

Ask HN:  Fixing the recruiter industry - d4ft

I hate recruiters, a lot.  Inane emails, phone calls, and messages on your social network of choice seem to be common modus operandi.<p>Has anyone considered this problem/Are there solutions out there? If so, are they decent? And if not, does anyone have any suggestions?  I'm not very familiar with the industry, but HATE HATE HATE when they bug me.  There must be a better way.  I was thinking about some sort of bidding system based solution, but haven't had a chance to really flesh out the idea. Would anyone be interested in working on it?<p>About me:  Completed CS undergrad at a top 10 school, about to complete a JD/Business School combined degree at another top 10 US university.  Some startup experience.  Comfortable with Java, Ruby, and Scala.<p>Thanks for reading.  If you are interested feel free to contact me at ihaterecruiters [at] gmail
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jbooth
Funny thing about recruiters, is going through a recruiter I've generally
wound up with higher pay than doing things the other way around. They'll be
their typical aggressive recruiter selves, sell me, bid me up and insist that
I can't possibly work for less than X without making me seem like the prima
donna.. I still get to be the mild mannered guy who's primarily motivated by
the quality of work. They've also gotten me into places faster.. last couple
of times I was looking for work, the companies with a recruiter had me into
final interview stage before other companies (some of whom I was actually
interested enough in to seek out and contact) even got back to me from my
first "here's my resume" email.

So.. they actually do work. You'd think that if the company wasn't forking
over 25% of my salary to a recruiter, they'd be more enthusiastic to speak to
me and would be willing to pay me more, but it hasn't worked out that way in
practice. YMMV.

~~~
alanthonyc
That sounds more like having an agent (like pro athletes) then being
recruited. That model might work.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
Except most candidates don't have the (perceived) star power they need for
this model to work.

E.g., if the Yankees thought all first basemen were pretty much the same,
there's no way Scott Boras could have convinced them to spend so much on Mark
Teixeira last winter.

No recruiter is going to do the work of an agent (which requires a totally
different focus & commitment to the candidate) for Joe Average programmer.

~~~
alanthonyc
You don't need "star power" to have an agent, just marketable skills. Almost
all pro athletes (with a few notable exceptions like Daunte Culpepper) have
agents, from Texeira's backup all the way down to the guys in double and
single-A. (Okay, not sure about how far down it goes.)

And your point about recruiters not doing the work of agents is correct.
Recruiters recruit, ergo they work for the hiring company.

Agents represent the talent. In this case, I'm guessing an agent would pound
the pavement looking for programming jobs while the programmer sits at home
waiting for a phone call.

At this point of the analogy, it's starting to sound a little ridiculous, but
who know.

~~~
thwarted
It wouldn't be ridiculous if the programmer is working full time with constant
work coming in while the agent is out pounding the pavement. There's no reason
the two tasks of "finding work" and "doing work" need to be done serially.

And what you've just described is what consulting firms do. The sales people
are out pounding the pavement hitting up prospective customers to bring in
work for the programmers (or whatever positions the sales people have claimed
they have bodies for). This obviously isn't an ideal situation, for the
customer or the programmer, but it seems to be reasonably successful, at least
with large consulting firms. It could work better with a customer centric
salesman and a small team of developers -- I'm sure there's small 4 or 5
people firms that work like this, with a "sales agent" in house.

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yangtheman
Folks at Hacker Dojo have been discussing holding a reverse job fair, where
hackers who are in the job market come in with their craft (live demo, code
samples and whatnot) and interact with other engineers or hiring managers who
can recognize their mad skills and refer internally, decide who to bring in
for further interview or hire someone on the spot!

It's not scalable, but as I see more and more co-working spaces sprout up in
many places, this could be ONE way of solving the hiring/recruiting problem
for hackers.

~~~
lmedinburgh
like hackers-got-talent or x-codemonkeys

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fnid
Bidding system? Hmm...

Like if I put my resume on a site, someone has to bid to contact me? Perhaps
as an applicant, you can set a base price and a frequency of contact. Maybe
you only allow one recruiter to contact you per week or day. If you want to be
that recruiter, it'll cost you minimum $1. If more than one recruiter wants to
contact you, they bid up the price.

