Ask HN: What things that tech recruiters do, annoy you the most as an engineer? For me it's definitely their desire for everything to be a call. If I'm even remotely interested, that'll be a 30mins call to setup. I really only have 3 basic things I want to know to see if it's even worth perusing: Salary range, tech stack, team size. And when you ask them about those things: "Oh, well cover all the on the call". |
It's also silly and shortsighted seeing posts like this where the poster doesn't understand why we need to talk on the phone. Isn't it self evident? To make a job happen, it requires human contact at every step of the way. Sending out emails hoping people reply results in....... zero.
Who is it that genuinely thinks that jobs are black and white? Who is it that thinks salaries are written in stone? "We're offering $50K", do you want the job? Obviously it doesn't work like that. Recruiting is a negotiation - with everyone - the employer and the candidate.
And talking on the phone is absolutely essential. Things need to be discussed, understood, clarified.
AND, it's a SALES job.... we're trying to catch your attention, interest you in a possible new job, entice you with the positives, lead you to do what we want you to do which is meet the employer and build up relationships on both sides such that the consummation happens, which is an employment deal. None of that will happen without personal talking on the phone.
Really frankly if you're meant o be be an intelligent person, can't you understand that finding someone for a job involves lots of personal communication and discussion and working around grey areas like salary? If you're not smart enough to get that, well.....
And honestly, when people say these two things, I give up on them:
"Can you just email me the details? I'll decide then."
And
"It's all written in my resume, why are you asking me these questions?"
Because these questions make it clear that you're not interested in actually pursuing possible jobs.
The thing that annoys me most about the "how much do you hate recruiters?" posts is that companies pay us alot of money to find great people and they are very happy when we succeed and the job seeker is very happy too when we succeed - why the hate?
If you are bitching about recruiters then you are not the CTO or development manager who is paying them and working with them and wants them to succeed.
I have no real interest in talking with the majority of recruiters, who will generally do at least one of the following:
- Misrepresent the role to me
- Misrepresent me to the employer
- Under or oversell me (A recruiter almost refused to put me through for my current job because I was asking for the top end of the range)
A good recruiter should be able to make the decision on whether to pass a candidate on from reading a CV plus 4/5 questions (in a single email).
If you know what you're doing, just set up the phone call with the employer.
>who make the effort to actually get people on the phone and make it happen
You might make it happen faster if you skip the phone screen with people who can't assess candidates because they don't understand the role nor the candidate!
Correct, I'm not interested in bureaucratic processes that you pulled out of your ass. If you don't understand how I want to be communicated with, you are not a good recruiter.
This implies that you only care about the experience of the people who are paying you. Which might be honest but if it's true, it shouldn't be a surprise that so many candidates have negative experiences with recruiters.
* Send through candidates that have nothing to do with our requirements.
* Tell me a candidate is interested in a lower salary than they actually are.
* Tell me they've phone screened a candidate with an expert and that they're excellent, but then within the first few minutes at interview it's obvious they can't code.
* Lie about candidates, including modifying their CV without telling them.
* Lie about the role to candidates.
To add a cherry on top, they began with "I'm a headhunter and my client has asked me to contact you specifically..."
I engaged with that one, but only enough to confirm that the client hadn't asked for me, that nobody had read my profile, and the recruiter was not a headhunter.
1) they got crap requirements from the company to begin with
2) even if they got great requirements, if they could talk about them all fluently, they would probably be a developer themselves and not a recruiter.
- The good recruiters have a high hit rate and are quick. One of these guys called me about 4 weeks ago. We did a chat about my history, and what I wanted. The next day, he suggested 4 firms. The day after, I had 3 interviews booked. This bit is the real value: if they are good they will suggest people who have a chance of wanting you. The last firm never responded, which I'll chalk down to the hiring firm being disorganized. I've been there myself, so I don't mind. But 3/4 is pretty decent for an interview rate. Got an offer from one of them, and another one wanted to talk about stuff to explore, but were more wanting to explore with me than having a specific thing to do.
- High hit rate comes from good relationships. There's a group of firms that are very picky with their hires (FAANG, HFT) that every recruiter in London will mention to you if you are a dev. Knowing which ones actually know these hiring managers is hard. They all claim to have gone to school with them. But also, the filter is pretty generic. If you look like a good coder, you will get an interview if the firm is hiring, regardless of whether the rec knows the guy. And past that there's nothing the rec can really do for you. So what are good relationships really? They're when there's an exclusive relationship. "I have this role at this salary for this profile, go and find me 4 CVs". A good rec will return with 4 CVs, one of which is wrong, and 3 candidates. The firm can now interview two of them and get the first one that works (and wants the job), knowing that probably the backups are just as good and one of them will want it.
- The less good recruiters have the goods but can't move the conversation forward. A couple of firms were in the same position as the offer above, same kind of role, weeks before. If you just take it easy, candidates will pass by. "Hiring manager is really busy, they're expanding, but they want to talk to you" just sounds a bit silly after a few weeks, and as a rec you need to move the hiring manager. What is fast? A guy is calling me today, on the weekend, knowing that I have offers (yes with details), having phoned me on Friday. That's giving yourself a chance.
