
Ask HN: Dontrecruit.me – A website to collect stories about bad recruiters - chpmrc
Hi people! We&#x27;re a bunch of developers tired of recruiters who get away with all sorts of unprofessional behavior.<p>After the n-th frustrating experience we decided to do something about it. We&#x27;re trying to collect as much (anonymous) data as possible about bad experiences involving fellow developers and unprofessional recruiters and one day publish all the curated data for free, to create a sort of Yelp for recruiters.<p>You can help us by filling out the form at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dontrecruit.me" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dontrecruit.me</a><p>After all you wouldn&#x27;t waste time at a crappy restaurant, why waste time with a crappy recruiter?<p>Let me know if you have any questions&#x2F;feedback. I&#x27;ll try to read (and answer) each and every comment.
======
codingdave
I appreciate the idea - I've had some bad experiences with recruiters myself,
and the temptation to shame them to the world certainly has some raw emotional
appeal. But I've also had wonderful experiences with recruiters, that resulted
in great jobs that lasted for years. So I have some concerns:

1) Specifically seeking out bad reviews is likely to attract angry rants. Yelp
has their share of bitter people lashing out because they can, and anonymous
content tends to encourage it. How do you intend to combat that behavior?

2) People grow and improve. I don't want to be judged for my work or my
behavior from my early days in the field. How are you going to be sure this
isn't unfairly capturing the worst moments of someone's career just because
they are new at it and haven't learned any better yet?

~~~
carlmr
>2) People grow and improve. I don't want to be judged for my work or my
behavior from my early days in the field. How are you going to be sure this
isn't unfairly capturing the worst moments of someone's career just because
they are new at it and haven't learned any better yet?

Or are currently in a bad company which forces/encourages this kind of
behavior. I wouldn't mind recruiting _company_ reviews though. Because there
would be a few on my blacklist.

~~~
Jeremy1026
Only one on my blacklist is Cyber Coders. They just sent me a listing for a
Davenport Machine Operator four states away, based on my skills. My skills are
all in software development. No idea why this recruiter thinks I'd be a good
fit for operating a giant piece of machinery.

~~~
anoncoward111
They're just spamming heavily and hoping you maybe know someone who knows
someone :)

~~~
Jeremy1026
Ah yes, the tried and true "you do my job for me" method.

------
jcadam
I particularly love recruiters who insist that you send them a resume in MS
Word format, so that they can remove your contact details and stick their
agency's ugly letterhead on top (or "improve" your resume for you if they're
particularly unethical).

"I'll need your resume in Word Format."

"I can give you a PDF"

"Give me the original in Word Format."

"There is no original in Word Format, I wrote my resume in LaTeX. Besides, why
do you need to be able to edit my resume?"

And... ghosted.

~~~
exikyut
> _" Give me the original in Word Format."_

Since they're all but certainly going to ghost you anyway, why not just

"Sure, here's the original. This is using features that aren't in the ancient
Debian distribution of TeXlive; you'll want to follow the excellent
instructions at [https://github.com/posquit0/Awesome-
CV](https://github.com/posquit0/Awesome-CV) to get XeLaTeX configured
correctly (or it'll bomb out with the _most_ inscrutable of errors).

I'm having a couple of locale issues with attaching files through pine at the
moment, so I've pasted the source below. I trust it will not be difficult to
copy-paste to a new file.

    
    
      %!TEX TS-program = xelatex
      %!TEX encoding = UTF-8 Unicode
      \documentclass[11pt, a4paper]{awesome-cv}
      \geometry{left=1.4cm, top=.8cm, right=1.4cm, bottom=1.8cm, footskip=.5cm}
      \fontdir[fonts/]
      \colorlet{awesome}{awesome-blue}
      \setbool{acvSectionColorHighlight}{true}
      .
      .
      .
      {\thepage}
      \end{document}
    

Let me know if there are any issues.

Thanks!"

