
Recruiter Disruption Rant - jimeh
http://lists.lrug.org/pipermail/chat-lrug.org/2012-September/008072.html
======
Peroni
Here we go again with the recruiter bashing.

I'm a former tech recruiter. A few of you know that already. I hear these
recruiter rants more than most. Most of it is justified however it's all noise
and no feasible solutions.

That great little spiel the author mentioned at the end? The one where he said
he would shout my name from the rooftops if I took that approach? How,
exactly, does that fit in with _I certainly don't want cold-calls or cold
emails, ever._ If I can't introduce myself to the guy, how am I ever meant to
prove I'm not one of the many useless bottom-feeders he deals with on a daily
basis?

I've blogged extensively about the problem:
[http://hackerjobs.co.uk/blog/2012/6/15/all-that-is-wrong-
wit...](http://hackerjobs.co.uk/blog/2012/6/15/all-that-is-wrong-with-the-
recruitment-industry)

The facts are simple, regardless of the fact that most recruiters can't even
spell PHP, the industry is worth hundreds of billions globally and isn't going
anywhere fast and it's certainly not innovating any time soon. Sure their
marketing methods are improving and their sales pitches becoming sleaker but
ultimately, you are paying a ridiculous sum of money to get a guy with no clue
about tech to spend a week or two on the phone harassing every developer that
comes even close to some of the tricky but cool sounding words on your job
spec.

My prediction: more and more tech companies adopt internal recruitment teams
and someone will actually create a useful, multipurpose, recruiter free (
_cough_ print: <http://hackerjobs.co.uk> _cough_ ) job site or web service
that eliminates, crowd sources or automates the leg work that you are paying
an incompetent human thousands of dollars to do on your behalf.

~~~
andybak
"If I can't introduce myself to the guy, how am I ever meant to prove I'm not
one of the many useless bottom-feeders he deals with on a daily basis?"

Networking, word-of-mouth, recommendations and referrals, social media, via
your website, advertising...

The same way everyone grows their business without spamming and cold-calling.

~~~
Peroni
Absolutely right however that process takes forever. I gained most of my
clients through those methods but some potential clients aren't always
available through those methods.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"Absolutely right however that process takes forever."_

I mean this in the least aggressive and judgmental tone I can muster...

... How is this our problem, and how does the fact that feet-on-ground
networking takes a lot of effort justify spamming and cold-calling?

~~~
Peroni
Bottom line: Recruiters will piss of a lot of people in the process of cold-
calling but the absolute reality is that they _will_ place more candidates in
1 month of cold-calling than they would in 6 months of networking.
Unfortunately, it really is a numbers game.

You can build a decent business through better methods such as networking and
building a reputation for yourself (my chosen method when I was in the
business) however some of my colleagues who wouldn't know a tech meet-up if it
slapped them in the face were making twice the bonus I made exclusively
through cold calling.

~~~
potatolicious
I get that part. I think mostly everyone here is familiar with the how and the
why of recruiter behavior.

The question is why we should be expected to put up with it.

419 scams also get a tremendous amount of traction, and selling things via
spam is also surprisingly profitable.

How are recruiters different, and why should they be _not_ be treated as
cancerous perversions of the system, and why should we adopt any stance other
than complete hostility towards these cold-calling, spammy recruiters?

~~~
Peroni
_The question is why we should be expected to put up with it._

You shouldn't and I'll never say otherwise. My original point is that moaning
about it is pointless. This is one of the most innovative communities I'm
aware of and despite the fact that HN constantly bemoans the recruitment
industry (and rightfully so) these discussions rarely, if ever focus on
potential solutions to the problem.

------
ig1
The fundamental problem is that scammy tactics is the value most recruiters
add. You as a company can't cold call developers at your competitor and
convince them to work for you, you can however pay a recruiter who does it at
an arms length.

At any point of time the vast majority of good developers are off the market,
they need to be cold-sold on a job before they even consider looking.

Unless you've got an alternative that has a proven track record of reaching
developers who aren't actively job hunting, you're not going to replace
recruiters.

I ran a job board that did go after this group by heavily targeting through
passive ads (i.e. display ads, facebook, dating sites), and even though it was
successful in reaching that group once I'd convinced a developer that job
hunting was a good idea they'd often go and use other job boards, recruiters,
etc. in addition to my own one.

So not only do you have to capture non-active job seekers, once you've got
them you've got to close them almost immediately otherwise they'll convert to
becoming an "active job seeker" and using other options for job hunting
destroying your advantage.

Hence "capture-and-close" are the dynamics of the market, and recruiters are
perfectly suited to those dynamics. I've yet to see a truly viable
alternative.

Almost all recruitment startups focus on active job seekers, but that's not
where most of the value in the market is.

