

Recruit this - samuellevy
http://blog.samuellevy.com/post/44-recruit-this.html

======
rogerbinns
I have a prominent link at the top of CV/Resume/linkedin to my "Note to
recruiters" which helps with all this -
<http://www.rogerbinns.com/recruiters.html>

For example it says to name the company (and why) and that if the recruiter
has trust issues with their client that I don't want to get involved. It
becomes _very_ obvious which recruiters have actually read the note to make
sure the company and I are possibly matched, versus those that are
indistinguishable from spammers.

Several years ago I was interviewing somewhere and Googled the job blurb.
There were over 100 recruiters who had copied the job details from the company
website and pretended it was their own client. (I checked with the company -
they had in house recruiters and did not accept external ones - all those
external ones were charlatans.)

Thankfully there are some good recruiters out there, but sadly they are
seriously outnumbered.

~~~
EnderMB
> Several years ago I was interviewing somewhere and Googled the job blurb.
> There were over 100 recruiters who had copied the job details from the
> company website and pretended it was their own client. (I checked with the
> company - they had in house recruiters and did not accept external ones -
> all those external ones were charlatans.)

I use LinkedIn, and have a personal website with my CV on it, and I experience
this almost daily.

Recently, I've started keeping a list of all the recruiters that spam me or
try to get in contact with me. I know quite a few of the companies in my area
that are hiring so I usually run these names past people that work there and
more often than not these recruiters will just scrape sites like Stack
Overflow Careers to find companies that are hiring, only to sell people
already on their books.

The worst I've experienced is when one of the large agencies in Bristol were
hiring. My company received a phone call from a hurried man saying "Something
is wrong, I need to speak to EnderMB". The second I picked up the phone,
fearing the worst, this guy told me he was a recruiter and asked if I was
happy at my job. After some harsh words he hung up, and then sent me a message
on LinkedIn asking me to recommend other developers to him. Half an hour
later, the phone rung again with someone saying that they needed to speak to
someone else at the company. The boss gave the phone over, and it was the same
guy again, doing the same thing to everyone in the company on my LinkedIn
friends list. I checked with the hiring company and they'd blacklisted this
guy and his company before, but they had tried to sell developers to him under
another holding company.

Recruitment is entirely out of hand now. The only recruiters I've ever wanted
to deal with are internal recruiters who seem to actually give a shit about
getting good talent to their company.

------
vinceguidry
Three rules for dealing with recruiters.

Don't let them near your cell phone number. Keep it off your profile. Put a
Google Voice number in there instead. It's like Craigslist, there are
advantages to using them, but you need to wear your big boy pants and take
some simple steps to protect your privacy.

Recruiters are not technical and never will be. "I think I'll quit programming
and start recruiting" -- No one, ever. Do not expect them to know anything
about the jobs they're pitching. They're sales types, skilled at making
connections with people, not machines. Try to appreciate that instead of
demanding they learn two difficult skill-sets just for a fairly-poorly
compensated job.

Keep each email to a single question until you've established that the
opportunity is worth pursuing. Don't let them set the direction of the
discussion until then. In the situation described, I would have simply asked,
over and over again, "What is the salary range offered?" until they coughed up
a number.

A recruiter found me my current job. I might be here a month until another
recruiter will find me another making more money.

~~~
MisterBastahrd
Technical recruiters are hardly poorly compensated. They rarely work more than
40 hours a week and any recruiter worth a crap will be making and sustaining 6
figures within 3 years.

~~~
Peroni
Not sure what the situation is in the US but I have yet to meet a single
successful recruiter in the UK that works less than a 60 hour week. Recruiter
hours on this side of the world are quite notorious.

~~~
MisterBastahrd
I worked a split desk for a year during the tech bust and made ~50K in 8
months, and I wasn't particularly motivated at that job... several co-workers
who started the same time that I did outperformed me by as much as 40K. For
most of those guys today, a bad year is below the $150K range. Mind you, this
is in Dallas, not San Francisco. Some of them migrated to another company
which does permanent and contract placement and most of the ones who made the
switch are pulling in 200K+.

From what I gather, the UK and EU don't value software developers as much, so
the bill rates are probably lower.

------
kaffeinecoma
Well I was with him up until:

    
    
       Three days later (on a Monday), she calls me, and tells me
       that she has organised an interview for me for Tuesday afternoon.
    