- The really bad recruiters don't know how the business works. As a CTO I get this from the other side. I have a load of emails from various randoms along the lines of "Angular engineer, £60K, available immediately". There's no reason to think I'd want one of those, it's just a spray and pray. The whole point of the recruitment industry is to be a broker. You wouldn't run a dating agency where you just randomly tried pairing people either. Or a real estate agency where you randomly match people with houses in random places. The recruiter is supposed to know who wants what skills, and who has what needs. In that sense there is no difference from any other marketplace business.
- Regarding the thing you bring up: if they don't tell you the salary, stack, and team details, they have nothing and are just adding you to a database to be matched later. I responded to an advert during this last search where the guy admitted to not actually having a job. He'd just put up the ad with some keywords to attract people, and then the plan was to scan the firms to see if there was a match for me. I didn't proceed. I can appreciate you need to do this if you are a new recruiter, but it is indeed annoying.
- But the thing that is the most annoying is this: They will claim to put your CV forward for a role, and then do nothing. The reason is they may know the manager at firm A, B, and C. Firm D is also a likely destination for your profile, but he doesn't know them. So then they tell you that they will put your CV forward for A, B, C and D. This way you can't apply to firm D through another firm, and they are more likely to collect your placement fee. Sounds like an urban legend but a couple of people told me this in the last month, and sometimes it is indeed possible to find out from the inside whether your CV arrived.
I have been a hiring manager at several FAANGs in London and these recruiters are all bullshitting you. We never used external recruiters, we had no need. Lead generation was entirely internal.
Good to know from you how to approach this.
Another thing: just tell me who the job is with. This makes a big difference, and is also going to influence whether I'll get back to you.
Still not as clueless as the fool who changed my CV from "Visual Age for C++ for OS/2" to "Visual C++" and assumed neither I nor the client would object to this minor amendment.
* spamming me with job offers that absolutely would never fit my profile (you haven't read my bio, you're lazy!)
* hiding the company name from me (you're being dishonest or wasting my time, trying to recruit me to a company that has a generally bad image).
Yeah at least for tech stack and overall description of the opening I am clear with them I won't take a call without knowing the basic job description
My time for a call is not worth without knowing if the job is not minimally a fit.
"What would be a good time to schedule a call?"
"I just need a phone number to get the ball rolling"
"Up to £100k" [this range includes £1]
Nowadays I am not sure what a lot of them do. Almost any job they know about, I already know about, as it is posted on Linkedin and in other places. A lot of them seem to be people one or two years out of college.
Annoying things - pitching me jobs I do not have the qualifications for (like a C# job if I have worked in a Javascript stack) and if I defer they say "why not give it a try". So in the older days I relent, apply, do not get it for the reason I had told them, and then they don't want to talk to me any more because I couldn't close the deal.
Suggesting to me I come to their office and meet them, despite only having given some vague words about some possible openings. Springing a surprise tech quiz on me when I arrive at the office (happened once).
While their usefulness has gone down, the one useful thing they still give is feedback on how the interview went. Of course, having been on the other side of the table and interviewing people, sometimes there is nothing wrong with someone - they are mediocre, just like the last three interviews, and the next person who comes in was suggested by the best coder on the team as a great coder, and they come in and impress us all as well - so they get the offer, not you.
I guess it’s so they can hire out some rando they just plucked off the street as normal engineer.
Easiest way for me to not even consider your opening (and don't worry, 99.9% of the time they're not worth it)
Saying they'd like to "chat" instead of just telling you you passed the interview and got an offer.
I feel it’s disrespectful to me and my current employer… Like asking out on a date someone that’s walking down the street with their partner.
I imagine I might be a bit particular here for feeling this way. I’m not American, maybe it’s that… I’d just wish that I could set my status to “not looking for a job, don’t contact me”. At least not through a completely impersonal spammy message.
Salary range is more a function of the market (yes, there are companies which seem to under- or even overpay), tech stack is changeable if needed, team size's flexible - if it's too big, it splits into parts.
The most annoying thing... is that you often don't know what was not good from the company standpoint.
I only had a simple yes/no question about the job that was important enough to me to either refuse or stay considering the position.
The recruiter just uploaded my cv in his database to start the normal long process and never bothered answering to me ever again.
It was a waste of time for everyone involved.
Followed closely by "how much are you currently earning?"
He was polite, urbane, efficient, well-informed and helpful. He got me an interview with a well-known company, and I got the job.
Two years later I was ready to move again; so naturally I went back to the same recruiter. But he had been promoted, and was now the managing director of the recruitment company; he no longer handled clients personally. His client-handling staff were run-of-the-mill.
Never before or since have I dealt with a recruiter that didn't seem like an ignorant, slimy salesman.
[Edit: I'm British. I worked for a year in the USA; I got the job through a local recruitment agency in Richmond, VA, who were pleasant, hard-working and well-connected. My remarks were about my UK experience.]
Those emails get ignored. I ignore most automated agency emails as well.
I will always reply to personal emails from in-house recruiters or employees, however. I am starting a new job soon, though, so it's only to thank them for writing.
I add an emoji before my first name on linkedin for the same reason.
I got on the phone with one of them and he started talking about devops - which is not on my resume. I guess he expected me to catch that, I missed it, and ended up wasting his time.
I offer you $10,000 to maker a phone call and ask someone if they might like to do something. There's a 1 in 50 chance you'll win the $10K.
Would you do it?
Not showing up for the call they insisted on :P
On LinkedIn, etc. reaching out may still be fine (even though I have set my profile to: "I am not interested in opportunities right now"), because you have no other chance me because of the pandemic (no places to mingle with engineers).