~~~
aldanor
You forgot to ask for their public PGP key!

~~~
exikyut
That is an _excellent_ suggestion.

In fact, that would be a great catalyst to weed out 99% of recruiters who
aren't willing to make any sort of effort.

I'm not joking. I might just apply this one...

------
dsr_
Dear people who are in charge of hiring processes (there will be some of you
in this audience, I'm sure):

External recruiters are generally expensive and bad. By using them, you reduce
the quality of your reputation. They charge 25% or more of the first year
salary per placement.

If you are big enough to afford it -- that is, you're making more than four
hires a year -- use an actual employee as your recruiter. Make sure that they
are familiar with your company's actual culture and business practices, and
can speak authoritatively about HR policies. Pay them a regular salary and
benefits, so that they have no incentive to lie. Pay bonuses based on the
performance of the employees they hire after those employees have been working
for you for a year, so that they have an incentive to get high-quality people
in.

The recruiter is the first face of your company. That experience should be
considerate, consistent, responsive, and above all positive. An unsuccessful
candidate should leave the experience thinking that your company would still
be a pretty good place to work in the future, and maybe they should recommend
a friend who would be a better fit.

~~~
rajacombinator
This is simply not true. I’m no fan of any kind of recruiter, but 3rd party
ones are almost always better than internal full-time recruiters - naturally,
since they do the same thing but get paid much more.

~~~
dsr_
Are you asserting that how much people are paid determines the quality of
their work?

------
Uptrenda
Whenever I've been contacted by a recruiter they make out like cooperating
with them is as good as receiving a job offer when none of them have any
authority over hiring. It's like why mislead people like that?

The biggest problem I have with them is their incentives are misaligned with
what you want. A recruiter doesn't make their money by getting you the best
offer. They make their money by helping sign a lot of people. Which is why
they always ask the salary question. So they can build a rolodex sorted by
salary ranges and then experience levels. In fact, there is probably
algorithms for prioritising the placement of the most qualified people asking
for the least amount of money.

I would almost be worried about new comers in tech who maybe haven't dealt
with recruiters before as recruiters are VERY good at extracting personal
information. In any other field what they are doing would be illegal. In fact
in information security you would call it social engineering. But people in
recruiting just call it their job.

It's even worse when you consider that this is a part of the process when
people might be more vulnerable or desperate. Perhaps ironically the old work-
from-home-fake-job-offer-scammery-roo is also used by identity thieves,
doxers, and fraudsters for the same purpose and really: Is there much
difference between that and recruiting? Both of them sell a lie to extract
profit from the person they target and the means they do so is extremely
similar.

------
dsk139
I'm a software engineer & a recruiter. I also work on a SaaS software for
recruiters. There are a ton of bad recruiters. But a lot of bad acting happens
because of 1) incentive misalignment 2) information asymmetry.

Looking at the list of reasons why a recruiter might be "bad" some of the
blame is on recruiting company structure, but another major source of blame is
on employers.

They sign contracts with recruiting firms, give little to no oversight, and
provide a limited set of information about the role/responsibilities/comp/etc.
At the same time, a lot of employers are really bad when it comes to
retention. This combination leads to recruiters/recruiting companies that get
away with bad behavior and still make a lot of money since it's purely a
numbers game and they find that subset of engineers willing to tolerate their
behavior. And companies pay them large fees for each transaction.

Protip: If you want to get rid of a lot of recruiter contacts, deactivate your
LinkedIn. And make sure your public commits on Github don't include your real
e-mail.

~~~
chpmrc
Thank you for the insight. Websites like Glassdoor already do a good job of
giving you an overview of potential employers but the same doesn't exist for
recruiters.

Normally you might be in contact with 10-20 recruiters for a few months and
end up working only for one company for the next few years so the impact
recruiters have is a superset of the employer's.

Maybe recruiters could stop selling the company to death and openly admit what
is wrong with the current state of things (e.g. poor Joel score). People
appreciate honesty and I would definitely work for a company that admits their
problems but is willing to fix them.

