
Recruiters are, by and large, a waste of your time - akharris
http://blog.tutorspree.com/post/11909570564/recruiters-and-startups
======
pg
A few days ago I moderated a panel discussion at the Computer History Museum
with the founders of Dropbox, Evernote, and Wildfire. I asked whether it was
worth dealing with outside recruiters, and they all said no. They all had
recruiters working for them in house. In fact between 3% and 5% of their
employees were recruiters.

They said the best source of people initially were the friends of the founders
and the first employees (which is one reason it's helpful to have gone to a
good CS school) and that as soon as you've exhausted this source you should
start hiring recruiters.

~~~
cperciva
_as soon as you've exhausted this source you should start hiring recruiters._

Did they present any evidence to support this position, or does "should" in
this case just mean that this is what they did?

There have been a few times when I've talked to technical people at startups
and come away thinking "if it weren't for Tarsnap, I'd _totally_ go work for
them". In contrast, every time I talk to a recruiter, I come away thinking "if
this is the sort of people they have at X, there's no way in hell I'd ever
want to work there".

I'm not sure what the best solution is here, but it seems that recruiters are
far from perfect.

~~~
tptacek
When a smart small company hires a recruiter, part of the goal is to have
recruits never really realize they're talking to recruiters. Presumably most
YC recruiters aren't randomly cold calling people; instead their job might
involve a lot more of "setting up circumstances so that the right person in
their company is likely to end up talking to Colin Percival".

~~~
cperciva
Aha! Good to know that there are such things as good recruiters out there,
even if I've never encountered them (knowingly, at least).

~~~
tptacek
Most of the time, when people complain about recruiters, they're complaining
about dialing-for-dollars cold-call transactional recruiters.

Recruiting is a special form of sales/marketing, and most businesses wouldn't
expect randomly calling people on the phone to be their best early sales
strategy. But that doesn't mean they don't do sales; they just execute on an
early sales strategy.

Jeff Cox's _Selling The Wheel_ is a good, if somewhat patronizing, summary of
the different sales strategies companies use at different stages of the
adoption curve for their offerings. The same insight applies to recruiting.

------
tptacek
Here's my most recent recruiting cold call:

Him: _Hello, I need to speak to the person who manages your servers._

Me: _Uh, who is this?_

Him: _I need to report an issue with your servers. Are you the person who
manages the servers?_

Me: _What kind of issue?_

Him: _Do you manage the servers?_

Me: _I manage the office. What's the issue you need to report?_

Him: _Oh! I'm calling because I understand that it's very hard to find good
Linux and Ruby on Rails people in Chicago and-_

Me: _You're a recruiter?_

Him: _Yes, and-_

Click.

Our current recruiter policy, at least in the Chicago office: $50 to the
person in the office who can keep a recruiter on the phone the longest using
only Emacs Eliza.

In terms of actually recruiting people:

* It's one of the key jobs for the management team; for instance, it is the thing I spend the most time on after billable work.

* We do increasingly generous referral bonuses for good candidates.

* We're doing a number of outreach programs (free classes and the like) to meet candidates.

Ultimately, like SEO consultants and direct sales people, the problem with
recruiters is adverse selection. There are good recruiters out there, but they
can more or less print money; they aren't cold-calling you. Anyone who is
cold-calling isn't a good recruiter. There aren't many good recruiters. The
most useful shorthand is "all recruiters are terrible".

~~~
dspillett
I usually respond to conversations like that with "you started this
conversation with a blatant lie, why the hell should I trust you enough to do
any sort of business with you?". They often call back almost immediately in
the hope of someone else picking up the phone instead of me.

Other common lies are "I'm a personal friend of Mr Anderson" (Mr Anderson
doesn't exist, we made him up and listed him in a couple of places as our
resources/personnel manager) or "I was talking to <some person> earlier today"
(that one is particularly fun when they state they were _just this minute_
talking to someone I has been sat opposite me talking to nobody for the last
hour or few).

I've stopped being nice to them. I don't even make an effort to be
professional.

Some companies will call repeatedly, day after day, sometimes several times a
day. The only way to get rid of them I've found is immediately asking to talk
to their boss to discuss being taken off their lists and demanding to talk to
their boss until you get to or then hang up. And if that fails find the
company's address and send them a letter by registered post stating that we do
not want to deal with them, will not give them any more of of our time for
free, and that any further calls will result in them being invoiced for our
time at our consulting rates (we've gone as far as that twice, both times we
heard nothing else from the company in question afterwards).

------
danilocampos
I need to write a post to discuss this at greater depth, but...

I am fucking astonished at how inept most recruiters are. I mean, just awful
and useless at their "jobs."

If we concede the point that, especially in the Valley, technical talent is in
high demand, it stands to reason that any overture to such talent needs to be
persuasive, informative and intriguing. It should explain the role in
reasonable detail, while making a sane case for how cool the company and
opportunity will be.

Ideally, it should demonstrate that the recruiter has a basic understanding of
a given prospect's skills and career trajectory. Super bonus points if it
doesn't seem like a form letter.

Instead, what I get is stuff like

"Hey, I'm looking for developers for a role I'm filling. You need to be this,
this, and this. Oh, and _this_ is a plus. Mmkay, lemme know!"

Well. Congratulations?

Hey, I _have a job_. And it doesn't involve proving to a random recruiter that
I'm skilled at it. And from such pitches, how would I know that I'd even care?
I know nothing about the company and only have the vaguest notion of what I'd
be wanted for.

Recruiters _are_ a waste of time, though mostly their own. A founder out being
social has a much better chance, I think, at successfully recruiting limited
talent. Not that they have time, I know.

And don't get me started on the pitch that opened with "I'm looking for some
iOS studs!" I had a friend at the company they were pitching. They weren't
impressed when they heard about this one, especially since they had no formal
relationship with the bozo.