~~~
chao-
_> You as a company can't cold call developers at your competitor and convince
them to work for you, you can however pay a recruiter who does it at an arms
length._

Aside from just getting a bad reputation, is there some legal reason why you
couldn't do precisely that? If this question seems a little naive, it's
because I absolutely am (naive, and asking is how I learn).

~~~
ig1
There's a variety of reasons, for example recruiters can engage in activity of
legal dubiousness such as buying employee lists off disgruntled employees or
using phishing techniques to get the same.

It's also much cheaper for the recruiter because they're representing a range
of different businesses. If the person they're calling isn't interested in a
particular role they're pitching, they can pitch another role hence the ROI of
each call is much higher for the recruiter than for an individual business.

~~~
endianswap
Forgive me if I'm being naive, but what is legally dubious about purchasing
employee lists off of former (or current) employees? I'm in an industry where
the "employee list" is published regularly (game development, employees listed
via product credits) hence my curiosity.

~~~
ig1
In most industries it's considered confidential information.

------
lifeisstillgood
I think there is a insight hanging around here. This thread reminded me of the
thread on 99designs, and the attitude of (some) designers towards a fairly
"robust" contest format.

The idea that a recruiter will "get to know you" and "deeply understand your
needs" whilst _still being on commission at another company_ is foolish.

I think the OP is a bit confused - he seems to want things both ways - the
faceless contest approach (where he sees the Twitter feeds and linkediN pages
early) and some how also have the deep and meaningful (where the recruiter
says you should meet this guy, and _without looking at a twitter feed you
trust the recrtuiter and set up the interview_

Either bring recruitment in house, and see it as long term nuturing of talent,
or turn on a beauty parade and expect to do a lot of the weeding out of bad
candidates yourself.

Now, if I was paying a few hundred a month for the beauty parade, I suspect
that would be fine. If I am paying 20K / hire I want the recrutier to send
over Mr and Mrs right.

Its that fact that recruiters are lining up beauty parades but charging for
deep and meaningful that gets the ire of the OP up

------
klous
For many of these staffing firms, it's really a numbers game for them. They
throw _everything_ against the wall and see what sticks. On perm roles, when
you are getting $15-20,000 just for making an "introduction", there is heavy
competition and incentive to try to "win" as many placements as possible.

In the contract IT space, fake resumes are the norm. There are some firms that
just train up people in a technology, build them a fake resume with 4 years
experience, then hope they perform on a phone interview and last past the
first week or two of the contract and have learned enough to fulfill the
contract.

For disruption, I like what Developer Auction[1] is doing. Where the companies
bid on each person they wish to employ and drive up the salary / signing
bonus. Seems to be a better model than what is currently out there.

[1] <http://developerauction.com/>

