Flipping the Script on Recruiters | Hacker News Reader

Flipping the Script on Recruiters

npnd.com

75 pointsmarkhenderson53 comments

This is an interesting approach that I might adopt, if only because my ordinary interactions with recruiters have been so wretched. It can hardly be worse than my results thus far.

The behavior of recruiters is puzzling to me. I've repeatedly been contacted by recruiters who want to talk to me about opportunities at X (where X has been Amazon, Google, and a few others). I've responded to these and then received no further contact from the recruiter. They go to the trouble of making a pitch to me and then disappear when their pitch is well-received. My only guess is that they're operating like a telemarketer, spamming the message out to some large number of people to ensure they get a few responses and ignoring any extras.

Just last week a Google recruiter contacted me and gave me a link to his calendar to schedule an appointment. I made the appointment and he no-showed. He later contacted me and said he'd spent the day at a conference he received a last-minute invite to attend. I'm just astounded that these folks treat people with such contempt, given that it reflects poorly on them and the business they're associated with.

Some are worse than others, but that guy sounds particularly bad.

seems to be the spec recruiters that the big SV players use.

I have only had 2 bad experiences with recruiters one was just a dick about salary disclosure (whom I fired and put his agency on my personal black list) and one totally misrepresented me to the client.

Having your recruiters behave badly doesn't really help the company brand.

I really hate the guys that insist on "getting a number" right off the bat before they'll even consider opening the door for you. Then there's the ones who offer "benefits" so you should be perfectly happy with $40/hr. Most of them don't even have a direct line to the hiring manager and are slaves to the fickle ATSs. There's no point in talking money if there is no chance of ever having a technical discussion with a human being in the company. When I point this out I often get the apologetic spiel about how they understand but that's the way this company works. It just tells me that this company is only willing to offer 50th percentile pay for 50th percentile workers while demanding a 90th percentile skillset. A bullet I'm happy to dodge.

I'm glad to see some people having the same experience. It's really hard to explain to people as a problem.

"You mean you're mad because people are trying to get you a job?" "Yeah, but..."

I really appreciated the people who did listen and sign up though - it feels really good when they do listen to you when you state the best way to contact you. Recruiters take note!

The best way I've found to explain this is to emphasize that to a recruiter, I am the product. The recruiter is trying to get me a job, just like a car salesman is trying to get a car a driver. Of course, there are good recruiters (and good car salesmen) that are truly interested in finding the best match for both parties, but at the core of the relationship the employer is the one paying the finder's fee.

That being said, the best recruiters take the long view, and realize that their career depends on maintaining relationships and growing their reputation. If they become known as someone who simply puts butts in chairs, they won't get very far. However, if they develop a reputation as someone who really is looking out for everyone's interests, their words will carry more weight with their customers, and they'll have the best product to sell.

So do you think this approach would make good recruiter better? It seems like it would. You would encourage the recruiter to maintain a long term relationship with you, and hopefully they'd respect your boundaries and only reach out when they have a prospect that is too good to pass up.

I interviewed with Twitter a while back. One phone screener never called and then there was a remote coding test where my contact never contacted me, not once but twice. That was enough of that.

I did a whole demo app in Backbone for Twitter, burned a lot of overtime hours for a couple of weeks. On the way to my interview, they said nevermind, they'd hired someone else. They did go ahead and interview me, for another position I wasn't interested in, and those guys had no interest in my demo app.

As I understand it, the problem is this:

Joe Random Recruiter can decide one day that he is a recruiter for Google/Twitter/FB/anyone else. He doesn't need or obtain their permission - he just starts firing out emails to everyone he can find on i.e., LinkedIn.

The email says something like: "My client, {Google, Facebook, etc}, is looking for someone with {one of your skills}. Are you interested?"

If you reply yes, he then sends an email to {Google, Facebook, etc} and says:

"I'm representing an engineer with {your skills} at {outrageous price including fat commission}. Are you interested?"

Assuming they are in fact interested in you (which they likely are), Google/Facebook/etc is now in a tough position.

