I've talked to experienced recruiters and hiring managers about this. The interesting thing is that the content of the email actually doesn't matter much at all. Personalization, mentioning mutual contacts, etc helps but not a lot.
The single biggest determinant of a successful recruit is (drumroll, please) whether the candidate is currently looking for a job.
I just went back to read the recruiting email that kicked off my current job. And I quote:
"I came across your profile online and would like to chat with you about the exciting career opportunities that we have available at Facebook."
Wow. That sure sounded a lot more exciting at the time, because I was looking. And that's my point. Timing is nearly everything. Maybe you could find ways to predict when or if someone is looking, say, close to anniversaries of their current job (ie vesting cliffs) right before or after performance review time, etc.
But when the cost of a mis-timed email is essentially zero, there's no point. In a tight market like we have now, there will be a lot of smarmy, cut-n-paste junk in your inbox. Because it works.
As a recruiter my data supports this. I stopped being spammy and more thoughtful in my communication with candidates. The result? More replies thanking me for being thoughtful and no increase in candidates expressing interest. I've decided that recruiting is about being in the right place at the right time and offering amazing career opportunities.
Other things that make recruiting more effective:
* getting out of the office and meeting candidates in person
* building relationships with recruiters over time
* being educated about your target audience and making conversations about meaningful content
Totally agree with the personal relationships - recruiters whom I have met in person, shared coffee and they still bother keeping in touch - well I have got good opportunities from them, they have got recommendations from me. The faceless emails - nah.
It seems that someone could make a killing by building a service where you:
1) can invite a small group of recruiters who have gained your trust
2) keep an up-to-date record of what it would take for you to switch (whether it's Facebook offering a CTO position or any job that pays about the same)
3) make it easy to work with your selected recruiters to find a new job (accept/reject leads, plan job interviews, etc. etc.)
Note that they told you a heck of a lot in that email by mentioning Facebook. You already know about them, engineering culture, programming language, open source contributions, lots of online videos etc.
Many of the non-personalized emails tell you virtually nothing useful about the company, certainly almost never the name.
I don't think we need to be as adversary towards recruiters as we sometimes are as a profession.
Good recruiters are basically your sales force. They'll be out there building connections and holding a very wide book of open opportunities for you the moment you need them.
The good ones will also be respected on the other side, by the employer. If they think you are a particularly good fit for a good role, they can have both you and the employer walking into a very warm lead before you even start your search.
I have two or three recruiters who have kept me busy for a decade. I tend to think of them as partners as much as anything. They know I won't make them look stupid in front of their clients, and I know they will do the right thing by me by being frank & honest.
As with all professions, some are better than others. However, if you treat all recruiters with disdain you are also damaging your own prospects in terms of building some potentially mutually rewarding relationships.
I agree that an adversarial tone is not advisable for multiple reasons. I have seen a couple of articles on this topic where the engineer comes across as downright rude. I think this particular article (mostly) avoided this trap and recognized that while there are legitimate issues with the way recruiters approach engineers, this is still ultimately a good problem to have. Being in demand is great, but the tides can turn quickly in any profession (see: lawyers). I think it's perfectly appropriate to be able to point out issues with recruiting, but ideally with a sense of humility and appreciation for the opportunities that one has -- this article does that for the most part.
Hey, I completely agree. The tone of my post was pretty aggressive but sincerely my goal was to be helpful, if a bit gruff.
The recruiters I have worked with have been like any other demographic, mostly very nice people and great to work with, but then there are some bad apples that make the rest look bad. I wrote this to try to give feedback on what it's like from our end, to let them know what's more likely to work, and what's not.
I can totally relate to the things the author wrote on the post, and my personal experience is not much different. However, I can't help but feeling a little bit uncomfortable with the tone.
As developers / engineers we are privileged to be in a position to choose our employer more than they choose us, to be "chased" by recruiters and flattered about our much desired skills. It's important to maintain some humility and not forget how hard it is for other people (recruiters included).
I have no doubts that the author didn't intend to patronize and that his advise to recruiters is ultimately a positive one, (yes - it would save both the recruiter and the engineer time, if the recruiter wouldn't call about a java job when the CV says javascript). I just wish it was coming across a little less arrogant.
You're right. I really didn't mean to come off like that. But looking back I should've known better and should've worded things more professionally. I think I may edit the post based on what you guys have said about my tone. I was sincerely trying to help.
If I hear anything about you looking for “ninjas”, “pirates”, “hackers”, “samurais”, or anything of the like, I’m just going to assume you’re looking for a new saturday morning cartoon character and not an engineer. Grow up.