~~~
Peroni
Certainly a useful alternative but I can't imagine it will make a dent on the
industry. Ultimately there are a huge number of companies that require average
developers and can't be bothered to invest their own time into finding them so
instead they pay a recruiter a lump sum to do it on their behalf.

~~~
klous
I agree, but I think developer auction could make a dent in less average,
"higher-end recruiting", like in highly competitive companies and locations
who snipe talent from each other in SV.

------
fecak
15 years recruiting software engineers, and I agree that the industry needs
some major changes. The problem you mention about candidates being used
unknowingly to bait potential new customers has been around for a while, and
many recruiters are not providing the proper value for the price.

I've started using a different model with my clients. I don't want to go into
too much detail, but my clients pay me a smaller up front fee to initiate a
search, and then a fee upon hire. The combined fees (front and back end) per
candidate end up being much lower than the industry standards, perhaps even
half what others are charging.

Why would I provide my service at approximately half the cost of other
companies? For one, when a client pays me up front, it guarantees my fee and
reduces my risk. Contingency recruiters take on 100% of the risk, whereas in a
retained relationship the hiring entity assumes 100% of the risk. My model
spreads that risk. I'm willing to take a lower fee, so long as my fee is
guaranteed.

My model will surely not be popular with contingency firms that have hundreds
of recruiters that they can burn through (pay them peanuts + commission until
they burn out), but I think if more small boutique firms used this model
regionally, many small software firms would jump at the chance to work with
one small firm that is going to produce with a minimal number of candidates
(usually 2-3 per search for my clients). Having the up front payment allows me
to be more selective to find the right fit, instead of just trying to find ANY
fit.

------
thingicantsay
"Twitter and Facebook pages full of photos from barbaric rituals and poems
about killing penguins?"

Right, because that's so relevant compared to photos indicating that the
candidate is pregnant, black, or of a religion the CTO hates passionately.
This sort of thing is either an irrational fear or a cover for excluding the
sort of person he's not allowed to say he doesn't want.

It's not that I want to force him to hire penguin murderers; it's that I find
myself wondering how likely it is that some crazy will find their way into a
technical interview process.

~~~
neverm0re
The fact he's being so flippant about what it is he exactly wants with the
details of someone's internet social life has me thinking he could not
actually admit what his real agenda and biases are. That should be worrying.

~~~
PaulRobinson
Hello, I'm Paul the author of the original piece. Pleased to meet you.

Thanks for taking a few hundred words I wrote over a lunch break and
extracting from them a warped inference that I must be a racist, misogynistic
bigot.

I actually have no such biases. I'm a leftist-liberal who reads The Guardian,
I've worked in the public sector for many years which in the UK means having
to know employment law inside out, and have specifically worked out of my
recruitment process anything that could impede somebody getting a job in my
team that other employers would secretly harbour as an excuse.

My hiring strategy is a bit like Valve software's: T-shaped skillsets are
gold, and I ask the three questions: What would happen if this person were to
become my boss? Would I learn a significant amount from them? How would I feel
if they went to work for a competitor?

I just like to understand candidate's beyond a single sheet CV before they
come into interview. They might spend 10 hours a day playing Minecraft. Cool,
let's talk about that, and how they like to hack around with it a little. They
might spend their weekends canoeing. I hate physical exertion, but cool, let's
talk about the challenges canoeing provides and how they deal with them. They
might be a devout Scientologist. OK, I don't get Scientology personally, but I
know employment law well enough to know that's no barrier to you getting the
job - I've heard Scientology is really big on clarity of communication through
"auditing", so let's talk about how that's helped the candidate in the
workplace, 'k?

I am not a white male bigot who hires people like me. I work with women, non-
white, non-atheist, non-Christian, non-liberal, non-leftist, non-English (I'm
British), people all day, every day and have done so for many years.

The fact you assume a potential employer who is betting a substantial amount
of money on you is interested in your personal life for any other reason than
to understand you better and to make sure you're going to be a great fit, is
cynical, naive and misguided.

It might be rooted in a truth with some employers, but I don't think those
employers live in the world of technology - particularly startups. Perhaps
that's naive of me. Perhaps that is a problem. So let's talk about the wider
issuer of "worst-case scenario" - if somebody on discovering who you really
are _is_ prejudiced against you, wouldn't you rather they hadn't hired you -
especially in a start-up environment where your legal recourse is highly
limited - than for them to find out a week into employment when you've moved
across a continent and now you're fucked?

If somebody is a penguin-murderer, why would I want to know that as an
employer other than to rule them out immediately? Because somebody who enjoys
torturing animals probably has an interesting approach to teamwork that isn't
going to fit into the way I like to run my teams. I'd want to spend some time
in interview understanding that a little more, precisely because I _don't_
want them turning up on day one and it being a disaster.

Yes, I was being flippant, but there's an important point there, somewhere.

Asserting that my "real agenda and biases" are hidden from view is wrong, and
the assertion that this is therefore worrying is flawed.

Hope that clears things up for you.

