

In Defense of Recruiters - quadlock
http://blog.42floors.com/in-defense-of-recruiters/

======
df07
The main difference we've seen is between retained vs. contingency recruiters.
Contingency recruiters don't get paid unless they find you a hire, which
sounds great in theory but turns it into a lottery for them: spam as many
developers and companies as you can, hoping for a big jackpot. It also leads
to some of the scummier practices of hiding names and contact information
(wouldn't want to lose that commission!), and paying for referrals (after all,
if I'm getting $20k for a hire, I can afford to pay out $2k to the person who
did the work). They don't really care if you fire the person after 6 months
because they'll be on to the next thing (or, even better, they can make
another commission off of you!).

Retained recruiters, whether they're contract or full-time, are ones you pay
to represent your company. They work off a salary or an hourly rate, like
normal employees. They expect to be there in a year or two, so if the hire
doesn't work out they'll hear about it. They represent you as a company and
don't have any incentive to hide who they're working for or who they're
talking to. You can still get clueless recruiters here, but at least the
relationship is much better.

~~~
fecak
The problem in most recruiting, as I've said here before, is that the big fees
in contingency recruiting models give recruiters incentives to cheat/lie/etc.
Fees of 30 - 50K might get people to do things they wouldn't do for 10 - 20K.

You also need to look at risk. In contingency recruiting, 100% of the risk is
on the recruiter. Company pays nothing until a hire is made, so companies can
engage all the contingency firms they want and most will be doing free labor -
spreading the word about the company, drumming up interest - it's free PR for
the company. I could find 10 perfect candidates and spend many hours, but not
make a dime if none get hired or if the company changes direction.

In fully retained recruiting, all the risk is on the company. The company will
pay money out and may get mixed results. My model tries to split the risk a
bit, with small upfront fees and small back-end fees (all flat fee and
unrelated to salary).

Negotiating with a couple recruiters to pay them some money up front with
additional back-end payout for performance may yield better results for
companies that complain about contingency firms. Recruiters will appreciate
you reducing their risk, and by removing the risk a company should be able to
negotiate a lower fee.

------
joshstrange
I have almost no problem with internal recruiters, it's the
external/contingency recruiters that I hate with a fiery passion. They call
during work hours, email constantly, and provide VERY little value in my
experience.

As others have mentioned, due to the high payouts to these recruiters they are
willing to lie their pants off to get you to accept the job. The last
recruiter I worked with tried to hide the name of the company which really
irked me. I am not some piece of cattle to be herded between companies and I
am perfectly capable of looking up information on a company to determine if I
want to work there or not.

I don't need a recruiter throwing buzzwords at me that he/she thinks will
convince me to take the job. Every call with the recruiter was more painful
than the last and then at one point the recruiters supervisor contacted me and
used even more BS/flowery language to try and convince me to apply for the
job.

A few months after I got a new job (without a recruiter) I was contacted by
another recruiter but noticed before I trashed the email that this wasn't from
a company of recruiters. Instead it was a recruiter hired by the company
looking for programmers. We talked back and forth on email a little and she
was very nice and I felt like there was much less over-hyping (still a little
but that's to be expected in that position). Within a few days and about 2-3
emails I had a phone call with the co-founder. I ended up not taking the job
due to lack of experience in what they were really looking for but it was a
very pleasant experience. Contrast that with 5+ calls (3 during work before I
told him not to call 9-5) with the external recruiter, a meeting in person,
him harassing my reference, and never once being able to talk to anyone at the
company they were trying to hire me for.

~~~
drdeadringer
> They call during work hours

Honest question: Should recruiters call during non-work hours when --
presumably -- no one would answer?

