

Engineer-to-Engineer Recruiting - samskiter
http://blog.sourcing.io/engineer-to-engineer-recruiting

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yummyfajitas
Here is an idea for getting useful responses back - give the candidate enough
info to evaluate whether they are interested. This means info on the company,
detailed description of the role, ballpark on the comp. You are even more
likely to get a response if your email suggests you went as far as googling
the candidate.

I truly don't understand why recruiters think "unspecified opportunity at top
startup in technology industry, send me your resume since I'm too lazy to
google it, I want a phone conversation" is actually useful.

~~~
lostcolony
I like the recruiters that tell you nothing other than a bit of the
technology, and even that does nothing to distinguish it. "I have a great Java
opportunity in (your area); call me if you're available and interested". Yeah,
I don't think so.

It's like they're trying to prevent you from going straight to the company, to
where they won't get their finder's fee, but all it does is ensure they only
get responses from people who are desperate.

~~~
argonaut
A lot of those recruiters are agency recruiters working on contingency.
Meaning they don't actually work for the company they're recruiting for, they
just get paid for successfully referring engineers to that company. The reason
they're so vague is because they don't want you skipping over them and
contacting the company directly, which would save you/the company a lot of
money (and cause them to lose their recruiting fee).

~~~
lostcolony
Like I said, "to where they won't get their finder's fee"

I understand them wanting to protect their sources, but they have to give some
details. "I have a Java backend position in the telecommunication sector, it
would be on the client's (whatever team) that (does whatever). I'm looking for
a developer with 3-5 years experience in Java or other static OO languages;
the client uses (frameworks), and some knowledge of (tech, tech, and tech)
would be helpful as well. Compensation is competitive, the pay is a bit better
than average, standard benefits" would be the elevator pitch that might
actually be worth paying attention to (well, no, because I don't want to go
back to writing Java, but you get the idea).

In short, I want to know -something- about the job beyond "it's a bog standard
development job". I can find a bajillion of those posted online, without
having to call and actually -talk- to someone. Show me that you actually know
what the position is about, and might be able to answer questions about it
before I actually talk to the client, and I might respond.

~~~
argonaut
We are in agreement.

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Jemaclus
What's really frustrating is when I get a seemingly personalized email, and
then six of my coworkers say that they got the same email. Do recruiters
really think we don't talk to each other?

~~~
Volscio
I try not to take it out on recruiters because from people I know who've done
it, their bosses are constantly on their asses to make quota/reach a certain #
of "connections" a day. The personal touch and relationship kind of goes out
the window.

~~~
vonmoltke
Very true, and unfortunate. However, its kind of bullshit when a company who
would look down on me for "resume blasting" and not tailoring my resume for
them thinks is OK to "lead blast" me with a fill-in-the-blank form letter.

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chaosphere2112
What gets me about recruiter spam is how similar to regular spam it is. I've
received only a smattering of messages, but largely, they're entirely
lowercase, they have almost no punctuation, and they frequently have patently
obvious grammatical errors. I responded to one recruiter (she managed to
contact me at a time I was looking at alternate employment), and on the phone
she was well-spoken; something about sticking a keyboard between them and me
apparently causes communication to devolve into a base form.

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lucb1e
I hear a lot about this, but never had any recruiter emails at all. I'm 20
years old so I suppose my name is just not known in the programmer world (?),
but then how does that work? How do you get your name known? Day after day you
hear about unemployment in the news, yet here everyone is complaining about
receiving too many "please come work for us" emails?

It's not that I don't believe that many developers receive so much spam, but I
don't understand why or how. How'd they even know if you're any good?
According to some internship places, >50% of the developers is incompetent. Do
recruiters just pull as many people as possible in for interviews and check
everyone out, is that the goal? Or is it mostly just because the company wants
to expand, or to compensate leaving/older people?

~~~
solarmist
I didn't start getting a ton of recruiter spam until I had a linkedin profile
and started "connecting" with recruiters on linkedin (to "get my name out";
not sure I'd use this method to get my name out again though). Before that I
would only occasionally get anything. Now every time I update my profile I get
a flood of recruiter spam.