~~~
thingicantsay
Hello, Mr. Robinson.

I don't doubt that you are a nice person, within your own culture.

However, when you refer to someone else's most deeply held beliefs as
"barbaric rituals", perhaps we can be forgiven for jumping to conclusions
about whether you are bigoted toward them. I am not a religious man, but for
this conclusion I don't have to practice mass, or auditing, or wearing temple
garments, or kosher meat production. We can't be sure which of these (or
whatever other religious ceremony) you mean when you say "barbaric ritual",
but it really doesn't matter which one, does it? Essentially every religious
practice is someone else's barbarism.

Is there _any_ other meaning to "barbaric ritual" than "religious ceremony I
find distasteful"?

~~~
mjw
Had it occurred to you it might be an off-the-cuff flippant example used as a
bit of a joke? did 'penguin murdering' not give you a clue that this might not
be a serious example intended to refer to someone's religion?

British sense of humour lost in translation I think.

------
mechanical_fish
_I can go onto LinkedIn myself and harvest profiles (as agency recs have to).
I can "touch base" with 100+ developers myself if I need to._

I doubt you can. Not easily, anyway. Think about the social implications for a
minute.

If you do this in the most efficient way - grab profiles with a simple
algorithm, then send the same pitch email to everyone using blind-carbon-copy
- you're cold-calling. The problem with cold-calling is that it doesn't
enhance your reputation. Do you really want your name and email address filed
in the spam filter along with the clumsiest of recruiters? Do you really want
to experience the indignity of being unfriended on LinkedIn?

Just wait until your amateur spam-o-rama accidentally hits four employees
_and_ a hiring manager at another company. They will talk to each other, and
figure out that you're attempting to "poach" their employees in the clumsiest
possible way, and now your name is mud, twice over.

Cold-calling does work, though. (There's no shortage of evidence.) Most of the
best candidates don't surf job listings for entertainment, and those few who
do are window-shoppers, who have trained themselves to read but not to act.
But they might respond to a little poke, when it happens to arrive at the
right time. But: You can't be doing that nagging yourself. Frankly, you need a
scapegoat. A third party. Perhaps someone whose job description protects their
reputation a bit: Everyone knows that recruiters gotta recruit, or be fired.

Alternatively, to be kind to your colleagues, you can screen profiles more
carefully, making sure not to email people who are obviously not a fit, and
making sure not to target the employees of companies run by your friends, and
making sure to write lovingly personalized emails to each person, asking about
their dog and their kids and then oh-so-discreetly suggesting, as if by
accident, that maybe they'd like a new job? This strategy works to some degree
- it is, in fact, what most of us do as we wander down the hall at a
conference - but it doesn't scale. We call it _networking_ , but when you have
to do it with 100+ developers it is a full-time job called _recruiting_.
Perhaps you should consider outsourcing it? And now we're back to square one.

~~~
PaulRobinson
OP here. I've done the LinkedIn and Facebook approach, and it works, but I
don't do it algorithmically. I send them personal emails. "I see you've been
working a lot recently with JRuby, that's kinda interesting to me. Want to
schedule a chat some time" kind of material, etc.

------
tocomment
One angle on the idea of disrupting the industry; It seems like a lot of
programmers would be in a good position to do recruiting on the side for a few
hours a week. They already know a lot of other people in the field. And they
obviously are able to recognize technical skills and filter people.

Could a startup make a setup where anyone can sign up and become a part time
recruiter? Maybe you set up a real recruiting company to handle the paper work
and billing, and let programmers sign on to be your staff. Then give them a
big cut of any fees they make.