Side note: I prefer email, and it is mysterious to me why a significant
portion of recruiters simply must insist on a telephone conversation when an
email would suffice.

~~~
joshstrange
I also would prefer an email as long as it's is not some form letter (which is
all I get from external recruiters and is nothing like what I received from
the internal recruiter). I'd also like them to take a look at my github,
google me, know more about me than "joshstrange.isProgrammer == true".

The internal recruiter talked only over email with me and setup a call with
the cofounder in her second email to me. (Note: we traded a few more emails to
figure out a time that worked for both of us). I just looked at the first
email she sent and it isn't very personalized but it is informal and not a
wall of text filled with BS buzzwords.

\-------------------------------------- Hi Josh,

I work for [removed]. We're kind of like a [removed] for [removed]. We’re
[removed], whether they work in factories, wait tables, or drive firetrucks,
with each other and the companies they work for. We recently raised our Series
B round and we’re looking for great engineers to help us reach an even bigger
audience.

We are passionate about including all employees at the workplace in the
conversation. Potentially you could be a great fit for our engineering team
here at [removed]. Would you be open to chat either today or tomorrow?

Look forward to connecting with you.

Best, [removed] \--------------------------------------

As you can see they didn't mention anything specific to me but I am much more
open to responding to than what I get from most recruiters.

I may be an edge case in the phone call department but I always answer my
phone if I am awake and not in the middle of something with friends. If I am
at home at 8pm messing around online or watching TV I will answer. I find it
extremely uncomfortable to talk with a recruiter while at work. It was even
worse at my last job where I sat within 5 feet from my boss with no divider
between us at all. I feel like I have to speak in code and watch out from
saying certain words that might tip off my current employer that I am talking
to a recruiter. Now a days if I hear the words "Hi I'm XXX XXX with YYYYY" I
hangup if "YYYYY" is a recruiting firm. If you google my name you can find my
email address in seconds so there is no reason anyone should have to call me
and I refuse to deal with external recruiting companies after multiple bad
experiences and overall dislike of their business model.

------
bane
You know, I was just called by a recruiter from a great company about a great
job. I talked to him for a bit, the job sounded great, the commute sounded
great, etc. I asked him if I needed to do anything and he said "no, I'll put
you against the job req internally, you don't even have to go on-line".

"When should I hear anything?"

"I have a meeting with the hiring manager in 2 days, I'll call you back right
after."

A week passes. I call him back, it's 2pm on Tuesday.

<clearly waking up> "oh yes. Well this job is about..." <repeats the original
pitch>

"okay, so I know this, and last time we talked you said you had a meeting with
the hiring manager and would get back to me, a week ago."

"so...I'm not at my computer, but I have some feedback on my computer, I'll
call you back this afternoon?"

"Well was it good or bad feedback?"

"I...I...have it on my computer. Can I call you back this afternoon?"

"Sure"

No call, nothing. It's 3 days later now. At this point I've hit so many red
flags I'm not even interested in checking them out anymore. But it _is_ a
great company. One of those Top-20 best places to work kind of places. I
called a friend of mine who works there and they checked with the hiring
manager, but got a non-reply. I'm apparently being put against the position,
so that much _is_ true.

It's not the first time I've dealt with this kind of shenanigans. My favorite
is the "why do you want to work here?" question which pops up somewhere in the
process. And I respond with "I don't you asked _me_ to come, why do you want
_me_ to work here?"

Recruiters really are a waste of time and if I had spent more than 20 minutes
on the phone with this guy I would feel kind of burned right now. But instead
I've just added it to the pile of bizarre recruiter interactions I've had over
the years.

On the flip-side, a company my wife used to work for had great success with a
professional retained recruiting agency. It took a few months to finally nail
down what they were looking for in a candidate, but before long they had a
steady stream of qualified resumes coming in. So there's that.

------
vosper
A lot of the comments here are from the employee "I hate being bothered by
recruiters" side, which I totally get. But as a (newly promoted) Director of
Engineering in SF I'm struggling to make any headway building my team without
using contingency recruiters. I'm new to being on the hiring side and my
manager is frustrated that my only resource for candidates is to use
recruiters (primarily because of the cost). What other things can / should I
be doing?

Here are some things I've considered:

\- Meetups: Hosting usually gives you a quick pitch to the audience, but there
is a real time investment to make a successful meetup that leaves a good
impression. I could attend other meetups and try to recruit but I don't want
to be "that guy" when everyone else is there to learn

\- Craigslist, StackOverflow, LinkedIn, etc... These are all things our
recruiters should be covering, but I thought I might get some traction as an
engineer trying to hire people. Not much luck so far

\- Hiring remotely. This is a little scary but I think that there's a big
talent pool outside of the Bay Area that we're not seeing because they don't
want to live here. I've read a lot about how to create successful remote teams
but I'm wary of building a team that's 95% in-office with one guy in Alabama
who's out of the loop.

I'd really love your thoughts or advice on this.

EDIT: Formatting

