
Ask HN: Why are recruiters not interested in contractors? - remotecontract
I have 10 years of development experience and have been doing contracting remotely for like 5 years now.  I get most of my work through an agency at a rate of $100 &#x2F; hour.<p>Nearly every day some recruiter emails me about a job opportunity.  I am not really interested in switching since my arrangement is flexible and comfortable, but just for kicks, I always reply that I am available as a remote contractor at a rate of $130 an hour.<p>No recruiter has ever wanted to move forward or hear more.  Why not?  Is it the remote thing, or the contractor thing, the way I am responding, or what?<p>It seems like a lot of contracting happens in the industry, and overall contracting seems like a great way to bring someone on risk free, before trying to convert them to a full time employee (although I never go for this).  What is it about offering back a remote contract that makes the recruiters run for the hills?
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trcollinson
I'll give a slightly different perspective. I work with TekSystems a lot.
Let's imagine you're a customer and you go into a car dealership. You tell
them you want a nice midsized sedan at a certain price level. If the sales
person comes back and says "that's cool but I want you to lease this much
nicer two door sports car. The horse power is double. And the price is 50%
higher." You wouldn't be happy.

The client in this case is the company hiring an employee. They are asking for
an FTE. They want to pay a certain salary. You are a consultant. You are
asking for a certain hourly/daily/weekly/monthly rate. It's not that they
don't like you. They just want something else. It's nothing personal.

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whalesalad
Recruiters are hired to do a job which typically means get as ass in a seat. A
contractor isn’t that, so they don’t want it.

Recruiting is a very concrete, straightforward task. Anything that doesn’t fit
into the mold is simply ignored. It’s not illogical, don’t take it personally.
They got horse blinders on and aren’t focusing on anything that isn’t directly
tied to their duties.

Also (anecdotally) the kind of recruiters who are going to reach out to you
are not the kind of people you want to be working with anyway.

All this being said, I empathize with you. Ultimately there’s a significant
chance that you are exactly the type of person that they are ultimately being
hired to find... but it’s not the way that business works.

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jamestimmins
Why are they not the ones you want to work with?

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GoToRO
My take: good jobs are not even posted anywhere, they are given to friends and
acquaintances. Bad jobs remain open long enough that a recruiter is called.

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swedish_mafia
Because in next few days recruitment will find a very capable developer with
12 Years experience who will do it for 90 because not everything in life is in
his control and he wants the gig ASAP.

You are replaceable commodity. Like iron ore etc.

~~~
eanthy
you must be a recruiter for sure

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pettycashstash2
Their pay schedule is dependant on you being hired. Perhaps it's simply too
difficult for them to find you clients or they just don't want to try. Either
way remember they are middlemen. Maybe find one that specializes in contract
recruiting and you'll have better results.

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BjoernKW
Like swedish_mafia has already stated: If you market yourself in terms of
development experience you’re a commodity to these people.

Market yourself in terms of the actual value you provide to customers and
simply ignore those recruiters.

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m463
In my experience there are two types of "recruiter"

#1 gets a commission for hiring someone for a job as an employee. The employer
will pay him a percentage of your yearly salary to the recruiter if you are
hired.

#2 is a contract shop recruiter. You are hired by the contract shop and then
subcontracted to the employer at an hourly wage which they get an ongoing cut
of.

These two types of recruiters are different animals with different skills and
motivations.

In my experience, #1 will not do #2 type deals. #2 will sometimes act as #1
doing conversions of temp-to-perm for a lump sum.

There is also a variant of type #1 - a recruiter for a large company that I
believe recruits for a salary without commission. This may be to eliminate
conflicts of interest in the hiring process (or more properly, favor the
employer to be)

all this might have morphed - I haven't interacted with type #2 for many
years.

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jobigoud
In both of these cases the recruiter has incentives that the recruitee gets a
high wage and has insider info from past recruitments. Why don't the
recruiters help in salary negotiations?

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algaeontoast
Most recruiters have no clue what the fuck they’re doing.

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GoToRO
That is true. Then you get a recruiter that knows what they are doing only to
be met by a company that has no clue what the fuck they're doing. Me and
recruiter left confused.

~~~
algaeontoast
I can't echo this enough! The one time I had an exceedingly positive
experience with a recruiter, the role and company involved had been grossly
misrepresented and had a very fractured org (which explained the rushed hiring
/ recruiting bit).

Good recruiters (i.e. retired software devs will likely not have bad intent or
be clueless) will usually mean good, but can still screw you. Otherwise, most
recruiters are econ majors or business majors who couldn't fill out excel
sheets well enough to find a decent job, so they decided to try "recruiting".
"in-house" recruiters, seemingly a new SF trend, generally aren't any more
qualified (still have basically zero tech background) and seem to just be
trying the hardest to "be cool" and set the stage for an over-blown behavioral
interview.

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speedplane
This has nothing to do with your skills, and everything to do with the way
recruiters are paid.

Recruiters are paid to find employees, and get a percentage of their yearly
salary when they make a placement.

In contrast, agencies and contractors are completely different. It’s normally
the job of the agency to find clients, they are not found by recruiters. If
youre getting paid $100/hr, it’s likely your agency is charging $200/hr. That
may seem unfair, but it’s likely they spent a ton of time and energy trying to
find a client who values your work. That extra money supports those client
development activities.

In many ways contractors/agencies are competing against full time recruiters.
I wouldn’t expect them to be your friend.

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souprock
It's not risk free.

Keeping a secret becomes harder as more people are involved. Employee (or
contractor) turnover means more people are involved.

The same goes for the number of work sites, with each remote worker being
their own work site. It is reasonable to guess that you don't have 24x7
guards, video recording, and competent on-site IT staff.

Then add in a training investment, the legal implications (tax, insurance,
holidays...) if you are in a different jurisdiction, and all the uncertainties
that a one-of-a-kind agreement would bring. Not every company is prepared to
deal with the situation you would create.

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mstaoru
Aside from startups, very minimal amount of companies do recruitment in-house.

Recruitment agencies charge anywhere from 25% to 50% annual wage for a
successful hire, at least here in SEA, I'm not sure about the US, but imagine
it must be comparable.

How would they charge for bringing in a contractor?

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eanthy
Just apply straight to the companies, recruiters always trying to find
whatever benefits them most and it's never in your interest.

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dlphn___xyz
your salary requirements are too high

