are just salesmen: I get emails from them these days and the first line is now "If this isn't your kind of job (paraphrasing here) then please pass it on to someone who you think would want it!" - Great pitch guys!
I don't like them and I don't actually know a single person in the tech game that has had decent dealings with them.
So for the last couple of months, at night, weekends, on the train etc. I have been working on Instajob (https://instajob.biz) to basically skip round the recruitment agents.
Only just went online so it's early days but I think they need a shakeup!
Anyway, my $0.02
Mick
And I explain where I am being compensated now, and explain "better" would have to beat those things.
They say "oh, yes, we can!" and then of course, the only thing that may be even slightly better is the rate, but all other benefits are essentially zero (vacation time, sick time, health insurance).
I would LOVE to be contacted by a real recruiter.
suspects this is in the class of Things To Be Careful What You Wish For
Sure its pretty ruthless but its not really my problem these guys look out for me and only bother me with calls about companies they know I'd fit with. They also leave me alone for years on end until I initiate the "I'm looking again" "protocol"
However.
I think it's also important to realize, from a recruiter's perspective, that not everyone feels the same way you do. How would a recruiter know, before you posted this extremely condescending letter, that you're too important to speak to anyone but your mother on the phone? Some people prefer the phone to email (I certainly think it can be more efficient, especially when dealing with Q&A). How would a recruiter know that you actually WANT to not be considered for amazing jobs in certain areas because of your sexuality? (In my thinking, that's a type of discrimination that should be discouraged.) How is a recruiter to know that what would be too much detail in a job description for another potential hire is not enough detail for you? Or vice-verse?
Everyone is busy. Recruiters are busy, programmers are busy, stay at home moms are busy, CEOs are busy. As soon as you think you're too important and busy to show other people respect, there's a problem.
I certainly think you're right about many things. Publicists who send blanket mass pitches that begin "Dear editor," give the rest of us a bad rap and make our jobs that much harder. But closing your letter with "Most engineers hate recruiter pitches not because we hate being pitched, it’s because we hate dealing with recruiters" tells me even if a recruiter follows all of your guidelines and sends you amazing pitches, you'll still think of him/her as a less important person than you, and treat her/him accordingly - simply because of the career they've happened to choose. As a person who's been on the receiving end of emails like yours before (along the lines of "I don't deal with publicists") I can tell you you're not going to gain a lot of respect by making sure everyone knows how Very Important you are. If I were a top recruiter and happened to read this, you can bet I wouldn't bother approaching you in the future - I'd look for someone who communicates like he remembers what it's like to not be on top.
Second Disclosure: I am not on top.
Were either of these different, I might feel differently than I do.
Some people do prefer email to the phone. I have no problem with a recruiter offering the option to have a phone call. I have problems with recruiters requiring the phone call before I can even talk to someone who will make a decision. Hell, the last recruiter blatantly told me they would not tell me the name of the company they were hiring for until I was on the phone with them. Perhaps it's my arrogance, but that doesn't to be a matter of "some people like the phone better".
You are right, not every recruiter needs to read my blog or Twitter enough to realise that I have a boyfriend. That is a terrible example. I'll iterate on it with an updated draft that better gets across the point--perhaps a suggesting I work in an enterprise environment would be a better example, as I'm decidedly unsuited to that environment, and that's obvious if you know anything about me at all.
I believe a bare minimum of a job description--the company they're hiring for, something about the culture or problem they're solving, the stack they use, maybe why they think you'd be a good candidate--is probably a good bet. I get too many recruiter emails like my sample that don't tell me, quite literally, anything about the company. At all. No name. No website. No size. Nothing that would allow me to determine if this is an opportunity I should pursue or not.
I believe I pointed out that recruiters are busy and that I am busy. I am well aware I'm not the only busy person out there. :) If you think this is disrespectful, I'd certainly love to find ways to fix this.
I think you may be unfamiliar with the level of interaction recruiters provide. The publicists sending the mass pitches you describe are the bad recruiter pitches I am talking about. It is not a matter of me having very specific guidelines for how I am spoken to before I'll consider a job; it's a matter of an industry whose norm is to type in search terms, then hit all the results with a form letter.
This letter is in case one of those who are trying to do a good job are seeing everyone else use the form letter and assuming that is how it's done. Or who simply don't know how to put themselves into an engineer's shoes to effectively communicate a pitch.
I resent your accusation that I believe recruiters are somehow beneath me. I actually, as I mentioned, believe recruiters have a really cool job. I don't have the aptitude for it, but I do not believe that making lights flash in a pleasing pattern is somehow a worthier job than connecting people to jobs that fulfill them. And yes, there are recruiters I love. They are the ones I send referrals to when a friend asks who is hiring. They are the ones I seek out. Which, for a recruiter, is a powerful card to hold in a limited market. I'm trying to give as many recruiters that card as I can.
I deal with recruiters all the time. I got my current job through a recruiter. He was fantastic. I have nothing against recruiters, or I would just set up a spam filter and call it a day.
I wrote this because I ask for feedback when I'm in the hiring process, so it struck me that recruiters might also like feedback. It seems to me that this is the opposite of what you accuse me of; if I didn't care about the recruiter, considered them lesser, or didn't think they cared about their job, why would I care if they got the feedback they needed to improve? I'd ignore them and move on. It's certainly less effort.
And it results in fewer people assuming I think my ass is the gravitational pull of the universe without bothering to find out anything about me.
what you're telling me is you're tired of being offered posts on my blog and I could be using more effective methods? O:)
But I'm wondering if the recruiters you're actually trying to reach are simply never going to listen and never stop their ways. That's just not who they are.
Somebody needs to fix the recruiting industry, for realz.
Writing this just put it in a convenient place so I can link to it instead of repeating myself every time.
Simply filling those job openings every time does not mean the right fit is found every time.
Again, though, success from whose perspective? If the recruiter gets their commission, it is a success for them.
Maybe success shouldn't be considered success unless the fit is right.
Couldn't agree more. I don't understand the desire of recruiters to talk in person. This must be something that they are required to do for a number of hours per day, I assume. I appreciate recruiters who can appreciate my time and not waste it.
Unless, of course, I hate dealing with them. In which case I'm not going to get hired through them in the first place.
Why would I do that?
HINT, you want the exclusive recruiter..
I've had recruiters tell me right upfront which company they are dealing with.
Obviously, no hope for the shotgun. I hold out hope for the bad pitches.
Why are you doing anything but this, in any situation? Delete/mark as spam, move on.
Be jealous of how frequently telemarketers call me!
You nailed it, ace.
This post is that answer for recruiters. I've typed it out individually, over and over again, in response to bad pitches, highlighting what they did wrong and how they could have succeeded or saved themselves time.
This is a time-consuming thing for me to do, but I feel it's justified if it helps even one recruiter. So this is my shorthand way of handling it--just link them to the post instead of rewriting it for every single recruiter.
Most will ignore it. Maybe all will ignore it. But if a recruiter is sincerely trying to do a good job, it will provide them with useful information as to why their pitch was ineffective and how to improve it.
If I was a recruiter, this is the kind of feedback I'd want from someone I was trying to recruit, so this is the kind of feedback I offer to people trying to recruit me.