[HN Gopher] Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter ___________________________________________________________________ Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter Author : alexc05 Score : 459 points Date : 2022-02-01 15:23 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (alexchesser.medium.com) (TXT) w3m dump (alexchesser.medium.com) | Apreche wrote: | The problem I have is that almost every recruiter that emails me | lists the positions they are trying to fill. Almost all of those | positions are ones to which I am morally opposed. It's a waste of | both of our time to respond positively and interview for | positions that I won't accept under any realistic circumstance. | capableweb wrote: | I'm not sure how you go from "Never ignore a recruiter" to | "Always respond positively and interview with a recruiter". | There is a middle-ground where you can reply, without being | positive and not setting up an interview, while not burning | bridges that you might want to cross in the future. | __MatrixMan__ wrote: | I get a lot of recruiters that are trying to fill positions at | defense contractors. So right away I know two things: | | - I'm not interested - They aren't at liberty to talk about the | technical details | | So I always respond with something like: | | > Oh yeah, I'm pretty decent at {language}. But I want to keep | growing, so I'm really not interested in writing {very old | version of language}. Can you tell me what version they're using? | | I figure it's a good balance between "screw off" and bothering | with a phone call that won't be fruitful for either of us. It | keeps me in their rolodex (in my experience, recruiters have a | very high turnover rate--so who knows who they'll be recruiting | for tomorrow). Also, I like to imagine that some poor engineer is | trying to convince the machine to let him upgrade, and maybe I | can help them out, whoever they are, by making the old version | seem like a recruiting hazard. | rharb wrote: | Just today I responded to a recruiter who directly emailed me | "because my LinkedIn bio looked promising", asking: 1) How he got | my email address, since it is not affiliated with my LinkedIn | profile (uses my work email and only contains information about | my current position) 2) That I wasn't interested, thanking him | for his time | | He responded, seemingly offended, that I "have a Gmail account, a | very public account" that his "team of Search Engineers" found. | MattGaiser wrote: | I've gotten a bunch of recruiters at work too and in a few | cases they sent the email to the wrong Matt because they just | spammed every common email name combo for corporate emails. | dogman144 wrote: | I'm always nice to recruiters if they make the bare minimum | effort. If the job isn't a fit, I offer to stay in touch. It has | led to great opportunities for me simply by taking advantage of | the network effects offered by a recruiter link. Things turn up | if you talk around enough. | CoastalCoder wrote: | I try to be nice to recruiters who demonstrate that they've | actually spent 60+ seconds considering if my resume was a match | for the position. (Including my stated location requirements.) | | Occasionally I'll tell them that I'm not working on a different | level of the software stack than their position requires, and | try to point them in the right direction. No idea if that's | helpful to them, but it's nice to feel like I've been kind to a | stranger. | ibi5 wrote: | The key to me is transparency. If they're going to beat around | the bush about the details I ask for I'm not going to waste my | time on them. | [deleted] | jen20 wrote: | Every time I read something about recruiters, I am reminded of | this fantastic post [1] (sadly the original has been taken down, | and this is the only copy I know of). | | Anyone who has ever experienced third party recruiters in the UK | will be nodding their head along after just the first few | paragraphs... | | [1]: | https://gist.github.com/CumpsD/696599d1bd4cd472a056586967293... | Rd6n6 wrote: | > ... and one in a hundred can double your salary. | | The time required to work with the 99 who can't double your | salary isn't nothing, that's a part time or even full time job | spent courting people who are just spamming everybody on linkedin | with a pulse | qubyte wrote: | Most of the recruiter traffic comes from LinkedIn, which is not | particularly surprising. The very first line of my profile there | reads: Please do not contact me about | cryptocurrency, blockchain, NFTs, or associated technologies. | | Almost all recruiters who contact me on LinkedIn are talking | about... cryptocurrency, blockchains, or NFTs etc. If a recruiter | isn't prepared to read even the first line of my profile then I | think I'm fine to ignore them. For all other recruiters I'll send | a polite and friendly "thanks, but I'm not looking at this time". | dariusj18 wrote: | I bet you it's those keywords in your profile that draw them to | send you a message | qubyte wrote: | Up until I added that line it was "rust" which was doing it. | Perhaps the line makes it worse, but at least I'm happy to | ignore those requests now. :) | makerofthings wrote: | I added rust to my list of skills and then got swamped with | blockchain nonsense. It's very odd, I took it back off | again. | drewm1980 wrote: | It is ironic that so many companies are using such an | efficient programming language to implement the most | horribly, deliberately wasteful computations on the planet. | I got into rust because I want to do meaningful work | efficiently not proof-of-meaningless-work. | pcthrowaway wrote: | Not sure if you're just calling blockchain development | meaningless work in general, or referencing proof-of- | work, which refers to meaningless computation done for | blockchain security despite the unnecessary wastefulness. | | If you're referencing the latter, maybe it's worth | pointing out that all the blockchains using Rust (or the | popular ones anyway) are proof of stake. | hn_version_0023 wrote: | I explicitly state in my LinkedIn profile "do not contact me | I'm not seeking new opportunities at this time" and I _still_ | get a half dozen a week. | | Recruiters are the laziest humans on earth. | devoutsalsa wrote: | Recruiters work super hard with archaic, shitty tools. You | may not like their methods, but (mostly) they are anything | but lazy. | noirbot wrote: | Work hard, not smart, I guess... | hn_version_0023 wrote: | If they can't be bothered to read the all-caps text stating | I don't wish to be contacted, then yes, they are _lazy_. | | If they read it and contact me _anyway_? Then they're | disrespectful of my wishes and not worth my time. But I'll | concede that isn't lazy! | nsxwolf wrote: | I don't know what I've done to be so blessed as to not receive | any blockchain recruiter spam. | | Everyone thinks I do Ruby on Rails though, because someone | accidentally endorsed me for it once years ago. Somehow 50+% of | the stuff I get is RoR. | jedberg wrote: | You can remove endorsements if you don't want to get those | anymore. | MattGaiser wrote: | I have one line from 2017 about working on blockchain | proposals. I never wrote any blockchain code. But it is half of | my LinkedIn inbox. | duskwuff wrote: | Honestly, I'd recommend taking that off your resume, or | describing it in a way that avoids using keywords. Your | resume doesn't have to mention every job you've ever had, | especially if they aren't relevant to the work you're looking | for. | qubyte wrote: | I think it happens to me because I mention that I'm dabbling | in rust in my profile, and I guess that's a keyword they | scrape for. | cableshaft wrote: | There are certain platforms that support smart contracts | written in Rust (like Solana), so yeah, there's a chance | that's triggering them. | mabbo wrote: | A simpler approach: just be nice to recruiters. | | Even the cold-calling, working-for-an-agency, just-wants-10%-of- | your-salary recruiters. Most of them are simply nice people who | are trying to make a living in a difficult and incredibly | competitive business. Some are assholes, no doubt, but just being | polite until they prove that they are cost you very little. | | I had a recruiter reach out this morning to tell me about great | opportunities in <city> with <company>. I don't want to work for | that company, ever, for serious ethical reasons. I don't want to | move to that city (though it's not a terrible place). | | I simply said "Hi <name>, thanks so much for reaching out. I'm | not really interested in any new opportunities right now. I'm | also planning a fully remote career from now on, so moving to | <city> doesn't really work for me. Thanks for reaching out | though". | | It took 30 seconds. It burned no bridges. It made no presumptions | about them and didn't try to harm them back for wasting my time. | | If they persist, I'll ask them to please take me off their list | and not contact me again- as politely as I can manage. | | So far this strategy has proven 100% effective at handling | recruiters, but it also makes me feel better because there's no | negative emotions involved. | c7DJTLrn wrote: | Exactly. I don't get the hate. We are so privileged in the | software industry to have people on our backs all the time | offering us work that it makes me kind of sick when people take | it for granted. | | Sure, some recruiters will waste your time, but a lot of them | are quite good at their job. It's literally their job to | matchmake workers and employers. You don't have to be an | asshole to them for reaching out. | matsemann wrote: | > It took 30 seconds. | | I don't want to deal with that multiple times a day, though. | They're not "nice people" when they disregard the only thing | written in my Linkedin profile: " _please no unsolicited calls_ | ". If they didn't even bother to read that single sentence, | they probably know nothing about me and have nothing to offer. | It's arrogant of them to waste my time. | CoastalCoder wrote: | I'm happy to invest in a relationship with recruiters who will be | around for a while. But I get the impression that most recruiters | have only short stints in that work. | | P.S. I would like to give credit to one recruiter though: Markus | Edmunds. He'd been recruiting for a particular technical | specialty a year or two ago. He really got to know my preferences | and strengths, and never ghosted me when individual companies | passed on my resume. I know that's indistinguishable from him | acting in enlightened self-interest, but it was still a | productive relationship. | frockington1 wrote: | Add NYC to that list as well. There's no reason to move to either | of those cities in 2022. | Ar-Curunir wrote: | > There's no reason to move to either of those cities in 2022 | | Hm, and here I was, thinking that different people like living | in different places for different reasons! | eatonphil wrote: | I like NYC. I moved here in 2017 though. But after the pandemic | I moved to Central Queens where my rent is much cheaper | (2400/mo) and the apartment is bigger (1,000sqft ish) in a | doorman building. 30m subway to Central Park and the best | Chinese, Thai, Indian, Vietnamese, and Korean restaurants in NY | are the next neighborhoods over. | | The coffee and pastries nearby aren't as fun as Brooklyn | though. | wnolens wrote: | Oops, just moved to NYC last year! :) | reasonabl_human wrote: | Can you elaborate on reasons for the move? I am facing a | similar realization regarding another one of your child | comments about not clicking as much with west coast culture | but am concerned about a drop in tech opportunities | wnolens wrote: | Many reasons. But after 10 years on the west coast, I had | many dozens of friends but almost none that I wanted to | spend holidays with (i.e. felt like family, neither friends | nor partners). I decided that it wasn't for a lack of | trying or giving it time. | | The west coast felt judgmental and divisive. I couldn't | always express myself for fear of alienation. I do not have | strong views and I (used to?) consider myself liberal (I'm | not American). | | I really enjoy how conversationally adept the average New | Yorker is. It's simply more fun to be with people. And the | diversity is refreshing. I'm a software dev more by | circumstance, not temperament. I used to only talk to ~30 | y/o tech men/women. Now my day includes a sweet 75 year old | lady, academics, health workers, and plenty of ~30 y/o | folks who are living interesting lives without a mold. | | I kept my job and moved here, taking a 10% haircut thanks | to taxes. Oh well. All the big tech firms have a physical | presence in NYC (FB, GOOG, AMZN..). There's less kool-aid | drinking startups, but I'm ok with that. It's a big city, | you can have your pick. I think as a tech worker, you have | the breathing room to give up the top 10% opportunities in | the field and still be a top 1% earner in the larger | society (with more job satisfaction). | wobbly_bush wrote: | Not the person you are responding to - what about NYC | made you get in touch with non-tech people that wasn't | possible on the west coast? Is there something different | about NYC's culture that helps in mingling with more | people? | wnolens wrote: | Hm.. It might be largely a numbers thing: higher density | (more interactions), and more diversity. But can't ignore | the general willingness to connect (ex: going to a bar | solo in NYC yields me a lengthy convo 50% of the time, | and I almost never initiate.). | econnors wrote: | not OP, but been in NYC for over 5 years and there's no | shortage of interesting opportunities in tech | boringg wrote: | Outside of the fact that if you like the city, the surrounding | land and the people that live there. As well as many other | great reasons to live in the cities. | | Just because you guys don't like them doesn't mean many other | people love those areas, please stop unnecessarily dumping on | cities you don't like. | [deleted] | datavirtue wrote: | I love city energy. Just have to opt out of the pollution. | The automotive exhaust alone is rediculous (as a truck rolls | coal in front of my house). | 1270018080 wrote: | I can understand the Bay Area, but it's a little bit crazy to | think there's no reason to live in NYC. | CoastalCoder wrote: | "No" reason is probably an overstatement. But it's certainly | a different lifestyle than e.g. living in a suburban / rural | area and working remotely. Many of us would consider it a | step backwards unless the net increase in income was life- | changing. | wnolens wrote: | Step backwards in take home pay and square footage. Step | forwards in social life, romantic life, culture (if you | weren't getting it elsewhere). | | If you're married with kids, NYC doesn't make sense. If | you're single with passions outside work - it's great. | rrose wrote: | i grew up in a big city. great place to grow up. so glad | my parents didn't move out to the suburbs. One size | doesn't fit all | datavirtue wrote: | What if my passion is goat husbandry? | CoastalCoder wrote: | That's about how I figure it. Even if you try to split | the difference by living in the suburbs of NYC, my | impression is that housing is still pretty expensive | _and_ you have a time-consuming commute. | wnolens wrote: | West coast of USA is easy-mode life. I don't fault anyone for | living there and loving it. It just wasn't for me socially. | | NYC makes me feel more human and connected, even if that | means higher taxes, smaller apartment, and generally more | discomfort on a daily basis. | daok wrote: | What are you talking about? The Bay Area has one of the | greatest weather of the world, lot of job opportunities, | beaches near by as as mountain. Lot to like also. | dang wrote: | We detached this subthread from | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30164267 and marked it off | topic. | throwaway202202 wrote: | This may be familiar by now but developers are very lucky. | | I left computers to move to investments, make 500k+/year but I | envy the stability and choices that developers have. If I lost my | job tomorrow it is not clear I could find another similar job. | You have lots of options. | | It looks like the situation will remain this way during our | lifetimes (you never know), but you should at least appreciate | it. | dogman144 wrote: | Great take. I turned down a path into finance to go computers, | and did so to target the reverse of what you notice. | | Few other jobs offer pay and stability similar to a Dr. or | Lawyer without the working hours and with geo-flexibilty. Few | other jobs offer a shot at a massive personal liquidity event | without the direct exposure to a recession like in finance. Few | other jobs offer this pay for what's basically a trade without | a tough physical lifestyle like working in O&G. | | If more "normal" people went into engineering, as in the normal | white collar types who are smart but go into MBAs/MDs instead, | I think we'd see interesting social impacts as more people | discover that you can do flavors of digital nomad work without | being the stereotypical tech bro. I think this is just starting | to happen with MBAs who go into TPM roles. | | Eng paths re-enanble lifestyles that I feel were lost post-1970 | for much of the general working population. Now, you can live | and work nearly anywhere. No requirements to suck it up in | Cleveland, NYC, whatever for the kids because of good schools | and a good local white collar job. If you want to pack up and | go to Europe, you can grab a visa from big US tech there, or | small startups. Just meet the right recruiter. Wild stuff. | dboreham wrote: | I think this means that your compensation reflects the cost to | your employer should you decide to quit. | NikolaeVarius wrote: | I ignore 99.9999% of recruiters, but anything that interests me I | just toss salary numbers that I find are funny. | | Makes it easier on all of us | dbg31415 wrote: | I Dissent. | | I've seen so many shady tricks pulled by recruiters. I'm sure it | goes both ways, but never forget the recruiter isn't in the | business of helping you, they're in the business of helping the | people who pay them. | | Seen recruiters low-ball staff, or tell the person that they | weren't as good as other candidates... "but if you lower your day | rate to be more aligned with your junior-level skills..." So when | the person shows up, they feel deflated since they think we | thought they were junior... but in fact, we loved them and just | didn't have enough budget to hire them at the right rate -- and | the recruiter helped us get their rates down because at the end | of the day the recruiter only cared about putting seats in chairs | for us. | | Seen recruiters spam over candidates without so much as doing a | basic screening interview. "Oh yeah, he's great... he knows | JavaScript and English..." and they're literally just looking at | the poor guy's LinkedIn and they haven't ever spoken with him | past a few copy-paste emails. It's a numbers game to them. They | don't want you, as the person paying them, to ever feel like | their shelves are empty. | | Seen recruiters promise people visas along with the offer | letter... then for whatever reason, if the job shifts, the | recruiters just cancel the contract and the person would get | deported. Saw this in Sydney A LOT. The recruiters and staffing | agencies don't care at all what happens to the person, as long as | they get a commission. They lie and over-promise, and sell-sell- | sell... and even if they only have a 3-month contract they'll | promise someone a year, then just switch it last minute or have a | cancellation clause. | | As someone who worked for a Digital Agency where we hired a lot | of people through recruiters... the number of times some poor | bloke would come up to me and be like, "So... 3 months probation | then I'm full time? That's what the recruiter said... now you can | get me a visa and I'll be able to bring my wife over here too?" | and I'd have to be like, "Yeah sorry, Johnny... this was just a | 3-month gig." Had one guy, "But I gave up my family's visa for | this... the recruiter promised me higher pay and that you'd take | over my visa..." Felt awful. And the poor guy almost certainly | had to leave Sydney when the job was done. | | Worse... my GM wouldn't let me fire that recruiter. "They give us | the best rates..." Was all so shady. Left me with the solid | impression that these people were all just bottom feeders. | Willing to do anything to make a buck that day. | junon wrote: | No thanks. Most cold callers these days don't even work for the | company. They always seem to say "I'm recruiting for an | esteemed/up and coming/potential unicorn (lol)/hot/aggressively | funded/blah blah blah company". I've bitten a few times and asked | for details about said company and they say they want a call | first. | | No thanks. Tell me about the position first. Then I'll tell you | if I'm interested. | FpUser wrote: | In my whole life I've never been able to find any job / contract | using recruiter. Obviously had to take matters into my onw hands | ;) | democracy wrote: | not worth it - they have a very high turn over, making | connections there with everyone is a waste of time | gitfan86 wrote: | Funny Story: | | A recruiter sent me a detail post about a job. I wrote back and | said I was interested. He never responded so I applied to the job | online and got it. | | 4 months later he messages me and says sorry but it looks like | the position has been removed. | | I didn't write back. | operatingthetan wrote: | I had that happen with a house once. I sent a house to my agent | (that I had an existing relationship with), and they never | responded. So I found a new agent and bought the house. Old | agent reappears two weeks later and I informed them of what | happened. | jackling wrote: | Curious to know what their response was. | kaydub wrote: | No, I definitely ignore recruiters. Internal recruiters I _may_ | respond, but if you 're some consultancy firm or recruiting firm | I'll never work with you. | | My skills are in demand. When I want a new job I'll reach out for | it. It'll be there. | onphonenow wrote: | "It is a wonderful position of privilege to be in and I'm | thankful