Anyone interested in helping me flush out this idea? It might be a viable
startup, no?

~~~
tocomment
Another twist on this is that many big companies will pay their employees say
a free ipod if they recruit someone to join the company, but will pay a
recruiter 20K or more.

That never seemed fair to me. I wonder if a twist on this is that the employee
can refer his friend to the recruiter and then go to his employer and say I
have a friend perfect for this job. He's represented by recruiter X. Then
recruiter X splits the fee with the employee.

~~~
dllthomas
They don't want to pay enough that it distracts too much from people doing
what they were really hired for.

------
droithomme
It's interesting he starts with the claim he needs to find talented people
with technical skills and then immediately starts talking about his need to
cyberstalk the personal lives of candidates in order to disqualify those whose
beliefs and hobbies he disagrees with.

~~~
PaulRobinson
I'm the original poster.

I don't want to cyberstalk anybody. I want to see what projects they're
interested in, what technologies they're loving, what they're hating.

My twitter feed has large amounts of swearing at Jenkins. Says a lot about me
and my attitude to code (I love CI, I hate configuring Tomcat, etc.).

If there's nothing there of tech interest, and there's lots of poems to the
candidate's other half, that tells me something far more interesting than a CV
can.

And my point is that the recruiters will never let me see that. They'll never
let me get an understanding beyond one side of A4 with all personal
information removed.

How do you connect to an individual in 2012 without some inkling of them
online? What value is the recruiter really adding by _deliberately blocking my
access_ to that info?

~~~
droithomme
We know that when you mention stalking up their "barbaric rituals" you don't
mean that you _want_ this sort of employee because of the way you have phrased
"barbaric rituals". You want to eliminate them from consideration. What are
barbaric rituals? It is a well known phrase used to describe religious
practices one doesn't like. So we are left to guess which ones you might mean.
Possibly it could be photos of the Day of Ashua, the Shia islam festival where
they cut their children's heads with swords. This seems a long shot though
since most developers don't post this sort of thing to their Facebook page. I
also don't see photos of the Bulgarian dog spinning ritual on pages, which is
the #3 google hit for "barbaric ritual". I do though see the occasional photo
of brit ceremonies (jewish circumcision) on people's facebook accounts, and
it's also the #1 google hit for "barbaric ritual" because this phrase is very
often used to describe it on various web forums by anti-circumcision
advocates, nearly all of whom for which their anti-circumcision stance is just
a veiled attempt to justify their deep seated hatred of muslims and jews.

Reading what you wrote, it in essence says "Jews and Muslims need not apply".
You'll of course insist that is not the case since that would look bad, but
that is why you wrote "barbaric rituals" rather than specify what you were
really getting at explicitly.

On to Facebook stalking in general. As far as candidate's Facebook pages where
they communicate private things with friends and families, you as employer are
neither friend nor family, and their Facebook account is none of your damn
business. That you think it is your business shows that you are a control
freak who can't mind his own business, and that your company is a hellhole to
work at.

I am speaking here as someone with hiring authority who has hired hundreds of
very talented people. I do not need to know their religion, their barbaric
practices, their baby photos, their friends list, or their poetry in order to
evaluate their technical ability. And you know what? I have _no problems_
recruiting the best, and I don't use recruiters.

Companies that have problems finding talent _always_ have attitude problems
and deep systematic problems within their firms.

How to find talent? It's easy. Here are some tips I have used, which are not
comprehensive, they are just a starting point for how to wise up to the right
attitude.

* Make sure one's firm is not a lousy place to work. If you are not sure, it is probably a lousy place. If you ever say "why do I work with idiots" then it definitely is.

* Make sure one's firm pays at least at the 75th percentile and above for one's area for talent because the fact is that the _average_ talent is quite poor.

* Be upfront about compensation. If there is a job ad somewhere, state clearly the salary range and benefits including if full relocation is paid.

