
Google recruitment mistakes: part 3 - ashitlerferad
https://asylum.madhouse-project.org/blog/2016/08/29/recruitment-mistakes-3/
======
ohitsdom
Is this really necessary? If you get this worked up about contact from a
recruiter, I imagine you also might write back to every piece of direct mail
junk mail telling them how your interests don't align and to please stop
contacting you.

Why not just delete it or reply no thank you? Google is a massive company, and
unless they are specifically head-hunting you, it's not fair to expect them to
even spend 5 minutes going through your personal site. You're going to get
picked up by automated scripts for big hiring campaigns. Accept it, and don't
waste time or mental energy getting frustrated or mad about it.

~~~
m52go
Recruiting is a sales process just like any other. No one would ever say it's
unfair to expect a business developer to spend 5 minutes researching a
prospect just because he/she sells for a big firm and doesn't have the time.

Come on. This is their JOB.

~~~
madeofpalk
When they have someone they specifically want to recruit/headhunt, I would
expect them to spend at least 5 minutes research.

~~~
valarauca1
Your argument boils down to:

    
    
        Large corporations do not have to sell employment.
        Potential employees should feel honored to merely be contacted on the basis of an opportunity. 
    

This sounds a lot like a cargo cult, or some weird corporatism worship.

Frankly if I'm contacted by a recruiter who is a direct employee of a company,
and it is blatantly obvious I'm receiving a form letter based on a keyword
search of a resume data base. I know exactly what my role will be at this
company, an employee ID in a database row.

~~~
deong
I don't think the argument is that you must feel "honored". Just not
personally affronted by it.

I work for a company that has open developer positions. None of them are
related to keyboard firmware, but if you told me nothing about a potential
candidate except that he'd been doing keyboard firmware for fun, my first
instinct would be, "great! Let's see if he wants to come in for an interview".
Don't we all spout the company line about how specific skills are less
important than "passion" or whatever? Well, then don't bitch if someone
contacts you about something other than the specific skills on your CV. You
don't have prostrate yourself before their glorious presence, but I don't see
a reason to get upset about it.

------
avindroth
It doesn't take much to piss someone off.

But it also doesn't take much to win someone's love and respect.

A Korean journalist (from here on referenced as Ms. Kim) once interviewed Guus
Hiddink, the football coach for 2002 World Cup SK National Team. The SK team
had placed fourth, an unprecedented miracle. Hiddink instantly became a
household name in Korea.

After the World Cup, countless journalists interviewed him; but Kim sought to
foster this relationship — to win Hiddink's love and respect.

Upon finishing the interview, Kim, the journalist, handed Hiddink a portable
drive with highlights of all the matches he coached this World Cup.

She gleefully recommended that he watch them on the flight back home.

Hiddink was so touched by her care that he took her out for lunch two days
later. This time, Ms. Kim brought kimchi that her grandmother made, and shared
that story at the table.

Kim and Hiddink kept in touch, and five years later, Hiddink came to her
wedding.

Hiddink flew half-way around the globe for the wedding of a journalist — whose
initial meeting was a typical interview.

Hundreds of people interviewed Hiddink. But only one managed to get him to
come to her wedding.

And all she spent was a little time, care, and attention.

~~~
huac
that actually sounds like a lot of effort

~~~
avindroth
Recordings of matches were just raw video files. No editing or anything.

"Highlights" must have given the wrong impression!

------
mabbo
Years ago I had a rather poor internship with Google. Wrong team, wrong time,
wrong me at the time. No one's fault really, but no one would call it a
success.

Their recruiter contacted me a couple years ago using the sentence "everyone
who worked with you had great things to say about you!". I replied back
"really? Who in particular?". Things went downhill from there.

I really do wish their recruiters (or all recruiters really) did a better job
of remembering what their company's previous interactions with candidates
were.

~~~
argonaut
I think you have to put things in the right perspective. The bar for a
software engineering internship (for a student) is not that high. The
expectations are not that high. When I was in college, I knew several fellow
students who were bored with their projects, felt like they didn't get along
with their team, and didn't really do anything useful, who got return offers
(which implies positive feedback).

Did you deliver _any_ code features / bug fixes during the internship, even if
you hated it and/or the code got thrown away? There is a good chance that is
considered enough for an internship. I'm pretty sure one of my internship
project's code got thrown out at a company, but I still got a return offer.

For some reason I doubt the recruiter would lie about something like this.
Perhaps the recruiter couldn't name names because the feedback was years-old
and/or anonymized?

