

Recruiters only know bad developers - liamgooding
https://medium.com/p/7b8f4cb478a6

======
mkautzm
'I'm going to delete an email because it has a CV in an editable format it in'

'Ask me to telnet into your CV or solve an algorithm that prints your CV...'

\--

If everyone had the ability to read minds and know how a given employer wants
to see their resume/CV, then a 'standard format' wouldn't be necessary. But
because the powers of long-range telepathy have evaded us so far, we end up
agreeing as a society that certain formats are acceptable. It's not that we
personally like them, but it's 'safe'. It's considered normal and there is
kind of an unspoken agreement between everyone that a .doc or .docx file is
acceptable.

If you ask 99% of employers to telnet into your CV, they are probably going to
tell you to kindly fuck off, and so you don't.

\--

'They’re going to complain about overtime'

The idea that you don't want to hire people who are motivated strictly by a
paycheck is fine, but this attitude right here breeds the shitty culture in
software development we have today, where 60, 70, 80+ work weeks are
considered normal and 'if you don't like it, leave'. It's poisonous to an
entire industry. People have lives -- I like to volunteer at my local zoo and
write music in my free time. If I had a job that just expected dozens of
overtime hours every week because 'reasons', then I'm not taking it.

\--

In the real world, people do want jobs. People do want jobs they love, and
they are willing to give up a lot for jobs they love, and you might be
providing them with one, but you need to come down to earth and realize that
this isn't the only job they will ever apply for and expecting to be super
impressed by the way they apply for the job is unrealistic, unfair, and I dare
say, 'out of touch'. These people also have lives outside of work. Hobbies,
family, friends and such take time and if you are hiring people that are
willing to give up all of that in the name of work, I'd be really concerned
for them.

~~~
liamgooding
First mkautzm , thanks for the comments on this. Honestly, I'm glad to see
debate as it allows me to really challenge how I feel about this beyond a
short blog post. Just want to feedback on a few points:

>It's considered normal and there is kind of an unspoken agreement between
everyone that a .doc or .docx file is acceptable.

I disagree. Maybe in a corporate world, applying for the paper distribution
business in town or the IT support department at the accountancy firm up the
road. But in the startup community, don't hackers all kinda share a sense of
"innovation"?

>If you ask 99% of employers to telnet into your CV, they are probably going
to tell you to kindly fuck off, and so you don't.

Wouldn't you want to work for that 1% who didn't?

>'They’re going to complain about overtime'

Don't quote out of context. There's an unlimited vacation policy at
Trak.io.... take all the time out you want and need. But yeah, when the AMS
MongoDB goes down and Digital Ocean aren;t allowing new droplet provisioning
in AMS, I expect all hands on deck while we spin up on AWS. Because we all
care about the product, our customers uptime, their data

>In the real world, people do want jobs. People do want jobs they love, and
they are willing to give up a lot for jobs they love, and you might be
providing them with one, but you need to come down to earth and realize that
this isn't the only job they will ever apply for and expecting to be super
impressed by the way they apply for the job is unrealistic, unfair, and I dare
say, 'out of touch'. These people also have lives outside of work. Hobbies,
family, friends and such take time and if you are hiring people that are
willing to give up all of that in the name of work, I'd be really concerned
for them.

What can I say.... I've learnt that when you're building an early team, you
need a small team of amazing people because the overhead of a few OK people
doesn;t even come close to the output of one amazing, passionate person.

I'd happily piss off 99 applicants to find no.100 who's amazing and who
actually put at least the same amount of time putting an application together
as I'll spend researching him/her online :-)

------
grumps
I stopped reading after `I Hate Word Docs`

If you have any plans to apply to any job besides your open position, they
need to be in a word document for all of the shitty ATS. Don't be that guy who
makes someone take an extra step just to apply to your open positions. I don't
disagree with the premise at all, I'd rather send PDF docs over word but the
geniuses in HRT decided against that.