Quite, also "rockstars". I did think "hackers" was an odd choice. It may be misused or overused, but it's also an insiders term, e.g. Hacker News. I'm ok with a recruiter using it the appropriate context. I wonder how much a bay area billboard runs. If it gets a bit of news coverage it'll probably make waves.
> Most experienced engineers get several solicitations a day
As an engineer who's just starting out, I get no solicitations at all. I've heard about people being constantly contacted about work, but that's just not happening to me. If I lost my job, I'd have no idea what to do. How do you get on these people's radar? I'd love to feel more in control of my career instead of like my whole life depends on the good graces of my current boss.
The reason why this happens to a lot of developers is because:
1) They have a LinkedIn or Stack Overflow account.
2) They have dealt with a recruiter before, either looking for work or from cold calls.
I've had the (mis)fortune of both. The only people that ever look at my LinkedIn profile are recruiters, so I regularly get emails about crappy jobs. Hell, it's not unusual for a recruiter to offer me the same-level job at the company I already work at, sometimes even by phone...
It'll happen, so I won't worry too much about it. It's largely a talent market out there, and if you've spent enough time at a company that gets hounded by recruiters or a recruiter finds an online profile of yours you'll be on a "list" too.
Have an up-to-date LinkedIn profile that lists your skills and experience will do most of the work. Of course you can also create profiles on all different sorts of freelance/jobs sites, but that's only when you're really desperate.
Make LinkedIn/Careers 2.0 as good or better than your resume. When someone wants my resume I usually just export my Careers 2.0 profile to PDF and send them that.
I asked this on reddit. How much of a proliferation do recruiters have on the job market?
For example, in major cities, recruiters can find out information about every real job in the city and essentially build a relationship with every major company out there. In theory, they can own the job market.
The HR recruiters don't have the time to scan over all the resumes they get. And the new job seeker doesn't have a relationship with the company, so he is just sending out email blind. Oh yea, I see recruiters from all over the country connecting with companies and trying to fill those positions. So it isn't even local anymore. Pretty much any shady recruiter can see an open position and try fill it.
So the third-party recruiter has a gold mine on their hands. They upsell on finding good candidates because they are the only people that have the time/resources to actually do that kind of scanning. It is pretty shady but apparently lucrative. So the job seeker almost has to contact at least one recruiter.
My question, what percentage of open jobs out there get filled by third-party recruiters?
I wanted to say something else. Recruiters aren't necessarily good or bad. They are just a natural phenomenon of the technical landscape.
Like I said earlier, a HR person at a big company normally deals with the HR things. They aren't pouring over technical resumes. The technical recruiter, their sole purpose is to match candidates with job openings. So they have the time and resources to match candidates. This is bad for the lone job seeker that is just trying to find a job and he sees an opening out there.
On the recruiters themselves, you want to look for big company technical recruiters of high-rated firms. E.g. ignore all the random emails from sys-inc-ez-find.com. You can search for the four or five top recruiter firms in your area.
You don't have to talk to the 20-something recruiter. Normally, there is an account manager or manager that may even have a technical background. He/she is the person that typically seals the deal and knows his stuff.
At the top of my resume/CV, I have a prominent "Note to recruiters" link which includes details on which kinds of companies I'd be a good fit for (and vice versa), as well as other details (eg I'm not maintaining an entry in your database).
This has proven very useful since you can immediately tell which recruiters have actually made an effort to qualify me, versus the ones indistinguishable from spam. I even go so far as to block the more egregious ones at my mail server which keeps the nuisance emails down.
One of my main gripes with external recruiters are the in-person meeting.
One external recruiter contacted me on Linkedin and said they knew of open positions I might be a fit for, but insisted, like most of them do, that I come in and meet them. So I wasted an afternoon meeting them. Then I hear nothing for months. Then I get an e-mail from the same firm. The last guy I met moved on from the company, a new person is now handling me there. They know of some positions I might be a fit for. But since this was a new person handling my account, they wanted me to come in for another meeting before they referred me to any of these clients they theoretically had. Of course I didn't go.
Once when I was on the other side of things, when we were dealing with recruiting firms for a hire, my boss said he wanted to phone screen interviews before bringing them in. One of the recruiting firms was unhappy with this, and was insisting its interviews come in without a phone screen. Luckily I had a good boss, he insisted on the phone screen and they gave in.
Who benefits from no phone screen? As an interviewee, I don't want to a waste an afternoon, maybe a whole day going in to interview for a position which I am unqualified for, or which has some requirements (50% travel, whatever) that I do not want to go along with. As an interviewer, why waste my time, and my co-workers time, and their time bringing in someone who can't answer the most basic technical questions I can ask? I wonder how many people who gave those recruiters their resumes knew the recruiter was pushing against phone screens and for in-person interviews only.