for it." | | Insta-delete if I'm doing hiring... ? I've found folks who | actually deliver seem to have less of this type of long winded | stuff. | Tehchops wrote: | Do you have hard data to back that up or is it just anecdotal | personal bristling whenever someone says "privilege"? | AnimalMuppet wrote: | Real tech people don't blather. | | Yeah, I know, that's not "hard data". It's a pretty | consistent pattern, though. Tech people have to be able to | communicate with precision; they usually don't do "blowing | smoke". | Mockapapella wrote: | Not a recruiter, but this has been my experience too | Tehchops wrote: | > Real tech people | | Ah this fun gatekeeping meme rears it's head again. | | So how do you define "tech" people? Do you have a | scorecard? | | How do they meet your assessment for "real"? Cohesive | organization of atomic matter generally constitutes "real" | in a lot of physics definitions. | | I'd argue trying to label someone a "real tech person" is a | laughably subjective exercise that's so corrupted by | personal bias and toxicity as to be utterly useless in | evaluating someone's capability to participate in organized | software engineering. | | Case in point: I have worked with several folks, in FAANG, | who by all technical standards were "real" tech people. | Polyglot programmers, could tackle any sticky logic | problem. | | Ask them to communicate their solution to other engineers? | To communicate with others with empathy? Be able to | navigate conversations with directors and VPs about broadly | implementing their solutions? Absolutely, 100% fell on | their face. Couldn't do it. They couldn't form a cohesive, | understandable, actionable statement about their work to | save their lives. They'd go off on some completely | pointless technical tangent that had little to do with the | problem at hand. | | Code reviews they participated in ground to a complete | fucking halt. Not because they actually addressed | meaningful technical issues. No, they wanted to pontificate | and show off how much smarter they were. | | In my not totally hard-data experience, people that maybe | didn't have quite the "real tech people" skills but were | expressive, capable communicators often actually shipped | more meaningful work, more often, and built organizational | equity not just for themselves, but for their teammates and | managers too. | | Software development at any scale, like it or not, involves | working with other people. In my experience people that go | around gatekeeping and using some hilariously subjective | ruler to grade "realness" aren't very effective at all. | 0des wrote: | I take it by your confrontational response that their | comment hooked you somewhat. I can assure you it's the | truth, and though it may or may not have been relevant to | you in a way that affected you emotionally, the words | ring true in my experience. Those who can do the thing | don't mince words about it, the ones who can't need to | massage what they're saying a bit to not lay the bad news | on you like a ton of bricks; it is natural for people to | want to be accepted socially. | Tehchops wrote: | "Truth" and "rings true in your experience" aren't | necessarily overlapping values. | | Sure, it's a confrontational response, because I've seen | too many solid, empathetic, capable individuals run out | of tech by toxic gatekeeping bullshit _just like this_. | | Then all I'm left to manage and work with are toxic, | self-aggrandizing, "um akshually" engineers who rate | appearing smarter than others over working well with | others and getting things done. | 0des wrote: | What is the need to interject the word 'manage' in there? | Is that a powermove? | | edit: Have a great day, I'm going to let this one go. | Things to do, code to write :) | Tehchops wrote: | Have a good day as well! | AnimalMuppet wrote: | I agree that people trying to appear smarter is toxic, at | least if done very often. (Even if not done often, maybe | it's still toxic, just not a lethal dose.) That isn't | what I meant. | | It really comes down to this: You can't blather at the | computer. You have to make very precise statements to the | computer. If you can't be precise in your communications, | you can't program. | | That usually spills over into human communications, too. | People who can talk to computers can usually talk to | humans who can talk to computers, because they can use at | least some of the same terms with the same meanings. | | And they can talk with the same mindset. You can't show | off to the computer. You can't get the code to compile or | to run by using more flowery wording. Tech people tend to | carry that mindset into their communication with each | other. | onphonenow wrote: | The point folks are making here is that folks who go on | these long rants, demand "hard data" for every | experience, write in over formal language, say things | like "corrupted by personal bias and toxicity as to be | utterly useless" may not be that able / focused on just | moving forward on stuff - it's all tied up in ego ego ego | type things. | | You like the posters approach? Fine. I don't find their | style (or yours) to be either healthy or productive and | it just can stress teams out to have to work with someone | super high need. | Tehchops wrote: | > "corrupted by personal bias and toxicity as to be | utterly useless" may not be that able / focused on just | moving forward on stuff. | | It's the same recycled logic of people who want to return | to the times of being able to say whatever they want, and | people who are offended just "need to move on". | | This kind of thinking is why homophobia/misogyny/racism | is still so prevalent in tech. Dog whistles like "real | tech people" or "super high need" or "people that just | can't move on". | | It's a lot more convenient and dismissive to associate it | with some kind of lack of performance. "Oh they should | just focus on the code, thank god for all the coders who | never want to attend meetings and just code..." | | I know you don't like my "style", but I'm afraid most | organized software development is starting to become | _more_ aware of the need to be empathetic and accepting | of the human element, not _less_ , and just "getting over | it and coding" isn't an acceptable answer anymore. | 0des wrote: | 100% spot on. You can usually tell on which side of the | sales vs tech spectrum someone is on organizationally by | this. | onphonenow wrote: | I would add managers who have super inflated views of | themselves but not technical so maybe with some | insecurities mixed in? | | Maybe mixed in with all the microaggression / toxic work | environment type stuff? | | The folks who code are usually like, hey, let me show you | this, or do you have time to look at this. | | THe managers, sales etc folks never say this. They will | schedule you for long long boring meetings on any topic | they can think of. | onphonenow wrote: | "Do you have hard data to back that up or is it just | anecdotal personal bristling whenever someone says | "privilege"?" - Tehchops | | This is actually a perfect example of this! Let's take a | minute here to look at your response. | | "Do you have hard data to back that up" | | I literally said "I've found". Folks who go on long winded | discussions about privilege do exactly this - redirect, | misunderstand, demand impossible things. | | I didn't say I had hard data, I said this was just my | personal experience. I don't need hard data to back up my own | experience - it's simply my experience. | | The "hard data" that you seem interested in is often | horrendously weak in this social studies type area. This may | be offensive or triggering, but measuring job performance is | extremely hard, and measuring it relative to communication | styles is harder. This raises a question in my mind, are you | unable to evaluate the likelihood that hard data would exist | so that it makes sense to demand it and you would believe | what I presented if I found some? There may be some poor | critical reasoning skills here. | | "just anecdotal personal bristling whenever someone says | "privilege"" | | Dismissing others experience rather than engaging on the | comment. Is your experience positive with folks who | communicate like this? Mine is not. The writer is using this | over the top over formal language. Their language choice is | all a bad sign of ego ego ego. Tech folks are in high demand, | they are not gods. | | "While I very much appreciate the fact that exceptionally | talented and engaged recruiters reach out consistently"... "I | will be unavailable for further discussion." | Tehchops wrote: | > Dismissing others experience rather than engaging on the | comment. Is your experience positive with folks who | communicate like this? Mine is not | | I believe your original comment was: | | > Insta-delete if I'm doing hiring... | | Now who's being dismissive again? ;-) | | > Folks who go on long winded discussions about privilege | do exactly this - redirect, misunderstand, demand | impossible things. | | And I've found folks who respond defensively as you have | tend to not reflect on their own privilege, and generally | do not respond well to criticism or questioning. | | Of course... feel free to "dismiss" what I'm saying. | nsxwolf wrote: | I personally bristle when someone says "privilege", but I | don't think a recruiter should. | hatware wrote: | Strange article, if I didn't ignore 99% of recruiters that reach | out to me, I wouldn't make any progress. | serverholic wrote: | Sorry but I do not care enough about my career to put in this | much effort. Recruiters are a dime a dozen these days and it's so | much easier to just wait until you need one. Even if it's a bit | less optimal. | abledon wrote: | Love the idea of automating my linkedin email funnels... I might | throw a GPT3 into the mix to spice things up... | omgmajk wrote: | I reply to InMail so that they get their LinkedIn credit back. | They are usually thankful for that. Other offers there's a 50/50 | chance I have the energy to reply. | acjohnson55 wrote: | I simply turned my InMail off. I've never gotten a useful | message in however many years I've been on LinkedIn. | speedgoose wrote: | I don't want to work for a company that needs recruter spam to | hire. It must not be a very attractive place. | llampx wrote: | - Groucho Marx | not2b wrote: | In my view (your experience may differ): almost always ignore a | recruiter, unless getting out of your current job situation is so | urgent that you're willing to waste a ton of time, or the | recruiter presents a very specific proposal that makes clear that | they've done their homework meaning that you are a great fit for | a unique opportunity. | | In some cases going through a recruiter is a guarantee that you | _won 't_ get a position, because a third-party recruiter tries to | sell you to a company that has its own recruiters and is | unwilling to pay the third-party recruiter's fee. | kache_ wrote: | I always just respond with a "whats the salary range?" response, | merely for data collection purposes | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | This. It works. And it saves time for both sides ( and remember | that recruiters have no motive not to disclose it -- the more | you get the better it is for them ). | organsnyder wrote: | Same. Also to normalize discussing salary up-front. I'd say at | least half of recruiters are forthcoming with this information. | dave_sid wrote: | I'd certainly say don't be rude to recruiters. Some people seem | to get unnecessarily wound up by recruiters and forget that we | are all adults just trying to do our job. It doesn't hurt to be | polite and might just work in your favour in the long run. | klaudioz wrote: | I have a dirty trick to ignore "bots" recruiters in Linkedin: | | I just put a greek character on my name or add an emoticon, so I | got a lot of messages starting with: | | "Dear name .. | | So, it's safe to ignore the message. Even when probably I'm not | interested I used to reply with a template message, but I won't | waste 30 seconds with a bot. | 908B64B197 wrote: | I think we have this post every few months on this site, so let | me explain how recruiting works. | | There's 3 types/market for recruiters and they almost never | overlap. The first are "body shop style" recruiters. It's | basically a numbers game where they try to cold-call as much | people with githubs/linkedin or blogs that reference programming. | They don't know programming (not even what's the difference | between languages or front-end/back-end) and are looking for a | list of buzzwords. They'll send copy-pasted messages (you can | tell because it references tech you never used or never even | claimed to have used). If you respond (and really you shouldn't) | you won't be able to get any relevant information about the | position because... they don't have it. These recruiters are | often contracted by external firms in "best value countries" and | are given canned response to message you. That's probably what | the author encountered. | | Second type are professional recruiters. Their salary is by | commissions will often be a percentage of your salary. They are | knowledgeable about programming and tech (often former engineers | who wanted a break from coding!). They typically are looking to | match specific profiles to specific jobs at client companies. | This goes all the way to recruiters specialized in C-Suite | executives (and you can picture the commission finding a CEO will | bring in). Their messages will be personalized and you shouldn't | hesitate to reply back even if you aren't looking for a job. They | know that most great software engineers are almost never openly | looking for a job so their goal is to be on good terms with a | large number of talented developers so that the minute they start | looking for a job they can match them with positions. You'll know | when you encounter one. | | Third type is basically referrals. A players attract A players, | smart companies know it. Make sure your referral bonus is a | percentage of total comp. It's probably the most effective way of | recruiting (it has an insane signal to noise ratio). But you only | get access to that type of network by... bringing value and being | part of it in the first place! | thomasfromcdnjs wrote: | I've been doing a variation of this myself over the years, it's | gotten me good jobs. Sometimes, I'd simply say I want X salary | that is ~20% more than I currently would have thought I was | worth. Then sometimes the recruiter would come back and say that | is actually possible. | dboreham wrote: | Always ignore recruiters. | cletus wrote: | I went into this thinking I was going to disagree because | honestly I hate recruiters and the time-wasting involved but I | actually agree. | | Here's why: by having a template that he just copy-pastes. This | is extremely low effort and will filter out a lot of recruiters. | I also agree with working with company recruiters over third- | party recruiters. | | The first thing many recruiters will want to do is "hop on a | call". Resist this urge. In fact, don't even give them your phone | number. Force them to use email to contact you. A phone call is a | good way of wasting your time. If you actually need to call them | on the phone, call them. | | There are lots of techniques recruiters will use to waste your | time. One common one is if pressed on compensation range you'll | get the answer that it's "competitive". | | Use a template like this to simply filter out time-wasters. If | they want to get on a call, resist giving concrete details or | otherwise just give you bad vibes, just stop responding. They | can't call you. They don't have your number. Move on. | milkytron wrote: | > There are lots of techniques recruiters will use to waste | your time. | | Why is this? Why do they insist on wasting a candidate's time | when answering some simple questions via email is much more | efficient? | | I've talked to HR people about this, and the answers I've | received are not satisfying. A common response is that they | want to get to know you, hear how you speak, determine if you | might be a good fit. BUT, shouldn't they figure out if the | candidate is even interested by verifying basic | needs/requirements? | | The responses come down to basically they don't value our time | as much as we do. | cletus wrote: | > Why is this? Why do they insist on wasting a candidate's | time when answering some simple questions via email is much | more efficient? | | That's easy: they want you invested. The sunk cost fallacy | works. | | Think about it another way: being a recruiter is being in | sales. Sales people love pipelines (funnels) so if you think | about the recruitment stages a simplified view might be: | | 1. Email candidate | | 2. Candidate responds to email | | 3. Discuss on phone | | 4. Candidate submits resume | | 5. Organize phone screen | | 6. Conduct interviews | | 7. Negotiate offer | | 8. Accept offer | | Each of these steps has a conversion rate. Imagine you get | paid $20,000 for placing a candidate. Work backwards through | this pipeline and you might figure out you have to send 5,000 | emails to place one candidate. That means each email you | send, you've "earned" $4. Imagine if the response rate is | 20%. Well, getting a candidate to respond by changing up the | content or presentation of the email means you've now | "earned" $20. If only 1 in 3 talk on the phone then each | phone introduction you make "earns" you $60. And so on. | | it's a numbers game. They're just trying to get you to the | next stage in the pipeline. | convolvatron wrote: | no. i think its more. i mean yes this is true. | | i've had lots of recruiters that really thought their value | was to harass me me by phone. even though I've emphasized | repeatedly that there isn't anything more that they can do | personally to help me...the insist on calling me nearly | ever day to 'see where my head is at' | | i'm pretty sure i've lost out on some decent positions in | the past because i got so sick of spending 30 minutes here | and there talking to the same idiot that said 'dont _ever_ | call me back you asshole' | DebtDeflation wrote: | Bad career advice I received early in my career: Don't talk | compensation until late in the interviewing process after you've | already convinced them to hire you. | | Compensation is the first thing I bring up now. "I currently make | X salary, Y annual bonus, and Z equity. This position will need | to exceed all 3 by at least 20% before I even consider it. Does | that sound doable? If not, let's not waste any more of each | other's time." | | Way too many lowballers out there. | d23 wrote: | Unless you're already extremely out of band and are pretty sure | your range will be higher than 95% of your incoming offers, I | do not recommend doing this. Never give first numbers, and if | you're in software and haven't gotten past the middling, | typical startup salary numbers and onto the mind-blowingly high | numbers, you will not feel confident enough to handle a | negotiation where you've already given away too much | information. | vincentmarle wrote: | > Never give first numbers | | I disagree: the first one who gives a number is able to | anchor the negotiation around their preferred outcome; it's | much harder to negotiate up from a lowball number than the | other way around. | DebtDeflation wrote: | I have >20 years of experience and my comp is absolutely >95% | of inbound offers. So yes, I definitely want to not waste | time with those and instead focus on the 5%. | d23 wrote: | That's great, and I'm in a similar situation myself. But | your intro mentioned this being early career advice, which | could mislead people into making pretty big negotiation | mistakes. | pojzon wrote: | I would consider that a good advice for anyone who is | half-decent in current market. | | Good Engineers are at the value of gold. Can save you a | lot of money down the road. | | I have like 8y of experience and salary requirement is | the first thing I negotiate. Easy 30-50% jump each time | in past few years. | tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: | Once you've reached a high salary, it's a "damned if you do, | damned if you don't". | | If you talk comp early, you'll potentially (almost certainly) | lowball yourself. If you don't, you'll spend a full time job's | worth of time with hopeless positions. | mosdl wrote: | I do the same thing - I give them a ballpark of what I am | making right now and depending on the opportunity what it would | take to make me say yes (and if I em flexible/etc). | | Sets expectations and avoid wasted time, which everyone | prefers. | l33t2328 wrote: | I have to imagine that it is good advice for early in your | career. When you're applicant number x out of 1500 who all got | good grades at a good school, have some good github projects, | and do well at the leetcode, grating the interviewer by | prematurely mentioning comp may not be your best move. | mywittyname wrote: | Fresh out of school, you're worth just about as much as | someone you graduated with. | | 20 years into your careers, you may be worth 10x or 1/10 of | that same person. | | Why waste people's time? It's a waste of time interviewing | for a place if you know they aren't offering anything close | to what you'll be asking. And if you're making 2-3x the | median salary for that job title, you should probably get a | comp range up front. | | I've been burned by this a lot. Don't talk comp, go through | hours of interviews, taking afternoons off for in person | interviews (in the before times), all to find out that their | maximum for for the position is a 25% pay cut. | saberdancer wrote: | Agreed, but it depends a lot on how much you value your time. | | When starting out, you are usually not going to be low balled | as you are cheap. Your time is not worth as much either and you | are trying to climb the ladder. | | Once you get to proper level of compensation, your time becomes | much more valuable and the number of offers that meet that | level of compensation become much lower. This means your best | call is probably to move to talking money first. | | Of course, you might miss out on some opportunities but you'll | save a lot of time. | jedberg wrote: | If you're going to start with salary, at least don't tell them | what you currently make, because that will instantly be their | baseline. Just tell them what you desire and don't tell them | that it is 20% or whatever more than what you currently make. | | But really you shouldn't start with giving a number. They | already have a huge advantage because they negotiate salary all | day and you do it once every few years. Just ask them for the | range and make sure the minimum is above your X+20% number. If | it's not, let them know that their range is too low, and if | they won't tell you, say, "thank you, next". | alkonaut wrote: | Does the baseline matter though? If I'm not switching for | less than 1.2x does it matter if they know what $current pay | is? Either they can offer it or they can't? | jedberg wrote: | It still matters because of mental anchoring. In their mind | they are being very generous by giving you 20% more than | you make so their offer will be the minimum. | | If they don't know what you're making now, they will think | the minimum might be too little and if they really like you | they will go higher than the 1.2x. | opportune wrote: | I don't think this true if you are already near top of band | (very lucky place to be in). Right now I have golden | handcuffs and just ignore almost all recruiters because I | know only a few select big companies (plus quant) can match | my pay. | | Startups are a bit more hit or miss though, and if they are | small enough they probably won't even have pay bands. You | need to do more due diligence there | douglee650 wrote: | TLDR | | - everything is signal, even/especially noise in aggregate - | engineers are particularly subject to blind spots - know yourself | - ymmv | mikece wrote: | I like the template but I bristle at the notion that being a | software engineer is a "privilege." I have spent countless hours | training and re-training myself on technologies that change every | few years: don't confuse my work ethic and interest in software | engineering with some sort of passive privilege that fell into my | lap. There are people far smarter than me who either cannot or | don't have the perseverance to stay in this industry because it | means having a never-ending commitment to learning and starting | over (as opposed to having the privilege of getting hired as a | manager at a company because of your blood line). | cortesoft wrote: | It probably depends on how you got into the line of work. | | I always say I am lucky and privileged because through random | chance, I developed an interest in programming as a kid and it | became my favorite hobby, long before I chose it as a career. I | spent hour and hours at it because it was how I played, and I | became good at it because it matched my way of thinking about | the world and I spent all my free time doing it. | | This was luck. I could easily have had gardening as my favorite | hobby, or art, or playing music. I would have had a lot harder | time turning those into a lucrative career, so in that sense I | am lucky. | | Now, many people came into the field in different ways, so not | everyone in the industry is lucky in the same way, but that | doesn't chance the fact that I am personally lucky. | bitcharmer wrote: | There is nothing privileged about being passionate in things | that may earn you good money. | | Luck? Sure | | Privilege? Definitely not | nsv wrote: | What is the difference between luck and privilege? | q845712 wrote: | Is it easier if you reframe it as "good fortune"? For instance | suppose that you or an immediate loved one suddenly developed a | condition which was treatable and tolerable within your current | life but took up 10+ hours per week. It sounds like thus far | you've had the good fortune to always be able to find the time | to continuously learn and re-train. | | Or if you think back to your earliest contacts with technology, | whether someone gave you a book, told you the name of some tech | to learn, helped you get access to a computer, etc., I think | all of us who are working in tech have had the good fortune to | have access to technology and resources that helped us train | ourselves but I can imagine having had substantially less | access earlier in my life and the deficit that could've left. | So I think I've been overall very fortunate, and that's part of | what's meant by the word "privilege." | stretchwithme wrote: | I'm very impressed with your ycombinator skills. | koonsolo wrote: | Worst jobs I got through recruiters. | | Best jobs I got when I picked the company and applied. | anonygler wrote: | Strong disagree. I've made it my policy to never work with a | recruiter that isn't affiliated with the company they're hiring | for. Recruiting farms like Cyber Recruiters (yuck) will do | everything in their power to waste your time out of sheer | incompetence and disinterest. | | I've "doubled" my salary plenty of times through this policy. | | But the real secret sauce is referrals. Companies always | prioritize a strong referral, ignoring mediocre interview | performance, and will even skip the reference checks so I don't | have to bug my network. | wly_cdgr wrote: | Unfortunately, you are correct. Nepotism has always been the | key to professional success | lhorie wrote: | My takeaway from the article wasn't to work with every | recruiter that spams you (in the sense of actually spending | time in their funnel), but rather, take the opportunity to | "interview them" with a "standardized test" of sorts. | | As the article said, most of the time, you're not actively job | searching, but you generally do care about salary data points | and what sort of roles are available. For unicorns, you can | find salary info through levels.fyi, but for those not making | those 300k+/yr, the pool of better paying jobs is much larger | and recruiters still remain a useful source of data. Sniffing | for roles is an underused technique. Recruiters have like 3 | paragraphs to catch your attention, so they optimize for bang- | for-the-buck. Which means they aren't going to offer EM roles | if you don't already hold that title, even if the company has | an opening. A lot of times, if your next career ladder rung is | a title upgrade or a role pivot, you need to ask explicitly. | | As for your policy, I feel like it's attributing all your chips | into one thing while ignoring everything else you've done. Like | many here, I've had my share of salary bumps over the course of | my career, and each time it was through different methods | (diagonal internal move, OSS lead, unicorn recruitment, | promotions). It'd be naive to not have more than one tool in | the arsenal. | alexc05 wrote: | I love this response. Thanks Leo! | castlecrasher2 wrote: | Agreed, though I still pay attention in case something | interesting shows up. For example, I got my current role | through a third-party recruiter (an individual, not a farm like | Cyber Recruiters) and it was a great experience through and | through. | devoutsalsa wrote: | > Companies always prioritize a strong referral, ignoring | mediocre interview performance, and will even skip the | reference checks | | I wish this were always true. When I worked as a recruiter, I | saw referrals routinely get tossed onto the stack of resumes | with no special preference. How candidates are treated | completely depends on the preferences of the hiring manager & | corporate red tape, even at smaller companies. | busterarm wrote: | I was hired to my current company through an external recruiter | that had a great track record but was expensive. We dropped all | of those external recruiters in favor of internal ones who are | absolutely useless at finding us worthy candidates because | unlike the external recruiter I worked with our internal ones | don't have an engineering background. | | My recruiter started his career as a software engineer. | reincarnate0x14 wrote: | I'm sure there are great recruiters out there (somewhere), but | totally agree on this. Had real days of my life wasted on | interviews and such, sometimes only to have everyone at the | table realize it was a completely bad fit with no hurt feelings | about a minute into us talking directly and not through "the | process". Meanwhile got an out of the blue referral from a guy | I had worked with ten years prior that started my consulting | years. | | Not everyone is a superstar networker but be kind, supportive, | and professional to your coworkers. People talk. | Sohcahtoa82 wrote: | > I've "doubled" my salary plenty of times through this policy. | | Meanwhile, I doubled my salary by responding to a recruiter. | | Though FWIW, I was actively looking for new work at the time. | commandlinefan wrote: | Well, let's be honest - when you're just starting out, making | $50,000/year, you can probably double your salary in one | jump. If you're making $200,000/year, you're not going to | double your salary, recruiter or not. | Sohcahtoa82 wrote: | You're absolutely correct. | | In my case, I doubled from $100K to $200K. I would not | expect to double it again. I'd be lucky to even see 50%. | scarface74 wrote: | I've had great experiences with local recruiters who had | relationships with the client companies. They will tell you the | max salary you can get, the interview process, why past | candidates failed, the actual must have requirements, etc. | | My success rate from my application being submitted by a | recruiter to a phone screen with the client company is 100%. My | non rejection rate was close to that. | | That's when I was hopping around in corp dev. I have a | specialty now that's slightly more niche. I am working for by | far the largest company in that niche so I don't really need | the middlemen anymore. If I ever decide to leave my current | employer, no one is going to ignore my resume. | alexc05 wrote: | You make a good point. This advice is strongly weighted towards | people who still have multiple salary doublings left in their | career ladder. At each step up the career ladder, you can | afford to be more and more selective around what you're looking | for. | | This basic script is designed to remove or greatly reduce that | time-waste from the early process. | | I'd argue that it makes early ghosting a non issue, by reducing | the cost of the initial and clear response it cuts through | multiple layers of that dance that the spam-cruiters go | through. | | You're also right about referrals and I don't think this is | mutually exclusive with them, instead it is a complimentary | passive search protocol. | kodah wrote: | > I've made it my policy to never work with a recruiter that | isn't affiliated with the company they're hiring for. | | This is a massive privilege. A lot of companies interview in a | way that I couldn't pass years ago, so I depended on external | recruiters to get me jobs. This was basically how I made a | living in the South without a CS or CE degree. | | The universal truth I see throughout every career advice thread | is always take this advice with a grain of salt. | obmelvin wrote: | Yes, it's interesting to see how many people here are 100% | against 3rd party recruiters rather than recognizing there | are those good and bad at their job - just like anything | else. My best friend from growing up had a 3rd party | recruiter go completely out of their way to help him, and he | was very appreciative of that. | conro1108 wrote: | I think it's possible to recognize that 3rd party | recruiters can be good or bad at their job while also | coming to the conclusion that the bad outweighs the good to | a degree that it's not worth the time to figure it out. | | It's certainly a privilege to be in a position where you'd | still have an excess of inbound job opportunities even | without 3rd party recruiters. But if that's the position | you're in, it's one of the more effective strategies I've | seen to increase signal:noise. | andrewnicolalde wrote: | What form did the help take? | [deleted] | l30n4da5 wrote: | > Strong disagree. I've made it my policy to never work with a | recruiter that isn't affiliated with the company they're hiring | for. Recruiting farms like Cyber Recruiters (yuck) will do | everything in their power to waste your time out of sheer | incompetence and disinterest. | | 100% agree. I'd go a step further and say: don't bother | applying for any job on Indeed where they say "we're looking to | fill a contract position with <insert some info about another | company (a top industry producer!)>" because they're just a | front for those same recruiting farms. | TameAntelope wrote: | Ah, but if someone doesn't have the secret sauce, are you then | suggesting that person is doomed? | | Industry sanctioned nepotism doesn't feel like a good look for | the SWE industry, especially given our diversity problems. | bboozzoo wrote: | > Industry sanctioned nepotism doesn't feel like a good look | for the SWE industry | | Is it nepotism though? Your friends are not your family. | Unless I'm missing some fine details of what nepotism means | as a non native English speaker. | | Besides, if you are a reliable employee, I doubt any | reasonable company would miss out on an opportunity to | consider a strong referral. Regardless of industry. | vanusa wrote: | It's not nepotism. That isn't even what "nepotism" means. | | People have always gone through their in-network to seek | advice and find others to work with, since the beginning of | time. It's how nearly anything really great or interesting | gets done, actually. | TameAntelope wrote: | I don't think, "It's always been done this way." is as good | of an argument as you think it is, especially considering | the discrimination that takes place when you hire referrals | over searching for the most qualified candidates. | | Maybe we should shoot for doing better than how it's been | done in the past? I think we can as an industry do a lot | better than where we are currently. | kritiko wrote: | Hiring for "culture fit" is problematic. Hiring known | commodities is not. | | I'm interested in hearing how you think the search for | the most qualified candidates can be improved. | Interviewing is, necessarily, a messy process and full of | uncertainty. | colmvp wrote: | A person who is referred (especially in SWE) doesn't | automatically mean they'll get the job, they'll still | have to pass checks from members who may have never even | interacted with the referrer. The advantage lies in the | fact that it means their resume/cover gets reviewed while | the 200th applicant doesn't. The reality is companies get | tons of applicants and on paper most of them might be | qualified. | TameAntelope wrote: | When you have multiple people on this very thread saying | they've hired or been hired as referrals without any | interview at all, it's hard to say with a straight face | that these people still had to pass any quality check | whatsoever. | stronglikedan wrote: | You had me until "diversity problems". That's a made up thing | to push identity politics, which is also a load of bullshit | that needs to die in a fire. Other than that, yes, finding | the best candidate for the role is always preferred, but | often not feasible, so shortcuts are taken. As with any game | in life, it's more beneficial to learn how it's played, than | what the "rules" are. | TameAntelope wrote: | Diversity problems are not a, "load of bullshit that needs | to die in a fire". | | Straight white men dominating the software field is a load | of bullshit that needs to die in a fire. | datavirtue wrote: | You make it seem like straight white men conspired to | take over the industry and box everyone else out. Last | few teams I have been on were very skin diverse. They all | had privileged cushy backgrounds though...except for one | of the white men who was self-made. | | The power base in the US is white middle class. It's not | just software that is dominated by white men. Law, | medicine, construction, management at corporations. Not | just white men. Privileged white men and the few | "diverse" people mostly come from a level of privilege | that would make my white lucky ass sick to my stomach. | | Nice comment. | thaumasiotes wrote: | > It's not just software that is dominated by white men. | Law, medicine, construction, management at corporations. | Not just white men. | | By what metric is software dominated by white men? Are we | counting Indians as white? | TameAntelope wrote: | https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2021/04/01/stem-jobs- | see... | thaumasiotes wrote: | That would seem to indicate that 54% of "software | developers" are white. | TameAntelope wrote: | Yeah, that sounds about right. Over half. | TameAntelope wrote: | Thanks, I appreciate it. | | It's not very important, when you focus on outcome, | whether or not a group of people conspired to create that | outcome, or if that outcome was simply a consequence of | other factors. The impact here is that straight white men | over-represent the software industry as a whole, and | there are things we can do to fix or improve that. | | It's a _super_ bad idea to hire anyone who is not | qualified for a position, but I 'm not going to pretend | there's any kind of even remotely objective or precise | way of determining who maximally fits into that position. | | Instead, it seems optimal to acknowledge that there will | always be more qualified candidates than there are open | positions, and once you've found each qualified | candidate, selecting the candidate that brings the | largest difference in perspective (regardless of | representation group) will be the best candidate. Given | the saturation of straight white men in the SWE field, | the odds that another straight white male will give the | largest new perspective is not super high (though it is | not zero). | | The "action" here, if we need to walk away with one | "thing" to do, is to saturate your pipeline with | candidates from very diverse backgrounds, and _then_ | select the best candidate. It 's a bullshit move to say, | "only straight white men applied" if you did no work at | all to reach out to other communities explicitly. | labcomputer wrote: | > Instead, it seems optimal to acknowledge that there | will always be more qualified candidates than there are | open positions | | This is a wrong assumption, in my experience. As a rule | of thumb, for not-principal/staff SWE roles, I would | estimate that it takes: | | 1. 10+ resumes to find someone worth phone-screening | | 2. 10ish phone screens screens to find someone worth an | in-person interview | | 3. 3ish in-persons to find someone worth an offer. | | In other words, a hiring manager has to look at 300+ | resumes to find one qualified candidate. So... imagine | you get a reference from someone you trust. You go from 1 | in 300 odds of finding someone who is basically qualified | to 1 in 3. | | This is after recruiters have pre-screened the resumes, | btw. The candidate pool for Step #1 excludes all the | people who apply to a senior SWE role with no Github | portfolio, no relevant claimed skills, no degree and no | work experience other than Burger King. | | I'm curious to hear other people's experience, but I've | literally never been in the position of "Do we hire | candidate A or candidate B for this tech role?" It's | always "Do we think A is good enough, or should we keep | looking?" | | > but I'm not going to pretend there's any kind of even | remotely objective or precise way of determining who | maximally fits into that position. | | Sure, defining who is "optimal" is challenging but that's | a cop-out. The situation is usually: Person A can't | finish FizzBuzz (literally FizzBuzz) in 45 minutes in any | language in coderpad, while Person B can do FizzBuzz, | some easy recursion problem and maybe some kind of stats | brain teaser. There is no world in which both of those | candidates are "approximately the same". | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | The reality at all the companies I've worked for is that | you are handed resumes, one or two at a time, from HR or | a recruiting partner. You interview those 1 or 2 until | you find a good/great candidate. Then you stop | interviewing, make an offer, and wait for reply. You | don't interview 50 people then choose the best and most | diverse candidate. | | Your "action" doesn't fit with the reality I've | experienced. | [deleted] | CoastalCoder wrote: | I think the popular definition of "nepotism" is hiring one's | family or close relations. I doubt anyone is advocating that. | TameAntelope wrote: | Closeness isn't a requisite for nepotistic behavior, only | undue bias due to personal familiarity. | | I don't think it's any less bad to hire someone you don't | know all that well because you share friends than it is to | hire people because they're you're close friend or a family | member. | | The point is that it's exclusionary to outsiders, and | outsiders tend to be the exact people tech needs more of. | andrewf wrote: | Family is nepotism, friends are cronyism. | TameAntelope wrote: | Cronyism is more in politics, nepotism is more in | business. | l33t2328 wrote: | Personal familiarity is a great tool though. | | If a hiring manager knows someone, the kind of worker and | individual they are, they are in a great position to know | if they should hire them. | CoastalCoder wrote: | I was just trying to state the _popular_ (AFAIK) | definition of nepotism. | vanusa wrote: | _Closeness isn 't a requisite for nepotistic behavior, | only undue bias due to personal familiarity._ | | Actually it is; it's how the term is defined. | TameAntelope wrote: | Actually it is not; _this_ is how the term is defined: | | > nep*o*tism - /'nep@,tiz@m/ - noun - the practice among | those with power or influence of favoring relatives or | friends, especially by giving them jobs. [0] | | > Nepotism is a form of favoritism which is granted to | relatives and friends in various fields, including | business, politics, entertainment, sports, fitness, | religion, and other activities. [1] | | [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Anepotism | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism | vanusa wrote: | _The practice among those with power or influence of | favoring relatives or friends,_ | | That's precisely the point - "close" relations. When we | talk about _business_ referrals, it by no means implied | that the person being referred is a "friend" in the | usual sense of the term (let alone relative). Usually | it's just someone you vaguely know (by their _work_ , | and/or a chance encounter at a meetup or conference), but | don't know too well personally. | | And just because they come in via a referral does not | mean, _ipso facto_ , that "favoritism" is happening and | all objectivity is thrown out the window in the | evaluation process. | TameAntelope wrote: | We may be violently agreeing here; what is bad is the | idea that someone can get a job because they know someone | else, over a more qualified candidate who doesn't know | that person already. We agree this is bad, yes? | | Our industry is _uniquely_ , as in above-replacement- | industry, plagued by a diversity problem, and I'm | asserting the practice among those in power of favoring | relatives, friends, _or even friends of friends_ over | other, more qualified candidates is a contributing factor | to that diversity problem. | | It is not guaranteed that this always happens, but I am | asserting it often is (as evinced by the "lack of | interview" or "going by reputation only" as reputation is | rife with bias), and _that_ is a bad thing. | vanusa wrote: | _We may be violently agreeing here;_ | | Violence is completely counter to my way of being - so | No. | | _What is bad is the idea that someone can get a job | because they know someone else, over a more qualified | candidate who doesn 't know that person already. We agree | this is bad, yes?