

Hacker Fair in Mountain View: Recruiters outnumber job-seekers - citizenkeys
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_18492691

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kordless
I went to this and I can tell you there were far more than 24 candidates that
didn't show up. In the first room alone, there were more empty positions than
there were filled ones. It was so bad, at one point as I was working on
modifying candidate short list (over 75% weren't there) I got asked if I was a
candidate myself!

As a result of the no-shows, the recruiter to candidate ratio was probably 5
to 1, which caused lines to form around the existing job-seekers. The space
was hardly big enough as it was - I can't imagine what we would have done if
all the candidates showed up too.

I think the event was was a good experiment, but frankly for the price it
wasn't worth my time to attend. I'd much rather see a speed-dating format.
That way everyone gets to talk to each other and you work around the issue of
having more recruiters than candidates.

~~~
bluehat
Hey, I co-organized this event, so the actual statistics were that out of 97
registered candidates under 10 dropped of their own accord and there were 40
no-shows. There were approximately 50 companies attending. While the ratio was
not great, and the fact that most companies sent at least two people made the
odds of humans bizarre, a 1:1 ratio is not what we hoped for but not 5:1.

At the last fair we got about 2:1 candidates to recruiters, which was closer
to what we were hoping for. At the next fair we plan to take $20 deposits
which can be refunded by either attending the fair or giving 48 hours warning
that you are dropping out. At this fair we actually had to stop accepting
candidates because we had so many that we were running out of room and worried
the ratio would go too far the other way.

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TorKlingberg
The key sentence here: "recruiters made the rounds to stations occupied by a
candidate, each of whom was required to have created a project they could
demonstrate to show off their software, hardware or other technical skills."

~~~
maeon3
I'd ask the recruiters for their resume, tell them some lame sentence about
what I'm all about, then tell them to visit my website with a deliberately
painful user interface that reminds them of how desperate they really are.

'Supply and demand' meets 'power corrupts'.

~~~
euroclydon
Why? What could that possibly demonstrate except that you're vindictive and
put such little value on your time that you're willing to go to a recruiting
event just to pay back the wrong person for some perceived way you've been
wronged.

~~~
maeon3
Sometimes I go out of my way to make Karma real for individuals who push
negative energy into the universe. I was out of work for longer than I wanted
last year, and I found exactly zero recruiters who treated me like a human
being. I was treated as a number. You can't blame them, because of supply and
demand meet power corrupts. What goes around comes around.

~~~
nbm
Were these company recruiters, or third-party recruiters?

I've never really had any luck with third-party recruiters - they don't seem
to have an interest in understanding you and your skills, assuming they even
understand those skills.

My experience with Facebook's recruiting team has been amazing, though.

August last year I was approached by a technical recruiter at Facebook because
I attended Velocity. I was initially quite skeptical about the entire thing
(I'm from South Africa, needed a H-1B, needed my partner to get a visa as
well) as well as generally jaded due to burn-out. She kept on my case, roping
in lawyers and so forth to answer my more detailed questions about the work
visa situation.

Another recruiter was involved in the final prep, on-site interview, offer,
and acceptance, and then through all the visa paperwork (and boy do I hate
paperwork!), up till the first day at work.

And then they didn't disappear - they've been keeping in contact with me,
meeting at lunch every few weeks, seeing how I'm settling in, whether I want
to stay where I am in the company, and introducing me to people. And I've now
worked with them twice at recruiting events - at Velocity and Hacker Fair.

So, I hope you encounter recruiters who make you feel like a human being, and
who care as much about doing a good job as you do, because they are out there.

~~~
rdl
Palantir, FB, and Quora all have top-notch internal recruiters - it's one of
their big differentiators.

A bunch of other top-tier startups have their top, productive execs handle
most high-profile recruiting (Keith Rabois at Square, ...)

Most startups have the founders handle recruiting, except for the mechanical
details of HR compliance and scheduling. Recruiting is probably the #1 task of
a startup founder on an ongoing basis; sales being #2, and product work being
#3.

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vessenes
As a counterpoint, I just hired a personal assistant in Seattle. I had 140
resume submissions in four days. You can read about my takeaways on G+:
[https://plus.google.com/112885659993091300749/posts/L4bzKXxC...](https://plus.google.com/112885659993091300749/posts/L4bzKXxCE2a)

In brief, though, there is a significant disparity in the US job markets. I'm
not sure how it's going to get sorted.

~~~
Luyt
This grabbed my attention:

Peter Vessenes: _"I received one impressively long 14 point lavender comic
sans missive which made me want to meet the person, but only in a public
place."_

David O'Neill: _"On that score, Comic Sans for editing code might be
amusing..."_

Actually, it is. I do this since years. Not in lavender, but dull grays and
subdued colors... [http://www.michielovertoom.com/incoming/comic-sans-
python.jp...](http://www.michielovertoom.com/incoming/comic-sans-python.jpg)