I have to say, I struggle to see the benefit technical recruiters bring. They rarely know enough about the tech to do any sort of reasonable matching. They don't give me as much information that I could find about the job as if I went to the website. Obviously exclude the company, but if you aren't going to give me a vague impression of salary or reqs, why would I roll the dice?
You will never get technical recruiters to abandon calling candidates whenever they feel like it. They are competing against many other recruiters at their own firm, not to mention recruiting agencies, to place candidates in front of managers. Sure, you can demand that they not call you, but most would rather drop you from their database than miss closing a deal.
I've dramatically reduced the number of annoying calls I get simply by writing "please send me an email, I ignore unsolicited calls" on my linkedin/website.
Don't work with recruiters, period. Why? From the hiring side of the table, here's why.
1) they misrepresent you and lie. "Kevin has 10+ years of experience with Ruby on Rails". I go "huh, Kevin's a lying shit. Bin."
2) 40% of your goddamned salary finders fee?! Fuck that shit I'll find someone else.
3) why would I be interested in employing you if you're not interested in us? The fact that you've gone to a recruiter just says "I have no idea what I'm doing or where I want to go, and I can't be bothered with research"
4) why would I hire someone that's already on myriad recruiter databases and therefore likely to be poached by the same shyster that placed you?
So, yeah, don't use recruiters. As an employer, I get 20+ emails per day from these animated coproliths, and they all get deleted. I don't have time to read 30 CVs for "javas php rubo on rales" developers.
I'll just hire the smart cookie who wants to work for us and approaches us directly.
Edit: also, the only reason recruiters exist is because they exist. They introduce artificial scarcity in the labour market and then exploit the deficit they created.
No better than ambulance-chasers.
Double edit: just to ram home how useless these people are, in the last seven years I've had recruiters try to sell me myself, no fewer than three times. Not a single thought between their immaculately preened ears.
But how much of your time or HR's time goes to scanning through resumes. If you only spend time reading 30 resumes. And it possible a recruiter database has 100's, possibly with good candidates, then you must missed a good set of candidates.
And then there is a timing issue. How long is your job post out there? 2 weeks, 2 months? So in the window of time that your post is out there, candidates have to find your site and your job post.
Recruiters, that is what they do. Everyday, they are scanning for candidates, filling positions.
3) I'm a competent engineer and I could go anywhere. Why should I pretend you're the most awesome thing in the world or lie about how loyal I'm going to be?
3) Some of the best hires at firms I've worked at came from recruiters. From the candidates' point of view, it's often a lot more efficient to find matching positions and land offers through recruiters.
I once contacted a company about a job offer they had published on a university's alumni website. First thing they did was redirect me to their favorite recruitment agency so they would screen me before they considered my application.
Here's the thing that weeds out recruiters for me: If you get far enough to get me to respond, I'm going to ask a couple specific questions in my response. Answer them.
Just yesterday I responded to a recruiter, explained my situation and asked a couple specific questions. The response was a totally generic email that made it clear he didn't bother to read what I wrote, and just was eager to get me on the phone.
One thing I've learned is they want to get you on the phone ASAP so that they can waste your time, because somehow in their minds, the more time they waste on the phone with you, the more likely your'e going to be interested in them sending you jobs. (If I'd ever had a productive, business like conversation with a recruiter that wasn't full of weasely words and them evading questions, I might feel differently.)
I think this must be a Sales 101 tactic.
Well, I'm in a position to be picky. That makes me the kind of person you probably are really desperate to hire.... so why not take the time to read my reply and respond to it?
I mean, I expressed interest. Now I know I'm going to get follow up mails along the lines of "you expressed interest in blah... lets set up a call" for weeks... he'll never go back and actually read my response, I'm almost certain.
The single biggest determinant of a successful recruit is (drumroll, please) whether the candidate is currently looking for a job.
I just went back to read the recruiting email that kicked off my current job. And I quote:
"I came across your profile online and would like to chat with you about the exciting career opportunities that we have available at Facebook."
Wow. That sure sounded a lot more exciting at the time, because I was looking. And that's my point. Timing is nearly everything. Maybe you could find ways to predict when or if someone is looking, say, close to anniversaries of their current job (ie vesting cliffs) right before or after performance review time, etc.
But when the cost of a mis-timed email is essentially zero, there's no point. In a tight market like we have now, there will be a lot of smarmy, cut-n-paste junk in your inbox. Because it works.