_ | | We keep going in circles - with this idea that person | that someone in the company already "knows" (or who came | in via a referral anyway) gets the job at the expense not | just of a comparably qualified (but not known to the | company) candidate, a hypothetical _more qualified_ | candidate. You just keep assuming that this what happens | when companies act on referrals (and implicitly, that it | happens a lot). | | That's now that I see happening, when referrals are made. | But if it's what you want to believe, then it's what you | want to believe - and there probably isn't anything I'll | be able to say to dissuade you from this belief. | TameAntelope wrote: | Violent agreement is just a term for when people seem to | be disagreeing but actually aren't. [0] If _that_ is | completely counter to your way of being, then it 's | possible your way of being isn't compatible with the | concept of constructive argument. | | And I'm confused about where I said anything about | certainty. I'm not talking about how all companies | operate all of the time, I'm talking about how some | companies operate an unfortunate number of times. | | > Holding everything else constant, from job title to | industry to location, female and minority applicants were | much less likely to report receiving an employee referral | than their white male counterparts. More specifically, | white women were 12% less likely to receive a referral, | men of color were 26% less likely and women of color were | 35% less likely. [1] | | This is not good. Can we agree on that? | | [0] https://wiki.c2.com/?ViolentAgreement | | [1] https://hbr.org/2018/03/how-to-use-employee- | referrals-withou... | vanusa wrote: | _I 'm not talking about how all companies operate all of | the time, I'm talking about how some companies operate an | unfortunate number of times._ | | In between these opposite extremes -- your language | clearly indicates that you think this level of what we | might call "aggravated bias" (hiring not just someone in | your network; but hiring them _over_ a more qualified | candidate, presumed to exist and be interested in your | opportunity) is _commonplace_ , or something close to it. | | Such that in your mind, "including referrals in your | hiring funnel" == aggravated bias (in the sense above), | basically. | | As to the bias stats you liked to: the findings | interesting, to say the least -- if they can be | validated. Unfortunately the link to the original | Payscale "study" seems to be broken (if we can call it | that -- since remember, this is the work of a private | company, with products to push). | TameAntelope wrote: | > Such that in your mind, "including referrals in your | hiring funnel" == aggravated bias (in the sense above), | basically. | | Can you show where I said anything approaching this? I do | not believe this, nor do I believe I said or even | suggested this to be the case. | vanusa wrote: | _I 'm asserting the practice among those in power of | favoring relatives, friends, or even friends of friends | over other, more qualified candidates is a contributing | factor to that diversity problem._ | TameAntelope wrote: | Not sure where in that statement I referenced hiring | funnels. | vanusa wrote: | I'd continue, but you're getting awful slippery. | TameAntelope wrote: | You made an assumption that turned out not to be true. | That's okay, it happens! | pwinnski wrote: | So you're defining closeness as not including blood | relation or friendship? | | You are quoting definitions which disagree with your | assertion. You used the word incorrectly, and now you're | doubling down on that rather than leave the word behind. | | Better hope good recruiters aren't seeing this! ;) | TameAntelope wrote: | What is my assertion, in your own words? | vintermann wrote: | I once had a former team leader tell me that "I warn you, | I practice nepotism", and she did not refer to familiar | relations, she just meant that she favored people she | knew and liked when looking for people (it included me, I | guess, since she "got me in" at a consultancy when I was | looking for a job). | | So at least some people use the word that way. | ehnto wrote: | That's the career advice I would give, build good bridges and | make friends with people. Everyone is moving around enough that | you'll be able to cross into new companies and skip whole song | and dance prior. You also get the benefit of having a heads up | on the company you're joining too. | | I don't have a professional network per se, just a bunch of | friends I clicked with at various companies. I know if they're | enjoying somewhere, I probably will too, since we value similar | things in the work. | belval wrote: | > I don't have a professional network per se, just a bunch of | friends I clicked with at various companies. | | You might not want to label it as such, but that is exactly | what a professional network is. People can genuinely be your | friends and still be part of your network. | actually_a_dog wrote: | Eh, I find work "friends" to be even more ephemeral than | school friends. Nobody I've ever worked with in the past | has ever contacted me after I left the company we worked | for. At least school friends are around for a more or less | guaranteed period of several years. | | Edit to add: I have initiated contact before and been well | received. Nobody contacts me. It's tiring to have to do | 100% of the work to maintain these relationships. | Cd00d wrote: | I think that's a little strange. You haven't maintained a | single relationship after having been coworkers? | | Try messaging someone you used to work with to check in - | you may enjoy catching up or even stumble into being able | to give or receive help. | XorNot wrote: | I've had the same experience. I have no idea how this | advice is working for people in most job markets - it | certainly doesn't seem to be a thing in Australia. | jpmoral wrote: | I'm in my second role in Australia. Can't say whether | it's a thing but people from my previous role (people | still there and people who have moved on) definitely keep | in touch with each other. | throwaway1777 wrote: | Sounds like it's on you for either not being someone they | liked working with or not putting any effort at | maintaining contacts. Can't always expect other people to | pull all the weight. | ehnto wrote: | Hence the 'per se'. Some people go out of their way to | groom a network of people specifically for their careers, I | was just trying to articulate that difference. | pydry wrote: | I did this for a while and certainly got some leads but the | really well paid roles still seemed to come mostly via | recruiters. | | The "networking" was also very time consuming. It was also | fun but if i had a wife and kids I wouldnt have had the time | for it. | | The good recruiters seemed to have a knack for finding the | companies that were the right combination of rich and | desperate whereas companies I found through my network were | generally from companies that were always keen on talking to | a decent technologist but werent exactly craving somebody | with my precise skillset to start next week. | softwarebeware wrote: | > I don't have a professional network per se, just a bunch of | friends I clicked with at various companies. I know if | they're enjoying somewhere, I probably will too, since we | value similar things in the work. | | I wish this were true for me. I do have people I click with | but I have a personal value not to work for anywhere whose | main revenue source boils down to "more eyeballs / clicks" | and this rules out pretty much everywhere my past | coworkers/friends have gone to work. | kcarter80 wrote: | That is a professional network. | ZhangSWEFAANG wrote: | I think he meant that he dosen't have a huge professional | network, just something slightly informal. | FredPret wrote: | That is a professional network. | ehnto wrote: | I was just trying to articulate what I see as a | difference between a purpose built career network and a | network of actual friends from work. There is a | difference between those two types of networks not | captured when you call them both a "Professional | network". | azinman2 wrote: | To me all you've described is a professional network with | strong and weak ties. | ehnto wrote: | The difference is the intention behind the relationship I | suppose. I don't think it matters if we disagree, it was | an off the cuff statement. I see a difference, I consider | it important. No one else has to. | notdonspaulding wrote: | Not to beat a dead horse, but the reason you keep getting | these kinds of replies is because it seems like you have | an idea about a second type of Professional Network that | is different than what you described as your network of | friends. Everybody's just trying to say that the real | Professional Network is exactly the network of your | friends, and if there is another kind of "purpose built | career network" that people are talking about, it's the | imitation of what you've got, not the other way around. | | What you've described from your own experience is the | _substance of what a professional network is_ , and has | always been. LinkedIn connection requests are trying to | create a digital product _in the form of_ the real-world | phenomenon that you 've experienced and described. If | we're going to call one of them a professional network, | everyone in this subthread is saying, let's give the real | thing the name professional network, and the imitation a | different name. | | (None of this is intended to disparage LinkedIn. It is | what it is, but if it's trying to be a substitute for | real relationships between humans, it will always be the | shadow, not the substance.) | ehnto wrote: | That is the case I think, the two ideas about types of | professional networks seems clear, and it would seem I | probably see it differently to some. To me, "professional | network" is better at describing a network curated for | your career. | | It's a tough one, because while I can see that it is also | a professional network, said network would be pretty | offended if I called them that. So I don't necessarily | disagree with you, or even with the other commenters, but | there is at least some room for subjectivity about what | to call your own personal relationships. | caddemon wrote: | Eh I think there is a huge middle ground between "network | consisting of work friends" and "LinkedIn network". Maybe | it's different in academia but I know plenty of people | that have a strictly professional network built from real | world interactions - conference meet ups, seminar series, | collaboration projects, etc. They would be happy to call | each other up for work purposes but would never do | something purely social together or consider each other | friends. | | I don't think the type of network I've just described is | imitating anything. They are mutually beneficial but | purely professional relationships. The fact that the | internet has enabled people to have a much larger number | of superficial relationships doesn't mean that what the | poster was describing is the only way to have a "real | professional network". Yeah it's a professional network, | but it's not the only kind. | djrogers wrote: | All you're describing here is a professional network with | 2 group of people in it - those you have beers with, and | those you don't. | fecak wrote: | Former recruiter here. You are spot-on about referrals, and | having an insider advocating for you or just their willingness | to make the recommendation starts things off at a great spot. | | Here's where I disagree. You haven't doubled your salary | BECAUSE of your policy of not working with recruiters, but | rather DESPITE this policy. | | Deciding to disregard any recruiter opportunity is just | shutting out quite a few things that you probably won't hear | about otherwise, especially at the higher levels. Exec roles | are often handled by retained recruiting firms and aren't as | well publicized as entry level and junior roles. So just saying | "I will never work with a third party recruiter" can certainly | be your policy, and you may save yourself a fair amount of time | by sticking with it, but that policy is doing nothing to | advance your position (career, earnings, etc.) | | The reasons that there are so many incompetent recruiters are | many, but a few are: | | - low cost: companies hire entry level recruiters and pay them | next to nothing in guaranteed compensation (mostly commission- | based). The good ones will make the company a lot of money, and | the bad ones can't afford to stay in the industry because they | aren't making enough in commission - so they 'go away'. | | - low skill: the skills required to be a good recruiter aren't | typically taught in school, so they aren't coming out of | college with a strong foundation. They need to learn and be | successful quickly (because it's commission-based) | scarface74 wrote: | I stayed at one job too long until 2008. I was looking to | restart my career and I spammed every ATS I could find. I | didn't have a network and I had no choice. I found a job that | paid around $80K as a mid level .Net dev - still more then I | was making. But about $10K below the local market. | | Over the next three years, I did build out my network of | _local_ external recruiters who had relationships with the | hiring managers. | | I hopped around between various corp dev job - one generic | corp dev CRUD job looks about like any other - by leveraging | recruiters. By the beginning of 2020, I was making $150K and | hearing opportunities of $165K locally. Then Covid hit and | external recruiters had absolutely nothing to offer me paying | more than I what I was making. | | I hopped on the FAANG bandwagon because of an internal | recruiter in mid 2020. Almost two years later, I still | haven't had an external recruiter ping me about anything | mildly interesting. | fecak wrote: | I'd bet your LinkedIn isn't optimized at all for discovery. | Populate a skills section with languages and tools you use, | and you'll often see an immediate uptick. | scarface74 wrote: | The companies paying in the BigTech compensation range | don't care about what languages or tools you are using. | | The same recruiters see I work for BigTech and they are | still sending me "exciting opportunities for .Net leads | paying up to $150K". | ibi5 wrote: | "but that policy is doing nothing to advance your position | (career, earnings, etc.)" | | Why does everybody assume that the goal is to advance to an | exec role? | | I'm sure that you were a competent recruiter, but the reality | is that I don't have the time or the energy to waste on you | to figure out if you are or not. | fecak wrote: | The OP mentioned doubling salary multiple times. | | I don't assume everyone is looking to advance to an exec | role - in my experience, most actually are not looking for | that at all. I tend to assume people aren't looking for | exec roles. | | "Advance your position" could refer to improved work/life | balance, more time off, remote, whatever you value. I was | referring to overall position (life quality), not on an org | chart. I can see how that wasn't made explicitly clear. | piva00 wrote: | What's your suggestion on fostering relationships with | recruiters? | | I do ignore the vast majority of contacts due to the | sheer overload of them, I don't have the energy or time | to parse through each message and see if it's worth | pursuing the recruiter in the future or not. | | My CV is no unicorn, I have a lot of experience in | different roles and company sizes but I'm not a deep | specialist or a very sought after technologist, just a | decent engineer. Even then I get dozens of contacts per | month, it's impossible for me to actively engage with | that... | | If I decided to keep some recruiters in the loop when I | look for new jobs, how should I do it? I can't just | answer all these contacts and filter out, are there good | places to match decent professional recruiters and job- | seekers? I'd love to have an ongoing relationship with a | good recruiter who could match me to openings offering | things like a 4-day work week, etc., but usually I'd have | to go searching for these openings and then contacting | the recruiters for them, how can I invert this | relationship? | | I feel like tech recruiting became a new gold rush, | noticed it got progressively worse the past 15 years with | recruiters just blasting me with spam. The increasingly | higher bonuses for hiring attracted a crowd that I'm not | very fond of. | fecak wrote: | The article's methods are actually quite good. You should | ignore most of the recruiter contacts - if the recruiter | approaches you for a job that is clearly not a fit for | your background, I'd dismiss that person as either not | respectful of your time or incompetent, and both are good | reasons to ignore that person down the road. | | If you're getting a fair amount of incoming traffic, | you're already optimized for discovery, so that is | working. Telling recruiters "I'm only looking for jobs | that fit these parameters" and then paying attention to | the ones that are respectful of that will work to start a | relationship. I had some relationships for the entire 20 | years I was in the business, and some of those people I | didn't make a dime off for maybe 15 of those years. | actually_a_dog wrote: | That's actually the problem with third party recruiters: the | bad ones so greatly outnumber the good ones that it's | extremely hard to filter out the bad from the good. I could | easily spend half an afternoon or more every week on random | calls with third party recruiters and never get anywhere. | | What I've started doing is only dealing with the ones who | both show a little evidence of having seen my profile on | LinkedIn (since this is generally the ultimate source of | these contacts), _and_ mention a specific opportunity (not | just "full time Python role with my direct client"). | | That brings me to the second problem, which is that most of | these third party recruiters are working for companies that | are still series C and earlier. I've done the startup game | twice now, and figured out that working for a company that's | going to pay me partially in lottery tickets that won't pay | out for 7-10 years isn't that great of an opportunity. There | are the odd exceptions out there, but they are few and far | between. | jrochkind1 wrote: | > The reasons that there are so many incompetent recruiters | are many, but a few are... companies hire entry level | recruiters and pay them next to nothing in guaranteed | compensation (mostly commission-based). The good ones will | make the company a lot of money, and the bad ones can't | afford to stay in the industry because they aren't making | enough in commission - so they 'go away' | | Wouldn't that be an explanation for why there _shouldn 't_ be | so many incompetent recruiters? Why don't the incompetent | ones all "go away"? | fecak wrote: | Good question. The bad ones don't go away immediately. They | go away eventually, and are quickly replaced with another | round of new hires. So you have maybe 10% of the industry | that stays for the long haul, and 90% is a revolving door | of college grads. | | There are probably other industries that have similar | models where most of the workforce is newbies at all times, | but I don't have an example that won't be dissected. | selfhifive wrote: | That's a great description of software consultancy firms. | Most people are fresh college grads who leave after their | first contract is up or earlier. | fecak wrote: | The bigger ones, yes. Not boutique/niche firms, but large | ones tend to churn. | nsv wrote: | Well, retail and food service is a classic example of a | high-turnover industry. | ozim wrote: | I think only true part in that description is "Exec roles are | often handled and retained by recruiting firms". | | But that is level where normal developers are not finding | themselves. I am senior developer but I don't imagine being | approached for exec level role. | | There are different worlds of recruiting - world where I am | is low level spamming that I get every day and most of it is | just predation on unhappy people that would be open to switch | job. | | World where there is super specialized recruiting like exec | level or really niche skills might work as described but that | is super specialized and most people are nowhere near that | world. | fecak wrote: | All of my recruiting work was retained for the last 5-10 | years I was in business, and I wasn't recruiting | executives. I'm not saying that is the norm (it definitely | isn't), and you are correct that senior developers will not | be approached for executive roles. | | Higher level candidates will probably attract higher level | recruiters, because the amount of time to place someone | making $100K is the same amount of time to place someone at | $500K, with the only difference being a $25K fee for the | first person and a $100K fee for the second. | ASinclair wrote: | How am I supposed to get any sense of a recruiter's skill | when they reach out? Do I need to be looking at their | LinkedIn profiles to see their tenure? I've dealt with maybe | one or two competent recruiters out of dozens. | fecak wrote: | Tenure is a good one, but can be misleading. There are a | few ways to make money in recruiting. Being really good at | it and ethical is one way, but there are also people who | are unethical and it hasn't caught up with them. | | I would always suggest looking at their tenure. A new | recruiter doesn't have the depth of client relationships to | be all that helpful, but most new recruiters are 'sourcers' | and not handling the client side (they are responsible for | researching and bringing in candidates). | dvtrn wrote: | _Deciding to disregard any recruiter opportunity is just | shutting out quite a few things that you probably won 't hear | about otherwise_ | | and | | _that policy is doing nothing to advance your position | (career, earnings, etc.)