I started external recruiting part-time in NYC while I was a full-time engineering lead a few years ago and made more part-time recruiting than my full-time job. Since then I've seen a few recruiters with a technical background have a lot of success in an industry filled with bad players because of their broad technical knowledge and ability to match engineers well, but they are very rare. I personally attribute my success to understanding hiring processes, understanding how to make a pitch compelling, and being able to automate the manual parts of the job.

The job itself ended up being a a healthy mix of sales, career counseling, and matchmaking. In other industries it seems more common for people in the field to jump into recruiting for that field (finance people to jump into recruiting finance people, lawyers jumping into recruiting lawyers).

I've seen job posts on HN for engineers to do interviews part-time or teach part-time. Are there engineers who would be interested in recruiting? Why or why not?