Also getting rid of recruiters altogether is not a viable option.

------
csmattryder
I get a lot of poor recruitment pitches, I could go on for hours about this.

Best ones are "looking for a $TECH ninja/pirate/spaceman", yada yada, they
have a ping-pong table, lunch etc.

No mention of salary range. Not one. Like I'm doing this purely because I
enjoy it (I do, but that's beside the point)!

Why the heck would I apply for a job that doesn't pay?

~~~
lebowen
What do you mean? You can't pay your mortgage with "great company ethos" or
"free beers on Friday"?

------
lebowen
Another frustrating tactic they have started to use is bait positions with
attractive "specifications". They use these to draw you into communicating
with them and start offering subpar positions than those initially mentioned
in the first communication. The classic bait and switch.

I'm fed up getting messages on LinkedIn along the lines of:

Hi LeBowen You are exactly what TheWorldsBestCompany are looking for, is it OK
for us to have a phone call to discuss?

Of course when you try to obtain any information about the position, you're
met with vague details about it, but they have this other position you might
be interested in.

~~~
jcadam
I get these all the time and I simply don't respond to them anymore.

The initial email needs to hook me somehow, and show that you've at least put
some amount of effort into personalizing your pitch to me, specifically (you
know, show that you've actually read my profile and explain why'd I'd be a
great fit for your client).

------
SmellyGeekBoy
As the owner of a small business I like to point out that recruiters' fees
come straight out of your salary - if I have a budget of £30k for a junior
developer position and interview someone myself, I'll offer £30k. If I
interview someone through a recruiter and know they'll charge me 15% I'll not
only offer less to try to bring the fees down but also so I don't go over my
budget _including fees_.

If you're job hunting it _pays_ to approach potential employers directly. It
also makes a much better impression.

~~~
caffeineclown
I'd like to apply to an company's own listing directly (whether it be
LinkedIn, StackOverflow, the company's own web site, etc.) but this seems to
be a straight ticket into a black hole.

At this point in my career, I've probably interviewed at 200-300 companies. I
think I can count the number of times I've received a positive response for a
position I applied to directly with one hand.

All my interviews have been from recruiters (whether it be third-party or in-
house) reaching out to me, or friends referring me.

Maybe my resume just sucks?

~~~
scarface74
I can honestly say out of around 60 job submittals (I’m very focused) over 20
years and 7 companies, going through recruiters, I’ve never been ghosted, I
always knew where I stood in the process and have only had maybe 4 rejections.
The rest I took myself out of the running for when I got the offer I wanted.
Even out of the four rejections, I at least went through the whole process of
phone screen and in person.

I’m no special snowflake I’m just your bog standard enterprise
developer/architect and honestly I just started taking my career seriously in
the last ten years. Five of the mentioned 7 jobs were in the last 10 years.

~~~
caffeineclown
My problem isn't ghosting. Correct me if I'm wrong, but ghosting means you
start communications with the employer, but at some point they cease contact.

My problem is getting a positive response in the first place from any company
I apply to directly. I apply online, wait anywhere from a few days to a few
weeks+, and either get no response at all, or a generic "sorry, but no thanks"
e-mail.

On the other hand, going through a recruiter, he/she has been able to sell me
to the employer much more effectively. When I go through a recruiter, I'd say
I've been able to at least get to a phone screen 90%+ of the time.

I reckon a large factor is that recruiters often have connections to hiring
managers.

~~~
scarface74
I’m “starting the conversation” when I send out the resume. When I go through
a reputable recruiter my resume never goes down a black hole.

I’ve gotten a phone screen 100% of the time my resume has been submitted by a
recruiter - the only exception was an immediate response from the company that
they filled the spot already.

Not that I am a special snowflake, but if you know the qualifications that the
company is looking for up front, you can tailor your resume to highlight those
qualifications. If you don’t have the qualifications you don’t bother
submitting your resume.