~~~
mabbo
Given the lengthy apology afterwards, I suspect it was more like "People love
to be told they're great, let's start with that".

~~~
argonaut
I see. Well this is just a standard feature of human interaction. I am
_always_ polite and cheerful in tone when I write emails. Even if I'm actually
annoyed or bored or tired. It costs me absolutely nothing to use certain words
instead of other words, to add an exclamation mark in certain places, etc.

------
jeffbush
A while back, as spent 3 months sourcing my own candidates as an engineering
manager and it was enlightening. I spent a while on each candidate, finding
their github repo, personal webpages, and the roles they had held, then wrote
a personalized note explaining who I was, what I was doing and why I thought
their experience was useful. Out of hundreds of emails I sent, I got a handful
of responses. I had a few takeaways:

\- People with really good information on-line get tons of responses. Someone
from LinkedIn confirmed that a small number of profiles get most hits.

\- Most public information about engineers is total crap. Most LinkedIn
profiles have no detail to determine if someone is a fit. I looked at the
profiles of some of my coworkers who I thought were really good and there was
nothing interesting in them. Most github repos have not substantive or
interesting projects. Looking at github was a big waste of time.

\- Being a recruiter is hard work. It's exhausting looking through profiles
and dismaying to get rejected and ignored all the time, especially when you've
spent time researching people.

\- Often you need to contact people several times before they will respond,
even if they are interested. I've found this even when I've been contacted by
recruiters: I think "interesting, I'll get back to them" and forget about it.

Recruiting is a volume game. Carpet bombing is the only effective strategy in
my experience, which is why recruiters do it. It's simply not worth doing that
much research up front.

Also, bear in mind that the recruiting staff is usually divided into
recruiters and sourcers. The latter are who are doing a lot of the contacting,
and their job is mainly to find lots of profiles, not do deep research. Once
they get a response, the recruiter takes over and does more of the
relationship building and candidate vetting. Given low response rates, this is
also a more effective strategy.

~~~
rusabd
we sourced all our candidates through
[https://lispjobs.wordpress.com](https://lispjobs.wordpress.com) . Given hard
requirement of relocation to Australia Adelaide that was very efficient and
pleasant experience.

We also tried recruiters and stackoverflow. One recruiter was very good at
selling himself to upper management and was pushing unqualified engineers into
our throats. Stackoverflow was less targeted than lispjobs blog, but much
better than typical recruitment company.

lispjobs was so good that another our practice of flying candidates in to
spend a week of hacking together after brief phone screen wasn't that
expensive at all.

~~~
jeffbush
Do you think lisp being a bit of a niche specialization makes it easier or
harder to find people for your roles?

------
LargeCompanies
Another Stupid post about us privileged techies complaining about recruiters
for the point of reverse bragging.

Recruiters are awesome and if you are smart(you should be you work in this
field) you should know how to use recruiters to your benefit!

1\. Don't ever give them your real phone number or email address. Give them
your spam email address and number.

2\. If they are so bold to hunt you down and call you at your place of work
get them fired and or shame them publicly. Doubtful this happens a lot

3\. When they are chasing you... Jack up your price and get the best deal
ever(money, benefits, work location).

I never understood these silly complaints about recruiters minus to me it
sounding like reverse bragging.

~~~
dpkirchner
The sarcastic passive aggressive personality in me wants to say "Man, that
must have been really rough on you. I'm sorry you had to say no."

------
greggyb
Best advice I ever saw about dealing with recruiters, from someone on this
site, though I don't remember who you are; sorry, internet-friend:

    
    
        Hi $recruiter,
        I appreciate you taking the time to reach
        out about this opportunity. Luckily, I am 
        quite happy at $current_employer and not 
        currently pursuing other options. I do
        have one question for you, though. Right
        now, what would a typical salary range 
        look like for someone with my background 
        and level of experience for a position 
        like this? 
    
        Thanks,
        greggyb
    

I'd say anecdotally that I get an answer more than half the time with a salary
range, sometimes based on the position they're hiring for, and sometimes their
ballpark based on my profile.