* Pay full relocation after a hire and interview expenses before a hire, that is just common sense. If the employee would have to sell his house at a loss in a down market to move because the market is underwater, the company buys the house from the employee to cover the difference so he doesn't lose money selling, which can make it impossible to move. When the employee is moving from a cheap housing area to an expensive one, signing bonuses can be used to cover the difference in housing prices between the two areas so the employee can move into a house comparable to the one he left.

Lousy places to work will go haywire when reading these sorts of tips and
start making excuses about why some or all of the above are impossible
policies.

~~~
PaulRobinson
You're talking shit. As another poster has pointed out, you will refuse to let
me deny what I actually meant, because you will insist I had no reason to
obfuscate unless my intention was perverse and bigoted, but I needed to
disguise the fact.

"barbaric rituals" was a flippant and throw-away comment inspired by the fact
that quite a few developers really, really like emacs. That's enough barbaric
ritual for me.

I had no thought or concept of religion in mind when using either that phrase,
or penguin-murdering. I was being deliberately dramatic in an attempt at
humour. I was pointing out the irony of how there's actually nothing to be
ashamed of by talking to your potential employer in terms of who you actually
are, so why do recruiters try and hide it?

You have cynically twisted my words, in as insulting and degrading a manner as
possible. You're wrong, you know nothing about me, and the Jews and Muslims
I've hired in the past would happily correct your interpretation of my
character if given the chance.

You're also within a whisker of libelling me, so, you know, please turn it
down a bit.

~~~
droithomme
Bring on the lawyers child.

------
tlogan
Recruiting is like dating. The problem is still not solved - but I also think
it will never be solved. The nature of process requires involvement on both
parties and that can be outsourced only to a very small extend.

So in dating you have guys saying: "I want to date supermodel. Lets go this
dating site ... after a couple of months... oh online dating sucks it needs
disruption".

~~~
fellars
agree, except that with recruiting anyone you want to date is almost always in
an existing relationship so you have to first convince them to break up before
you can start dating, thus making it even more complicated.

We actually took many principles from online dating services to form
betacave.com and think we have a solution that can suffice the needs of both
parties (the site is up and functional but not quite ready for primetime; I'll
do a formal Show HN next week, but was too relevant to this thread to not
share).

------
debacle
Here's why it, at its heart, is wrong.

A good recruiter is good on both sides - people want to have their resume in
the recruiter's portfolio, and companies want that recruiter's card on their
hiring manager's desk. Because of this, technology has only made recruiting
more empowering for good recruiters - they can manage more clients on both
ends, can schedule easier, and are more agile.

I've got two particular recruiters in mind, but I know that with either of
them, if I quit my job on a Friday both my employer (who works with one of
them) and myself would have interviews lined up on Monday if that's what we
were looking for.

Just because there are a lot of bad recruiters out there (for the same reason
there are a lot of bad realtors, or marketers, or hair stylists), doesn't mean
there isn't immense value in the good recruiters.

This rant is just a rant, probably the result of one too many recruiter emails
in the inbox on a Friday morning.

~~~
tocomment
I'm curious what makes the good recruiters you have in mind, special? (I
actually didn't know they existed)