~~~
itsdrewmiller
The number one source of candidates should be your own social network, and the
number two source is the social network of other engineers at your company.
Having an employee referral program is nice, but nothing beats just asking
your best engineers directly who they've worked with that you should be
working together on recruiting.

~~~
vosper
One of my problems there is that we have a large number of foreign people
(myself included) who've only been in the city for a few years. For a number
of them this is their first job. Accordingly, the social networks are small.
I'll try to work on that, though.

Thanks for your feedback

------
aantix
If you care about maximizing your take home pay, you will not use a recruiter.

Regardless of what they tell you, their fee will factor into your salary
negotiations and give you less leverage to the upside.

While the potential employer won't tell you the recruiters fee, behind closed
doors the conversation goes "Well, he wants 125K and the recruiter has a 10%
fee on top of that, so..."

You're automatically a more expensive employee if you go through a recruiter
and that's a bad thing. If you're half-way good at what you do, reach out to
the company you like directly.

~~~
hkmurakami
On the flip side, what if you're terrible at negotiating? For those people,
even s theoretically reduced salary may be higher than what they'd get for
themselves.

~~~
hcho
Most recruiters don't care about the number; they only care that you signed
the dotted line. Their downside is much, much bigger than their downside.

~~~
fecak
This is partially true, although you have to keep in mind that agency
recruiters never have the incentive to minimize your compensation. They do
have an incentive to get you more money, and their biggest incentive is for
any offer (high or low) to be accepted - but their incentive is never to get
you a lower salary.

~~~
chrisbennet
It isn't that simple. Like real estate agents, they only get paid for a
placement. Numbers wise, they are motivated to place you any way they can.
They don't have much more to gain from getting you another $10K. They risk not
placing you if you are too expensive.

I don't have anything against recruiters but one should be realistic as to how
things actually work.

~~~
fecak
They do get paid for a placement - this is true - but there is certainly
motivation in getting someone another 10K. For someone like me that owns their
own small company, an extra 10K for my candidate could mean $2,500 in my
pocket.

I'll always advise candidates on the risk of asking too much or the potential
for an offer to be retracted if we don't negotiate in good faith and
reasonability, but it isn't accurate to think that the incentive to raise a
candidate's salary isn't there for many recruiters. For your example of 10K
that may result in $2,500 to the recruiter, that isn't an insignificant
amount. That's a mortgage payment for some.

I do agree that the risk of someone being too expensive is real, but the
recruiter doesn't decide on what is too expensive - that is a decision made by
the market and participants in the market.

------
awjr
Nothing wrong with recruiters, but never make the mistake of thinking they are
your friend no matter how 'nice' they appear. They follow the money. It's
their job to do that.

I can remember being on contract and wrangling a bottle of Whiskey out of the
agent. I had to go into the car park and collect it quietly there as he didn't
want the other people he was managing on site to get wind he'd given me it.
Funny in an odd way.

Remember that an agent is just following the money. A lot are on basic +
bonuses. One reason I used to keep the company and address of my current role
off my CV is that their focus is so much on locating new roles.

