

Note to recruiters - reinhardt
https://github.com/vzaar/note-to-recruiters/blob/master/ntr.md

======
sklivvz1971
> When sending us a CV, please include the candidate's salary expectations and
> availability

Sorry, this is just arrogant. If a company is offering a job they should be
open about how much it is worth to them and not try to haggle on developer
salaries. Based on this alone I would struggle to work for this company.

You want someone to work with you? We all know you have a budget and a range.
Put it down in writing from day zero.

\---

Edit: apparently they do publish the range. I still feel they should mention
that they do so as a policy in that statement.

~~~
kamjam
This is fairly standard practice, esp in the UK. Sometimes a candidate might
be asking more than you are offering, but if the candidate is good enough you
may increase your budget. It happens.

~~~
Hansi
Yes this is true, I've been in that situation. Got an extra 20% increase.

------
jameshart
Very confusing reading this on a github page. Took a moment to realize this
was not github's own terms for dealing with recruiters. It is actually linked
on github directly from [http://vzaar.com/jobs](http://vzaar.com/jobs) \-
rather than being used to generate a page on their site. So why the github
hosting? Are they accepting pull requests from enterprising recruiters who
disagree with their terms?

~~~
PeterisP
I can imagine doing it the same way - it's a single, common document
repository for the company; it's shared instead of stuck on someone's
computer, with version control, and the same place as their other docs - so
you learn and maintain only a single place/tool/useraccounts instead of having
a separate system for everything.

~~~
rurounijones
Seems a bit wierd to link them to a new site though. I (In typical programmer
over-engneering fashion) would be pulling the text from github via the API for
display on my own domain.

------
BitMastro
I cannot believe that in our age, and in a field like ours where everyone has
a computer and is internet savvy we are still using recruitment agencies to
find jobs and employees.

Paying 15% of my salary for the privilege of being a self-proclaimed hub
between employers and employees? Well, thank you very much, but I'll skip.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Everyone has an incentive to lie. The recruiter, to place people who may be
unsuitable. The job-seeker, to get a job that pays more than they're worth
(and then get themselves poached). The employer, to cut out the middleman and
underpay the employee. And most of the people the recruiter is dealing with
(including themselves) are non-technical people who can't use any program but
Word or Excel, and are out of their depth trying to understand the
requirements or what a CV indicates.

 _You_ try and design a decentralized protocol to handle that amount of
Byzantine failure, or a centralized protocol that doesn't pay the hub to lie,
cheat, and flounder.

"Recruiting should be easy" is like "huh, why is search hard? I would just
build an inverted index". Yeah, you and Altavista.

~~~
WalterBright
The recruiter who places unsuitable people is not going to get repeat
business.

A recruiter develops a sustainable business by making placements that please
both the job seeker and the employer.

Of course, this is true in general for business. Creating win-win agreements
is a lot more profitable in the long run than ones where one party is the
loser.

~~~
JulianMorrison
That's only true if your business is crudely comparable to the _iterated_
prisoner's dilemma. But any given recruiter can expect to fall off the end of
the mental space you've allocated to $BAD_RECRUITERS by the time they contact
you again, if they ever do contact you again.

------
civilian
I feel like this notice is out of touch with reality. First of all-- what
hustling recruiter is going to take their time to read this notice, and
remember that X company has those conditions?

I'm a software developer, and I agree that recruiters don't add nearly as much
value as they claim to. But I did a college summer internship at a recruiting
firm and I understand their angle.

Not all hiring managers are honest enough not to just contact a candidate
directly. The anonymous resume is not meant to be a formal application, it's
meant to be a teaser to enter into a recruiting agreement and it's a way of
protecting themselves.

15% is pretty low for the industry. You're just encouraging even lower quality
candidate-finding with that method.

You specified how to contact them (on a job-per-job basis) but recruiters can
work at a higher level than that. Sometimes a candid call about their general
talent needs helps a ton. Like: You're advertising for a mid-level employee,
but you'd be okay with a senior-level.

As a hiring manager, part of your job is to recruiter-wrangle. A stubborn and
neckbeary document like this does not make you inviting to work with.

~~~
PeterisP
The whole article reads that they're getting more recruiters than they
want/need - so, it's a buyers market, and they believe that they can be picky
about recruiters, and if some of the most hustling recruiters will think that
they're not inviting to work with - excellent, mission accomplished.