~~~
dabent
I've worked with third-party recruiters for many jobs I had while contracting.
The pitch you mentioned can work, but only in the high-turnover world of
contract consulting for big companies. This is NOT going to work for startups,
or anything even close.

Contract programmers often switch jobs once a year. That's driven my duration
limits set by companies, layoffs and the wanderlust that contractors often
have. Big companies don't seem to want to be bothered with in-house
recruiters, so they pay third-party companies to do the work. In the midst of
that shuffle, a job requirement is handed from a hiring manager (who may not
know how to code) to a company HR rep (who may edit it) to the recruiter. What
you end up with looks like this:

    
    
      Req: JAVA Developer
      REQUIRED:
      - 5-7 Years Java Experience
      - 3-5 Years J2EE Experience
      - 1 Year JDBC
      - 3-5 Years Oracle
      - MUST HAVE WEBLOGIC 10.3.5
      PLUSSES:
      - C/C++
      - Perl
    

Of course, this may or may not have anything to do with what the job actually
requires. They may have a taped-together C/C++ and Perl system they're trying
to move to JEE/Weblogic They probably haven't really ordered (or gotten
approval for) Weblogic, but it's what all the other companies seem to use.

So, the recruiter goes around spamming folks, and manages to find someone
who's just hit their 12-month limit at BigCo and is open to find another
position. The recruiter gets paid, the contractor may or may not like the
position (but gets paid, anyway), and the hiring manager gets bagels brought
in, courtesy of the recruiter's firm. Everyone wins, so to speak. That's why
the cycle persists.

I'm describing this as someone who played that game successfully for many
years. To someone who's working in startup circles it may seem like madness,
and it would be if applied to startups. But it's how Fortune 500 companies,
for better or worse, find talent.

To put it in startup terms, the third-party recruiter model seems to work well
for companies who've found their business model and need people to execute it.
For companies who are in a race to iterate and find a product-market fit, it's
the kiss of death. Skip the free bagels, delete the emails and find people on
your own or with internal recruiters who really know your company well.

~~~
tsotha
_I've worked with third-party recruiters for many jobs I had while
contracting. The pitch you mentioned can work, but only in the high-turnover
world of contract consulting for big companies._

Big companies have a specific reason for going with contract employees. It
gives them (the company) a legal separation from the person who would
otherwise have been an employee. That person can be unceremoniously dumped out
onto the street if things aren't working out, and the company is willing to
pay extra for that option.

Startups can't afford to pay a 30% premium on technical help just so it's less
risky to fire the bad apples. And anyway they aren't big fat targets for
lawyers like big companies are - good luck finding a lawyer to take your case
on contingency when you're suing a company that's having trouble making
payroll.

------
benmathes
_The roles that we fill at this stage are highly specialized and generally
call for nearly contradictory attributes in candidates. You need incredible
good engineers who are not already in golden handcuffs, are crazy enough to
join a risky early stage company, do not want to found their own company right
now, want to work at all hours, and are aligned with the culture you are
trying to build._

It seems that this is indeed what startups are looking for. It also seems that
they are generally unwilling to pay market salary. And startups don't seem
willing to part with enough equity to make up the difference in the slightest
if you weigh in how unlikely it is for employees to see any return on equity.

There may be a reason why these jobs are hard to fill.