------
at-fates-hands
My major issue right now is getting a ton of irrelevant emails and voicemails
for roles that I am not at all qualified for.

They're borderline spam and follow the came basic format:

Hey atfateshands!

I've got a great FTE opportunity in your area. The company is really great and
offers a ton of great perks.

 _insert another paragraph about how awesome the company is and how many "best
places to work" awards it has won in the last few years_

Then it lays out the req's and experience:

 _insert laundry list of technologies they want you to have. Usually stuff
that 's not all relevant to what you do. I'm a front-end dev and get all kinds
of these for Java, .Net, Azure or other tech stacks I'm not at all involved
in_

Then the kicker:

"If you're not a good fit for this, please forward this on to anybody in your
network who you think would be interested."

When I was looking for a gig about a year ago, I got sucked into many of these
thinking they were legit. Now I just scan and delete them.

------
bastard_op
I remember a little site called fuckedcompany.com circa 1999 that was a great
dirt rag on businesses in the bay area at the time to know whether or not to
go work there. People started disclosing way too much info about companies and
people in particular, and lawyers came out with fangs bared. It didn't end
well for the people running the site, but it was sad to see go eventually. Now
there's glassdoor, a cleaner version it, with less vitriol (unfortunately).

~~~
icedchai
I loved that site. Hilarious stuff for the time.

------
kernx16
This is more nitpicky if anything, but developers are not the only ones that
get blasted and ghosted with recruiters.

I'm a DBA, but I also get recruiters always telling me how I am perfect for a
Sr. full stack engineer.

~~~
randyzwitch
As a DBA, you don't consider yourself a developer?

~~~
lowercased
just went through a process audit with a major financial company. they were
vetting our setup to connect and grab info from them for use in a product. The
auditor flipped out when he learned that "developers" would potentially have
access to our live production database (not theirs mind you - our own).

"This is unacceptable, developers can write code and could exfiltrate data".

"Umm... _someone_ needs to be doing database updates, backups, restores, etc.
Who do you suggest do that?" (bear in mind there's only 3 tech people on our
team, and only 6 people total involved in the company's business).

"Typically a DBA or a manager would do that work. It would need to be someone
who couldn't write any code to exfiltrate data".

We just sat on the call for another minute or so. I asked him to detail out
the process by which someone who should be incapable of 'exfiltrating code'
should also be the person who has access to manage the structure of a
production database. We got nothing back except a checklist of stuff that we'd
'failed' with no remediation suggestions.

So... apparently some large companies do not consider DBAs as "developers" for
certain checklists.

~~~
reaperducer
Wow. Just wow. Because I've actually seen this happen elsewhere (not
financial), and I thought it was a one-off.

------
nelsonic
@chprmc good idea to have an anon way of collecting the data.

In the UK we have a list of "spammy recruiters" who consistently disrespect
"unsubscribe" requests and send useless/unrelated emails see:
[https://github.com/drcongo/spammy-
recruiters](https://github.com/drcongo/spammy-recruiters)

~~~
pandemic_region
Looked for vividresourcing aaand yep no surprise it's there !

~~~
chpmrc
We are very curious to hear what happened!

------
kome
I wish recruiters could harass me with job offers... some have it all :)

~~~
chpmrc
Haha one day they will and you'll understand how big of a problem this has
become :) good luck!

------
ForHackernews
Why do recruiters insist on phone calls for everything? Why can't they just
send an email? I can't get on the phone _while I 'm at my job_ to talk to you
about some other job.

~~~
seanhunter
It's as bad if not worse if you have decision-making power at a place which is
hiring and therefore are a client or potential client. For example, I
(reluctantly) agreed to have coffee with a recruiter next week. I'm not
looking for a job - he wants to be put on our preferred supplier list. So now
he sends me an email - he wants to have a quick catch up call before we meet
for coffee.