Of note if you hate an ex-boss, just casually mention that you worked for X :D

~~~
twistedpair
Usually the 20K payout is staged and contingent on the employee working
through a target date, say 1 year.

This has made me want to call them up at 50 weeks and ask for that bottle of
whiskey or brown paper bag of cash, otherwise I walk. Oddly enough, I've had
plenty of recruiters that placed me call me up on that 53rd week and try to
place me somewhere else.

Too bad the employees are not getting in on this racket?

~~~
fecak
In the US the guarantee period is usually much less, and fees are paid
relatively quickly. 90 day guarantee (sometimes prorated) and 90 day net is
pretty normal, and you might even see 30 day net.

------
rayiner
I don't get all the recruiter hate. You're the pretty girl/handsome guy at the
dance, for now. The unsolicited attention will fade with age. Enjoy it while
it lasts.

~~~
itafroma
I'm sure this isn't universal (though I don't think I'm the only one), but my
experience with recruiters has been a series of cold emails for jobs that
aren't even close to my areas of expertise in areas nowhere near where I'm
located. They usually incorporate some form of "if this isn't a good
opportunity for you, can you please forward it to someone else" with no
attempt to actually get to know me or what I'm looking for. That type of stuff
is borderline spam, regardless of market demand.

~~~
fecak
The forward it to someone else is probably what comes off as most offensive if
you haven't developed any rapport with the recruiter. I get tons of referrals
now from past candidates, but I almost never ask for referrals. I'd rather be
the one not asking for them, which differentiates me from most other firms out
there.

If they didn't ask you to forward, would you freely respond with what you in
fact are looking for, or would the recruiter specifically have to ask that? I
usually phrase my intros by saying if the opportunity I presented isn't
something you are interested in, I'd like to learn about what types of things
would interest you so I can let you know about only those opportunities if
they happen to come across my desk. Response varies, even with that added
line.

~~~
itafroma
When I get a cold email, especially if the email doesn't show any particular
knowledge about who I am or what I do, I almost always want to know how the
person emailing me came across my email and decided to email me. It's fine if
I get an email about an opportunity isn't a fit for me, but I would like to
know who or what gave the impression that it was so I can correct it.

The forward request is a little grating, but I used to reply to recruiters
asking how they came across me, regardless of whether they included that line.
Virtually none of them replied back. Lately, I've just been junking any
recruiter email without replying back if it's clear they don't know anything,
or they know the bare minimum, about me.

If a recruiter emailed me, opened the email up with an explanation of how they
came across me and why they thought I'd be interested, I'd be much more
inclined to respond with more information about what I'm looking for even if
the offer in their initial email is not even close or if they asked me to
forward the email to someone else.

~~~
fecak
This is good to hear. I usually provide some context, like if you have
experience with a certain framework or in a specific niche perhaps - whatever
caught my eye. Sounds like that info is useful in cases where it was a false
positive. Thanks for the insight, and glad it validates my thought process.

------
Spooky23
Recruiters who suck mostly suck because that's what their customers want.

When you get a call from some shady recruiter asking you about a 6 month
contract in Omaha, you're getting that call because a company or government
agency decided to start doing strategic sourcing and procure people the same
way they buy any other commodity.

So two things explain the poor quality -- they are literally squeezing every
penny out of the process and are hiring idiots