_ | | Are readers supposed to read this as a suggestion that | missing out is synonymous with _losing out_? I kind of take | exception to these phrases because it strips a lot of agency | out of otherwise exceptional people who are more than capable | of navigating their careers to where _they_ want them to be, | maybe not necessarily where you as a recruiter _think they | should be_. | | Seems to me the market is very strong for employees and those | with in demand skills and experience to back them up are | probably missing out on job x but probably aren't losing out | by any equal measure-all other considerations being equal. | One of the most common refrains I've been hearing _right here | on HackerNews_ in response to the 'Great Resignation' isn't | that people are leaving the workforce, they're just finally | leaving jobs they've been wanting to anyway and taking their | labor elsewhere. | | So | | That said, what does it really matter if someone decides they | want more autonomy in who they decide to interview with? | Shouldn't we be _encouraging_ more of this? | | Especially given some of the fees that come with hiring | through a recruiter? | fecak wrote: | I don't think missing out and losing out are synonymous. | I'm simply stating that if you decide to ignore any subset | of potential opportunities solely due to the source, you | are limiting your exposure to possibilities. | | For example, if you don't have a LinkedIn profile, you will | probably get far less incoming inquiries from hiring | entities (external/internal recruiters, hiring managers, | etc.). That's a decision many people make. | | Everyone has autonomy in who they interview with - I'm not | sure where that comment is coming from. | | This isn't about autonomy or interviews. It's about the | ability to say "yes" or "no" to additional information | about opportunities. Nothing more. | | EDIT: To address the Great Resignation thing, agreed there | as well. I'm a resume writer/career advisor now and my | business has been brisk. Lots of clients are changing | industries to find more impactful work, better working | conditions, etc. Obviously if someone IS leaving the | workforce they aren't calling me to write their resume, but | I'm seeing a lot of activity from people looking to find | work they "feel better" about in one way or another. | NikolaNovak wrote: | I read it as a fairly mathematical statement of fact. There | is a tree of opportunities, and one can choose to prune | some of them at the root. By definition, any | direct/anticipated; _and_ any unanticipated, indirect | opportunities; are gone. Which is a 100% valid personal | choice, I interpreted the minor quibble being whether this | is a net positive creditor to their overall success. On one | hand, pruning opportunities is in principle a negative; on | the other hand, time saved not dealing with undesired | channels is a positive. | fecak wrote: | The reluctance to work with recruiters is mostly the | "time suck" element. If you were to chase every | opportunity sent by recruiters you'd waste a ton of time, | but you'd also maximize your potential for getting offers | that meet your criteria (whatever those criteria are). | | It was meant as a statement of fact. To oversimplify, if | you limit the information you are willing to receive, you | won't have all the information you could have. | | My main issue with the original post was that OP was | crediting a policy of reduced information with doubling | their salary. That just isn't the case. | res0nat0r wrote: | Sounds like just a general statement of opportunity cost. | If you're disregarding all recruiters, and someone comes | along with a possible job that fits with a $200k raise that | you would normally disregard out of hand, and most of your | average raises you find on your own are $50-75k when you | switch jobs, spending time talking to the recruiter would | likely be worth it. | moron4hire wrote: | That doesn't sound like a thing that ever happens. | | If I took every recruiter call I receive, I'd be spending | half my week talking to recruiters. All for a tiny, | small, infinitesimal chance that they might find me a job | that A) is in a field I want, B) at a company I want, and | C) at a decent salary. | | I've been unemployed with next to no professional network | before. And I took those recruiter calls. And they were a | waste of time. I'd end up in companies doing slimy stuff, | I'd get low-balled on salary, I'd get bait-and-switched | on my role. | | In the end, the only way I've ever gotten good jobs is | through the professional network. It was faster to build | a professional network from 0 by working on open source | projects and going out to meetups than to go through a | 3rd party recruiter. | ipaddr wrote: | I agree with everything you say until you are out of | work. At that point I start taking calls. | vintermann wrote: | As far as I can see, the only thing outsourced recruiters | provide is blame-shifting. They're not better at judging | candidates. They're not better at finding candidates. | They're almost certainly worse at understanding what the | company needs than the company, and worse at understanding | what the candidate has to offer than the candidate. | | But, if the company hires a few people they're unhappy with | through a recruiter (which is bound to happen from random | chance no matter how they hire), they have someone to | blame. They can switch to another recruiter, and assure | their further-ups that the problem has been addressed. | | There are many corporate roles that are mostly about | providing blame-shifting opportunities, but outsourced | recruiting is an unusually pure one. Along with | "networking"-logrolling, it's one of the things which I | really can't stand about working in software development, | and on darker days they makes me wonder if I shouldn't go | be a hermit in a cabin in the woods or something instead. | sebzim4500 wrote: | Does this blame shifting really happen though? I've never | seen recruiters get blamed for a bad hire. I've seen them | get blamed for sending people that fail at the first | interview though. | fecak wrote: | A bad hire isn't on a recruiter unless they are basically | lying to the employer about the hire's credentials or | background, and even then it's the employer's job to vet | what is being said. | stretchwithme wrote: | My policy is if you hear 18 other recruiters murmuring in the | background, decline, then block that number and that email. | | Sometimes you get multiple contacts from different recruiters | with the same company on the same day. | | If they won't tell you what company is interested, they don't | have a contract with that company. | | Don't be open and honest with a recruiter if they aren't open | and honest with you. | jeffalbertson wrote: | Very much agree with this comment. Just had an awful experience | with a Jobot recruiter and will 100% never work with anyone | affiliated with that company again. | hamburglar wrote: | Also strong disagree. I literally ignore several obviously | useless recruiters a week. I occasionally humor one long enough | to confirm that they know exactly nothing about me and have put | zero actual thought into their inquiry. Asking "what about my | resume made you think of me for this position" is usually very | enlightening. | | I do have an exception, however, and it's not recruiters that | are affiliated with a particular company, it's _high quality_ | recruiters that my friends refer me to and who will work on my | behalf. I had one spend a TON of time really getting to know | what I was looking for, what my skills were, and what made me | happy, and he looked at companies with an eye toward making | both me and the company happy long term, because he knew that's | where the big payoff was. | dvtrn wrote: | _Recruiting farms like Cyber Recruiters (yuck) will do | everything in their power to waste your time_ | | Or share your data. | | I made a throwaway, but not obnoxious email on my domain just | for recruiters a few years ago, so I could try tracking who I | was talking to. | | Via three consecutive third-party recruiters I started getting | cold calls and e-mails from recruiters I'd never contacted, | never met, or never before engaged with from agencies that | weren't the ones I spoke to or sent a CV to. Soon I started | getting other completely irrelevant email. Then the robocalls | came. I later found that email address among five different | data leak sources. | | Just so happened to be a different popular recruiting company | that has "Cyber" in the name. | lelandfe wrote: | I highly recommend using a Google Voice number for recruiters | for just such a reason. | | I keep all my interviewing data isolated from my private | data. | devoutsalsa wrote: | These days I just never answer the actual phone for anyone. | I don't even bother to look who is calling. | jjwiseman wrote: | A scenario I hadn't thought about, that you might want to | be aware of: I had to call 911 recently. I talked to the | dispatcher, and hung up. A few minutes later they called | me back to give me instructions. The call showed up as a | regular Los Angeles 323 area code number. In fact, it was | flagged by my phone as spam. | | It made me wonder whether reverse 911[1] calls, which are | used to warn about hazmat situations, fire evacuations, | and other public safety issues, show up similarly. | | 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_9-1-1 | stjohnswarts wrote: | Yeah, me too. I have my 3 best friends and my mom | whitelisted; everyone else can leave a message or SMS. | dvtrn wrote: | I have a nice collection of "throwaway" phone numbers for | all kinds of reasons, while one of them is dedicated to job | hunting, I don't think merely having it would have stopped | this agency from sharing my CV across to whomever they | shared it with, or stopped whatever leak occurred for said | email address to end up in so many collections of leaked | data. | | That was the reason: to understand where my data was | leaking from, not to duck recruiter calls. | imglorp wrote: | Same experience. | | It seems like an old flea market where most people don't buy | anything but the vendors all buy and sell old stuff from each | other to supplement. | Tade0 wrote: | I always ask where do they have this number from. | | One time the guy told me that the person who referred me | "preferred to remain anonymous". | | I asked him if he realised that this is a violation of GDPR | and that a typical candidate would recognize it as such? | | No coherent answer. | Cd00d wrote: | I've more than once asked a cold-call recruiter how they | got my number where the answer has been a rather candid, | "there are markets for such information". | | Kinda makes me regret the few years my LinkedIn profile had | my phone number public, but I do wonder how successful | these questionable personal data marketplaces are. I | certainly haven't had a conversation get beyond "this is | spam". | dvtrn wrote: | Check out http://intelx.io, depending on your risk | tolerances, putting your email and phone number in yet | another search bar may not be in the cards. If you can | swallow it though, depending if (1) anything you care | about has been leaked at all and (2) anything you care | about being leaked has been indexed by this site...the | results may be illuminating. Or nothing at all. | | Interesting resource nonetheless that supplements my day- | to-day line of Devsecops. | | This site and a few other OSINT tools was how I | discovered who 'sold out' my CV to some of the | questionable 'recruiting agencies'. | anothernewdude wrote: | Even non-recruiter HR will share your data without concern | these days. | chana_masala wrote: | I legally changed my name two years ago and I still get | recruiting emails addressed to my old name. It hasn't been on | LinkedIn for equally as long, so I can only anticipate that | my data was sold and my old name is cached in some database. | Taylor_OD wrote: | > Recruiting farms like Cyber Recruiters (yuck) will do | everything in their power to waste your time out of sheer | incompetence and disinterest. | | Cyber Coders, I think that is the actual name, is pretty bad. | They use a lot of automation to build funnels and send out | messages automatically. There are several thousand other | recruiting firms that do the same thing with more or less | technology. | | That being said their goal isnt to waste your time. They are | just playing a numbers game. They are trying to hit the postgre | DBA who just got told their contract is ending with an email | about a postgre DBA contract that starts ASAP. If you are that | person and you get that email you might have good results. | | I think people get angry when recruiters don't personalize | messages or make sure that they are actually qualified for a | job or that they actually are helpful during the interview | process. But they sold for 105 million in 2013. Their model | works despite having one of the worst reputations in the | business. They generate a shit load of revenue by spamming | massive amounts of people and getting enough emails to the | right person at the right time. | | If you view third party recruiters as someone who is going to | be your job agent and work for you, you're going to have a bad | time. If you think of them as street vendors who are slinging | wares of questionable quality and price and who offering no | refund no return one supply items... You might have a better | experience and save yourself a lot of grief. | | TLDR: Recruiting companies print money by getting the right | email to the right person at the right time. They don't work | for you. Don't expect their service to be tailered for you. | | [1] https://www.cybercoders.com/insights/press-release- | cybercode... | LinearEntropy wrote: | I completely agree with you. Every single job offer I have | received has come through direct listings from the company | itself. | | Safe to say the quality of tech recruiters in New Zealand is | even lower than those elsewhere. | Mandatum wrote: | Because the market is tiny. Recruiters can't specialize, and | those that do get eaten up by the likes of Datacom or | Australian-based providers. | | Most recruiters in NZ start from labourer/contracting/HR | firms and then move into tech because it's better paid. | Whereas in Australia you get people who trained specifically | to be a tech recruiter, or migrated to recruitment from tech | (usually BA and QA type roles). | winternett wrote: | Agreed. Mu primary test for a recruiter call is to ask them if | the position is funded and what the title is. Recruiting | warehouses will often say they want to ask me a few more | questions before answering that, and the truth is they're | scouring Indeed for the same jobs I could find on my own and | adding a recruiter commission to the bid. | kyawzazaw wrote: | Great Third party headhunters can be good too | subsubzero wrote: | Strongly with you on this one. I have had recruiters from the | UK reach out to me(I'm based on the west coast in US) from | agencies and made the mistake of replying to one. Complete | waste of time and total incompetence on their side. I have a | rule like this(recruiters have to be from the company they are | soliciting for): | | - If I am interested in the company I will reply right away. | | - Somewhat/not really interested ignore first email they send | out and if they followup a reply I then email them stating I am | not looking for work now but could change my mind in the | future. | | - Not interested in company at all just ignore the unsolicited | response. | | I have also completely given up on startups as the comp they | have been getting back to me with is 50-70% lower than my TC | and its a waste of my time. Your time is the most important | resource you have, don't waste it on unsolicited responses from | recruiters in positions that are not right or companies you | have no desire to work for. | codegeek wrote: | There are 3 types of recruiters: | | 1. Internal company recruiters. They couldn't care less about | contacting you directly unless things have changed in today's | market (My last interaction with in house recruiter was circa | 2010). | | 2. Scummy recruiting farms where they hire a bunch of people on | commissions and they spam anyone and everyone | | 3. Recruiters who actually have relationships with a customer, | prospect good candidates like a salesperson, keep their | pipeline full and understand the hiring needs. They work | diligently to find good candidates who fit the job description. | They do exist but are rare unfortunately. | | I have no problem with #3 above and I have worked with some | great ones in the past and right now as a hiring manager, | working with one who is trying to find a senior level candidate | for a while now (lot of work there). | gbronner wrote: | I got my current job through an internal company recruiter. | He's the best I've ever seen in this business -- the | introduction was extremely well targeted, the process was | very low-pressure, and he's measured on the long-term success | of the people he brings in. | | He spent time explaining the role, the skills, and the goals, | and offered feedback throughout the process. | jnwatson wrote: | That's a great categorization. | | I've accepted a job through a very good internal recruiter | once in 2015. | | I can distinguish between a 2 and a 3 in a 5 minute phone | call. | | I don't understand all the hate about recruiters. I cut off | the bad ones and the folks left are great. The overhead is | quite low. | ravenstine wrote: | My exact experience. I've had one actual great recruiter that | was in the #3 category, one okay recruiter from #2 who a #1 | recruiter farmed out to, and then dozens and dozens of | sleazeballs from #2. | | For the most part, I just say ignore recruiters entirely, | unless the job is for a great company and there are no red | flags, instead opting to network and send emails directly to | people in charge of hiring. | jiveturkey wrote: | #3 = headhunters | silisili wrote: | Same. Sorry for any good recruiters out there, but these people | are generally used car salesman like scum. Multiple keep | emailing my work address even after asking them numerous times | to stop. One I worked with on a potentially good role - acted | like my best buddy, constantly texting and calling for weeks, | and when I decided not to take the offer, just ghosted me. Not | even an 'OK thanks anyways'. I think even an annoyed reply like | 'Sigh, OK' would have been more professional. | | Anymore I just ignore them all. | polote wrote: | > I've "doubled" my salary plenty of times through this policy. | | Let say you started at 50k (which is very low) and you doubled | your salary 4 times (what is plenty ?). Then you make now 800k. | Which is unlikely, so your main argument is probably wrong | ThalesX wrote: | I've doubled my income some times but I started out at around | $200 | picture_view wrote: | I was recently talking to a 3rd party recruiter who started | asking me for detailed salary info of all my past jobs. I told | him that I didn't feel comfortable answering that, then when he | pushed back I told him I'm legally not required to give him | that info in my state (and the potential employer's state.) He | abruptly cut the call off and ghosted me. | | I decided to apply to the company directly. They were happy to | talk to me because my experience was a really good fit for | them. I come to find out that the recruiter emailed them saying | that I was a poor candidate and that he suggest they don't talk | to me. Luckily they didn't listen to him. | | I am also done with 3rd party recruiters. | larkost wrote: | It is ok that you did not feel comfortable with that, but pay | negotiations are exactly why you would want to have a | recruiter: they handle that for you, and are generally | incentivized to get you as much money as they can since they | generally get a percentage of your yearly salary as their | pay. So by telling the recruiter you were not going to share | that with them you were hamstringing them... of course they | thought you were a bad candidate (for them). | | It is a bit petty that they told the company that you were a | poor candidate, but you seem to not understand what was | happening. And it could have been they had already mentioned | your name to them, and then had to explain why they suddenly | were not representing you. I don't know, but that is a | reasonable explanation. | | I personally have had a mixed bag with recruiters: many I | have dealt with are worthless in that they don't understand | the jobs they are recruiting for (so give very bad matches to | both sides), but I have been lucky twice and had recruiters | give me great jobs and handle the pay negotiations so well | that I probably got $20-40K/year more than I would have by | myself (if I had somehow found those positions). | throwaway6532 wrote: | >and are generally incentivized to get you as much money as | they can since they generally get a percentage of your | yearly salary as their pay | | This is not quite true. They're optimizing for throughput, | not max dollar value. If they optimized for the maximum | amount of money they could get you that would come at the | cost of their time which would lower their throughput of | placing candidates and hence the maximum amount of money | that they can personally earn in aggregate. | | They'll still try to spin you that line though. | picture_view wrote: | So the only good candidates for a recruiter are the ones | willing to let their recruiter break the law and make a | salary history a requirement for consideration? | | WA state law makes it very clear as a candidate I don't | need to share salary information, and by some readings of | the statute it's illegal for them to even ask. | | My most recent job is at a very large public company where | the salaries are well published (levels.fyi) - there was no | need for me to give a detailed salary history of all my | recent jobs. | | If the value-add of a recruiter is getting a better | negotiated salary, what is the value-minus of putting | another point of failure between me and a job I want. | Surely it's possible that over time the minuses are greater | than the pluses. | robin_reala wrote: | _Who else has real and direct insight into how much money any | given role pays?