It's not scientific, but it is helpful to keep a pulse on the types of
opportunities and compensation available.

~~~
fecak
This is great advice. I'm a recruiter known for being critical of recruiter
behavior, and when people claim that recruiters are mostly worthless to them,
I encourage them to simply use recruiters for this kind of information. An
experienced recruiter, specifically an agency recruiter with a wide variety of
clients, should be able to give you a fairly solid expectation on your
marketability and market value.

Instead of wasting the opportunity, a reply like this can be quite useful. If
the recruiter doesn't reply, don't respond to them again.

------
fecak
Recruiter here, though of the agency variety (even less popular than the
internal recruiters).

Google has no real excuse not to have a better candidate database in place
where this kind of thing doesn't happen. This person's information (email,
GitHub account, LinkedIn, name, web pages, etc.) should all be entered into a
system and marked as "DO NOT CALL" based on his previous interactions with
Google. Google recruiters should be required to check the name and contact
info of anyone before they send any correspondence - that only takes a minute.

The Google recruiter might be required to do this already and just didn't do
his/her job properly, but I can't imagine a company like Google doesn't have
this system in place.

The recruiter appears to have done some minimal level of research on the
candidate, but it's hard to tell that the recruiter discovered anything other
than the fact that this person had a GitHub account. Some recruiters looking
for software engineers of any kind will contact anyone with a GitHub account,
as most of those people will be developers.

The recruiter could have done a bit more, and most recruiters could do a bit
more research.

All this said, if this candidate actually wanted to work for Google, this blog
post never gets written. Candidates will accept a bit of laziness from the
recruiter if it's from a desirable company. If this person was interested in
Apple and this same email came from an Apple recruiter, the response is
probably "Sure, let's talk!". Because it's Google, and because this person
(unlike many in the world) doesn't want to work for Google and really wants us
to know that he doesn't want to work for Google, this is supposed to be
interesting.

This kind of thing happens thousands of times a day. It's not unique or
interesting.

~~~
brudgers
One reason that people like the author might not be on a 'do not call' list is
that long lists of crappy leads are often what gets passed to the new sales
person [and what is recruiting other than a sales process?]. I mean why waste
good leads on someone who is just learning the ropes and might screw up a slam
dunk or why pass good leads to someone who may not be cut out to handle the
high rate of rejection and will move on to a better match for their talents in
a few months?

------
mianos
An automated github keyword search to shotgun job offers? Pretty much like the
rest of the place. A couple of hundred guys wrote some scripts to automate
everything a few years back, then retired to their isolated clubhouse. That is
the only logical explanation to lack of useful contact with the outside world.
(The bot that posts to hacker news once every 13.87 articles saying 'Hi I am
Tony from this project and we really do care' is a similarly poor imitation of
a real person BTW).

------
kelvin0
I've never had ANY good experiences with ANY recruiters in my career so far.
Ditto with most HR of ANY company I've worked for. That being said, being
miffed because the recruiter didn't research him thoroughly (because he is
such a special 'snowflake'?) seems like a bit of a stretch. But then again,
who I am to talk? I've never had such offers from ABC Company's subsidiuaries.

~~~
scient
Have you ever considered that the issue could be you, not HR/recruiters? Not
trying to insult here in any way. People at times are super oblivious to small
stuff that causes huge issues.

~~~
kelvin0
Actually, I just remembered I did have 1 recruiter do a fantastic job which
landed my my first job in Video games. And yes you are correct in pointing out
I could be the problem, however in my case the only interaction I've ever had
with recruiters was very courteous but they always seem to be "shooting from
the hip" and simply contacting me in a haphazard way without any real or
concrete offers other than to expand their contact portfolios? Never any
follow through or any contact after the first initial email. As stated before,
I did my best to help them help me. I just simply ain't no rockstar/ninja/10x
dev enough for them I guess.

As for HR, their incompetence seems more due to the fact that: 1) There seems
to be a turnaround rate in HR departments, which if harvested could power a
small city 2) The head of HR is usually not given the power to enact proper
recruitment efforts (see #1) 3) The level of disorganization is at best
amateurish. This is not a personal statement against any HR employees, which
seem like great people who are stuck in sinking ship.

------
JustSomeNobody
Let me reply to this automated email, post about it on my blog and hopefully
get some lulz.

This being HN, I was hoping for something better from the link.

------
guy_c
"... I do not wish to work for Google. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever."

Are you really sure? How about in 15 years when nearly all programming jobs
have been replaced with AI[1]. Programmers are jobless, hungry, homeless and
without any access to healthcare. However Google bizarrely needs some keyboard
firmware written because AI is pretty shitty when it comes to keyboard
firmware.

[1] maybe even less dramatic, how about a year 2000 dot-com-style crash when
you are out of work for 12 months?

~~~
kuschku
Many – including myself – would rather then go and work in a supermarket or
even work with the garbage disposal men than working with Google.

Many people just have strict morals and refuse to work for multinationals that
try to use their market power and might to influence local laws, or think
they’re above the law.

Again others dislike the corporate culture.

------
raverbashing
While I agree with the sentiment, and Google recruiters have shown to be
disconnected from the candidates several times, I disagree with the tone of
the message

(However I can't condone their recruiter's behaviour - on average - as well)

I know, so many "amazing career opportunities" show up in my inbox from people
that can't even read that I'm not in the US and send me "no visa sponsorship"
openings there. Those get the 'report as spam' treatment

~~~
tdkl
The tone of the message is appropriate to the state of acceptance of his
initial wish stating "Thank you, no".