Applicants could regulate the minimum price based on their current status. If
they are employed happily, the price is $1000. If they are unemployed, perhaps
it's zero with unlimited contacts until they get flooded and then the price
goes up.

The economics of such an idea is interesting. It assumes a shift in power from
the employer to the applicant. The best of the best will rise to the top and a
natural ranking of applicants will evolve based on the bid. Great applicants
could sustain themselves on employer interest for a while until recruiters
give up trying to gain their interest.

Could something like this work? I suppose it depends on supply and demand of
both applicants and jobs.

~~~
pwnstigator
People would inflate their minimum bid prices to increase their status, and so
everyone would be expensive to contact. So no one would use the site for
recruiting.

~~~
d4ft
What if there was no status per se or what if status was based on "tests" of
some sort and independent of pricing?

~~~
fnid
Elance does the testing method, but it isn't too successful.

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adnam
I think that programmers often encounter a culture clash with recruiters. A
recruiter has a client (and it's not you) and has to fill a large number of
positions. I have had some awful experiences. Once, the recruiter sent a
modified version of my CV to a company and exaggerated my experience in
certain areas. I guess she thought she was doing me a favour, but I ended up
looking like an idiot in the interview.

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lmedinburgh
Guys & Dolls,

Recruitment is sales. 95% of your time is wasted calling clients and
candidates for the one time you get a match. This is unless you manage a
number of clients where you are fed requirements, and then it's just the
candidate part.

There is no way to escape it; the best thing to do is to shield yourself from
the continuous onslaught.

• Insist all communication is sent to a "jobs" email and have GMail filter it
or poll it • Delete your phone number off CV's when sending them in or posting
on the web. • Make your most recent employer anonymous • You can also use an
initial instead of your first name incase they have your details already, it
may fool them ;-) • Make sure your CV is well written and updated • Insist on
seeing a job spec before giving them your number, if you’re the perfect match
they will take the time. • Do tell them your current status and salary

DO NOT tell them info on current company, manager until you trust them.

Remember they want to close candidates, clients, deals – it’s a sales job

Every call is a sales call; they will try to strip you for information, about
colleagues, workplace, inside info, references for managers’ names

We would often misplace the truth or withhold information to close deals; this
is common practice in the UK/Europe. The most common one telling people we had
sent their CV to an employer when we hadn’t just to ensure they wouldn’t let
other recruiters send it to the client and increasing the likeliness that our
current candidates had a better chance.

I think Recruiters have a place in society, some are upstanding and honest,
other aren’t. As I mentioned, it’s about distancing yourself from them until
they have the ideal job for you.

P.S. Sorry for the ramblings, trying to watch TV and take care of my 4 day old
daughter.

I’m a mature student studying CS but worked as an IT recruiter before deciding
I wanted to turn to the other side.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
" _Do tell them your current status and salary_ "

I could not disagree more.

If you're switching jobs, one of your goals should be to get the most salary
you can (many reasons for this, best described in detail by Jeffrey J. Fox in
his "How to Become CEO" book).

Telling the recruiter (and thus the hiring firm) how much you make now is a
mistake b/c they'll use that to make an incremental increase over your current
salary (say 10 to 20 percent), whereas they might have been willing to offer
you much more.

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vaksel
I think a service product is a much better option. What is recruiting after
all? It's a) contacts and b) a filter.

Programmers deal with recruiters because they have the "exclusives" and
companies deal with recruiters because they can filter out the first interview
stage.

So create a service, that will let companies find out the quality of the
programmer, without shelling out $20,000.

I imagine it as a "testing company" you create a few thousand tests,
programmers take them, get their rank, then they add it to their resumes.

Employers see the ranking link, go to your site, find out about your testing
methods, see aha, 90% percentile on this tough test, good guy to interview.

Eventually offer programmers the ability to list their rates + languages, and
let employers contact them for a small fee. i.e. Search for all programmers
under $50/hr in California with Java rank of 90th percentile.

Make one of the questionnaires the usual questions asked in the first
interview, you know the script all recruiters follow to weed out people.