_ | | Your union? | mrweasel wrote: | I get access to salary statistics every year via my union. They | collect everything from the member, support is almost always | around 80%. Just plug in area, experience, title and if you | have a management role. So yeah, my answer would be: most | people have insight in salary levels. | | Also remember that in some countries you income is public | record that can be looked up by anyone. | [deleted] | gloryjulio wrote: | You can get better data points from levels.fyi and teamblind | alexc05 wrote: | This is for part two!!! | rodiger wrote: | Those are great for larger companies but most smaller places | won't have much listed there | gloryjulio wrote: | I agree. Although as someone who has been burnt before, I | would not consider the position from a small company unless | its a very senior and generous offer. | blizkreeg wrote: | Q for engineers on this thread: would you be more open to a | "recruiter reach-out" if that person _is_ an engineer themselves | but independently also helps startups build teams as a recruiter? | deathanatos wrote: | I'd rather talk to another eng, but the problem with recruiters | isn't that they're recruiters, it's that their email _wastes | people 's time_; cf. the article, and the canned response the | article recommends writing: what if... what if the recruiter | just _told_ us those things up front? Then I 'd instantly know | this is worth responding to! Instead, we have to waste a | mostly-automated round trip asking for what ought to have been | done up front. | | Of course -- the offer would need to be actually palatable. | ebiester wrote: | The more you differentiate yourself, the more likely I am to | listen. My priority is: 1. Internal recruiters. They have real | pull. 2. External recruiters that give me real information and | give me quality information before I get on a call and why I | might be interested. 3. External recruiters that are working | with a company that I have prior interest in. | | Below this, I usually don't respond. | | 4. Recruiters that ask if I can "get on a call" to get me | details. 5. Recruiters from big name firms. (Robert Half et. | al) 6. Low quality recruiters that have no connection to what I | do. | onion2k wrote: | I don't ignore recruiters. I tell them to $%^& off. | tomrod wrote: | Depends on recruiter quality. | | There are some 3rd party groups that are solid. Most are a waste | of time. | manuelabeledo wrote: | Good advice on salary negotiation, awful about "answer all the | calls". | | Truth is, many first contacts are just to add you to their | database. In some cases, there aren't any immediate openings | either. | gadders wrote: | After reading the responses, all I can say is that the US | recruiting industry must be a lot different from the UK one. Or | maybe it's different because I'm not in a popular niche like | Python dev or something. | | I'm in the UK and I just looked at my latest linkedin recruiter | message. They told me the company type, the role, the skills they | were looking for. An accurate enough description to make me think | it was a real role. They didn't include the rate, but that would | have been my next question if I had been interested. | | If I'm not interested in the role, I normally reply with "Thank | you for thinking of me but it's not right for me because | [reason]. Good luck in your search." I might even refer them on | to a friend if I know one that fits the requirement and may be | looking. | ricardobayes wrote: | Honestly that autoresponder reply reads a bit condescending and | borderline rude, but it could be just me. 'This means I don't | have the time to hop on a call' is not how my mother taught me to | talk to people. | lbriner wrote: | Your mother probably didn't teach the recruiters to call you up | without invitation to interrupt your day either. | sebastianconcpt wrote: | Here is my version: | | _Thanks for reaching out. I 'm okay to travel to spend a week to | work together every now and then but I'm working remote only and | permanently from X1-Country and I'd only be interested in | opportunities with compensations around X2 plus benefits and if I | like their tech stack. Let me know when you have something that | sounds like a match for that. Thanks again._ | rietta wrote: | Completely disagree. I have found recruiters to be nearly | useless. However, my experience is through the lens of someone | who created a consulting practice bit by bit and have gained a | good reputation in my niche. Recruiters don't help people like | me. Those on LinkedIn who don't even read your profile are the | worst. | mkl95 wrote: | When you are a junior engineer, recruiters ignore you or use you | to boost their career. When you are a senior engineer, you ignore | recruiters or use them to boost your career. | eatonphil wrote: | That's a pretty big wall of text when most recruiters reach out | with a single sentence or few sentences. | coolso wrote: | It reads like the author really wanted to get that "privilege" | line in there, and then came up with a lot of other words to | put around it to hide that fact. | alexc05 wrote: | I like to think of it as spamming the spammers! The marginal | cost of extra words in a "select all -> copy -> paste" is | pretty low so I think it makes a lot of sense to be very clear | and address any objections they might have in advance. | | I also have found through experimentation that posting one | liners like "how much?" just results in the recruiter reverting | to their own script of "objection handlers" | | The size and clarity of the message really does say "this isn't | a conversation", "no bullshit" and "let's not fuck around here" | | This is my own experience though. I've been running with it and | refining for about 6 months to a year. Maybe It could be | better. :) | lhorie wrote: | Hey Alex, fancy seeing you here :) | | I'm going to agree that the "if you want me, do some work | first" thing seems a bit overkill. For me, usually just a | single sentence asking for salary range and job description | gives me more than enough to figure out whereabouts in the | spectrum they are. | | This is the way I think about it: | | 1) there are different types of recruiters. At least in the | city where you are, I can tell you that there are actually | some good recruiting firms that consistently send appealing | opportunities while avoid wasting your time with emails about | lowballers, if you just spend the 30 mins upfront to chat | with them about your expected salary range and | specialization. These recruiters understand that there's an | entire subsection of the workforce that is very capable but | has zero online presence, and they build their own moat by | connecting w/ professionals directly, to build a long term, | high quality, proprietary network. Being part of such | networks and having the recruiter sift and prescreen jobs for | you can be valuable. For one-off linkedin cold mailers, the | signal to noise ratio is generally pretty low IME because | they optimize for volume. While they can give me data points | about what lowballers offer, I personally haven't gained | anything from this info, so I'd optimize elsewhere. YMMV. | | 2) you can often infer salary range from the company name and | job title alone. As a rule of thumb, if it's an no-name | company, they're almost always going to lowball if you're at | senior level. If your goal is to raise your salary quickly, | then rather than looking at sideways increments, you'll want | to target "obvious" upgrades (e.g. if one is junior, look for | "senior" roles; if you're senior at a local non-US company, | look for US-based multinationals; or just go for broke and | try for unicorns exclusively) | alexc05 wrote: | Those are incredibly good points. If you look at the | levels.fyi data I think this pattern applies really well to | the people within the bottom half of the graph. | | There's ALWAYS the option of trying to go from "No Name" -> | "Big Name" but I also feel like that can be a harder path | to take. When the person reaching out is a "Meta" or a | "Netflix" I know that I don't need to ask how much. | | I'm pretty sure the number I got there would be a 4x or | 5x... in Meta's case though, it's the leetcode stopping me | (2 mediums in 45 minutes? Maybe if I wasn't dad to a | toddlerI could study enough to get there, though my other | problem is I keep getting bored of the grind and wind up | building cool shit for fun instead), in the Netflix case | it's because they keep saying "NO" (hahahahaha) | | The optimal path here for the bulk of the developers in the | middle of the pack is to make a move when the person | reaching out has a role at a different no-name shop that is | 50% higher than their current. | | Remember there are a few vectors for that big salary bump. | One where you were grossly underpaid from the moment you | were hired, but another one that pops up might be that | you've been in the role for a couple years and you have | been so busy and engaged that you didn't even NOTICE that | the market popped in the meantime, your no-name-company | doesn't really pay attention to keeping up with the market | and the persona reaching out is ALSO picking you for a spot | that has a significant increase in responsibility. | | I do think that the "reply to everyone" model starts to | fall down once you're at an Uber, or some other big logo. | | The best part about advice is once you've heard it you can | choose to ignore it on a case by case basis. | | :D | | I've PERSONALLY only ever heard the "I ignore recruiters" | jokes so the idea that they're this tremendous fountain of | untapped knowledge was pretty wild to me. | | OOOH!! One more thing about the leetcode grind. I'd ALSO | argue that if you're in the middle of your grind and a 50% | raise comes along, it's probably a clever move to pause the | grind for long enough to take the raise and then get back | to work on the grind while you're making way more. | lhorie wrote: | > The optimal path here for the bulk of the developers in | the middle of the pack is to make a move when the person | reaching out has a role at a different no-name shop that | is 50% higher than their current | | I think it's worth noting that 50% bumps were | historically nowhere as realistic as they are today with | the current job market. At least from my convos w/ | recruiters over the years, large bumps would normally | imply some very tangible upgrade, like a corresponding | job title change. A 30-50k bump back in ~2015 typically | meant moving from a dev role to a role w/ significant | leadership/managerial responsibilities. | | Being able to command 50% bumps without a significant | change in levels of responsibilities in today's market is | definitely an anomaly from a historical perspective, but | under these circumstances it definitely makes sense to | consider lateral job changes to get in on those juicy | market dynamics. | eatonphil wrote: | I think you could get the same effect but in like 6-8 | sentences, 1-2 paragraphs. | | If I saw this text in a response, personally (and I'm not a | recruiter), I'd move on since the person seems hard to | handle. | | But yeah my approach is different in the first place. I only | respond to recruiters who seem to put good thought and | background research into their conversation starter. | alexc05 wrote: | I'd love to see your version of the same thing. The exact | response isn't really as important as writing something | that is authentic and in "your voice" | | You're probably right that a different response would work | well for you. | | Though if a recruiter wasn't willing to read through that | for the ~$30k payday I'd represent if they are successful, | maybe that's one that I don't want to work with either. | | But we all gravitate towards people who we think we'd fit | with. Maybe someone skips over me for coming across as a | stuffy and a lot of work and maybe someone else says | "finally a type-a jackass like me! we're gonna crush this | thing" | | ha ha ha | notapenny wrote: | I'd cut that whole message down to this: | | "Thanks for reaching out, could you send along the | company name, a job description and total compensation | details for the role?" | | Get to the core of what you're asking. The rest of the | response is needlessly long-winded. You don't want them | to waste your time, and that is a fair ask in our | industry, but you also don't need to waste theirs. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | What is sad, is what has happened to the industry, over time. | | When I was younger, recruiters would woo you, and would act as | your advocate. They would sing your praises (sometimes, with a | bit of "embellishment") to the prospective employer. | | They also made quite a bit of money. | | I suspect that outfits like monster.com devastated the | "concierge" type of recruiter. | | Also, there were contractor specialists. They acted almost | exactly like talent agents, getting a commission, whenever they | successfully found a contract for their clients. I dealt with a | number of them (as an employer) over the years. | | I think the "agents" are a thing of the past. Not exactly sure | what killed them. | | These days, everybody, in every profession, is obsessed with | scale. Lots of small numbers, as opposed to a few big ones. | | I assume that "self-service" sites have accelerated that | transition. | | If anyone ever saw the movie _Jerry Maguire_ , it sort of laments | the same kind of metamorphosis, in the sports agent field. | | I have been rather shocked at the uncouth behavior that has been | directed my way, by recruiters. I've been told that it's because | I'm older. They haven't done or said anything to dissuade me from | that point of view. | | Dealing with today's recruiters was one of a number of reasons | that I threw in the towel on looking for work, and just accepted | that I'm in early retirement. | | In any case, I am sad to see the change, but folks seem OK with | the state of the industry, so I guess that it's really just sour | grapes, on my part. | tra3 wrote: | Great advice, in my opinion. | | The incentives for recruiters are clear; to get you hired. They | cannot however force a hire and there's a threshold for | submitting duds -- their clients will stop working with them. | | I look at recruiters as a helping hand in the hiring process. | That said I've had a couple that have wasted my time, so there's | that. | | Typically, unless you're getting flooded, it takes almost nothing | to engage with them temporarily. I like the approach the author | recommends. Recruiters are folks that are trying to make a living | too, there's no need to be nasty. | emilyridler wrote: | MattGaiser wrote: | Eh, you need to use some heuristics on them. Any with "urgent | requirement" should be utterly ignored. A personalized LinkedIn | message is worth taking. | | The problem is that far too many of those companies are using an | external recruiter to fill the job as the job is low paid | garbage. | beeskneecaps wrote: | Ignore recruiter if they: | | * are a part of a large firm | | * use multiple fonts, sizes, or any color in their emails | | * send an email _and_ an InMail | | * text or call you | | * jokingly or seriously refer to themselves as a stalker | | * automatically substitute in your skills or past company name | | * ask for your resume when they can obviously download the | LinkedIn pdf | | * don't disclose comp | | * don't disclose the company name | | * use tracking pixels or redirect links | | * send an automated sequence of follow-up emails (4 follow-ups = | bot) | | Write them back if they seem like a human! "Not interested at | this time, but let's keep in touch. Thanks for your time" should | do. | lbriner wrote: | It's no unreasonable to check if the Resume on Linked In is up | to date by asking for an up to date one is it? | l33t2328 wrote: | How can you detect tracking pixels? | woodruffw wrote: | Tracking pixels are just embedded 1x1 images in HTML emails. | They're not hidden; they're just stuffed in the rendered | HTML. For example, here's one from B&H photo: | <img src="https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bimages/email- | icons/1pximgfortracking.jpg?email=status" /> | | Detecting them automatically is probably tricky, but you can | avoid the entire problem by not loading external resources in | HTML emails (or, better yet, always load the plaintext | version of the email.) | asadlionpk wrote: | Turn off "auto-load images in emails" option in gmail. If a | plain-looking email has that banner at top "click here to | load images", there is a pixel-tracker in there. | faeyanpiraat wrote: | Or just a company logo.. | orangepurple wrote: | Fastmail shows a banner that indicates image links are | included in the email and asks you if you want to load them | devoutsalsa wrote: | I recently switched from Gmail to Fastmail. I have to say I | really like it. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | If they seem like an intelligent human, don't just write them | back. _Keep their name._ When you decide that you 're looking, | let them know. | gwbas1c wrote: | I have one rule about life: I do not work with spammers. This | includes my career. | | Recently, I've been solicited for jobs where it was clear that | the recruiter never looked at my resume. (I'm a software | engineer, and the roles had nothing to do with software | engineering.) I flagged these as SPAM. | | Reading resumes is _work._ Reading job openings is _work._ When a | recruiter spams a job opening without screening the recipients, | they 're just trying to push their work onto strangers. | thrower123 wrote: | Recruiters need to pass the bozo test to prove that they have | read and understood the first sentence of my LinkedIn profile | before they rate anything beyond having their email reported as | spam. | | It's a high bar for them to cross; I've only seen two or three in | the past few years, and those I think were sold my data by | Triplebyte instead. | michelb wrote: | Obviously this is geared towards software development, and my | personal experience with recruiters for software jobs is similar | to most here. | | However, I sometimes help out my client's HR departments and the | recruitment experience for other jobs is vastly different. Like | searching for expert welders or other specific skillsets, not | unlike the ones that exists in software development (+10 years | java, +15 years embedded C, etc.). They almost always use | external recruiters for the first filtering, and they deliver | quality candidates. Expensive fees, but worth it. | | Why is this such a problem with recruitment for software | development? Are there recruitment shops that DO understand the | differences in software development? | mulmen wrote: | The uncomfortable truth is that quality doesn't matter in | software. When you need something welded you need an expert. | Most companies don't need or even want a candidate with 10 | years of Java experience. They want someone with barely enough | skills to ship the minimum portion of the feature the business | will accept. It's an evolutionary process. If companies wanted | high quality candidates the market would deliver a solution. In | software it just doesn't matter for most cases. | valdiorn wrote: | I'd argue that it does matter, however it's incredibly | difficult to measure "quality" of a software project, so | there's no real way to distinguish crappy software engineers | from good ones. Even people with 15+ years of experience have | often just been delivering dogshit for 15+ years. | jyu wrote: | You know how everyone hates real estate agents? Imagine if a real | estate agent did not need to take courses, become licensed, and | face repercussions for unethical and illegal conduct. | | That's what a recruiter is. | city41 wrote: | I think there is a better middle ground. | | > you don't want to be a jerk to the one in 100 who have taken | the time to carefully craft a high quality message to you alone. | | I agree with this. If I get the sense the recruiter put effort | into the email, then I will usually respond. I'm sure I still | fall for automated messages with this. But some recruiters really | do their homework, really research you, have interesting and | fitting opportunities, and can be valuable. | | The 99.99% of recruiters who are just spamming? Totally ignore | them. | dsr_ wrote: | The typical recruiting-house recruiter has a script that was | given to them by someone else, has no particular job in mind for | you, and does not know the difference between Java and | JavaScript. They are, in short, one small step above spammers. | Unless you are currently thinking about changing jobs, you should | definitely ignore them. | | None of that applies to an in-house recruiter. Someone who works | in HR for the hiring company, directly, may have years of | experience, good training, and have a good idea of what the | hiring manager is looking for. You shouldn't ignore them, | although if you're entirely happy you should have a short message | prepared -- "Thanks for thinking of me. I'm happy with my current | position, but you never know what the future holds. Feel free to | check in with me again in six months or so." | | TL;DR: reputation counts. | mymllnthaccount wrote: | My experience has been the opposite. 