2. ask me to write code for them for free, to be "evaluated". This has always seemed like a scam to me. Either I'm working for free, or it's code that they won't even look at
I have a pre-typed response asking for all the basic details first, otherwise I won’t engage any further.
I believe they want to talk live because that shows you are interested enough to put some effort in. If someone can't commit to a 30min call, then they probably aren't actually looking for a new job. If a candidate will only deal with them via email and never talk live, they may make conclusions from this related to the communication skills (not judging but think about it). For a lot of companies, communication skills for developers are as important as coding skills since you will be working with other humans.
Not all recruiters of course. I’ve had some who are super helpful, keep in touch with friendly and useful checkins, etc.
Some of them even start with (I know you're not interested, but what would it take to tempt you into....)
I usually answer with a salary figure that would match what I earn as a freelancer, plus taxes, and then they leave it at that. (I live in Sweden, one of the most heavily taxed nations on earth, so that +taxes is quite significant)
I do however agree with another poster that recruiters are a luxury problem to have, and I'm grateful for their harassment, in the sense that it represents a job security. Still, I do hope they would read this thread and stop it with the worst practices
- ghosting
- asking for my current salary
- asking for my desired salary for a job that I know very little about
- not sharing the actual salary range for the position we're discussing
Google has outsourced all hiring, their "internal" recruiters are temps working from an external sweatshop.
There are plenty of issues and disincentives. They recruit for Google but they are not allowed to say that they work at Google themselves. They couldn't care less about the company because they don't work there and have zero benefits.
In my experience, if you wait a month to reply to the reach out email, there is a good chance you get a delivery error recipient not found, because the recruiter is not contracted by google anymore. The churn is insane.
Facebook and Apple use internal recruiters (in London). My experience with them was much more positive.
It could be that the guy you talked to had some agreement with somebody working there to share the referral bonus in case of hire, but I don't know how shady that would be considered.
It’s different now. I worked at a well known company for a few years and get plenty of recruiter emails. Many of them are for positions I’m not interested in. Many of them use tactics I’d prefer they didn’t. But I don’t complain because the only thing worse than receiving these emails is not receiving them.
I despise the rare ones who dangle a job they do not actually have in order to get my information in their database.
These always seem to be the same ones who gaslight and neg: e.g. "We're looking for people who know what they're doing" and such. Not sure what they accomplish with that, but conversation is over.
That's comparatively rare, though. Most are just decent people, making a living connecting people who want a job with people wanting to hire.
Ghosting is annoying, but I've had good luck asking them in advance not to do that. "Tell me what's going on, even if it's nothing, or bad news"
However, I'm of a mind these days that full-time, salaried jobs are rarely the best option. Freelancing, bootstrapping, or founding are all usually better given today's market.
Finally, be unfailingly polite and kind to recruiters, and to everyone, really, even if they don't have anything you want, unless and until they give you a specific reason not to be (eg gaslight, neg). How you treat people is a reflection of your personal character. Be on the side of good.
I've been called by recruiters who won't name the company they're recruiting for, the salary range, and are incapable of actually describing the daily-expections beyond buzzwords.
I've found the best approach for me is to google "sysadmin helsinki", etc, and applying directly to companies. Any time I see an application form that wants facebook/linkedin/github details I just close the window.
Dealing with people (in-house recruiters possible) in the actual company cuts actually allows you to have a decent conversation about expected skillsets, areas that are involved, working hours, on-call schedules, salary, etc.
- lack of diversity in candidates. (not just virtue signaling. if all I see are nearly identical resumes, I assume the recruiter is just phoning it in.)
- candidates “just a little out of your price range” who are 30% over the top end of my budget.
- “confidentially” telling me what other offers a candidate has because then I know they are also leaking my offers to my competitors
- telling me every candidate is great
- telling me every candidate is a hot commodity like they are hotels.com
5 seconds with a search engine and I can usually find the exact job. Now I know the name of the company you're so carefully trying to avoid naming.
You're not going to take a call from someone you couldn't imagine working for.
The initial intro and description can be handled via email or text. If not, well that is a red flag right away.
Worse is when this becomes a conversation with a hiring manager and they are somehow shocked by your complete lack of total excitement about their framework. Once it becomes clear they are wanting a tool jockey instead of somebody to write software I have already lost complete interest. It might as well be a dead end career telemarketing at that point.
Asynch is ignorable (which is why they are good for the receiver), but Synch if accepted can become a negotiation (which is good for the sender).
My advice for engineers is: understand what manner of communication you most prefer, state this clearly whereever you have a profile and stick rigidly to this. There is really no reason why a recruiter should have your number, and if they do, no reason for you to answer it if the number is unrecognised
- Sending totally unsuitable vacancies
- Refusing to disclose company name
- Refusing to disclose salary
- Not respecting your time
- Fishing for your information without disclosing anything to you
Generally having a kind of condescending, slimy, sales like approach in communication, although this is far less common then it used to be.
Gives you an impression they could by selling anything. In the morning - you to the company. After lunch - a house or a used car.
You are reaching out to me because I was in your system, to then ask me when was the last time I interviewed?! Once that batch of recruiters is gone, rinse and repeat for the next wave of recruiters[0].
[0] https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/a511708c-e058-4488-958b-56f7ed5...