Since I think having coffee with him is a total waste of my time, how do I
even begin to think about a pre-call for the coffee?

~~~
mrunkel
Do the call, cover the topics, say "I guess we don't need to meet now."

Saying no is hard but we all need to learn to do it. If you're not interested,
just say so.

~~~
seanhunter
I've actually just said no to both things. I'm pretty good at it.

------
mchannon
Wish you luck on this, but I don't see it helping a lot of candidates. There's
a large number of (and will always be a large number of) "ambulance chaser"
boiler room recruiters working in a very large English-speaking country that
shall remain nameless, and they'll often cold call me up for the same certain
roles (that don't pay well) as the last one 5 minutes prior.

I could write a whole book of these stories (as I'm sure many others reading
this post could as well) but I'll recount one of my favorites.

I had interviewed with Abbott Diabetes Care in Alameda, CA, and gotten a job
offer, but went with a different opportunity. Fine.

Recruiters would still blow up my inbox and phone with that role for months to
come. And being employed, I was getting really short with them. Like, say "not
interested" in half a second, hang up in a second, super-rude short. The
trouble was it took 3 minutes squeezing the details about the job out of the
person before I could get there.

One recruiter with a very thick accent was being exceptionally coy with the
details after he cold-called me. The role was in "California", and then once
pressed he said, "Alameda, California". Alameda's not all that big, and it's a
bedroom community more so than most Bay Area cities, with the exception of a
couple business parks next to the airport, where Abbott is.

I asked, "is this with Abbott?" "No, no, no.." "Ok, who is it with? What's the
company's name?"

It's with.. (shuffling of papers).. "uh-BOT".

"That's Abbott.. Dumb ass." <click>

40+ years old and I'd never called anyone dumbass on the phone before.

~~~
chpmrc
Well that's a funny story :) We're very aware that the market is filled with
harassing cutthroats and that's exactly what we're trying to put an end to.

If you have time it would be great if you could share one or two of your
stories with us (you can fill out the form multiple times). Like I wrote in
other comments the more data is in the open the easier it will be to show
agencies that certain practices are not just useless but can also damage their
image.

~~~
mchannon
There is such a thing as "libel proof". No matter how much dirt you dish on
the bottom feeders in this industry, someone will give them an IP phone and
your phone number, and they'll still cold-call and harass you no matter what
your site says about them.

Your heart is in the right place, but your forum will unfortunately never be a
deciding factor in anything. Either a recruiter makes a convincing pitch or
they won't, and in my experience it's never close to equivocal.

Now if you wanted to reframe the purposes of your website to go from
recruiters to _interviewing employers_, •THERE• is an untapped market that
could be worth billions if played right. I encourage you to pivot to there,
and I'd love to help.

------
zhte415
Question 5 alerted me

> Don't worry, we'll keep this bit of information private

So the rest isn't?

And then... there's lots of mention of 'we' in this thread and on the form,
but no mention of who 'we' are.

This is harder to trust than a recruiter that at least states who they are.

~~~
chpmrc
It's clearly written in the beginning of the form:

> We are collecting stories from devs all over the world and plan to release
> all data to the public (for free!) so that no more fellow devs will have to
> suffer

We never ask you to disclose sensitive information (your name for example) and
this being completely anonymous means you don't have to "trust" anyone. But
you are right about telling more about ourselves, I'll add our profiles to the
form somehow.

Meanwhile my profile on HN has a link to my personal website where you can see
who I am (no comment on the profile picture :) ). Cheers!

------
anony-user123
I applied for a software developer role through this recruiting agency and was
offered a contract to full time. After I quit my job, I was told my contract
was terminated because the company had budget issues and as a result I was
left jobless. I spent two months looking for a new job and finally found one
at a startup company. In the mean time this recruiting agency keep contacting
me and tried to low ball me with a salary that was significantly lower than
what my previous companies offered.