       What?  I went to the interview [...]
    

Why would you go on an interview under these circumstances? You're just giving
positive reinforcement to their bad behavior.

~~~
samuellevy
OP here. I went to the interview to see if I could salvage some work out of it
(I'm a contractor, and quite often a skilled contractor would suit better than
another full-time employee). The person I interviewed with (he was tech lead
in the company) was actually quite happy with the idea, but he couldn't get it
past HR.

~~~
inopinatus
Actually by going to the interview you probably ended any chance of
freelancing for them for the next 6-12 months. A standard arrangement is that
they would've had to pay the recruiter a 25% annual salary equivalent in fees
if there's a hire once the introduction has been made. How do you think
recruiters make their money? Irrespective of any other reason given, it's no
surprise HR said no.

------
benjamincburns
Recruiters, especially those who work for third-party recruiting firms, are
sales people. They have a series of incentives that only loosely align with
"find good candidates" and almost never align with "don't piss off said
candidates." There are some very good recruiters out there, most seem to be
employed directly by the company they're recruiting for, but the rest of the
lot might as well be in low-end used car sales.

If they set up an interview that you didn't request, that you don't want, and
you go to it - you're the one to blame. Chances are you contributed to part of
their incentive pay by participating in that interview. Further, they're not
'taking "no" for an answer' because you're not telling them "no."

~~~
Matt_Mickiewicz
Yeah, the incentives are really screwed up.

Firms like Riviera Partners in SanFran have different tiers of clients. Some
pay 33% on base salary, others 25%... guess what interviews you'll be pushed
into first?

If you pass, you probably won't even hear about the job openings at the
companies that are "only" paying 25% commissions, even if it's potentially a
better fit for you.

------
darylfritz
I get tired of them never disclosing the client. If they're soliciting me
while I'm currently at a position that they can only assume I'm happy with,
they need to present a pretty damn good case to get me out it; ambiguity just
won't cut it.

~~~
Matt_Mickiewicz
Half the time there is no client... They are just luring you in, and once they
have your resume, it gets spammed out to as many employers as the have in
their address book. Your resume gets used as "bait" in order for them to find
new clients.

Even at DeveloperAuction we get clueless recruiters pitching us Java Engineers
in NYC (We're rails in SF) and sending us "blinded" resumes with personally
identifiable contact details removed. It's craziness!

~~~
darylfritz
That's my biggest concern. The other is, often I find their claims to be mis-
repesented. "We have a large media client downtown" really meant "a company of
20 people, and 3 developers". If they had told me the name, I would have seen
right through the BS.

------
maresca
I've had to login to my phone provider's website and block numbers on two
separate occasions. If I don't pick up after calls/voicemails every day for a
week straight and you continue to call, you are doing your job wrong.

------
hkmurakami
I imagine there are recruiters for every type of profession (I know for sure
that "executive" recruiters exist). The question is, is it this bad in those
other industries? Is IT particularly bad because it's intangible and an
'average person' doesn't know the first thing about the inside of a computer
vs the inside of a car?

------
iguana
The correct way to deal with recruiters, especially if you're currently doing
freelance work: find the name of the company, insist that you're not
interested in the role, then contact the company directly.

Also, don't call it freelancing, call it consulting, and charge more.

------
ecspike
The upside of Silicon Valley is 99% of the time, they disclose the client on
first contact.

~~~
ankitoberoi
and thats because the scene @ SV is more evolved. They understand that they
have little, if any, chance of converting from a normal to hot lead, without
disclosing the name.

------
ChristianMarks
The latest: a recruiter submitted my resume to D.E. Shaw without asking. The
recruiter calls, I tell them I'm grieving a loss in my family and at the same
time I'm on a death march--can we discuss this later. I then receive an email
informing me that my resume has been submitted. I made the mistake of picking
up the phone when they call to hector me about submitting to the recruitment
process. I'm afraid they left the company with the impression that I was
initially interested, but changed my mind.

In some cases they can be aggressive and schedule interviews, or act as if we
had spoken previously and that my memory was defective. I don't tolerate
gaslighting and tell them. I never hear from them again.

------
rusbra
Great Point... I deal with recruiters all the time that just don't get the
point but every once in a while you encounter a good one here and there.