I also lecture them at the end of a call sometimes. One of the more recent calls, they recruiter was looking for someone to fill “an architect position”. I asked him if he knew anything about software, and he conceded that he didn’t and that he was a psych major. I asked him if the people who told him to find an architect had told him what that entailed. They hadn’t. So I broke down three different types of architects there is in software development (code, systems and enterprise) told him he was most likely looking for a systems and what profile they could have and had a general good discussion with him. When I’m done at my current position, I have a good repor with this guys to have him find me an interesting position :)
So advice to recruiters:
1) Know what you have to offer
2) Know what you are actually looking for, even if it’s complicated. If you want to hire experienced people, seem like you know what you are talking about.
3) Proof read you written communication. You main job is to communicate and make a good first impression, but if your outreach mail/message is filled with spelling mistakes or contradictions, I’m not gonna respond.
4) Don’t try to sell me the cat in the hat. With experience come the ability to look right through your babble. If you want people like that, be open and honest. We might cut you some slack if the position is interesting enough to us ;)
- Sending really unprofessional messages and not even doing the smallest amount of research before talking to me. I've had one call about a Ruby tech lead position this week, nowhere on my publicly available CVs do I even mention Ruby.
- I've got multiple messages from "lol we're so quirky here" type recruiters, all I can think is "silence, brand!". Emojis evoke a very visceral and unpleasant reaction from me, and I'll always forward the messages onto my boss asking him to make sure we never use those recruiters
- I'll say things that amount to "if they're offering less than $x, they can't afford me", and they'll try to haggle. That's incredibly disrespectful IMHO
- Pretending they care about social issues. If they mention anything about workplace activism I get as far away as possible.
- Being too friendly. I'm a potential recruit, not your new best mate.
1. Nonsense spam messages. No content about their company or anything that shows they know anything about me. "Your experience at $COMPANY" doesn't count either.
2. Not using the Calendly (https://calendly.com/) link I send them for scheduling and instead trying to have a email chain of "What's your availability like?" "Does 8:30am work for you?" "What's the best # to reach you?" OMFG use the calendar schedule link I sent you at the beginning of our conversation! Also, my # is at the very top of my resume, so you just showed you didn't even glance at it.
3. Having blinders on when looking at a candidate. One thing I run into a lot is recruiters or interviewers trying to pigeon-hole me into some box like "backend Java developer" or "front-end react developer" or "swift iOS developer" I mean it when I say senior full-stack web and app software engineer. Don't try to reduce my experience and skills and scoff at me when I know what my time is worth and what salary I can expect, because I'm already making that much! You want a candidate that can do *everything* but at intern rates? Don't waste my time and don't ever, ever neg me for having standards that reflect my reality.
4. "Why do you want to work for this company?" Because you're hiring and money is a requisite for existence. Give up this whole "passion for the product or tech" nonsense. You sell a service that pipes data; anyone that pretends to be passionate about that is full of it.
When I am ready to make a switch, I now have a better understanding of what's out there.
Sure, sometimes the calls are a waste of time, but its not like I haven't also wasted at least that much time in a week scrolling on reddit.
I guess what I'm trying say is don't be so dismissive about a conversation. Building a relationship with the folks who are a gateway to new jobs is not a bad thing.
Though I leave my little Java experience (just some side tasks, no career in it) on the CV as a honey pot that allows me to identify stupid recruiters earlier. If they contact me because of it, I know they're just chasing buzzwords and don't care about actual experience.
Seriously: it is right there on LinkedIn and if someone is interested I tell them to forward the link to my profile.
In fact that is my acid test now.
If they insist on me sending anything more it is game over.
But if the recruiter obviously can't even be bothered to read my interests I've published on my profile, they can take a long hike off a short pier.
Even worse is when a recruiter finds me a well paid job that I like.
I hate those jerks.
Wasting everyone's time with wanting to "talk on the phone", trying to clarify details about my "skills" and "experience" or "salary expectation", ugh such pointless questions - can't they just send emails, which I can slam the "delete" key on?
There are a lot—a lot—of shitty, slimy, unprofessional and rude recruiters out there. The number of actually-good recruiters is dwarfed by the teeming masses of bad recruiters. The vast majority of recruiters reading this probably think they're in the good minority but they're just Dunning-Krugerrands and they're actually shitty too.
For real, most recruiters are awful and dealing with them has zero upside.
If you're a recruiter reading this you're probably one of the good guys just by virtue of making any effort beyond keyword scraping!
It's like saying "ugh, it really pisses me off when police tries to do their job and protect me." in a conversation about police brutality and overreach.
Yeah, its aggravating sometimes but in the long run, I'd rather be approached for jobs by noobs than be ignored.
Skills and experience? Those are on the CV. Salary? That should flow in the other direction, from the hirer.
Lack of information about culture or team policies (working hours, time tracking etc)
Always wanting to do a phone call before giving basic info - I get 10+ targeted outreach a week, I don’t have time and anyone good will have similar issues
Give highly generic position descriptions "innovative company based in your country doing stuff"
Call you up even if you haven't posted a CV in years and ask for a CV
Not listen to you "I'm a contractor, I'm looking for contracts" - "would you consider full time" - "no" . Arrive at interview to find company looking to hire full-time because hey the word "no" means something different in recruiter speak
By ignoring them, you become more and more interesting to them, and their study. Be wary. Soon they will stalk to IRL.