~~~
msie
_First of all, if a developer is applying for a job with me and he sends me a
Word Doc CV, I’m going to delete his email. Why? Because a word doc is an
editable format. But I don’t need to edit his CV. If you really need to send a
traditional CV, make it a PDF. It’s basic IT competence._

He sounds like a horribly picky (for no good reason) boss to work for. Only
Rockstars need apply.

~~~
ChristianMarks
If he can't edit a pdf with a binary editor, or log into a dial-up connection
by screeching into his telephone (no modem) then no true hacker will work for
him. Other than that, he has a point.

~~~
dalke
"He has a point."

Granted. But is it isn't a useful point. Some companies insist on text CVs
only, which is much easier to edit than a MS Word or PDF document. They state
this requirement along with the position information. (For example,
[http://www.psteam.com/general/about/jobs.asp](http://www.psteam.com/general/about/jobs.asp)
says " Plain ASCII text CV's only please.")

Rather than rant, this company should state its requirements for, say,
"unusual and/or puzzle-based CVs only", and then feel free to toss out any
non-conforming submissions.

In general that rant is very company specific, and provides little generally
useful advice. Consider this line: "so out of touch with the development
community, that they’ve gone to a suit-and-tie recruiter."

I used to be in touch with the Python developer community, back around 2000,
with core commit rights and everything. But knowing other developers in the
Python community isn't at all the same as knowing people who would hire Python
programmers, especially since I didn't want to move from Santa Fe, NM. While a
local recruiter is much more likely to know who is hiring in my area.

Also, the posting suggests that they are looking for people willing to work
long hours for low wages, and who likely won't be pressuring management for
raises to match their market worth. It also suggests that hosting a London
hackathon for £9K GBP hackathon isn't a good way to find job leads, otherwise
they would have done so by now.

~~~
liamgooding
Hey Dalke, firstly thanks for the long comments and feedback.

You make an amazing point and on future job openings we are going to be far
more specific in order to be fair to developers who want to apply directly.

However, from experience no mater HOW MUCH detail I give, recruiters will
still spin me the same shit:

"A company just when bust in your area and I have some amazing developers
looking for work, here's some word docs attached"

Also, that's a really good exception RE someone moving to a new geographic
location and might not have any contacts or referrals... I think we can work
on this by expanding our own digital footprint internationally over time, but
it's a special circumstance I guess recruiters might come in...

However, then I think how hard is it to google? If I lost my job and decided
to move to spain, building a database of tech companies in Madrid would take
an evening. Sending personal emails to the CEO (assuming small teams) in each
case would only take a few days.

So no, other than knowing the local salary market (google that too) I still
think I'd find better people by circumventing recruiters

>Also, the posting suggests that they are looking for people willing to work
long hours for low wages, and who likely won't be pressuring management for
raises to match their market worth.

No it doesn't. Yeah, like all startups we offer a touch below market rate in
exchange for options but nowhere do I imply "long hours for low wages"? Maybe
the _unlimited vacation time_ was overlooked????

~~~
dalke
Why are you giving more details to the recruiters? Based on what you wrote,
shouldn't you say "we don't work through recruiters" and hang up?

I gave the geographical one as an example that was easy to understand. I work
in a specialized subfield of computational chemistry. I work for myself. There
are three major classes of developers: 1) people working in software
companies, 2) people working in academia, or 3) people working at
pharmaceutical companies. I'm in group #1. The developers I know are in group
#1 and #2, because those working in #3 are usually working on in-house
software that typically remains private for several years before doing any
publications.

If I wanted a job, I would want to work in #3, because I like working directly
with scientists. On the other hand, I don't have good contacts outside of the
actual developers in various companies. While a good recruiter would.

Even better, consider an in-house software developer at AstraZeneca near
Boston (group #3) and who wanted to work for another pharma or biotech in the
area, of which there are many. Odds are that person wouldn't have that many
contacts, because most in-house developers can't talk about their jobs in
public, or work on public projects related to their job. It seems that a good
recruiter would be the way to go even there.

"building a database of tech companies in Madrid would take an evening"

Yes, that's a large city. Santa Fe has 65,000 people. People in those
situations have to be a lot broader in the search, which takes time. There's
lots of small companies that I could have worked for, ranging from chemistry
or GIS to futures trading or human factors analysis, and there's no
centralized listing for those.