The other thing is that they don't want to find candidates. They want to have
low rates of success -- they're just engaging in a recruitment process to
justify hiring workers on guest visas who can be more effectively exploited.
If you look in an industry "trade rag", you'll usually find a page with some
hard to read, small print job postings -- those are "compliance"
advertisements purchased for the same purpose.

~~~
aeturnum
I was recently talking to two startups through their internal recruiters. The
two companies had similar positions available and were of a similar size, but
their recruiters were night and day. One of them frequently forgot to get back
to me, was unresponsive, gave unclear instructions, and generally slowed down
the process. The other was extremely attentive, always moving the process as
quickly as possible and accommodating my requests. It was dramatic enough
that, even though the company with the slow recruiter had a ~3 week head
start, I had to stall with the better recruiter to get an interview with both
companies.

Even in situations where the employee profile is similar, recruiter quality
can vary widely.

------
Peroni
The reason full-time internal recruiters tend to operate very differently to
external recruiters is primarily because the incentive is entirely different.

Full-time internal recruiters are rarely financially incentivised per hire or
to hit targets. If they are, I'd strongly argue that the company employing
them is utilising the recruiter incorrectly.

External recruiters live and die by their targets and their commission. Money
is a terrible incentive (possibly the worst) for encouraging recruiters to
actually help their candidates or clients.

Just like the best engineers/designers/etc, the best recruiters are those that
go above and beyond simply to help their company succeed. When you use an
external recruiter, that company is an agency.

------
kreitje
A recruiter setup an interview for me about an hour or so south of where I
live. He talked up how great of a person the C __is. I show up early and wait
for the recruiter. He showed 10 minutes AFTER the interview was suppose to
start and only then actually met the C __person.

I started talking to the interviewer and found out that one of the main things
on his list for a candidate was to be local. Within 5 minutes we both knew
this wasn't going anywhere and wrapped it up.

~~~
tkinom
A long time ago, I showed up in a company for interview after the recruiter
told me so. The contact person didn't even know I suppose to be there.

After that, I refuse to go to any on site interview unless I talked to the
hiring manager on phone for 10-20 minutes.

If the "lead" is from recruiter to my email inbox, I ask for job descriptions,
salary range via email. 98% of "jobs" are rejected base on those info. Good
for salary range - No need to "chat" with any headhunter, period!

------
robtdennis
If you haven't read Elaine Wherry's post "The Recruiter Honeypot," you haven't
read the best one about recruiters. Check it out here:
[http://www.ewherry.com/2012/06/the-recruiter-
honeypot/](http://www.ewherry.com/2012/06/the-recruiter-honeypot/)

A lot has been written about recruiter incentives in these comments, but the
market is still clearing even with extremely high fees. The reason bad
recruiters can still get paid really well is because there's zero transparency
and therefore almost no accountability. I think most of the problems with
recruiters could be solved just by addressing this issue.

When you're looking for a good restaurant you can go on Yelp to find one, and
you can tell from the reviews what to expect. The same goes if you have a bad
restaurant experience -- you can write a review on Yelp and warn others about
the crappy food / service / etc. Nothing really exists like this in the
recruiting space, despite people really loving to write about how much
recruiters suck. And a lot of them do, but what real accountability is there?
If a recruiter gets in touch about a job, how do I know he's not super shady?
If I'm an employer and need to hire rapidly, how can I find good recruiters
other than word of mouth? There should be a Yelp for recruiters. If you're
slimy, the world should know about it, and you should have a hard time finding
new business and new candidates. If you're a great recruiter who's adding real
value, that should be obvious, too, so that others will want to work with you.

Some friends and I have been working on making this a reality. Check it out.
Leave a review of your worst recruiting experience (worst one we'll feature on
the main page). Or your best one. Or both. And if you're interested in helping
us with this project, get in touch. www.hiredex.com

------
saganus
Is it not possible to do some sort of "phased" payment to recruiters? So
instead of giving 10% of the employees salary if actually employed (or
employed for at least 3 months or other variations), how about giving
increased percentages depending on actual time employed. So maybe 1% of salary
if employed, then 5% is the employee stays for more than 3 months, then 1%
every 3 months thereafter until it reaches 10-15% or some other amount.

I would imagine that this would encourage recruiters to not do a shotgun
approach (i.e. do any employee you can) as only the actually good employees
will be profitable, and the others will probably end up costing the recruiter
more than the first 5% he could get.