Will add to the OP’s list by saying they often also leave out even the hiring company’s name and if it’s a defined length contract in the initial message. Why do I need to get on a call for this?
Ghosting you is definitely not ok, but the inability to provide status updates usually comes from the end-client, not the recruiter.
Yes, and also because it's in your own self interest. That recruiter who has a job that you're not interested in? The next job they have may be a perfect fit. But if you're a jerk to them about this one, they aren't going to call you with the next one.
Especially, never be rude to an airline gate agent. They can look you right in the eye and tell you that the flight is full. Or, in the exact same circumstances, they can say "Let me upgrade you to first class." They're probably going to go with the first option if they don't like you.
Absolutely, be nice to people because it affects who you turn into, and you eventually have to live with who that is. But also be nice to others because sometimes it helps you.
Looking back, if I had been shitty to every single recruiter, my career would not be materially very different. Slightly different perhaps, but arc essentially the same. My full-time jobs came from direct contact. Freelance through agencies. That one time I co-founded, no recruiter was involved at any point.
I suggest be kind and polite because you can, as an expression of strength and power. Even if you're a stone-cold sociopath or imagine yourself to be, do it because being shitty is easy and being genuinely kind is a challenge.
Interesting, why do you think that? What has changed?
Naively I would tend to think that the quality of freelancing opportunities and that of full-time jobs are correlated, but your comment imply that they're not. What am I missing?
Bootstrapping or founding? Everything that you do is an investment in your future. It's like buying a house rather than renting.
There are exceptions, of course.
> What has changed?
I'm not sure anything has changed. Software is an ever-expanding demand. If you know how to write it, you can charge a premium for this skill.
Sounds interesting. Care to expand on that?
I've had a handful of good experiences with recruiters, this seems to mostly be with recruiters who at one point were engineers or have been hired by FAANG. However, my best experience with a recruiter lead to a job that after about two weeks didn't fit the description of the job at hand. In short, I was under the impression I'd be writing Go and Elixir and within two weeks was writing glue code to hold together a shit-tier ruby app expected to "scale to 9-9's reliability". Other times, I've ascertained I haven't gotten a job after a botched interview and heard "officially" from the recruiter weeks later. Sometimes they're genuinely just idiots or incompetent (which is mostly annoying because it sucks when your time is wasted by someone incompetent). In short, I no longer trust recruiters.
Of course, but I'm not sure why that is my problem. Does the company want good people, or just the best they can afford after recruiter fees? If the recruiter can talk the talk, I'll hang with them vs going direct, and they will get the commission. If not, they won't get the placement anyway. They would be better off telling me the company and making a case for themselves why I should work with them (dealing with salary negotiation etc) vs hiding details and ending up up with me bailing early on the opportunity. The typical approach is short-sighted imo.
State that you want to conduct your own research into the company first, and that by hiding the name they are coming off as unprofessional. To avoid the questions on conflict and timing, add this note: "You can use the this message and its timestamp as a proof of first contact."
Some come back with actual details. Always be kind and courteous with them.
Nonetheless, what I wrote back in 2014 still holds true: https://bostik.iki.fi/aivoituksia/pages/recruiter-anxiety.ht...
You might be doing yourself a disservice there. It varies by company but I ask our HR team to offer the option of LinkedIn profile as an alternative to uploading a CV/resume in case you have the former but don't have the latter to hand or prepared. It's still a minority but I do see people come through who use their public LinkedIn profile as their CV.
Github is a complete waste of time as a guideline to anything useful. If there was any doubt about that in the past the recent trend I've seen of people setting up separate GitHub accounts for each job they have and keeping their personal account separate has completely removed it. (Sometimes this behaviour is company mandated, but often it's peoples' own choice.)
I've never seen the point at all of asking for other social networks because that stuff is none of my business.
I see the request for social media, as a method to determine if you will fit in. If the group you are going to is extreme in some way, it would be a blessing to avoid them. e.g. if they all play tennis and they have their own tennis tournament ... and you hate tennis ... you will hate working there.
Makes me wonder if you, as a potential employee, should ask to see their linkedin / facebook pages .....
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-10-13/it-isn...
This is in effect how you gauge what your talents are worth in the labor market. I’m glad offers get leaked for this reason
We pay well. I don’t alter my offers based on the others I hear about. We usually beat them anyway, but when we don’t, that’s too bad.
The only problem here is that they're claiming confidentiality which is obviously not true. Workers and their agents should be playing offers off each other.
I think it's the pipeline as well as selection: I work in finance and usually in smaller firms.
Could you explain what you mean by this? I don't quite understand the language.
So in this case, they don't actually care about finding good (or underpriced) candidates, they're just spamming a basic resume match.
// ...
INFORMAL work or perform without much effort, interest, or enthusiasm. "I think of my playing as committed—I can't remember ever phoning it in at any performance"
> My advice for engineers is: understand what manner of communication you most prefer, state this clearly whereever you have a profile and stick rigidly to this. There is really no reason why a recruiter should have your number, and if they do, no reason for you to answer it if the number is unrecognised
I understand what you're trying to convey to recruiters here but, and please understand that my intent isn't to be unkind (and certainly not to you specifically because I'm talking about a whole class of comments), what you may not understand is how this comes across and why it is not good advice for other engineers who may read your comment.
It comes across as entitled and demanding, and marks you out as somebody who possibly lacks flexibility, and might be difficult to work with.