- Google/FB/etc can say YES, pay the fat commission to the recruiter, and give you the job. You think the recruiter is a gift from heaven.

- Google/FB/etc can say NO, and the recruiter will just tell you they flaked, the opportunity disappeared, or just never contact you again.

The twist is that if Google/FB/etc says NO, the you will end up with a bad impression of THEM, not Joe Random Recruiter. They don't even know your name, with which they could reach out and explain.

Google/FB/etc know this, and as an engineer you are (currently) so valuable that they are (currently) forced to play ball.

And unfortunately, since this method actually works, we see more "recruiters" popping up every day. Even worse, the bad ones are the most aggresive, and they drown out the honest players.

My advice to the Googles/FBs/Twitters of the world: make a page listing the firms you DO work with, just as you list the IP ranges of your crawlers. Not a great idea, but its all I've come up with.

My advice to the job seekers of this world: cut them some slack - you probably didn't ever actually talk to Google/Facebook/etc, or at least they were misinformed about you.

This is definitely a problem, and in the case of Amazon that's likely what happened, as the individual I dealt with is part of a third-party recruiting firm. In the case of Google, however, the recruiter has an @google.com email, so I'd say he's actually employed by them and it really does reflect poorly on them.

You seem to have a good grasp on this, so I'll ask you: why are things set up such that recruiters are "Joe Random Recruiter" to me, rather than "Joe, who I have met, worked with across multiple job switches, and who relies on my trust"?

There are recruiters out there that fall into the later category. lookahead.com.au is a great example of a company that doesn't spam, doesn't pressure and doesn't lie.

I've known the founder of the company for about 5 years now and he is well respected within the communities he operates in (Ruby on Rails, iOS, DevOps, etc)

Perhaps a reputation system for recruiters, i.e., an Angie's List for recruiters, could help here? That could be a useful service.

Its a tough market to serve because the most people don't change jobs more than a couple times in their career.

Whenever you have a good interaction with a recruiter, tell them that, and tell them that you'd like to build a relationship and contact them every time you begin a job search. The good ones will be receptive.

I think it is common for agencies to have Non Compete clauses such that if your favorite recruiter goes someplace else, they aren't allowed to represent you for a certain period.

One big reason: turnover rate. For recruiters it's about 70% first year, and ~90% by second year. Most jobs are contract and not many people survive agencies. Internal jobs are more stable so turnover rates are likely a lot lower.

There are people that stay in contact throughout multiple switches, but it's pretty rare. Staying in touch after getting you multiple jobs presumes they are likely in agency and that they still work on the same type of roles. Agency turnover is high so they might not even be in recruiting after the first year. Then also take myself, I worked on varying roles from finance, healthcare, mech eng, swe, ml, pm, and more all in the last 2 years. Chances of me working the exact type of role I got you into a year later is unlikely.

> The twist is that if Google/FB/etc says NO, the you will end up with a bad impression of THEM, not Joe Random Recruiter.

I can't imagine getting a bad impression of Google from what a random recruiter tells me.

What if the recruiter tells you that Google/FB/etc reviewed your resume and you didn't make the cut? (When in actuality they just don't want to pay the commission)

You wouldn't dislike them, but you might then not apply for a job there (thinking you had already been turned down once), and then Google/FB/etc misses out on any chance to hire you.

I'm just astounded that these folks treat people with such contempt, given that it reflects poorly on them and the business they're associated with

They'll stop doing it, when candidates stop beating down their door to get in. That I suspect if what's really behind self-driving cars and the like. No-one would put up with being dicked around by their recruiters if they knew that 99% of Google staff working on displaying, billing for, and reporting on ads.

Actually, most Googlers work on creating ad-inventory, ie gmail, blogger, G+ etc. Only a small fraction work on the ads technology itself.

I see what you are saying though, most of that isn't shiny.