~~~
lostcolony
You don't need to connect to recruiters, per se. But yes, having a LinkedIn
profile will ensure you get a constant trickle of recruiters. Any time you
touch your profile, expect the number to increase; LinkedIn's algorithm seems
to promote newly updated profiles, likely due from the assumption that
touching your LinkedIn profile is like updating your resume; you're more
probable to be looking for a job than someone who has left it sitting there
untouched for two years.

~~~
solarmist
Well, it also made a big difference once I moved to the Valley

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DHowett
Engineer-to-engineer recruiting works to some extent, but only as long as your
engineers are willing to tolerate it.

Airbnb, for example, has (had?) an "Always Be Recruiting" dogma: Get your
engineers so _psyched_ about the company that they go forth and witness to
every engineer they know. It seems to work–at least, until you dig deeper. The
nigh-unto weekly "most recruiting recommendations" statistics single out the
few who are willing to share the Kool-Aid, and–more importantly–the many
hundred who are not. If your engineers are made to look bad because they're
not proliferating their trade at every tech talk, it's a bad sign.

As an aside to my aside, this article seems to ignore the glaringly-obvious
"Have the CEO do the recruiting" conclusion.

~~~
mason55
_> As an aside to my aside, this article seems to ignore the glaringly-obvious
"Have the CEO do the recruiting" conclusion._

Comparative advantage. It's likely that the CEO's time is better spent
elsewhere even if he's also the best at getting responses to recruiting.

Maybe the right answer is to have a recruiter recruit using the CEOs account,
pretending to be the CEO and then handing people off to the recruiter version
of themselves when they reply.

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damm
Good marketing spam about their product. Nothing for the end user here; just
to sell to companies.

I wish recruiters would be:

a) honesty. Nothing good is built on a lie. b) personal. Get Feedback if you
are not interested and actively engage in talking to your potential employee's
as well as your potential clients. c) communication. Falls into b) but it also
falls into a).

I immediately delete most recruiting spam that is not actually written to me.
I realize this costs me jobs potentially but it also saves me face. Nothing
worse than getting hyped up over a potential job that will never be.

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sawar
Interesting article and its small sampling echoes what I’ve long preached –
keep HR and recruiters out of the hiring process.

The claim that HR/recruiters are the only ones that have “pipeline management”
(translation: multitasking), “offer negotiation” (translation: requirements
validation; this is farce as HR/recruiters work for the company and not the
candidate, thus they all have a take-it-or-leave-it approach), and “brand
recognition” skills are completely false. If HR/recruiters were such experts
on brand recognition then there would have been responses to the limited
sampling.

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whileonebegin
If a recruiter is open to telling you the company name, I usually respond. If
not, they're much more likely to be ignored.

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purereason
I think the article raises / highlights a great point. When you're trying to
hire the most talented folks out there, making that effort of integrating the
team, be it the CEO, VP R&D or any of the engineers in the process makes a
strong statement in my mind that a company is really interested in you and
that you're not being carpet bombed by email. That in itself creates a
slightly stronger sense of good moral obligation from the side of the
candidate to respond, as he feels that there's a "real" person on the other
end, but also that this company is making a real effort. The fact that they
incorporate engineers into this, is also something to would send a strong
signal (at least to me) that this is a company worth checking. My two cents at
least.

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capkutay
I think spam is spam no matter who sends it (engineer or recruiter). If I send
or receive a random message, it'll be just that: a random message in an inbox.
Such messages are usually ignored. While recruiting for my startup, I've had
the most success through introductions rather than sending random messages to
people.

~~~
samskiter
Interesting, I think you highlight the point that the more personal the
contact is, the more fruitful it will hopefully be (see purereason's reply).
While you consider all recruitment email to be spam, it seems that not all do
(according the results of the experiment shown...)

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gkoberger
The best recruiters I've ever talked to have been from VC firms. I've actually
ended up friends with recruiters working at VC firms that I've gotten calls
from. With the better firms, they realize it's not all about placing people in
one of their companies today, but rather fostering a positive relationship.

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buckbova
This requires recruiters to actually do work, instead of keyword searching
resumes and spamming candidates.