You might like to think that you are very special and very talented, and maybe you are, but here's a dose of reality for you: I work for a company that nobody's ever heard of and, even here, we get far more applicants for our engineering roles than we have roles available. Inevitably that means we unfortunately turn down some very special and very talented people because there are simply too many of them in our pipeline to employ them all (much as I might like to).
This in turn means we get to be choosy about who we hire and who we don't. If you come off as maybe a bit difficult to work with, or a bit inflexible, or maybe nursing a sense of entitlement, you're probably not going to get the job. Why? Because we know there's somebody else in the pipeline with the same skills and who is going to be easier and more pleasant to work with. So, at every stage of our selection process we're selecting against those former traits, and for the latter traits.
And, let me state this again, I don't work for a famous company that loads of people want to work at. I've never really worked for a famous company, apart from one multinational retailer on a contract, yet this is the way it's worked at every single one of them and they've never really struggled to hire. (Of course companies moan that it's hard to hire engineers but what I've come to realise is that most of the time what they mean is that it's more effort than they expected or would like - a sort of reverse entitlement, if you like: "well, these people should obviously just fall into our laps.")
We all have our preferences, and I hate talking to recruiters and going through selection processes but, when all's said and done, if you want the job you've got to play the game. I know there are far too many recruiters who appear to have picked up their social skills from the local reptile sanctuary, but (and especially if you want the job) do not be a pain in the ass to the recruiter, whether they're external or in-house.
FOR ADDITIONAL CONTEXT ONLY: I am not a recruiter (I'm very much a programmer at heart), but I do recruit people for my own teams, and in fact I regard building a strong team as possibly my most important responsibility. This is because without that strong team I can't really discharge my other key responsibilities effectively.
Moreover, unless your business is basic webdev or your skill requirements are very low, I have a hard time believing you are turning down lots of candidates. It's brutal out there for those trying to hire. This is definately not a buyers market, it's a seller's market. It may not be for long, but that's the current situation.
If a company could afford to purge people for being skeptical of recruiters, they wouldn't be spending money on recruiters. Engaging in recruitment by definition means you don't have an adequate hiring pool.
If you want me to talk to you, you can make time in your schedule and I can keep my number secret. I don't work for you, I don't need to be flexible. You reached out? Then you operate on my terms. That's completely reasonable and anyone who tries to suggest it isn't reasonable, is being unreasonable - and I think any protestations to the contrary are probably hot air. If they want me, that's not going to be the tipping point (nor should it be).
Compared to a discussion with an HR member who also happen to deal with recruiting it's night and day. The gold standard being of course talking to an actual manager or team member who can explain why they need people, and for what.
Even talking to my own company's HR people felt like a chore in a lot of jobs, and we took a lot of time to get them to understand what we are looking for. It's just not simple, they don't do the same job, and the further the people are from us the harder it is to have efficient recruiting discussions IMO.
It can become too much when it's several call requests a day, and some of them can become rather pushy, e.g. demanding references up front before you've even applied for something. I don't get many approaches at the moment, but last year the number ramped up to a point where I had to be selective about phone calls.
Part of it is that a 15 minute call isn't just 15 minutes. If you want good outcomes, there's some preparation involved. A bit of research on the company helps. Refreshing what you recall about $X that they mentioned. And just getting into a good frame of mind to have a productive call. Maybe get a nice drink ready. Even finding somewhere quiet to take a call, if you aren't normally in a suitable place. And there's stopping what else you were doing.
Personally I've enjoyed chatting with many recruiters over the last couple of years, and it has led to some pleasant relationships, and a much better understanding of what's realistically out there. It's also been an opportunity for me to share with recruiters things they didn't know but were interested in, mostly technology areas and terminology.
My current role came from taking a long call with a recruiter more than a year earlier about a different role in a different company. I enjoyed the chat, we talked about the industry in general, technology trends, different skill areas, how to manage projects and so on, as they tried to figure out how to pitch me to the company. That one didn't work out. But a year later I came to their mind for a role somewhere else, I remembered them as well so the new call started out well, and the role turned out to be a great fit for me. They also ended up negotiating for me, undoubtedly helped by the chat from a year before, and I'm pleased with how it turned out. As a result of all the positive interactions I ended up enthusiastic about the new job too.
Recruiters take your CV, remove identifiable information (to avoid company going directly after you), add 1-2 cover/intro pages and send it to the company.
No ones gonna PRINT PDF your LinkedIn page and send it to a company as an application.
Also from company’s point of view, even if you were an applicant with a printed LinkedIn page as CV, it would add more questions than give any you brownie points.
While you can learn about someone’s experience on LinkedIn, it is not a CV replacement in the world recruitment.
I've worked as a recruiter for 7 years, and I have sent LinkedIn print-outs to clients several times. A strong candidate's a strong candidate.
> Recruiters take your CV, remove identifiable information (to avoid company going directly after you), add 1-2 cover/intro pages and send it to the company.
Recruiters have terms in place with their clients that mean the client would have to pay either way. The only time recruiters will anonymise CVs before submission are if they're using a CV to try and tempt a company who isn't a client yet -- which is illegal unless they've cleared it with the candidate first.
I'm grateful to those recruiters - that was really helpful. One of them told me they have a team who will sort that out if there's good information in the LinkedIn profile already.