While in a large city you can search for "<specialization> Madrid", and odds
are that someone at least has put a decent list together already.

"No it doesn't."

I was reacting to "They’re going to complain about overtime." I worked
overtime. I worked a lot of overtime when I was starting off. I am convinced
that overtime is generally an indication that the company wants its employees
to work for free. Want to convince me otherwise? Pay your employees time and a
half for working overtime.

I worked overtime even in a company with two days per month vacation time.
Which I like nearly everyone else never took, because we felt we needed to
work hard in a startup. Many even came in to work on the weekends. And in the
end, those stock options? Worthless.

I was also reacting to the "bad-ass senior developers their extortionate
hourly rates." I am a "bad-ass senior developer" in my field. There's a reason
I charge "high hourly rates" \- my time is worth it. That you think the rate
is "extortionate" (and not simply "expensive") implies that you don't think
bad-ass senior developers are worth market rates. Since you likely want bad-
ass senior developers, this suggests you would rather pay people less than
they are worth.

------
VonGallifrey
I have worked with recruiters before and just wanted to say a few things about
this:

1\. The Word Doc is not the fault of the Developer.

Every time I send my CV out it is a PDF, but Recruiters usually ask me to send
them a Doc instead. "How can I hire a developer who can’t even understand file
formats?" This is a wrong conclusion I think, the Developer probably knows
that a PDF would be better, but he has no choice if he wants to work with the
recruiter.

2\. how relevant is a traditional CV

I don't know how relevant a traditional CV is, but I know that there are great
developers that simply can not pump everything they do onto GitHub because the
type of Contract they have with their employers. This means that a CV would be
the only way to show what they have done in those years without breaking their
Contracts. Or do you think that someone that can do a little Play project on
GitHub really does not even have to show what else he did?

3\. "desperate, so driven by money"

Every time I work with a recruiter it works like this: The recruiter contacts
me and tells me about a company that would be interested in working with me
and I send him my CV. The reason I send him my CV is because it is no work at
all and I want to find out if it is a interesting company. This doesn't mean
that I am desperate and so far money didn't even come up once. And also I have
not "gone to" a suit-and-tie recruiter the suit-and-tie recruiter came to me.

~~~
liamgooding
Hey VonGallifrey, also thanks for giving this some decent feedback. While it's
mostly criticism, been challenged like this is extremely valuable as it helps
me address my own preconceptions and assumptions about the recruitment game!

>The recruiter contacts me and tells me about a company that would be
interested in working with me

In over 1,000 recruiter emails I've received over the last few years (of which
at least 500 have been in the last few months due to Trak.io spiking in
awareness) not once have I ever, ever expressed an interest first. Which means
the Word Doc's getting dumped in my inbox are from people who haven't had your
experience at all.

So the recruiters who are coming to you (kudos BTW), probably spinning you
different shit as they send to employers but equally just as BS.

Think about it - a recruiter earns a commission on your base salary. Not
options. Not employment perks. Not company culture. Not product vision. Which
opportunities do you think they're going to put in front of you??

Their only job is literally to get the highest salary possible for the
developer. They hope you'll pull that salary for 3 months, so that their
manager will unlock their full commission.

>This means that a CV would be the only way to show what they have done in
those years without breaking their Contracts.

I totally get your point about NDA work, and perhaps finding no time for any
out-of-work-projects, but I fail to accept that truly interesting people have
NOTHING outside of their job to talk about.

Or maybe there are some people... not seen enough people to truly call
definitive judgement on this yet.

A word doc feels so "copy-paste". A personal intro email with a few relevant
points, with a follow up Skype call, is going to tell me so much more.
Receiving a "pump and dump" CV through a recruiter leaves absolutely no room
for this. And I want people who KNOW this.

I want people who know full well that having that first impression of a "pump
and dump" kinda developer is not how they want to be perceived.

So I guess my point shouldn't be specifically that they need a Github profile
full of fun projects _instead_ of a CV, more that I don't want to get a CV of
them via a recruiter as it sending all the wrong signals.