~~~
taude
But it's not a buyers market, right now. That would imply that there's a ton
more technical talent than there are jobs. It's the reverse. It's a sellers
market, whether your a candidate, represented by an agency, or whatever....(at
least here in U.S., maybe the U.K. is different?)

~~~
PeterisP
There's a lack of technical talent, but there's an overabundance of eager
middlemen/recruiters - and even if you desperately want talent, you really
don't need (or want) all the world's recruiters shoveling shit towards your
HR, it won't help you in getting more (or better) talent.

Recruiters aren't 'exclusive agents' like for, maybe, star athletes.
Blacklisting a specific aggressive recruiter doesn't mean that you're
blacklisting a part of your target employees - actually the good employees
also want to avoid the same scummy recruiters, so it even helps.

------
pallandt
Has anyone checked this company's website job section? They have a 'Ninja'
position advertised as _' (Note: this isn't a development ninja, coding ninja,
design ninja. This is a role for an actual Ninja)'_ :)

~~~
noir_lord
Hostile takeovers would take on a whole new meaning if you could legitimately
employ Corporate Ninjas.

~~~
duskwuff
…suddenly, two black-clothed men burst down from the drop ceiling, strangle
the CFO, and disappear into The Cloud!

~~~
noir_lord
I was thinking more along the lines of..

"And therefore I want to announce a policy of investing back into the business
to _phht_ " New CEO stands up "My policy, lay everyone off and pay massive
dividends and worry about the next quarter next quarter".

------
ig1
If you actually want to get good candidates from recruiters then 15% is low,
recruiters are naturally going to send candidates to the companies that will
pay them more first. At 15% you're basically going to get the dregs that other
companies don't want.

~~~
kamjam
It's the UK, 15% is standard finders fee there.

~~~
ig1
Not in London it isn't; I've seen what a lot of startups are paying and 15% is
definitely low for permie devs.

~~~
kamjam
Everywhere I've worked for in London it has been 15% for devs. If you're
paying more then you need to negotiate better. The rates may of course differ
for bigger companies, where recruiters are more likely to place more
candidates.

~~~
ig1
It's nothing to do with negotiation, if you offer recruiters a lower rate than
other companies you're simply not going to be their top priority.

That said if you're offering recruiters 15% and you're getting candidates of
the calibre you need then that's fine. But you should be aware that you're not
even getting a look in at the best candidates that are on your recruiters
books.

~~~
kamjam
I've only worked for fairly large companies, that recruit 10s if not 100s of
people each year. I guess they get an "economies of scale" discount, and we've
always had good candidates. If a recruiter was not to offer a good candidate
then there will be 10 more in their place that would send the CV of that same
candidate. In a digital marketplace I put my CV out once and I have 20
recruiters looking for me. It's a tough marketplace, and to the candidate they
don't care what the recruiters fee is.

~~~
ig1
Generally the value in recruiters is in passive candidates and not active ones
so in those cases it's unlikely that the candidate is working with a
significant number of recruiters.

Even in the case that a candidate works with multiple recruiters they'll
generally all have "preferred clients" who get first look at candidates. And
at 15% you're unlikely to be a preferred client for any recruiter except the
bottom-feeders who spam every CV to every client.

And you don't want any bottom-feeder recruiter to have your CV because many
companies have a policy of instantly rejecting any candidate that comes in
through multiple recruiters because they don't want to get into a legal
dispute over priority.

The recruitment market is a fairly complex one (I had a startup in the space
so I've been neck deep in understanding how the different players interact).

(You're right that if you're recruiting for lots of roles you can get a
discount, but it's a tricky path, you really need to exchange information with
industry competitors to get a good idea if you're being passed over for good
candidates. In some industries like banking this does happen albeit on a semi-
informal basis)

~~~
kamjam
Fair enough, and thanks for all the info. I've never directly recruited, but
I've heard the 15% touted by my ex-employers. Certainly for headhunters 30% is
more normal. To me as a employee though I don't care what the rate is, it's a
negotiation between the recruiter and the employer.

------
jakejake
The problem with posting a "list of rules for working with me" is that the
only people who will read it are more diligent and thoughtful recruiters. It
will only filter out people who a) bother to read it and b) have enough sense
to read and consider your terms. The logical result is that your overall
number of high quality recruiters might decrease, while the number of low
quality recruiters will remain the same.

~~~
cygwin98
Not really. If they execute their rules faithfully and efficiently, the bad
ones will be blacklisted and filtered out. That might be doable if they can
program their VOIP phones and automatically block whoever violate their rules.

------
walshemj
"Do not try poach our staff" hmm sounds a lovely place to work NOT

Gives a very entitled vibe if your to buzy/lazy to recruit your self you have
to take whats on offer.