Sounds like you are new to the scene. Recruiting has changed so much from 2000. In 2000's, many companies valued recruiters: they had recruiters working for the company on 1099. They used to hire best candidates as recruiters too. Caspean networks paid like $200K on 1099 to my buddy, who worked as their recruiter; they even paid for his hotel, cars, etc when he travelled to best college/technology towns: like NC, Toronto, etc.

See how linkedin has changed the recruitment and the role of headhunters: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/242445

I have been doing contracting for last 7 years or so. The way I look at recruites now has changed: nowadays, recruiters need to get paid their commission or fill their quota; so, they need to find at least 4 prospects for the hiring manager. So, they don't care as long as one of them gets hired. Since they don't maintain long term relatoinship with candidates, they don't know where the prospect stands.

So, just treat them recruiters like car salesman: you don't need to be disrespectful of their profession. They need to make a living like we do. Recruiters (car salesman) are not the problem; but the industry (recruiting or selling cars) is the problem.

I worked as a salesman for two years; I know how difficult it is: commission, base pay, selling warranties, targets, etc. I was lucky to get out of that shitty sales job; many don't have that option any more. After all, becoming an internal recruiter is better for many new graduates than working for Enterprise car rental at their counters.

There seems to be in this thread (and on HN in general) a lack of empathy for the recruiter.

Here's my perspective on (internal) recruiters as someone who sits next to them at an office:

1. Recruiters tend to be really nice people.

2. All day long they talk about prospects with other recruiters almost as if they were talking about potential romantic partners. Except replace any discussion of your physical characteristics with your intellectual / linkedin characteristics. It would be weird if it weren't their job.

3. If a recruiter sends you an InMail, if you reply back (no matter what the response) it helps them as each unanswered InMail costs them money (they don't get to reuse it).

4. Their job is really hard (especially for finding developers), and they are under a ton of pressure, especially when a company is growing, to build head count. Investors really value head count growth heading into a Series B / Series C round of funding.

So, consequently, I would recommend that devs cut recruiters some slack. Be grateful we live in a time where our greatest annoyance is someone contacting us with a job opportunity.

It wasn't always like this and it probably won't be forever.

Thank you for this response. I fully admit that I don't see the recruiter side of things. There isn't a lot of discussion about the trade, or craft, or whatever you want to call it and I think there should be.

I will certainly reply to every InMail that I get now.

It is my hope that methods and conversations like this can make the field better for everybody.

I respond to InMails where it is clear the recruiter actually took the time to read my profile and had a valid reason to believe there might be a match.

Knowing now that unanswered InMails cost them money, I'm doubling down on my stance to not answer InMails from recruiters who are spamming and/or clearly didn't bother to take the time to see if I really would be a good match or if they just matched a couple of buzzwords and hit send.

Isn't the dislike for external recruiters? They can be wildly variable in quality - spamming by keywords, regardless of geographic areas. And the good ones may overprepare, asking questions that the company won't.

Edit: oh yeah. Sudden radio silence. Adding bogus resume tidbits. Posting bogus jobs, just to pump their contact numbers in the database.

I see a lot more bad external recruiters than good.

The dislike probably is directed mostly at the external recruiters, but a lot of this stuff applies to them as well.

I've only had two bad recruiter experiences, one with an internal and one with an external. The former lured me in with a 'big equity' role that turned out to be junior developer. The latter was a recruiting contractor for Tesla who told me they were building a new frontend team. When I got on the phone with him it turned out the team had existed for two years, was over 10 people, and was simply refocusing their product.

In both cases, the recruiter was dishonest about the position. So what I've learned is not to take next steps until I have much clearer details on the role.

External recruiters tend to be way more vague on details, so I can understand the annoyance of having to reply with "tell me what you're actually trying to sell me on." But I find that sending a direct reply like that tends to be pretty effective at eliciting details.

I've had sudden radio silence so much, even after talking to them on the phone. I don't understand because sure they wasted my time, but now they're wasting their time too!

