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Comment by tech2000 | Hacker News Reader

tech2000

So all those recruiters he mentioned are just prank calling or they all have the same single job and tons of applicants? I don't get it.

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Almost all (inhouse/exclusive excluded) recruiters that claim to be "working on filling a position" don't have a specific position at all. They are simply finding candidates.

Once they have a candidate they will ring around their client base and see if they can find a place for you to go.

They will chase any potential candidate they can see getting a 20-40k payout (20%~ first year salaray)

This gives senior devs with solid linked in profiles quite a warped view about the state of things.

When companies go out actively looking they don't get exposed to these types of candidates because most of these possible candidates are not actively looking. Hence the "shortage of talent".

In other words, there is a talent shortage, but most talented people (i.e. anyone reading this) won't see it because they're all too busy being traded around the block.

This is why Hired.com is interesting. I tried it after a couple rounds of interviewing where it either seemed like salary was a sticking point or the interviewees were unprepared. With Hired.com, I was able to explain my value in a context that those who I would like to work for would understand. I received a number of solid offers, interviewed with a handful and accepted one. Every person that contacted me was direct from the company that I would work for and these were real positions.

Its a good idea but its a huge time waster if they don't ban the multiple companies that ran bait-and-switch games on me. Also their fee is very high, which employers claim not to care about but definitely do.

Is your experience based on being a potential employee or a potential employer? I spoke with them about fees and learned that their fees are lower than the average outside recruiter. Nobody likes to pay to hire but everyone does -- you either pay an outside recruiter or an inside (employee) recruiter. Now you have the option of paying Hired.com instead and the terms aren't bad -- you can spread the repayment over time.

Agreed, solid product.

Recruiters call anyone who's made an effort to find a software job in the last ten years, seriously. I get calls and email from ten year old resumes. The less they know about someone, the more they promise.

The recruiter world is really weird, a lot of them are pretty marginal and just looking to pad interviews (or something, it's hard to tell). Calls are absolutely not a gauge of the job market. Sometimes it is literally true that every recruiter is calling about the same job.

Or, all those recruiters are spamming him with jobs that pay below market, because since (as I postulate) there is no actual shortage of labor, there are likely many people out there willing to work for at-or-below-market wages.

I thought this too. Then I entered a job and interviewed 100~ candidates. There is absolutely such a shortage, and this isn't even for anything complex, this was just for a frontend position. I genuinely had to ask a few candidates if they've ever programmed in JS or HTML before this interview, can't even imagine the type of bullshit at higher levels. You can staff your entire company in under a day, sure, but they're going to be utterly useless. Most are, mainly because they don't delve into it beyond school work / work so they never blossom into someone who is very good.

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