~~~
chpmrc
That's terrible! I'm glad you're doing ok now. The golden rule is to never
quit your job until you have a signed contract in your hand. I'm pretty sure
that in most countries companies can't legally mandate that employees are not
allowed to sign other employment contracts, also to prevent situations like
yours.

I really hope you took the time to share your story with us. It would help
lots of people avoid shady companies like this one. Thanks!

------
oracle2025
This whole proposal sounds just like one that a spoiled teenager would make.

Instead of feeling lucky to have a skill highly sought after, and to live in
an economy that can afford to not only pay good money, but that will even send
people out to throw that money after you, you still find reason to complain.

Set aside, I am aware, that there are crappy jobs, companies and people
around, that want to scam and screw you.

But overall, that situation is quite a luxury, ... complaining about that is
even beyond the proverbial first world problems.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Maybe an overstatement. Bad recruiters are essentially scammers, not trying to
throw money at anybody but just hoping to score a commission without working.

------
tristor
I don't respond to recruiters anymore, I just delete the email or ignore the
message on LinkedIn. The only way I will respond is if they specifically name
drop someone I know who recommended they reach out. If I want to talk to your
company, I probably already know someone who works there and will reach out
internally because I want to know the real scoop of how things work, not the
rose-tinted version the recruiter will give me for a commission.

------
dsr_
It occurs to me that YC could offer a centralized recruiting system for their
newly minted vassals. They all need one, and it would improve their prospects
if they could get the mechanical details handled efficiently and competently.

I suppose the downside is that to some degree they are competing with each
other for talented people, so the trust relationship with YC isn't completely
transitive.

------
blantonl
Fun reading, however why not turn this into an authoritative source for
something akin to a donotcall registry?

If something like that got some traction, and you were able to secure some
endorsements from big tech players, these irritants would become less of an
issue, and recruiters would be more effective in their efforts instead of
wasting time with people who don't want to be bothered.

~~~
chpmrc
That is actually one of our goals but first we have to prove that there is an
actual widespread interest in the community to put an end to this kind of
behavior (this is what we need the data for) and that we tried to get in touch
with these "bad" companies, provided them with all the data they need, hoping
they will fix the problem internally, before adding them to a sort of
"blacklist". That should be the last resort.

------
hyperdata
Hi,

I had a bad experience at Insight Global. Recruiter submitted my resume
without my permission. I had already asked a different recruiter to submit my
resume for that particular job. So, I lost that opportunity, completely.

------
k__
If you only publish by company and date and not by person that's okay, I
think.

"EuroStaff did xyz on dd.mm.yyyy"

------
philip1209
Maybe it would be more positive to make a recruiter pledge or something, e.g.
"I looked at your skills and thought you were a match for this role", "I'll be
upfront about compensation", "I'll respond to all emails within one working
day"

~~~
chpmrc
What we learned is that open data is one of the most powerful tools we have
for proposing and implementing change. We hope that with this initiative we'll
be able to slowly change how recruiters approach talent acquisition. Pledges
would definitely be a welcomed change!

------
james_s_tayler
Recently an ex-colleague of mine who is still working and has been looking put
out his CV and it's in non-chronological order so a recruiter thought he was
currently unemployed.

She asked him directly "would you be willing to take less because you're not
working?"

~~~
gaius
A non-chronological CV is somewhat unusual, to be fair to the recruiter (not
something I’d often say!)

------
gesman
Don't make it one-sided, "bad" only.

Make it proactive, but search-only. Search for your recruiter company or
individual by name and see how many "good or bad references" this specific
entity or person has.

------
deelly
After filling questionnaire will I will be able to read experiences of other
peoples?

------
bsvalley
How will you guarantee that the data manually entered in your system is true
or false? I had the same idea though, so many bad recruiters out there it's
hard to find the good ones.

~~~
chpmrc
The same way websites like Glassdoor guarantee that the reviews posted on
their websites are real.