~~~
rbranson
Too easy to cheat the test. Next.

~~~
vaksel
fine, make it a real test, where you have to take a test in front of a
representative

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jordibunster
I used to have a canned email that I used to reply to recruiters.

It basically explained (in better words) that I needed the name, website and
physical address of the company, because I was very picky about culture and
location, and it would save us both a ton of time.

It also said I had no incentive to screw them and go directly to the company,
if I was indeed interested.

Worked 50% of the time. Some people wanted me to call them first before
telling me the info (I wonder why), and others plain told me "that's not how
this works, I've been burned before", but even when it did work, it seems like
it caused said recruiter to not send any more leads my way.

So I went back to playing their game. Which I hate as much as you do.

~~~
bmj
I ignore all recruiters, except two who know:

1\. My requirements for a potential employer (location, size, culture, etc)
2\. My preferred method of communication (email) 3\. When I might be actively
looking.

I think there are good recruiters out there who are willing to work with both
employers and job seekers. They are, however, few and far between.

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adammichaelc
Dude, that's a pretty sweet problem to have. "Shoot!! all these people keep
calling me about how awesome I am and how many job offers they can get me. The
nerve..."

Not the kind of problem to be upset about IMHO. If I were you I'd send them
all Christmas cards and be glad that you're so sought after.

:-) cheers!

~~~
xsmasher
It'd be sweet if they actually got you an appropriate job - if all they do is
mangle and falsify your resume and send you on inappropriate interviews, then
they're a bother.

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pmichaud
Recruiters exists because of two problems:

1) Programmers can't find all the jobs that are available 2) Companies aren't
generally able to evaluate programmers

But #1 is less and less true, and the recruitment industry doesn't do a good
job of addressing #2.

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antipimp
Hey fellas/ladies - one of my developer cronies sent this post my way and I'd
LOVE to chat with some of y'all. I AM a recruiter and have been for the last
12+ years..in addition I share the exact sentiment that you have written on
the pages below. Any of you wanna chat off line? If so, I'd welcome it and
would enjoy your contribution on my blog TheAntiPimp.com. Might also help to
check out this post I did about the things I hate about recruiters...rock on.

<http://theantipimp.com/?p=1082>

Scott scott@theantipimp.com

~~~
d4ft
Awaiting the.. "and I have some great opportunities that you might be
interested in". Case and point imo.

~~~
antipimp
blah blah blah. If you are waiting on that, you'll be waiting a long time.
Dude..I've done this for too long to even attempt to come to a forum like this
and do sh*t like that. I'm just offering an honest view from the other side of
the table. Honestly..I don't like recruiters either. Which is why I started my
site. Have a great weekend.

------
shmichael
Be original. If you want something unconventional, you'll have to make it
happen. Here is some inspiration: [http://www.socialmediajobs.com.au/blog/wp-
content/uploads/20...](http://www.socialmediajobs.com.au/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2009/11/dnd-resume-23.jpg)

~~~
d4ft
I don't get it. I'm not looking for a job here, just voicing my distress at
the recruiting industry.

~~~
shmichael
Your last two paragraphs don't look so innocent to me.

~~~
d4ft
Yes but if you read carefully, instead of just "look"ing, you would see that
1) I am a student with a semester left and therefore don't need a job and 2) I
am soliciting offers to work with someone on solving this problem i.e.
creating a solution. I am NOT asking for hints on job searches or tips on how
to create a "creative" resume. Sorry if this sounds condescending, but it is
frustrating when people don't read the post and respond to some other issue
altogether.

~~~
shmichael
You're in the right. My apologies.

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clistctrl
I had a women ask me once if I was interested in a position writing C Pound.

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allenbrunson
don't have much to add here except: yeah, who _hasn't_ had bad recruiter
experiences? i wish i was l33t enough that i could ignore them altogether, but
i'm not.

i have had a few good experiences, but even then, i've never met even one who
had a good grasp of the technical skills that they are trying to sell to
potential employers. that's always struck me as kind of odd.