My problem with recruiters isn't the recruiter. My problems with them are:

- the types of jobs they are trying to fill

- the types of companies they are working with

- knowing that I will get paid less vs. working directly with the company

I would agree, that most recruiters are pleasant, approachable people -- they need to be, they're salespeople. But I don't necessarily get annoyed with them. I feel fortunate that my skills and experience are wanted, and having recruiters contacting me frequently is a good problem to have.

But in the end, I just feel that I have very little to gain in speaking with a recruiter.

This is interesting. I've found that a (good) recruiter will work hard to drive up your salary because it benefits them in the end usually. I believe most make a commission based on your salary in the contract. This only applies to external recruiters--I doubt it works the same for internal recruiters for obvious reasons, but I may be wrong. I dunno.

Although not in tech, my partner was contacted by an external recruiter looking to fill a position at an architecture firm. She was reluctant to leave her current job working with the best (IMHO) living architect today, but the recruiter did the leg work and came back with an offer that was something few of us could negotiate on our own. All she had to do was respond to the recruiter's occasional emails. This is the ideal scenario, and as I mentioned in a previous comment, I don't know the ins and outs of recruiting, so it might be more cutthroat than I realize, and they probably don't have the resources to give you that kind of a la carte service, but I think the OP's approach can open the potential for that.

>I've found that a (good) recruiter will work hard to drive up your salary because it benefits them in the end usually. I believe most make a commission based on your salary in the contract.

How did you find this out if you don't mind my asking? From my experience and common sense it would be pretty reckless for a recruiter to try and get few %% more in commission at the risk of loosing the entire deal.

When I discussed salary with a recruiter it was never in the direction "Let's try and get you even more money!" it was more in the direction: "If you don't take the <ridiculously low salary> now you might spend months looking for anything higher and in the meanwhile somebody not as entitled as you will take this job and will be making money hand over fist!".

I've had the same experience as jkochis. It happens rarely, but it does happen. The recruiter can (and should) see it as win-win.

Plus, there are ways of negotiating where you can ask for a larger number and not blow the whole deal.

Sure, you can almost always ask (everywhere you read they will tell you it's completely safe though it depends on industry, I guess, I have seen offers rescinded over mere asking) however if you are not prepared to walk away there is little incentive to offer what you are asking.

An agent who maintains long relationship with you might actually be ready to negotiate on your behalf since it will both strengthen your relationship and bring quite a lot of money in the future as it increases your base price in all the future negotiations. Third party recruiter placing FTEs, on the other hand, has much to lose by walking away and very little to gain.

> I've found that a (good) recruiter will work hard to drive up your salary

That hasn't been my experience at all. I've been contacted by several recruiters and nearly all of them asked me to lower my rate for them.

On one occasion I was asked in depth about what rates I would find acceptable under which conditions and then after they established contact between me and their client I would find out that they had already offered my absolute minimum rate (which I had previously qualified with "if it's a perfect match, a nice environment, and the office is practically next door, I may be willing to go that low") without asking me.

But I guess recruiters for consultants are a different matter from recruiters for permanent employees. There's probably a higher incentive to negotiate a high wage for a permanent employee because in most cases you'll only sign them up once. With consultants you just want them signed as frequently as possible.

I'm on the hiring manager side (full time roles, no contracts). I can assure you that you won't make any more coming directly to us for a full-time role than working through a recruiter.

We fill most (90+%) roles using our internal recruiters (so you still get an advantage coming direct through our internal team and by all means I encourage that), but for the subset of roles that we open to external recruiters, I'm going to make you the same offer [or think about the negotiations the same] either way.

The referral fee we pay the external recruiter is a one-time fee and literally comes from another bucket of money. Yes, I also have to budget for and fund that bucket, but since it's non-recurring, it's treated as a recruiting expense, not a compensation expense.

For a contract role, there are probably good reasons to go direct, as the markup is an on-going compensation expense in many case, but for full-time, I suspect most companies work like mine does.

This is how we operate as well. There's no penalty for someone coming in via an external recruiter in terms of their salary.

I don't necessarily believe this but the other argument about making less money is that recruiters are incentivized for you to take the job and not to push the envelope on your behalf knowing that the company might balk and back out.