This kind of behaviour irks me in RL too. If someone can't respect your
decision of a polite "thank you, but no", then still keeps riling at it, then
there's perhaps no other way for them to realize that.

------
ehosca
I'm sorry but I don;t understand why you are posting this? This is a personal
correspondence between you and Google and I'm not sure why it needs to be made
public. Do you also post every other conversation you have with every other
entity?

~~~
Terr_
> This is a personal correspondence

No it isn't, that's the problem: It's impersonal bulk-email that _pretends_ to
be personalized.

------
qwertyuiop924
For a company who specializes in data and search, Google is remarkably
disorganized and doesn't seem to have the right data.

Mind, this is far from the first case of Google being disconnected from the
outside world. Like Google's lack of support for web standards, while loudly
supporting them. Or not communicating vital information to YouTube's creators
when they screw up, and disable monetization on all videos for no reason, or
unsubscribe people seemingly randomly. I could keep going, but I think you get
the picture.

------
petters
Wow, what an overreaction. Just politely reply no.

------
ancymon
I think it's kind of overreaction and a waste of time responding that way.
What is he tring to prove by responding in that maner and publishing it on the
blog?

~~~
gaius
People can write whatever they like in their blogs, that's kinda the point of
them.

------
amyjess
What pisses me off is when companies get my contact information off Monster
and then try to recruit me for a job in another city or a contract position.

My profile on Monster, and on other sites, explicitly states that I am not
interested in relocation and I will only accept full-time employment.

And I know for a fact that these recruiters are getting my information from
Monster because I get a flood of calls and emails every time I update my
profile there (which I haven't done in a while because I just started a new
job and thus I'm not looking anymore, so fortunately the calls have died down
lately).

Most of these are Indian recruiters hawking positions at no-name companies,
but I've received a disproportionately large amount of emails from Amazon.
Every few months, I'll get another email saying they're checking in on me and
that they've got positions open for me.

~~~
fecak
Your first mistake is having a profile on Monster. Recruiters that use Monster
are probably the bottom-feeders most in the industry hate, and the reason they
are on Monster is that is where you can generally find the bottom of the
talent pool. I don't think I've known any decent industry pro (I recruit
engineers for startups) in 10 years that has posted their info to Monster.

------
knocte
That is not really constructive.

If I were him, I would have replied with something really interesting for
anyone at Google (I'm guessing actually recruiters would not care), for
example, what would it take me take a job at Google?

Certainly I'm not so arrogant to say I would never accept a job at Google. You
will never know the future, so you will never know if 3 years from now Google
would be funding the side-project of your dreams...

But even then, there are some things about Google that bother me. And this is
what I would have written in an email to a recruiter. Some examples below:

\- Stop spending resources on developing bad languages such as Go. (Or at
least, really improve it please by adding generics and removing ignoring-
errors-by-default. And merge it with Dart, or just throw Dart down the toilet
please...)

\- Stop tracking everyone and be more like duckduckgo.

\- Take down GooglePlus, it doesn't make any fucking point nowadays, it's just
useless and shameful.

\- Resurrect GoogleReader (I still sometimes begin to write "reader.goo" when
I open a tab nowadays), or at least make the code opensource and publish it.

\- Open source the software that brings automation to google cars. We need
accountability and transparency here.

\- Stop the inclusion of proprietary software in Android. And stop
blackmailing smartphone manufacturers by forcing them to include these
services.

\- After you have fixed Go (and flushed Dart), stop pushing for Python so
much. If I get hired I don't want to write code that is going to be broken 6
months down the road.

\- Same thing as previous bullet, but Java. Move Android to be Swift or C#
based.

\- Deprecate the stupid GoogleWallet thing and just adopt bitcoin, for once.

\- Don't ever stop organizing Google Summer Of Code please (not everything in
this comment was going to be criticism).

If these items get fulfilled, I would be less annoyed about working for
Google.

------
PaulHoule
Google+?

I'd rather work on accounts receivable for a ball bearing factory.

------
MelmanGI
Seems down, Google Cache version:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Pb4VPWY...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Pb4VPWYBhQIJ:https://asylum.madhouse-
project.org/blog/2016/08/29/recruitment-
mistakes-3/&num=1&lr=lang_de%7Clang_en&hl=en&gl=de&tbs=lr:lang_1de%7Clang_1en&strip=0&vwsrc=0)

------
untilHellbanned
TL;DR = Humble brag

------
subway
You're not wrong, Walter.

