

Ask HN: why do companies use 3rd party recruiters? - jpd750

I&#x27;ve talked to 30-40 recruiters over the past few months about various jobs in IT.<p>I wondered why so many companies use 3rd party recruiters as opposed to in-house recruiters? Is it just the money or what is it?<p>Other developers on here - what are you thoughts on communication with 3rd party recruiters?<p>Recently I&#x27;ve found in-house to be far more effective in communicating the company, position, etc. than 3rd party recruiters (who are after just the &quot;finder&#x27;s fee&quot;)
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fredophile
I've had positive experiences with third party recruiters. They're experts on
the state of the job market. They know who is hiring and what their processes
are like. They can tell you what to expect at each stage of the process. When
you're doing your job search you want to time things so that all of the offers
come within a few weeks of each other. Recruiters know how to make that
happen. They also know what salary ranges companies will pay and can negotiate
a better deal than you might get yourself.

A good recruiter cares about getting a good placement. I don't plan to look
for another job anytime soon. However, because of my positive experience I'd
definitely recommend the last recruiter I worked with to former coworkers and
friends in my field.

One catch with recruiters is that they seem to prefer placing senior people.
I'm guessing this is a combination of better payout (their pay is often a
percentage of he placed salary) and the fact that senior positions are harder
to fill so there are less other candidates to compete with. Finally, this is
based on good experiences. I've never had a good experience with a third party
recruiter that cold called me. The good experiences came from recommendations
from friends so YMMV.

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read
Companies do it primarily because they don't understand the large variance in
productivity between tech people, which seems to range between 18x-25x. They
think they can outsource the task like outsourcing office cleaners.

The problem with that is companies can't tell how badly they are doing at
recruiting. They think they are doing great, because they fill positions with
people with credentials, but they can't gauge the bottom-line productivity.
They can't see how badly they are doing compared to other companies.
(Ironically, some companies see that when they go out of business.)

The skills needed to know how good you are at something are the same as the
skills needed to be good at it. Which means if you aren't a good tech person,
which HR people aren't, not only do you not find good tech people, but you
also can't tell you are doing a bad job it.

Most companies are also not willing to pay to get this higher productivity.
Partly because they can get away with it, and partly because they have been
conditioned to believe tech salaries shouldn't vary more than salaries in
other professions.

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nicholas73
How did you arrive at 18x-25x?

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codeonfire
Obviously, from the Apple/Google/et al no-hire conspiracy we know that in-
house recruiters get fired for trying to hire the best people from the wrong
company. 3rd party recruiters don't have any such restrictions or fears.

Of course in house recruiters are more effective. They are sitting in front of
a database with the job, job description, hiring guidelines, potential
candidates, and have probably talked face to face with the person who posted
the job. A 3rd party recruiter has none of that.

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sdoowpilihp
The value of using third party recruiters is that most companies don't need a
full time recruiter until they are fairly large. Most companies usually only
have a few positions to fill, or go through short hiring sprints, both of
which are more conducive to third party recruiters.

That being said, a lot companies will avoid recruiters if they can. That is
why you will often find that companies have referral bonus programs.

~~~
ahi
In my neck of the woods, Detroit metro, most of the companies using recruiters
are clueless megacorps. For the dev unit or subsidiary looking to hire there
is very little difference between going through a recruiter and their own HR.

Edit: Actually the tech specific recruiters are likely better than the
industry focused HR.

I find most recruiters are a waste of time, but that's because I work remote
for California wages in an area that wants to pay senior devs 60k. My policy
is I quote my hourly and tell them to contact me if they have something. Weeds
out a lot.

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linuxydave
Well, not every company has sufficient staff turnover to warrant an in-house
recruitment team (or person) so they find that it's cheaper to use recruiters
every so often. Other companies don't have staff willing or capable of doing
in-house recruiting (lack of experience, too much other work to do, etc).
Hell, I'm met some business owners who thought that doing it in-house wasn't
'professional'.

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JSeymourATL
Every profession has its assorted Pros & Bozos, regardless if they're In-House
Staff or 3rd Party Hired Guns. As for communicating with them, be welcoming
and curious. Learn more about them and the problems they have to solve. You'll
be able to discern who's real and who's not.