> There seems to be in this thread (and on HN in general) a lack of empathy for the recruiter.

most of it is just thinly veiled humblebragging.

I think what many here have said is right: few lack empathy for the individuals, but many lack empathy for the system. Those very nice people who sit next to you are, in essence, spending their days spamming people, and talking about (inevitably superficial) resume characteristics. It may not be their fault personally, and it does sound like a tough job, but that doesn't mean it's a good system. I don't really understand why I don't have a personal relationship with one or more recruiters who I've described my career goals to and who I trust to send me good leads. It's just a bunch of anonymous people who I'll never meet selling me possible snake-oil.

A good recruiter is worth his or her weight in gold, but they are rarer than hen's teeth.

> Be grateful we live in a time where our greatest annoyance is someone contacting us with a job opportunity.

I've said this before, and will say it again: there is a world of difference between being approached by a recruiter who has been explicitly commissioned to fill a position, and being hounded by a recruiter who is just trying to fill their quota.

Hell, some time ago I got so annoyed that I disgorged my thoughts to a post: http://bostik.iki.fi/aivoituksia/pages/recruiter-anxiety.htm...

I still try to maintain a reasonable approach to them. I get an insane amount of recruiter spam at my work inbox, which I ignore. Everyone is trying to get their (live)stock hired by anyone, for anything. Some of the more enterprising ones will try to inmail me with their solicitations. Most of them contain a magic phrase "I noticed you are looking for developers". I've started to send these individuals a canned response: "If you found that out, you also read that we don't accept agency resumes." I also include the link to my post above.

Seems quite an effective repellent so far.

Huh. That is interesting - used to be 180 degree opposite to that, the InMails with replies to used to cost, the ignored ones got refunded. Changed last month.

Does make more sense this way round, spam people and it costs you, make an engaging proposition and it doesn't.

https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/75/~/inmai...

For an illustration of just how dishonest, lazy and rude IT recruiters can be check out http://shit-it-recruiters-say.tumblr.com/. Yes, at least in the UK they really are that bad.

I started just replying with a "No thanks, but I'll hang onto your info in case anything changes or I come across anyone else who's looking", and then I add their email to a "recruiters" contact list in Gmail.

I now have close to 300 folks split between internal/external/vc. I haven't needed to use the list yet, but I have shared it with one or two friends who were interested in changing jobs.

That's great! I like the stats that an email vendor provides. :)

I like this. I know that recruiters are something a lot of us have to deal with, and most of the time they are an annoyance. This approach sounds like it could save a lot of wasted time for both of us. That said, I realize I don't know much about the business of being a recruiter, and I wonder what their perspective might be.

Yeah. I would actually love to hear their point of view on this. Surely they don't like cold calling and emailing all day but also there might be a lot we don't know about as the talent.

This would be an interesting twist on a job board. After reaching critical mass, charge recruiters to see the updates. They get a pool of people they already qualified when they're actually looking and developers get more control over the process.

Wow. Charging someone to help you find a job. Now that's really flipping the script!

I was thinking that the job board would get all of the money, but revenue sharing with the developers would be even more interesting! The amounts paid to external recruiters in this industry are insane...

Aren't you basically describing a (better) LinkedIn?

All the independent recruiters in my area have an autoresponder set up in my GMail that tells them politely that I don't work with their kind because the incentive structure of their business creates quantity of matches over quality.

I'm happy to receive interest from recruiters who work for the companies they're recruiting for, though.

I like the proactive approach. Just yesterday, I went to an IXDA breakfast event and some recruiters showed up. Some people were just annoyed by their presence, but I thought it was a good opportunity to talk. They were pretty new to the industry, so I gave them pointers about how supporting the community by sponsoring events, organizing talks at companies they are hiring for, telling better stories about the companies they are hiring for, etc could get them better results than the usual cold-emailing.

I just think that if you don't like how they are doing things, give them pointers. Won't work everywhere, but sometimes it will, and that will be worth it.

Nice idea.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com