Also any tips on locating a good recruiter next time I'm looking?

~~~
elemeno
From my experience (financial technology, very hard to find finance jobs in
London without going through recruiters), the main qualities that a good
recruiter has is that they're willing to take time to get to know you, they're
willing to admit when they don't understand something in the spec they've got
and will ask you about it rather than trying to bluf, and that they still take
your calls and take time to talk to you when interviews they've set up haven't
panned out.

A good recruiter is interested in a long term relationship - they know that
people tend to change jobs every 18 months to 2 years (in my industry at
least) and they want to be the first person you'll call each time you get
itchy feet and because they know you, you're easy for them to sell to your
next employer and they know what type of company you'll be happy working for.

The three best recruiter's I've used have all done one simple thing that got
the relationship off to a good start - spending a solid hour or so sitting
down and getting to know me over a coffee or drink within a week or two of
first contacting me. This is a far cry from the recruiters who call me on an
almost daily basis who 'chat' for five minutes and then I never hear from
again.

------
tarr11
The problem is not that recruiting as an industry is obsolete.

The problem is that you can't find a good recruiter based on your needs
(price, specialty, experience level, etc).

The quality of recruiters is variable, but the need for them is constant. I
appreciate more systems to post jobs and review candidates directly, but after
LinkedIn and Craigslist, the value diminishes. I've also worked with
recruiters who are highly qualified and present good candidates.

A solution would be a system to help you find a better recruiter and create
more transparency in that industry.

I can envision a system whereby you can rate your interactions with recruiters
(ie., Yelp for recruiting).

"I used [recruiter] and they found me [x] candidates in [y] days. The quality
of the candidates was [z] and I [hired/didnt hire] someone that they
presented. I [would/wouldn't] work with them again. They charged [x] per
[candidate/hour/placement]"

When a recruiter contacts you, and knows nothing about your
[Technology/Industry/Company], you can look them up on a site and rate them.
You would rate them on these vectors, and then you could build a search tool
that helps you find the right recruiter. ("Find me a BioTech Recruiter in
Seattle who works with Genentech on a flat fee" etc)

This would also have a benefit keep recruiters more honest. The good
recruiters would rise to the top, and potentially get more leads. You wouldn't
have to waste as much time with poor recruiters since they would be outed
pretty quickly. Frustration levels (as evinced by this thread) are pretty high
when incompetent recruiters waste your time.

------
codegeek
"I can go onto LinkedIn myself and harvest profiles (as agency recs have to).
I can "touch base" with 100+ developers myself if I need to. If that's all the
agency recs are doing, they're not adding value"

Exactly. I still don't understand (after 9 years of being in industry and
consulting the last 5) why it is too much for a hiring manager to spend some
time himeself to vet a candidate esepcially if they will be critical to the
team,project and company's success. As much as I hate to work with thetse
agency recruiters, the underlying issue is not them. The issue is the
employers who depend on these recruiters even though they rant about how bad
the quality is etc.

Employers: it is simple. To hire the best, you need to do a lot more than
asking agency/vendors to send u resumes/cvs. Interview your recruiter first.
Test them if they know and understand what and who you really need. Just
saying "PHP developer" doesn't cut it. Provide more specifics. Any good
candidate will be more inclined to talk to you.

------
at-fates-hands
Two points.

"I want to see the candidate's twitter feeds, Facebook pages, LinkedIn
profiles, activity on mailing lists and github, etc."

This is the very reason I keep all my social network to myself and not under
my name. Unless I tell you what my Twitter page and Facebook page are, you'll
never find them and I do this on purpose.

I agree this industry needs some help. A company I was recently working for
developed an application for the pharmaceutical sales industry which assigns a
score to each sales person based on various criteria, which is then tracked by
employers looking hire the best talent. As soon as I saw it, I thought it
could just as easily be used in tech field for developers or any other
technical position.

This is just a start, but at least its something that's gaining traction in a
industry that is similar in size and revenue generation.

~~~
dpritchett
That sounds like my buddies' startup Work For Pie:
<http://workforpie.com/dpritchett>

The single-score approach is a bit heavy handed but it's still interesting
information.

------
scrrr
I sometimes think I could eventually go into recruiting. As a freelancer I
have met many many developers, I try to stay in touch with many of them, and I
know what they can do, what they dislike to do, and so forth. And I know the
technology. But so far the engineering itself is making me happy. However, one
day perhaps..

------
l_coontz
I think it is interesting that the author mentions, "I want to see the
candidate's twitter feeds, Facebook pages, LinkedIn profiles, activity on
mailing lists and github, etc."

I found TalentBin.com comes the closest to solving this need. This is a
screenshot that shows all the profile information accessible on a TB profile-
<http://screencast.com/t/DgePgGRj>

Not only do you get access to what they are tweeting about, but you also can
see their personal blogs, google+, Meetup, and Stackoverflow?
<http://screencast.com/t/SfFqIMXWIzlg>

So far nothing comes close to Talentbin in terms of information quantity and
quality.