Of course I have no experience doing this and all figures are made up, but are
there any obvious reasons of why this would not work? Maybe in the end the
final percentage is higher than the typical market rate for recruiters (i.e.
>10% maybe) but extended over a longer period so the recruiter would have to
actually cherry-pick the candidates.

~~~
fecak
This sounds a bit like contract to hire, but it's an interesting idea. It's
the counterpoint to how recruiters debate the issue of guarantees.

Companies want long guarantee periods, meaning if they use a recruiter and pay
25% of salary, they want a refund if the candidate leaves quickly. Most
guarantees I see are 90 days.

When a company wants asks for a six month or one year guarantee, recruiters
may use the rebuttal "Well if my candidate stays for 20 years, are you going
to pay me a 50% fee instead of 25%?"

It's an interesting concept to reward recruiters who provide candidates that
stay for a long time. I've never seen any data to suggest that new hires that
come from agencies have any longer or shorter tenures than those found through
other means, so I'm not sure how a phased payment system would really help
change much (other than recruiters having a vested interest in their hires
staying at a job for as long as possible, which is the object of contract
recruiting).

~~~
saganus
_having a vested interest in their hires staying at a job for as long as
possible_

Exactly what I was thinking, but of course as I'm not experienced with this I
thought there could be some glaring issues with it.

I would love to see some data (even if anecdotal) from someone that tried
something similar. Imagine that you can even treat some of your older, most
successful employees as "passive income"; as a recruiter you made a really
really good effort locating, training and making the best fit for someone, and
then that someone is netting you, say, 1% of their salary every 6 months or
something, for the next 5 years (haven't worked through the numbers so that
might not even make sense), but replace 1% and 5 years with X and Y.

In general terms, I would like to have a recruiter in more "closer" terms. So
maybe this recruiter got me a job at company A, then 3 or 4 years from now,
since they really did their job and know me well, they can put me in a much
better job, for say the next 3 or 4 years again, and so forth. That would mean
both he and I could have continued income due to the effort we _both_ made. He
made his effort picking a really good candidate and so did I, doing my job.

Kind of like an investor. Successful traders are usually the ones that make
their due diligence and thus are rewarded with the most handsome payouts.
Isn't that what a recruiter should do? invest in a particular candidate and
find the best place where his "investment" can payback handsomely?

~~~
fecak
You're looking for an agent essentially who will be getting a portion of your
earnings, though you won't be truly paying for the service the agent provided
(the company will). I've written about this twice (1,2), inspired by a piece
here on HN, as a potential solution for the problems in contingency
recruiting, but with fees being paid by candidates. That is the key
differentiator to that agent model - the job seeker, not the company, foots
the bill.

Would you pay say 2-5% of your annual salary to a recruiter/agent every year?
Even in years that you aren't actively looking for a job?

These are interesting questions if you think the recruiter can find you good
jobs that you might not find on your own, can provide solid career advice, and
negotiate salaries that are higher than what you might receive otherwise. If I
can negotiate a 5% higher salary than you every time, paying me 2% every year
is a pretty easy decision. Most technologists probably trust that they are as
good at (or even better) negotiators than most recruiters, and in many cases
they may be correct.

(1)
[http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2012/09/17/disrupt/](http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2012/09/17/disrupt/)
(2)
[http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2012/09/26/disruptii/](http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2012/09/26/disruptii/)

~~~
saganus
Awesome! thanks for sharing. I'll be sure to read those articles.

Great to see I'm not alone with this crazy idea. When writing the previous
comment I actually started thinking if I would pay someone to actively look
for the best job I can get at any given moment, and that I would probably pay
for that happily. Of course, you make a serious point about considering that
same payment after X years in a stable job (e.g. I've been with Google for the
past 3 years... I'm not planning on changing jobs.. why should I pay this guy
every year?) very interesting things to ponder over.

Again, thanks for sharing!

------
takrupp
Hired is basically a team of recruiters (well, at least there are a good 10 of
us coming from various flavors of recruiting) and even we have a need for
external recruiters and internal interview coordinator.

The external recruiters we use are in markets we don't know a lot about (like
Marketing - which we are hiring for big time right now). The internal
coordinator helps keep onsites organized and managing the huge amount of
interview flow through the organization so that key stakeholders still have
some time to do their jobs.