Hint: they don't :) A company's reputation isn't ruined by 1 or 2 nasty
reviews (which will be deleted in a timely fashion should they be blatantly
false). Statistically speaking the chances that someone would purposely make a
bad story up to damage a company's reputation is negligible and so all of
these "review" websites (and we) rely on a sort of "honor system", assuming
that the majority of users will be honest.

EDIT: replaced Yelp and Trip Advisor with Glassdoor (better example).

------
peteradio
I am green to working with recruiters. What should I watch for? I already do
not like the experience but I don't know if that's a problem with me or them.

~~~
csmattryder
\- Recuiters aren't your friends, they're salespeople, selling you.

\- Don't stick your CV on a job board, there's no expiry and recuiters will
call up wondering if you're still unemployed three years later.

\- Never answer "how much are you currently on?". You should always say "I'm
looking for $X" \- feel free to give a range, but keep the ball in your court.
Check glassdoor/linkedin to make sure you're not blagging for an unreasonable
figure.

~~~
deathanatos
> _\- Never answer "how much are you currently on?". You should always say
> "I'm looking for $X" \- feel free to give a range, but keep the ball in your
> court._

(IANAL.) Know your locale's regulations here. For example, in California, it
is not legal for an employer to ask about prior salary[1]:

> _(b) An employer shall not, orally or in writing, personally or through an
> agent, seek salary history information, including compensation and benefits,
> about an applicant for employment._

> _(c) An employer, upon reasonable request, shall provide the pay scale for a
> position to an applicant applying for employment._

(CA LAB §432.3[2].)

(The advice in the comment I'm replying to is good, too. This isn't meant to
contradict it.)

[1]: [https://www.sfgate.com/business/networth/article/New-law-
ban...](https://www.sfgate.com/business/networth/article/New-law-bans-
California-employers-from-asking-12274431.php)

[2]:
[http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xh...](http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=LAB&division=2.&title=&part=1.&chapter=3.&article=3).

------
xtracto
"They Insisted to know my current salary"

"They refused to talk about compensation"

Working outside of the USA, these two are kind of weird. When I am hiring
someone, I want to know their current salary to know that I won't offer them a
low salary + benefits package.

I have ranges depending on positions, and if after evaluating someone she
falls into the "mid level" category, I want to make sure that their
expectations are in line with the level... otherwise I just cannot hire them.

So, people want to talk about compensation but they don't want to have a
conversation (which is 2 ways). Or how does it work in the USA?

~~~
randyzwitch
Because it's irrelevant what the person currently makes. It only matters what
the company is willing to pay for the work they are hiring for. Requiring the
applicant to tell their current salary is only useful as a means of salary
deflation.

------
ty_a
Recruiters are not your buddy. Just like the salesperson at the car dealership
is not your buddy.

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akeck
I understand the motivation, but this seems like a lawsuit magnet.

~~~
chpmrc
We've already done our research, of course, but before releasing any data we
will lawyer up properly and make sure we're not in violation of any law or
regulation ;)

~~~
akeck
Even if you get cleared initially, you may spend a significant amount of time
and cash proving that "clearance" in lawsuits. Time is your most important
resource. A year in litigation is year of your life you're not getting back.
At some point, you may have to decide if it's worth spending time on
litigation or other things. Pancreatic cancer made this clear for me. One
moment a family member had years to go. The next moment they only had six
months. Six months and a few weeks later, I collected their ashes from the
crematorium.

~~~
chpmrc
I'm sorry to hear that. I've had experience with a family member having cancer
myself and they lasted only 3 months. It's a trade-off: fighting for something
you believe in and enjoying life. If we realize it's not worth it we will drop
everything in a heart beat.

That's why we hope to collect enough data to justify why we're doing it and
that it's a bigger problem than we thought.

------
codesternews
Don't ever do that. Don't ever professionally ruin some Person life. It has a
greater impact than you thought.

~~~
kksskkss
Giving anonymous feedback based on your anonymous experiences should not ruin
anyone's life. Especially if the point is to help recruiters to not be asses
in the future.