And if that isn't enough- TalentBin.com recently added the entire patent
database. Soon will come the day where we hire by looking at only implicit web
information and resumes are long forgotten.

------
andrewstuart
I recruit technical people. Our clients seem to like working with us. We try
to treat job seekers with respect. We take an ethical approach to everything
we do. But like any business, we do of course go to market to sell our
services directly to the target clients, and we go directly to the people we
wish to sell. No apologies to anyone for that. The reason recruitment exists
is because employers pay money for it. If anyone has an issue with recruiters
then stop whining about it and instead make sure your company stops using
them. People who whine about recruiters but still get jobs through them or
work for a company that hires from recruiters are like people who criticise
the oil industry but are happy to drive a car and consume the thousands of oil
derived products. Hypocrites.

------
ChristianMarks
In the two decades I have been consulting, I notice that in the past few
years, many of the job shop calls I receive sound as though they come from
offshore call centers (I am attempting to put this delicately). I invariably
ignore these, for several reasons. The first is that they tend to act put upon
if one asks for a job description that goes beyond a few acronyms or
"Mathematica and Ph.D. required," as if I were being uncooperative to ask for
something more informative than the few matching keywords they have in front
of them. They seem to be interested in receiving the goahead to send a resume
somewhere on the basis of a keyword search. Asking for details eats into their
time. Secondly, they tend to offer lowball rates and seem as if they go in and
out of business.

------
RileyJames
Curation, Transparency, Quality & NO CONTACTS. 100% agree, I think this rant
perfectly sums up how this industry could work. A great user experience and
reasonable rates for finding quality people, that's a service people will
happily pay for... and they are. Which is why we build Dragonfly
(<http://dragonflylist.com>) but we're not the only ones that have realised
this. Its a big market, plenty of room for other niche/geo specific
recruitment solutions.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
If I were you, I'd drop the "Dragonfly IS $YOURCOUNTRY Freelancers." It's
fairly confusing, given that your firm is in Melbourne and almost inevitably
will not find freelancing clients outside the Anglosphere.

------
startupstella
as i've been talking more and more to developers, i keep hearing these same
complaints about recruiters. I'm finally trying to make a difference by
launching matchist.com, which will be a different kind of recruiting. we'll be
catering to freelance developers by vetting projects they want to work on. we
think the process is simple: tell us what projects you want to work on, what
kinds of clients you'd like, and we'll send them your way.

------
dschiptsov
What you're expecting from a recruiter who are trying to catch good writers by
checking their spelling, punctuation and knowledge (but not the meaning) of
long words?)

Writer could be measured only by (the value of) his texts. It is not about the
knowledge of grammar, even if it is a relevant knowledge.

And, of course, appearance and manners of a potential writer have almost
nothing to do with his talent.

------
oesmith
... and that's why I unsubscribed from LRUG this afternoon. There's more
discussion about recruiters than ANYTHING ELSE.

~~~
PaulRobinson
I feel your pain, which is why I wanted to address it to some extent, and why
I wrote that post.

I hope that thread dies, and the discussion moves here.

Can you not see however, that the recruiters are all over the list, hitting
reply-all, and not really helping the list at all, and it's because of that,
that we need to make it clear why they're not wanted, why they shouldn't be on
the list in the first place, and why we want our list back?

Don't be part of the problem (leaving the list so making the recruiter/coder
ratio even worse), be part of the solution. Re-join the list, and let's start
some interesting tech discussions. I'll start. Check the list in 20 minutes.

------
fecak
I wrote a response to this at my blog jobtipsforgeeks.com. For all of you that
want to see what actions can be taken to disrupt recruiting, (hiring an agent,
flat fees, etc.) check it out. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4535547>

------
lifeisstillgood
We have robots.txt, humans.txt, business.txt

so whats wrong with jobs.txt

Parseable, searchable, uptodate (one assumes, and can easily be deprecated)
and simple to throw up a cottage industry around.

~~~
abulman
That's a really good idea.

So I made this: <http://jobstxt.org/> and <http://jobstxt.org/jobs.txt>