3rd party recruiters cold | messaging me have led to my last two job changes and | significant bumps in salary. One of them put my salary in at a | higher level than I had asked for. | | In house recruiters on the other hand have not been more | knowledgeable about the team they are trying to fill for. Also, | I have a theory that companies that are willing to pay a huge | commission check to 3rd party recruiters are more likely to pay | more for talent. | alexc05 wrote: | Hmmm... maybe I should have been clearer and more explicit | about the fact that there are times when you ignore the script | entirely. | | Companies that are known to pay top of market... Like you're | not going to hammer Facebook or Netflix by saying "how much | sucker?" if you're in a bottom of the market bracket. | | I also ignore the script when it is a company that I'm really | interested in and excited by. | | I should clean that up. Thanks for the comments. | llampx wrote: | I liked your article, you don't need to cover every edge case | imho. Its on people who want to take inspiration from your | script whether they apply it like a sledge hammer or a | goldsmith's tool. | swagasaurus-rex wrote: | Absolutely true. 3rd party recruiting agencies have very | different motives than an in-house HR department recruitment. | | An easy tell-tale sign is that they withhold the name of the | company until they get you on the phone. They have a contract | saying once you're in direct contact with the recruiter, you | are in their pipeline and they get rights to bill a portion of | your contract. | | 3rd party agencies are incentivized to get you the most amount | of money they can, so they can skim off the top. They are | highly motivated to move you through and get you signed as | quickly as possible, qualified or not. | | In house recruiting doesn't have this constant need to move | candidates, and will be fast or slow depending on the needs | within the company. | lifeplusplus wrote: | Not sure how this got upvoted | jedberg wrote: | A great tip I heard was to put something at the top of your | LinkedIn profile like "If you're messaging me about a job | opening, please tell me your favorite song at the top of your | message". | | That way you can throw away any message that doesn't start with | the answer because you know it was a bulk mail and they didn't | actually read your profile. | rendall wrote: | I dunno. I've been a SWE for almost 20 years now, and I just got | a recruitment email for "Senior Manager of Partner Relations". | I'm honestly not sure what that even is, but it's definitely not | code monkey. Email included all kindsa reassurances, which, even | if I were in the field of "Partner Relations", would make me | pretty nervous: | | We do not conduct fake interviews | | We will not ask you for references unless you are being | considered for a job | | We will give you feedback the moment we get it from our customer | | etc. | | Do I really have to "not ignore" this recruiter? | dokka wrote: | I also strongly disagree. All the jobs I've taken at the advice | of a recruiter were the worst jobs I've ever had. Even if the job | matched everything on my checklist and I was able to visit the | company and talk to the employees before signing on, it was still | a terrible place to work. Why? Because it was in everyone's best | interest to hide how miserable the job actually was. And yes, the | salary was higer, but the jobs didn't last. The longest I was | able to tolerate these jobs was about 2 years each. Which didn't | look very good on my resume. Switching jobs every 2 years is | probably ok for some, but I wouldn't hire anyone that has a | consistent record of that. My advice is to find places that you | would want to work and apply there on your own. | yupper32 wrote: | I ignore all recruiters for a few reasons: | | 1. It's not like they give up. I've been receiving the same | emails from the same firms for years and years. | | 2. You can't just respond. The few times I've responded years ago | meant that they follow up at an even more frequent pace, even | when I made it clear I wasn't interested. Sometimes calling me | after I said no! | | 3. It's clear very few of them actually read my profile. | | 4. Very few are upfront with compensation. | 1270018080 wrote: | Counterpoint: Always ignore recruiters. | [deleted] | bravetraveler wrote: | I ignore recruiters all the time lol. | | I haven't had issues with finding good paying work - history, | references, and a good bit of research in the places where I | apply has served me well /shrug | rr808 wrote: | Does anyone know what the salary range is now though? It seems | pretty random. Levels.fyi has a lot of very high numbers. Blind | has crazy high numbers. I'm not sure if people are lying or | including RSUs that have gone up 10x. | | Most experienced people in HCOL areas still earning 150k-200k | max. When I talk to a recruited and ask for 300k often they'll | say its possible but dont say if you have to be a superstar to | get that. Meta seems paying 500k+ often and random big tech cos | are all over the place. | kstrauser wrote: | I'm not replying to the guy who wants me to move to Tampa for "up | to $60K" as a PHP developer. (Nothing against Tampa or PHP. I'm | just not moving there for that.) | | But occasionally I'll get an email like: | | "Hi! I saw from your LinkedIn that you used to do X, but now | you're doing Y. That's an interesting progression! I'm working | with a company who needs people with experience in X who'd rather | be doing Y, because they'd like to be on Y. I also see that | you're interested in Z, and you'd be reporting to our CTO who | wrote a book about Z. Want to hear more?" | | I'm not looking, but I send them a nice reply and remember their | names. If I _were_ looking, that's the kind of recruiter I'd want | to talk to. | ghostoftiber wrote: | I like forcing recruiters to voicemail. It's the same for email. | This doesn't mean I am ignoring them but it does give me a way to | filter who I even reply to. If they send me a badly written, very | generic email for something like Helpdesk Level 1, something I'm | not even doing or isn't on my resume, or CEO of Company X for | $10/hr, I don't even reply. The voicemail works the same way - if | they can't seem to render a sentence, be topical, or sound | conversant in the local language, I just delete it. | | If it sounds remotely interesting, I might send them an email | back. The exception is AWS/Azure/Google which is heavily | recruiting for TAMs and they're having a heck of a time filling | the seats and keeping them filled. If they're | $MAJOR_CLOUD_PROVIDER I always ask them if its for a TAM or | similar role up front. | | I have a small blacklist of companies too - folks I know who are | going to go through the entire interview process and it doesn't | matter whats said because they're going to lowball the crap out | of people. I don't want to work for bottom-feeders. | | The "good offers" I get typically come from someone who has seen | an open source contribution from me, or someone I know from | consulting. If you find yourself jammed up in your career and you | can't find that next lillypad, try consulting to build up your | connections. It's a good way to get the inside story at | companies, and also if you find a company you really like, it's | very possible to arrange something so that they hire you on some | split between your consulting rate and your pay rate so you and | them win. Check your employment contract first, local laws, etc. | Check my profile for an email to send your resume to if you want | to chat. | mv4 wrote: | Horrible email response: long-winded, cringe-inducing, poorly | structured. | | Just state clearly what kind of information you need in order to | continue the conversation (or not). Even a simple "what's the pay | like" would be more effective. | honkycat wrote: | Two years ago I quit my job, then covid kicked off and I was out | of work for 6 months. | | During that time I was relying on recruiters to hunt down leads | for me. | | Nothing was coming up! They kept trying to feed me full-stack and | front-end roles, and I kept saying no thank you. | | Then, I just started sending out my own resumes. And I instantly | got more callbacks in the MONTHS I spent with recruiters. | | I have a few suspicions: | | 1. The recruiters present themselves as having a "relationship" | with companies, but they actually don't, they are just | bullshitting you. | | 2. The jobs people actually want end up getting filled, so if you | end up with a recruiter, you are going to be ending up with | bottom-tier opportunities. | caffeine wrote: | I've been doing this for years. It's good advice. | lnxg33k1 wrote: | >> If you respond, does that mean you're being disloyal to your | current employer? | | Is it a thing? Am I Sir Worker of Devs I? | vmception wrote: | How could anyone come to this contrarian conclusion, even after | reading the article it is baffling. | | There is a time and place for in-house recruiters and third party | recruiters. This article does not identify them and obsessively | takes the contrarian view with no supporting rationale for doing | so. | alexc05 wrote: | Hey! Thanks for your feedback. I would love to try and | understand what you're saying but I'm struggling a little. | | Can you explain what you mean by "There is a time and place for | in-house recruiters and third party recruiters." what is that | time and place? | | I honestly tried to be really nuanced (but clearly failed a | little, thanks for that data point). | | I think it does speak to the fact that I have seen 20 years of | the prevailing narrative that there is zero value to recruiters | and this realization was, to me, pretty mind-blowing. | | I appreciate that "never" is a word that lacks nuance, maybe | that was a little too clickbait of me. | | Sorry for that. | | Thanks again for the feedback. | vmception wrote: | I like third party recruiters because I like to use them | strategically. I know how they are compensated and they learn | what I want to do, so I could get raises every 15-18 months | by switching companies that they placed me at and they could | get paid multiple times because turns out I'm a reliable | employee! | | We knew to ignore each other for 15 months. It was a good | symbiotic relationship. Sometimes they knew I wanted side | gigs and would hook me up with the companies that "needed | something yesterday!" while they knew I was employed at one | of their client companies. sometimes the recruiter hired me | on their payroll directly instead of letting me be a | contractor with their clients. it was a fun time for some | time. | | This has almost nothing to do with random outreach from them | on linkedin. It is barely the same topic. But thats what I | used them for. | | In-house recruiters are distinctly different animals with a | couple of overlapping daily tasks and the same name, but the | way to use them is very different. A company with one of | those wouldn't be using third party recruiters and thats | fine, in house recruiters can somewhat bat for you in a | unique and more holistic way but they are still just | gatekeepers you want to get passed so you can talk technical | stuff with hiring managers. | Kalium wrote: | I wouldn't go so far as to say _zero_ value, but I would say | that engaging with third-party recruiters is generally an | activity with a negative expected value. Generally they don | 't actually have or aren't willing to share the incredibly | useful real and direct insights you wisely point to. | | Personally, I've found that high quality messages from | recruiters are usually painfully obvious. They lead with the | name of the company and show evidence that the recruiter read | my profile. These are so rare that I completely skip any kind | of bot-ish response to handle them. | | Most of the responses I can expect to the kind, | compassionate, empathetic script you've so helpfully provided | will not contain all three data points requested. At best, we | can expect to get a JD and maybe a company name. Comp is | usually withheld and the cycle goes around again. | | Treating the recruiter-spammers as humans, unfortunately, | does not really seem to produce the results we would all love | it to. It mostly seems to be treated as proof that the | spammer has hooked a fish and just has to reel them in. | jugg1es wrote: | My problem with responding to recruiters - especially FAANG - is | that once you start a conversation it's hard to stop. I find it | very hard to leave if I'm in the middle of a big project. | pizza234 wrote: | I give an extremely simple answer, where I state that in the | present, for $real_reason, I'm not looking for other | opportunities, but in the future, I may. It worked! | | I actually spend a little bit of effort to filter out (block) | incompetent recruiters, but that's all. | stakkur wrote: | I have to say--none of this advice would be actionable in all my | previous experiences with recruiters. | | The truest statement is the one the author makes up front: | >Recruiters are just cold calling | | More accurately, they're contacting a _lot_ of people who 's | profile contains their search keywords. _No recruiter is | contacting only you for a req they 're trying to fill_. | lizknope wrote: | A lot of recruiters won't list the company that they are | recruiting for. I assume this is because you could just apply to | the company directly and they wouldn't get their fee. | | One time I asked the company who they were recruiting for. They | told me the company name and I replied with "I already work | there." | | This was on LinkedIn where my current employer is on my page and | anyone can see it. | tudorconstantin wrote: | I loved the article. I worked in sales for ~2 years before | starting my career as a software engineer +15 years ago, so | knowing how downputting rejections are, I try to treat all the | salespeople as human beings, so I try to respond to all of them. | My strategy is to make them refusing me, by requiring "only" a | +30% i increase. | JohnWhigham wrote: | A recruiter got me my first job a decade ago when I was fresh out | of college and my internship place didn't hire me and I was | panicking to find something as I didn't have a backup plan. He | helped me interview at multiple places until he found one for me | (the pay sucked but it was a job). So yeah, they're annoying, but | I do understand their place. | Spinnaker_ wrote: | I also recommend a response to every recruiter, but you don't | need to explain your privilege, you don't need to suck up to | them, and you don't need to justify your actions. | | "Hey ____. Before we move forward, can you provide me with the | company name, a job description, and the expected compensation. | Regards" | wnolens wrote: | This is what I do. That email in OP is gross. | | "Hi, thanks for the message. I would appreciate as much detail | as you can via message. Interested in location, compensation, | and what specific problems they need help solving. Thanks!" | | I don't take a call unless the work description is specific | enough. I don't want to work on your "backend". If asked, I | tell them my comp expectation is min +50k over what I currently | make. And I sure as hell am not moving to the bay area. | ryandrake wrote: | I don't like to ignore recruiters, but it's hard to answer them | correctly. I'm always looking for a nice way to articulate "I'm | comfortable with my current job, but interested in exploring | whether I'm being compensated fairly. I don't want to slam any | doors. But, I am also not up for the hazing session of grinding | leetcode, filling out online forms, doing take-home tests, | phone screens, and 5 rounds of interviews, just to find out at | the end of it all what my current market value is." | jeremywho wrote: | Yes, his response template is way too verbose. | Kalium wrote: | > "Hey ____. Before we move forward, can you provide me with | the company name, a job description, and the expected | compensation. Regards" | | I've found that this makes 80-90% of recruiters go completely | silent. For some reason, asking for this basic information | scares off the vast majority of recruiters. | | I'm genuinely unsure what I - or they - get out of dragging | this out into a screenful of blah blah blah. | sergiotapia wrote: | That hasn't been my experience. I always get the salary | range, equity package, and what stage/growth the company is | at currently and where they want to take things. All in the | first 30 minute call. | Kalium wrote: | I've tried a fair number of those calls. You might be | surprised by how many recruiters don't really have salary | range or meaningful equity details (preferences, shares | outstanding, etc.) but _really_ want me to be excited for | the great opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a | rapidly growing business. | | To my eyes, thirty minutes is a pretty expensive way to | find out if a position is in line with my comp and the | company one I want to work for. It could just as easily be | handled in thirty seconds. | | Last month I had a quick 20-minute call with a recruiter | who couldn't tell me anything about the company or the | position that I hadn't found in thirty seconds of | searching. This is not an unusual experience, | unfortunately. The only explanation for that call I can | find is that the recruiter sincerely expected to impress me | with a phone sales approach. | joezydeco wrote: | They go silent, or they also give a canned response about | being competitive in the market when it comes to comp | (without naming a number). | | If they do name a number and you reply it's too low, they | again go into a canned response of "we're willing to reach | (++x) for the right candidate", which is just as much | bullshit as before. You'll complete an interview cycle and | get the lowball offer of (original x). | | TLDR they'll lie about comp and never completely answer you. | Kalium wrote: | Sometimes I say something like "I'm glad to hear you're | competitive! I'm currently being offered | $REAL_BIG_COMPANY_NUMBER, so I look forward to our | conversation." Generally this ends the conversation. | lbriner wrote: | One of the most common reasons is simply that they don't want | you to go direct to the company in question and bypass their | commission. If they give you too much, it is very easy to do | and many companies will recruit directly and the recruiter | would have no legal basis to do anything about that. | | On the other hand, because of commission, it is in the | recruiter's interest to get you as much money as possible so | you might get a better offer via them than you would if you | went direct. | joezydeco wrote: | 9 times out of 10 the job description you get from the | recruiter is a lazy cut-and-paste from the actual company's | input. | | It's never anonymized and simply pasting it into Google | will almost always get you a lead on the hiring company. | | Another lead is if they give you the company location. | There is only one company on the planet, for example, that | has R&D offices in both Mossvile and Aurora, Illinois. | bengy5959 wrote: | Also 9 times out of 10 its a bait and switch for a | different company. Whenever I've worked with these | recruiters they always "see whats a good fit" with my | resume and its never the company that was in the job | description. | ornornor wrote: | > it is in the recruiter's interest to get you as much | money as possible so you might get a better offer via them | | Up to a point. They get a fraction of the marginal increase | in salary, and they'd much sooner "close the sale" than | risking having someone else fill the job to try and get an | extra 500$ commission. | | It's the same story with real estate agents: selling your | house for an extra 20k might be a lot to you but to the | agent it's an extra 400$ in commission (exact percentage | varies). In other words, it's hardly worth risking the | seller losing interest or working an extra 2-3 weeks for so | little. | pishpash wrote: | You can split the extra margin 50/50 so your motivations | are exactly equal. | wnevets wrote: | > it is in the recruiter's interest to get you as much | money as possible so you might get a better offer via them | than you would if you went direct. | | Unlikely. Its way better for the recruiter to focus on the | quantity of hires rather than trying to increase the | salaries of a smaller number of them. It takes way more | work and makes them less money to help increase your salary | by 20% than just finding another role and hire. | mcrider wrote: | I think the _one_ time I responded to a recruiter and went | through the process was because they told me the company up | front. Unless its an internal recruiter, I never get that | info. I was interested in the company and I figured they | could help speed me through the process (which I believe | was true). I didn 't take the job but I appreciated this | person not BSing me. | Kalium wrote: | I understand their fear of being cut out. | | I want them to understand that I need to know up-front if | the position is interesting enough to be worth investing my | time in at all. I _could_ sacrifice my time and energy to | assuage their fears, but every time I 've done that in the | past ten years there has been zero return on investment. | | A reader might, at this point, optimistically point out | that the next recruiter could be different. This reader | would be correct. That could indeed be the case! Yet every | time I wind up deciding to try the optimistic approach I | wind up on a phonecall in which I learn that the company | isn't