You may not have meant this way but that doesn't give a good vibe for those
who might want to come and work for you.

~~~
tieTYT
Why do you feel that way? I didn't get that impression at all. It even
explained how uncomfortable that makes the employee. An employee can easily
search for a job on their own time.

~~~
geebee
Here's the full quote: "Do not try poach our staff. The whole team/office can
hear when there is a recruiter on the line trying to do this. This makes both
the person you’re speaking to uncomfortable, as well as the team around him.
Do not do this."

I guess this means that it is impossible for a developer to have a
conversation on the phone that is not announced to and/or overheard by
everyone in the office? I can see how that would make a developer
uncomfortable, but it's not really a selling point for working at that
company.

I also have to wonder - do managers at this company have private offices where
they can have private phone conversations?

------
takrupp
Terms seem pretty fair. Any recruiter that can live by those, is being
unreasonable.

The startup I joined, Hired, just started offering 1% per month instead of 15%
upfront. It better ties our output (you having an employee that is successful)
to our fee, which I think is a win for all.

Should make it a little easier on startups where there isn't cash flow and
other tech companies that just don't do contingency fees.

Just went live today - [http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2013/10/30/hired-
com-has...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2013/10/30/hired-com-has-
built-what-every-tech-company-wants-a-pipeline-of-top-technical-talent/)

~~~
rpedela
Pretty cool! Any plans to expand into other cities such as Denver/Boulder?

------
comice
The whole recruitment industry has been poisoned. So many liars and fraudsters
that anyone left trying to do things right is surely overshadowed.

I've never actually met or dealt with a non-sleazy recruitment agent, so I
don't actually know what they would actually do for me (either as a company or
a candidate).

My note to recruiters is: go away and leave us alone. It's worth our time
doing our own job advertising and candidate selection!

~~~
shiftb
I've come across only a couple legitimately good recruiters in my career. I've
realized that a good recruiter can be valuable to a company, but I'm not sure
I'd work with one as a candidate.

------
mangrish
I've been lucky to work in Australia, east & west coast USA and the UK. In
that time I have witnessed the similarities and differences between hiring
practices and to be honest I feel that a lot of what we experience is
deserved. We as problem solvers have just not bothered with solving the one
problem we as an industry ubiquitously hate the most: IT recruitment agents.

We continue to buy into an antiquated paradigm of job descriptions and CV's.
In my opinion these artefacts hurt our industry more than help us. We are so
much better than this (and I don't think that answer is portfolio work as not
all programmers work with public facing products - which is a cohort i think
HN can sometimes overrepresent).

I've been working on a startup to hopefully change the way all this works.
Modelling how to address how different types of developers seek opportunities,
whether we are in work or out and tying that into how different types of
hiring manager (and their teams) meet us. If we do it right it won't be too
long before the era of 15-30% 'placement fees' are back to being a much more
manageable cost.

Sorry for ranting; I don't speak on HN much.

------
vellum
_When sending us a CV, please include the candidate 's salary expectations and
availability_

This kind of thing is only fair if the company specifies a salary range in
advance. At least OP's company is practicing what they preach.

[http://lists.lrug.org/pipermail/chat-
lrug.org/2013-January/0...](http://lists.lrug.org/pipermail/chat-
lrug.org/2013-January/008357.html)

------
encoderer
I find a lot of this somewhat objectionable, but find one piece particularly
objectionable:

> Do not send PHP developers for a Rails position.

Possibly this company is placing the engineer on-site at a client location, or
something like that. But generally, I think a label like "PHP developer" and
"Rails position" really silos the talent/job market and is not good for our
industry.

------
muratmutlu
I wrote a post about the different services popping up (aimed at designers
mostly, some at devs too) trying to solve the recruiter problem. Might be
useful to some

[http://www.mobileinc.co.uk/2013/04/designers-making-moves-
to...](http://www.mobileinc.co.uk/2013/04/designers-making-moves-to-disrupt-
recruitment-agencies/)

------
xacaxulu
Step 1: Stop using recruiters.

~~~
eriksank
And start using ... ?

~~~
kamjam
Step 3: PROFIT!!!

------
eriksank
In my impression, the solution would be to create a marketplace website, in
which employers and recruiters register/join, and which will automatically
enforce the rules desired. From there, you can insist that all recruitment
communication must go through the marketplace site. My experience is that
marketplace software is tremendously efficient at social engineering ;-)

~~~
mangrish
exactly

------
Aarvay
Why the f __k is this on the front page of HN?

