

Recruiters: My fee for referrals is 5% - Harkins
http://t-machine.org/index.php/2011/03/07/recruiters-my-fee-for-referrals-is-5/

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slapshot
I forward job emails to my friends if I think its' a good job, regardless of
the fee. That's a very low percentage of headhunting letters I get, but I'm
far more interested in giving my friends relevant info than spamming them in
the hopes of getting 5%---the fact that the (rare) offer of compensation is
small actually helps me. As a result, I know that my friends will forward good
jobs to me.

It would be nice if the world worked the way that this author wishes it would,
but a headhunter would rather cruise LinkedIn than negotiate a fee separately
with every person who might know somebody who knows somebody. If you don't
like the terms of this recruiter's offer, don't forward it.

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lsc
I used to do that, too. Now, I realize, if the recruiter is hitting me up for,
say, a vmware admin position, the recruiter probably can't tell the difference
between a high quality candidate and a low-quality candidate, and is someone
who is not worth doing business with. The spam belongs in the spam bucket, not
my friend's inbox.

As far as I can tell, most of those recruiters are just building up a list of
resumes. even if you respond with relevant resumes, the hit rate is no better
than what you'd get responding to ads on dice or craigslist.

Sure, sometimes recruiters take the time to actually figure out who or what I
am and send me appropriate jobs. And in those cases, if I'm busy, sure, I'll
pass it on to people I know who are able to do the job. But those are
extremely rare.

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spullara
During the last bubble I used keen.com to charge them by the minute to talk to
me. That was a discount compared to this.

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jarin
How appropriate that it's a charge-by-the-minute site for psychics, haha

~~~
spullara
all the non-psychic stuff was migrated to <http://www.ingenio.com/> after
keen.com became dominated by psychics :)

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Duff
That's a great technique for getting yourself off of the annoying recruiter
mailing list.

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jobmatchbox
And on the annoying candidate list.

~~~
Vivtek
If you're on the annoying candidate list for the recruiters that spam
everybody in the hope they'll place somebody at random, you've lost nothing.

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jobmatchbox
Who are you talking to and where are you finding them? They must be coming
from offshore because no self-respecting recruiter in the US would go that low
or be allowed to go that low if they were working for an agency.

On second thought, what a brilliant way to reward bad recruiters - by by
taxing them for helping you waste your own time and simultaneously testing
good will of people in your network. Save yourself the time and use your spam
filter on bad recruiters. Not good enough? Change your email address, stop
posting your resume on job boards, and stop talking to bad staffing agencies.
Better yet, save yourself the time and get to know a handful of good
recruiters and then forget about all the bad ones. Only let good ones through.

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magic5227
Box.net takes this approach, we will pay a flat $10,000 for a referral.

~~~
snowmaker
Scribd does as well. This is standard among startups that take recruiting
seriously.

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martinc
Good blog post.

I used to get spammed to hell by recruiters until I:

1\. Requested the removal of my details from their database. 2\. Threatened to
report them to the REC (UK-based recruitment organisation). 3\. Threatened
legal action, quoting relevant EU directives. 4\. Named and shamed them on a
blog post (or two). 5\. Requested an apology from their managing director.

Seemed to work a treat.

One 'sorry' recruiter admitted that they generated an 'email blast' based on a
keyboard search which was taken from data scraped from JobSite (or other
similar job website) 1-2 years ago.

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Peroni
Deal.

Unfortunately the company I work for dictates how much of the fee goes into my
pocket, so heres the deal: I'll give you 5% of my own commission if the
candidate you recommend gets the job.

Lets say for arguments sake that the salary is £50k and our fee is 25%.

My company gets £12.5k for placing the candidate.

I get 15% of the fee: £1,875 in my pocket.

You get 5% of my commission: £93.75

Where do I sign up?

~~~
ahi
I believe he means 5% of salary so recruiter company gets 20%. 2500 instead of
93.75.

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Nate75Sanders
How do you ensure that they don't play games with numbers? Do the terms of
your payment state that you have access to final salary?

Even when you get that, how do you know they didn't completely falsify it or
fudge it somewhat?

It seems safer to me to just charge $5K flat fee or something.

~~~
anthonyb
Well, if you're forwarding it to a friend, presumably you can talk to them
about it.

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suyash
Start charging recruiters fee just for sending in your resume I would say or
your friend's resume, coz they are making money just passing out qualified
resumes to the company!

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iworkforthem
Er... most permanent recruitment agencies charge between 15%-25% of the first
years annual salary of the successful applicant.

Unless you are helping a friend, why do it?

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itsnotvalid
Seeing that Apple takes 30% of the cuts, 5% seems to be a reasonable amount.
However, if anyone reply you with this kind of demands, you won't entertain
_any_ demands from that guy without 5% cut on anything ever in the future.

There is a blur line between friends and business partners and things like
that make this line crystal clear.

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Harkins
I thought to post this because I read it a few days ago and tried it on
recruiter spam last night. After he checked that I was a dev and not a
recruiter he said it had never happened before and that the $500 Visa gift
card he offered was "a little bonus as 'a thank you'." Sure, guy, let me just
do half your job for 'a little bonus'.

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pavel_lishin
How do you enforce it?

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suyash
I would have 1 page Legal Document saying "You agree to pay such and and such
a 5%fee of the referred person's annual salary etc..." and make them accept
that before you email the referral

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mkramlich
Good idea but hard to make it really happen.

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bkaid
This makes sense as to why a lot of recruiters don't tell you who the company
is in the email (for ones that they are not the sole recruiter on) because
they don't want you to apply directly and lose out on their 15% cut. However,
2 minutes of googling and you can usually find the same job posting on dice or
monster with the company name on it.

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ultrasaurus
That's the bit I always find is the strangest about recruiter-spam, they only
target "technical" people unable to search Google _with_ quotes.