The low-end contingency recruiting agencies have given the whole profession in
San Francisco a bad name, when in reality there are great people (like Oliver,
from the post) who do great work and are incredibly valuable to a fast growing
organization.

------
jrjarrett
So how does someone who is a recruitee get connected with a DECENT recruiter?

All I seem to get are the body shop type places contacting me (aka Robert
Half, TEKSystems). I've told them that I would be interested if and only if it
would mean a step up, go on to explain my current levels of pay,vacation,
sick, bonus, etc, and say if the opportunity isn't better than that, then we
have nothing to talk about.

Of course they start trying to hard sell me, and it turns out these places
have zero benefits.

I'd entertain discussion with someone looking for my skills that would be
willing to pay for them.

~~~
fecak
I wrote an article a while back on how to find a decent recruiter
([http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2013/08/09/pretty/](http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2013/08/09/pretty/)).
You really can't control who contacts you, so to find a good one you'll likely
have to do some outreach.

In my eyes the main thing is experience. Young recruiters who haven't made any
money yet get tied up in trying to recruit everyone and they don't
discriminate. They waste everybody's time - the candidate, the client, and
their own. Wave 5K or 10K in front of someone a year out of school and they go
bonkers - wave that same amount in front of someone who has been in business
for a while, and they know how valuable their time really is.

The recruiters that are trying to squeeze round pegs into square holes haven't
figured out the time management side of things yet. If they figure it out at
some point, they could have a long career. If they don't figure it out in a
couple years, they have to leave the industry (or bounce around between
companies until they are unemployable).

Career longevity could mean that the recruiter is the best at sales and
skilled at convincing candidates to take any job. But doing that isn't
sustainable over years and years - your reputation will eventually catch up to
you.

Find someone who has been in the business for a while with a steady work
history and experience in your industry. They will be thrilled to hear from
you.

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henrik_w
My experience of recruiters is mostly good. I spend almost no time saying no
to offers that I don't like. For offers that might be good, I have a better
negotiating position than if I applied for the job - I still have my current
job, so they have to make a really good offer, otherwise I won't switch.

I am mostly contacted on LinkedIn, and I think, on balance, that it works well
there. I've written about it here:
[http://henrikwarne.com/2013/08/21/linkedin-good-or-
bad/](http://henrikwarne.com/2013/08/21/linkedin-good-or-bad/)

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tieTYT
I hate the ones that require you to give an in person interview with them
before they'll suggest you for an in person interview with a company. Can
someone explain the reason they do this?

~~~
fecak
I've never done that, but one reason is for them to be able to coach you. If
you show up to meet them dressed poorly or making a bad overall impression,
they will either coach you or simply cut you loose and say they couldn't get
you in for the interview.

It also helps build a relationship. At some point that recruiter might 'ask'
you to take a job with his/her client. Saying no to someone you haven't met is
easier than saying no to someone you have spent time with.

Recruiters are constantly doing little sales 'closes' during the process,
building towards that big close of you accepting a job offer. It's all part of
a sales process, no different than any other sales position.

Edit: changed "the reason" to "one reason"

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megablast
My big problem with IT recruiters at the moments is the constant calls. Come
on guys, send me a damn email. I am at a work, not I don't have time to talk
to you now. Put your stupid questions, which are the same questions every
time, in an email, and I will copy and paste from the last time someone did
it.

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vladgur
What would be great is finding out how much exactly recruiters and referral
services charge. For instance, how much can Hired.com charge per referral to
afford to give several thousand back to the employee.

~~~
Peroni
Hired charge pretty much the same percentage rate that most agencies charge.

>What would be great is finding out how much exactly recruiters and referral
services charge.

The answer is anywhere between 12% and 35% of the candidates annual salary.

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jpsim
Like the talent you're trying to hire, recruiters span the spectrum from
horrible to not-so-horrible... with the occasional gem. Now if only there were
recruiters to help find good recruiters.

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digitalpacman
No