someone I want to work for, the JD isn't one I | actually want to work on, the comp isn't nearly enough, or | some combination thereof. Generally the comp is so far off | it has no change to even be negotiated to something I would | consider. Often they try to sell me on a 40%-60% pay cut, | because a slice of that is worth a lot to them (it's | happened twice this month). | | At this point I'm quite tired of paying optimism's price to | assuage the fears of recruiters. The kindness is not | returned. I understand others might choose differently. | seneca wrote: | > On the other hand, because of commission, it is in the | recruiter's interest to get you as much money as possible | so you might get a better offer via them than you would if | you went direct. | | This isn't my experience at all, having worked with | recruiters both as a hirer and hiree. Recruiters typically | are looking to close as many positions as possible, making | money on volume. Their incentives are to spend as little | time as they can getting candidates just enough so they say | yes. | | They typically are paid a percentage of a candidates first | year salary. At first glance this might seem to mean | they're motivated to get you as much as possible. In | reality it means that the effort to get an extra $20k, | which might make a big difference for the candidate, only | results in an extra e.g. $2000 for them. They're not going | to spend time on that that could be spent on closing | another candidate, and getting another full commission, if | they think the candidate will accept either way. | | The money a recruiter is paid also often comes from the | same budget a potential signing bonus would. The fact that | they take 10% of the first year salary makes companies less | forthcoming with extra money for the candidate. | datavirtue wrote: | A lot of the recruiters have different businesses. Some | may be recruiting for direct hire but alot of them retain | them as employees as they contract for six months or | however long...sometimes years..for an hourly rate. They | pocket the difference over what is paid to the engineer. | mrweasel wrote: | Yep, at least tell me who your recruiting for. I have a list of | companies I don't care to work for, so let's not waist time on | those. | | A number of recruiters are also just bad at their job. I worked | as a .Net developer 12 years ago, but most recruiters | apparently aren't smart enough to figure out that not only is | my knowledge horrible out of date, it might also not interest | me anymore. | Philip-J-Fry wrote: | Yep, short and sweet. If they can't answer that then they | aren't worth your time. | | Works most of the time for me. | commandlinefan wrote: | Or just a canned, "Thanks for getting in touch, but I'm not | looking for a change right now." | dewey wrote: | If it's just that you might as well just ignore it and not | cause any additional noise. | derwiki wrote: | Not GP but I can't shake that it feels rude, even if | expected. | | But more practically: if I decline after the first, I don't | get the other 4 emails they have queued up for me | wccrawford wrote: | If they cold-contact you, it is _not_ rude to simply | ignore them. | | If you have an existing relationship with them, then it | could be considered rude, but it would depend on your | relationship. | taormina wrote: | I can tell Amazon isn't banging down your door. | Seriously, it's insane how no one at Amazon Recruiting | talks to anyone else in Amazon Recruiting. | weeblewobble wrote: | Amazon is getting ridiculous. I get an email from them | almost every day | delecti wrote: | I've started getting very firm with them. I respond to | each email with "no thank you, also stop contacting me, | also here's the last person I asked to stop contacting | me, but who didn't." We'll see how long it works, if at | all, but after 3 separate Amazon recruiters contacted me | last month I was fed up. | muh_gradle wrote: | They're all cold emailing you with a canned email. It's | about as close to automated as possible. | OJFord wrote: | I replied to a first follow up (~'I don't think I'm a | good fit', nevermind anything else) this morning as it | happens. Almost always ignore; took one as far as | interview a few years ago, which I never heard back from | (no result/feedback) until a week or so ago! But I might | make that a policy, if they 'just check in' after the | first email then may as well try to head it off there I | suppose. | sebastianconcpt wrote: | This is what I'm doing so far. I typically answer stating how I | would like to work and hint my conditions and let them know | that I'm happy to follow up if they see a fit. | BeefWellington wrote: | It's amazing how these basic questions are often like | kryptonite to these people. | | Protip: If you want senior people to respond, you should | probably include that information up front. | | I've done several interviews at places only to get to the stage | we're talking money and suddenly it becomes clear they were | expecting to pay about a third to half of what I currently make | for someone in a senior position. Each time I think it could | genuinely save a lot of time and effort (and thus money) by | just being up front about that stuff. | lxe wrote: | I only reply to recruiters from companies that I'm actually | really interested in (but not currently looking to move), or | places where my former colleagues work. | justinlloyd wrote: | Like most things in life, 90% of everything is crap. That goes | double for recruiters. I've worked with only two competent | recruiters in my very long career, who have, at most, gotten me a | low double-digit raise at best. I've had one recruiter royally | screw up an offer to the point the company rescinded, and I've | had another recruiter use coercion on me to not work at SONY for | 20% more than the other company was offering. But as only a | single data point, I can quite emphatically say no recruiter has | ever doubled my money for me. | | I will also say that most recruiter outreach, even in this hot | market, is absolutely lousy, and the compensation on offer is | below what I am currently earning at a company I am exceptionally | happy with doing work I love, and I don't consider myself to be | overly compensated. | | Most recruiters that do any outreach immediately ghost me when I | ask about compensation range, and if compensation range is | mentioned, it has yet to be more than what I currently make. Once | or twice in the past three months I've had an "upto $X for the | right candidate" where $X is only 10% more than what I am | currently making, so it is highly unlikely I will get that upper | bound. | | If I responded to every recruiter that reached out to me via | email and LinkedIn I'd spend many more hours per day wasting my | time than I would care to think about. And most recruiters that | reach out to me these days are of the exceptionally low quality | churn'n'burn variety. | | I currently have three recruiter messages open on LinkedIn, one | for an animator with 2+ years of experience, another for someone | wanting a mid-level front-end web developer for an AR | application, and another for a "senior" Java programmer. I don't | do any of those things, didn't even look at my profile or C.V. | Just a scattershot approach, which you would think on LinkedIn, | with its targetted InMails, it wouldn't be the case. But here we | are. | | Of the one recruiter out of the three who didn't immediately | ghost when asked about compensation (always my first question), | the upper bound is $80K below what I currently make, and again, I | don't consider myself well compensated. | | My recommendation is never waste your time with any recruiter, | but if you must, expend it on those that actually work for the | company they are hiring for. | eez0 wrote: | There is no one better than yourself to get what you're looking | for, so instead of relying in a third party to give you the edge, | make sure you're already on the top of the wave. | | I never work with external recruiters (staffing agencies)I have | made the exception three times, and all of them ended with a poor | experience, basically repeating the same information over and | over again between them and the people from the actual company. | atum47 wrote: | Maybe once you're a respected programmer with some solid | companies on your resumee recruiters maybe nice to you. Fresh out | of college, like I was a few years back, recruiters really don't | care about you. They spam you likedin inbox and you email with | generic messages to see if anyone bites. Back in my day they went | as far as sending me whatsapp messages - the funny thing is - | they don't even bother to properly answer you. | | I was coming back from the south of the country to my city, a | long drive, and I received a whatsapp message from a recruiter | telling me about an opportunity, since I was fresh out of college | looking for a job, I stopped the car to talk to them, only to | find out they won't respond you right away. I only got a answer | from this person like 3 days later. | alexc05 wrote: | That's baked into the assumption of the script though. If your | response is a copy and paste, who cares about the ones that | ghost you after one message? Doesn't matter because the cost of | interaction was quite low. | | If they send the ball back after your initial response THEN you | know you can open a conversation up until that point, just | assume it is spam and you're spamming them back. | throckmortra wrote: | * no 3rd party recruiters * won't respond if compensation isn't | posted up front | | My simple rules of engagement | Ekaros wrote: | To me it's pretty clear that I really shouldn't bother with ones | that have position I'm not clearly interested in or isn't line | with my own career. These are pretty clearly not desirable | positions. So why even follow up with that spam. | andrew_ wrote: | I run a small agency in addition to my full-time gig. Every time | a recruiter sends me a message I respond with a script that | includes criteria for work that I'll do, work that I won't do, | and interview limitations. I also include an agency hourly rate | which makes most of them run for the hills. Every great once in a | while I'll get a short-term contract out of it. | | The lone full-time contract I took on came about from recruiter | contact, but he wasn't one of those keyword carpet bombing mooks. | I've only ever landed one full-time job without a referral in 20 | years in the industry. Referrals and niche market sites (e.g. | AngelList) are the way to go. | throwingawayyou wrote: | I've gone back and forth on this issue. The bottom line, some | recruiters help and can get your resume into the right hands. | Aka, not on the shit heap. | JuanitaYoung wrote: | Even a handyman can have a good resume. A friend of mine is a | handyman and he needed a resume, they wouldn't hire him without | it. He needed a resume for part time work | https://resumeedge.com/blog/how-to-write-a-resume-for-a-part..., | but he didn't know how to do it himself. He got help from experts | and the resume was successful. Now he was easily hired. | xutopia wrote: | I reply gently saying that I have no interest unless it is my | absolute dream job and describe exactly what that is. They are | happy to receive a reply even if my demands seem bonkers. | praptak wrote: | I am currently at my 4th full time job. Each and every one of | them I got via someone I knew, even the first one. | | I spoke to recruiters but they were pretty useless for getting a | job. | duxup wrote: | My current approach: | | I don't have time ... the volume of messages is too high, and the | amount of 'legitimate' inquiries are too low. And the odds of | getting ghosted by the recruiter too high. | | If they're a recruiter from a company that I know and they WORK | FOR that company, I'll respond. | | Having said that I think that is a good article and I really like | that email. | CoastalCoder wrote: | Is there a decent way to determine that? | | I know there are two extremes: (a) recruiter is a regular | employee of hiring company, vs. (z) recruiter works for an | unaffiliated placement company. | | But i.e. if a recruiter is a temporary contractor with the | hiring company, they'd still have an email address from that | company, right? | macksd wrote: | I suppose it is possible that a temporary contractor has an | email address from that company, but I think you can get | reasonably high signal by looking at their LinkedIn history. | Switching positions every few months is a red flag. Even if | they're an independent contractor, longer-term arrangements | with each client suggest better relationships and better | commitment to real outcomes. | | I see plenty of recruiters who just work for recruiting firms | and don't hide that fact. Anyone who won't immediately tell | me who they're recruiting for gets ignored. I'm sure I end up | talking to the occasional contractor but you can easily | filter out a lot of obvious low-hanging (and rotten) fruit). | duxup wrote: | I find that a lot of people working for a recruiting company | actually make it clear in their email with the address or | signature. | | To some extent a contractor who working for the company I | know ... I'd still consider that a direct company reaching | out to me type situation that I'd be more inclined to | respond. | | I don't find that it is hidden all that often, but that's | just my experience. | Tehchops wrote: | I don't know if it needs to be this elaborate. I like the idea | though. | | However... | | > Can you send along the company name, a job description and, | total compensation details for the role you're reaching out in | reference to? | | Should be table stakes. I've started having to walk away from any | recruiter that insists on a 15 minute call without providing | these details up front. I wish there was some collective | awareness around the fact that if someone took a 15 min call with | every recruiter ping they got, they'd be on the phone 5-8 hours a | day. | tgtweak wrote: | Taking this post to publicly shame a recruiting technique I was | victim to: | | I entertained a reference check call by a recruiting firm (not | standard but he was a good coworker and it was a serious position | with a serious company). The interview was normal and standard | fare except the last question which I found off-putting and | dishonest: "Are you looking to fill any positions?" | | Although I was, it's not the kind of professionalism I expect | from any company representing mine so I politely declined and | ended it there. My friend got the job and all's well that ends | well. | | Fast forward 3 months and I get cold called by the same company | asking me if I would consider a position at XYZ inc (new company, | unrelated to the first). | | I was blown away that a company would think this is acceptable, | and that information given for reference checks by employees are | somehow automatically made into leads owned by the recruiting | company. I escalated to legal at serious company and explained in | no unclear manner how serious of a matter this was, to which they | terminated the hiring agreement over. | | So just a reminder please vet your recruiting companies before | you mandate them to represent your company. | mywittyname wrote: | Sounds like this was written by someone who has very atypical | experience with recruiters. Perhaps they haven't had their | resumes copied into the database that gets bought and sold by | every recruiting firm in existence. | | I could make a full time job out of replying to recruiters, | because I get probably 100 "opportunities" a day. Most of them | have never actually read my resume, or they are working off of a | 10 year old copy that was bought from a data broker. And probably | 10k other people get that same exact email, so even if I did | respond, the odds are bad. | | If a founder of a company reaches out with a thoughtful message, | there's a 100% chance I'll respond, even to decline. If an in- | house recruiter for a copy reaches out, and shows that they | understand why I'd be a good fit, there's a 100% chance I'll | look, and a 50% chance I'll respond. | | I did get my current role by doing roughly what the article | states. A recruiter for a startup reached out to me, explaining | what the role was and why I might be a good fit. I interviewed | with an intent to only leave for a 50%+ salary bump, and they | offered 80%+ and equity, so I left. That being said, I ignored | 99.9% of the other recruiters who reached out. | jppope wrote: | Great article, very thoughtful and definitely a useful template/ | concept | rthomas6 wrote: | I wonder if it would work to respond with a link to an online | form to fill out with the job details. This website would also | contain your resume and descriptions/code for your software | projects. Kind of a script flip, making potential employers apply | to you, rather than the other way around. Obviously this will | only work if you are really good, and know it. | alexc05 wrote: | I've heard of that being done. It's actually the thing that | inspired me to write the note in the first place. | | I didn't have time to take on the overhead of setting up a cool | site / form to go with the response, but I could have the | response. | | The form version of this works as an even bigger filter. Fewer | leads will come though, more leads will be higher quality. | habeebtc wrote: | I make a habit of responding to each and every recruiter. | | The ones who send me jobs I am way overqualified for, or simply | don't pay enough, I tell them my current compensation package | with the advice to send relevant offers in the future. | | Realistically though, every external recruiter I have talked to | since I got into my current big tech company has been a waste of | time. They can't usually touch my comp package, and only the | other big tech companies are likely to be able to (or internal | recruiters). | bdamm wrote: | The only value a recruiter brings to me these days is someone to | practice light interview skills with when I'm feeling like I need | a reminder that I can still do it. | k__ wrote: | There are few people in my life that wasted as much of my time as | recruiters. | muh_gradle wrote: | The trick is to ignore them. Then they can't waste your time as | effectively. | hsn915 wrote: | If you want a high salary you're not going to get one by going | through recruiters. | vultour wrote: | Maybe in SF, but in London you'll often see recruiters working | for hedge funds which offer pretty much the best compensation | around. | db1234 wrote: | I just want to say I feel blessed to work in a field where | companies bombard you with opportunities. I may not reply to | recruiter emails but don't consider them spam. | karboosx wrote: | My idea for recruiters was special website with referral link | where they could fill out all information I was interested in | (the fields was required in order to submit the form) and big red | information that stated: "If your offer will be interesting I | will contact back on linkedin". | | In addition I made small control question, for example: "Whats | the first letter on my LinkedIn description?". | | That way I know I don't talk with a bot and they really read my | profile. | pjc50 wrote: | Possibly, but they left out the possible outcomes of "simply | refuse to talk salary, or to talk salary in email" and "just lie | about the salary and/or the job". | alexc05 wrote: | I did have that in there at one point. In _my case_ I tend to | either practice refining my script, or just thank them and walk | away. It 's in the autoresponse "without that data I'm unable | to continue further discussions" | | You do have to stick to that, but it's IMO pretty clear but | also concise enough that you don't well on it. | | Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts! | mmastrac wrote: | As others on this thread have pointed out - avoid unaffiliated | recruiters, talk to affiliated/salaried recruiters from a | company. | dschuetz wrote: | Interestingly, I have employed a similar sentiment so far, | without knowing that it might be actually a good thing. I am | trying to give at least one short and comprehensive answer that: | I am not looking for new challenges, thanks though. Exceptions | might apply to especially annoying recruiters who just don't care | and ignore my wishes and send me useless messages regardless. | stjohnswarts wrote: | I don't ignore them, I give their email or voice mail a quick | perusal. Maybe 1 in 4 pass that I'll reach back out to them. | Things I look for | | 1. did they name someone/some company that I know | | 2. Does it look like a form letter | | 3. Do they have a "give me all these details" section of the | email on the 1st email. Instant trash can on that one. | | 4. Does it fall under the regime of things I do. | | 5. What email address alias/phone number did they have access to. | civilized wrote: | Does anyone, recruiter or otherwise, want a screenful of auto- | response text? I'd cut it down to 2-3 sentences and make it much | more direct. | whateveracct wrote: | Always worth talking to ones with opportunities that seem | interesting. Those are rare. But if you do and follow up every | 6mo/year..you can just ping them whenever you're ready to move on | and you'll have an interview. | aluminussoma wrote: | I don't think the recruiter gets 10% of the salary anymore. I | have seen recent recruiter fees for 20% of the first year base | salary. People should know that. | MattPalmer1086 wrote: | I pretty much always respond to recruiters that seem to have | understood what I do, even if I'm not looking. They are gold. | | I usually ignore the others. | | The ones that spam me with positions that are clearly absolutely | nothing to do with my career, I sometimes respond to asking why | they think I'm suitable. And that's just for the childish | pleasure of wasting a bit of their time. | buttsecks wrote: | Lol Wut? | | You should always respond to recruiters at your OWN discretion. | Use 3 digital condoms (throwaway numbers, etc.), and don't | continue the Convo if they won't disclose details such as salary. | Ain't nobody got time for dat. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-02-01 23:00 UTC)