It also helped with a mental block, because it is so hard to cut down decades of diverse experience into a couple of pages that somehow encapsulate it. A good recruiter knows what the company wants to see better than I do, and if something is genuinely part of my skills and experience that I wouldn't have thought to include, that's really helpful.
I don't know why but I found things pretty difficult mentally last year. Those recruiters who were able to hook me up with a company with less ritual proved to be catalytic.
If a cold-messaging recruiter asks me for a CV now, I apologise for not having an up to date one and tell them they are welcome to use my LinkedIn profile. If they continue needing a CV, the process stalls. I feel I should have something ready, but during times where I was seriously looking for a role, I ended up with my attention taken up with calls, interviews and offers from other companies before I got around to writing up a targeted CV, so ended up not writing one. Perhaps it's just luck but that's how it turned out the last couple of years.
Similarly, companies that took "as little as a month!" to interview were eclipsed by those who took less than a week to make a good offer worth considering.
Good recruiters have been catalytic in getting those offers quickly, as well as negotiating on my behalf (taking into account my input, not blindly). So I am grateful to the good ones. They are facilitators.
I’m currently hiring for a bunch of roles and recruiters are aggressively reaching out that they “have the perfect candidate for your vacancy”. Even though I’m looking for experienced ML specialists and they’re offering someone with 1 year of Java CRUD app experience… they’re playing the numbers game on both sides of the market.
(this is for cold outreach)
The context of the GP post is getting back to a recruiter to find out more about a job, which suggests you're at least interested in that job. If you are interested, you need to be at least somewhat accommodating.
Yes, they reached out to you, but now you're getting back to them? Why are you doing this unless you're interested?
If you're not interested, either ignore them or send a polite decline.
Expressing interest whilst simultaneously coming off as difficult and entitled does you no favours.
Recruiters will often have a bunch of people who get back to them to express interest for any given role and will, in addition, be responsible for multiple roles. Having a quick call with somebody is generally quicker than responding by email, which is probably the main reason they ask for a call. Doesn't mean you can't do the call at a time of mutual convenience - that's obviously fine.
> Moreover, unless your business is basic webdev or your skill requirements are very low, I have a hard time believing you are turning down lots of candidates. It's brutal out there for those trying to hire. This is definately not a buyers market, it's a seller's market. It may not be for long, but that's the current situation.
That might be true in your market: it is not in mine. You are, of course, entitled to believe whatever you'd like to.
Right, because it's very hard trying to find a good candidate now.
> The context of the GP post is getting back to a recruiter to find out more about a job, which suggests you're at least interested in that job.
No, I am open to being persuaded. But without basic details like the name of the company, salary range, rough description of what the job is and location/WFH situation, I cannot say that I am interested or not. I am not going to take time off work and start an interview process -- which costs me vacation time and effort -- with a company that isn't willing to try to prove to me that they are better than my current employer. So if I have a question, then you should answer it if you want me to consider taking the leap to interview with you. You are trying to recruit me. Don't do that with a chip on your shoulder. What kind of salesman tries to make his leads jump through hoops? You are the salesmen here.
On the other hand when I am unemployed and I reach out to you to convince me to hire you, I will give you all my contact info and I will be willing to jump through hoops to convince you to hire me, just as you should be willing to jump through hoops when you are trying to recruit someone to quit their current job and come work for you.
When 2 recruiters sends in your info, the company does not know whom to compensate. They have been sued for this. 15 years ago, the common practice, because lawsuits and fraud are expensive, it was safer to pass on the candidate.
Getting your application thrown away because you happened to postulate a the company the recruiter didn't disclose you is just horrible.
Between a recruiter and me submitting, I prefer the recruiter, as they should be pushing to get the job, its in their interest. If I get the job, it is no skin off of me.
By way of example from the other side of the fence - my LinkedIn profile asks recruiters to state that they've read my pre-requisites for a role when they contact me. 90% don't do that (and clearly haven't).
The kind of recruiter that doesn't bother to read the candidate's profile is "phoning it in"
I delete all of those - the remaining recruiters are generally ok, though they're often offering roles that are trivially discoverable to anyone actively job hunting.
We don't make much use of external recruiters for technical roles (there are a couple that we do use from time to time). We do talk to them about their candidates, and they have warned us off people they've spoken to who were rude or demanding.
We also have an in-house recruiter as part of our HR. In technology we don't often approach people directly (i.e., headhunt). I seem to recall we used it once for a leadership role a year or two back, but ended up hiring a referral instead. If you're demanding with our recruiter I may not even hear about it because they might reject you on my behalf (a decision that I will always support). But if you have been tricky to deal with, we'll certainly talk about it.
That doesn't mean we're completely inflexible either: we pick a time of mutual convenience to talk, but we are going to want to talk. Quite often people will want to talk to use to find out more about a role before they go into a formal selection process. Again, we schedule these at a time of mutual convenience. We often reschedule telephone and in-person interviews (not that we've been doing a whole lot of those for the past 15 months) at candidates request because life happens.
There seems to be some belief amongst a number of posters on this thread that the only or main reason we want to talk to you is so we can cut to a salary negotiation and hammer you down. That simply isn't true. Here are a couple of other important reasons we want to talk:
- We can learn a lot more about who someone is by talking to them than we ever can by email; the same goes in reverse. That call is as much about helping you figure out whether you want to proceed with your application as it is about us taking you forward.
- It's generally a lot quicker to deal with candidate questions on a phone call than it is in a potentially long email chain: I'd rather have a 10 minute call with someone than spend 30 minutes writing an email. This has benefits for both parties: both are usually busy. Time is often of the essence for both.
We often do not talk about salary at all in an initial conversation unless we're concerned that there's a significant mismatch in expectation: we don't want to waste anybody's time.
Again, let me reiterate the advice: don't be difficult. It doesn't matter whether you contacted them, or they contacted you: if you're really interested in the job, then be accommodating. This doesn't mean you can't come to some mutually convenient arrangement, but don't be a pain about it. If you're not interested then either ignore them (they won't take it personally, or even remember), or politely decline. You can even politely ask for more detail and politely decline if they're not forthcoming. That's fine, but there is no scenario in which it is beneficial for you to be difficult.
This advice holds true with every company I've worked for and every reputable recruiter I've worked with.
[This is not to say I've never lost my rag with a recruiter: I gave one a polite but firm telling off the other day because he kept phoning me to try to hawk candidates to me (yes, they can be as painful for hiring managers as for candidates). His line of thinking was that because he'd sent me an email in the morning saying he'd like to talk to me in the afternoon, my silence was a tacit approval for him to call me. It was probably the third time he'd called me when I was either in the middle of a meeting, or feverishly doing pre- or post- work between meetings, and I'd just had enough and pointed out to him that this was not OK. I still said please and thank you, and I did not shout or swear at him. I do get that pushy recruiters are annoying but this guy's behaviour represents only a tiny, tiny minority of my interaction with recruiters over the course of my career.]
> if you're really interested in the job, then be accommodating
Right, that's the point - I don't know if I'm interested until I have a fair amount of detail about the posting. If it can be communicated via email, it should be. I don't want information artificially withheld in order to bait me into a sales pitch, or for that sales pitch to be misrepresented as the type of discussion you're offering.
> There seems to be some belief amongst a number of posters on this thread that the only or main reason we want to talk to you is so we can cut to a salary negotiation and hammer you down. That simply isn't true.
Sure, but your written communication needs to demonstrate to me that you aren't one of those people, because most recruiters are.
Typically recruiters are responsible for multiple roles, and will be dealing with an absolute hail of email. One learns by experience that a quick call is often a more efficient way of imparting information and dealing with follow-up questions than email.
Look, some recruiters are... quite unsavoury... and nobody's denying that, but if you've responded to them there's obviously enough in that first email/LinkedIn message to have whetted your appetite.
If you go back to them with questions they'll probably be more than happy to answer, but they're also probably going to want to do it on a call because it's just quicker and easier. Yes, quicker and easier for them. If you don't like that, just ignore them, or politely decline. There's no need to do more.
It's generally possible to figure out whether a recruiter is worth responding to at all based on their first message to you, just as it's generally possible to figure out whether a job applicant is worth talking to based on their initial application (doesn't necessarily mean they'll get the job, of course, because there will be multiple applicants at every stage of the process). I suppose this is a kind way of saying that if you're wasting your time with recruiters you're better off looking in the mirror and changing your own behaviour than you are complaining about the recruiters and trying to change them.
If someone gets three messages a day, five days a week, and 80% of those messages say "there is a job somewhere, I won't say which country, or what kind of job, but it's a leading-edge company that won awards for excellence in 2015, would you like to jump on a call?", that's not enough information to decide whether to jump on a call.
Let's focus on just that 80%, because that's what's being complained about.
The potential candidate has no idea if the call is worthwhile yet.
But from experience, the potential candidate should estimate: It's probably in a city, state or sometimes even a country, that they aren't going to relocate to. It's probably offering less than half their current salary, or if they are not currently working, it's probably offering at the low end for what they could get. It's probably in an area of technology that has almost no overlap with what they have done before. It's probably not an interesting job even if everything else were great. The recruiter has probably not read your profile at all. Their message is probably somewhat automated, and you might not even get a reply if you say yes to a call.
Given that it's a recruiter who has already shown how little they value your time (by sending a message devoid of useful information, when they could easily say useful things up front), and in some cases they have lied ("I'm a headhunter and my client specifically asked me to write to you" in their mailmerge template...), but they have whetted your appetite enough to reply - it seems only fair to reply with a few easy questions first before a call:
- Which country? Would I have to relocate? Is the salary less than half my current salary? Is it a tech job? Is it a management job? Is it a retail job? Have you looked at my CV/profile at all? Am I writing to a human being?
You're right that a quick call is an efficient way of imparting information. But who's going to agree to a quick call about something extremely vague when the other party has shown so little consideration towards the potential candidate so far, and there's almost certainly nothing in it for the candidate?
It's analogous to agreeing to a sales call which was proposed by an opening message like "I have a household product you will definitely want to buy - tell me your number so I can call you!!" with no clue about what the product is. Of course you're going to be curious enough sometimes ("whetted") to reply with "tell me something useful about the product before I agree to a call?" It's amazing how many of these get a second message that's just as vague as the first one.
Perhaps this strategy works out for those recruiters, as it will filter out candidates who feel comfortable declining low quality approaches, and appeal to the more desparate candidates who will take anything. Recruiters are often looking for candidates that would accept below-average salaries to work for less attractive jobs, after all.
It's still reasonable for a potential candidate to get answers to a few basic questions before proceeding with a call.