~~~
gaius
Quite. There have been recent discussions on HN which point out the darkside
of this: that early employees of startups often take as much risk and work as
hard as the founders, yet get a tiny sliver of the upside. Co-founder, or
nothing.

~~~
benmathes
There has been quite a bit of discussion, going back almost 2 years:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1369039>

I'm personally interested in this because I know first hand about the bottom
of EV-comp curve: I personally _enjoy_ working at really early-stage
companies, have little in the way of expenses (27yo DINK), but don't have
enough saved to start my own thing (payed off 50k in student loans last year).

It feels somewhat akin to working at game companies: Working in the industry
is glamorized, so young and energetic people flock to it and get relatively
shafted _on the margins_. My job is nowhere near as bad as working at
somewhere like EA, but it's not unlike it either.

I won't be doing this for much longer though, as the market isn't changing
fast enough. Next time it's co-founder or series C+. In-between I always feel
like I'm being had, to a degree.

------
shawndrost
Here's another side of the story: I just moved to SF, and I'm looking for
jobs. Two friends sic'd a bunch of recruiters on me, and it is awesome! Here's
the process:

    
    
       1. They email or call me, and I send my resume and short summary of what I want.
       2. They send me streams of awesome jobs.  (Two have sent bad jobs, but gmail has 
          a hotkey for that :D )
       3. I say I want to talk to XYZ at one of these times, and they hustle to make it 
          happen.
       4. They tell me little nuggets like "The last guy I placed here made $X"
    

I'm running my own processes in parallel, and I can tell you that they suck a
lot more. Non-recruiters -- and even in-house recruiters -- are hard to herd.

~~~
angelbob
Fair enough. That's the most use I've heard of anybody getting out of
recruiters. Well done!

It's probably worth putting up a blog post somewhere about it :-)

------
dpritchett
Quote: _You need incredible good engineers who are not already in golden
handcuffs, are crazy enough to join a risky early stage company, do not want
to found their own company right now, want to work at all hours, and are
aligned with the culture you are trying to build._

That really is asking for everything. I hope you have figured out a way to
explain your value proposition to these dream candidates.

~~~
umjames
Agreed.

Are there people who really want to work at all hours? Maybe eager students
right out of college.

Personally, I'm at the point where if I'm going to be working at all hours,
I'd better be one of the primary beneficiaries of that work.

~~~
phillmv
Basically, you want that rarest of birds - shy sparks who aren't nestled in a
large company yet.

Too introverted to be really aware of their market value and have a life and
smart enough that they're going to be obsessed with the work and work at it
all the time.

Considering I'm having a hard time finding "reasonably competent" Rails devs,
I can't imagine how you might hire for that kind of position.

~~~
DilipJ
maybe some combination of an IQ or programming test plus a Myers-Briggs
analysis. That would probably be a great way to screen. Or just recruit at
MIT/CMU/Caltech...

~~~
mzl
While I see what you mean with referencing Myers-Briggs, do you really believe
that it is useful? Some reference reading:
<http://www.skepdic.com/myersb.html>

------
rmason
I had a conversation with a recruiter and she said how can you expect to get a
job if you have ColdFusion on your resume instead of Cold Fusion?

I directed her to adobe.com so she could see the correct spelling. She went oh
crap, I've been throwing away all the resumes with ColdFusion because the
employer spelled it Cold Fusion.

No wonder the client is complaining to me about the low quality of candidates
that I am sending them. She promised to get me an interview with them but
never called back.

~~~
mgkimsal
Wow. I wanted to LOL at that and claim you made it up, but it really does
sound plausible.

I've considered putting together a training course for tech recruiters -
something like a one day bootcamp to familiarize them with specific tech, so
they know the diff between java and javascript, for example. but... need to
find the time to do that on top of everything else!

~~~
knotty66
Just last week I was sent a job requiring C++ and extensive Ball and Builder
experience. It took me a couple of minutes to figure that one out ...

~~~
ramchip
Borland Builder? I didn't know that still existed...

~~~
knotty66
Yeah - the recruiter didn't know it had _ever_ existed!

------
jamiequint
This is basically an argument that contingency recruiters are bad. You should
differentiate this in the title from in-house or contract recruiters (retained
search). Contingency recruiters, as you've noticed, have no incentive to
filter out junk because they can just take a throw it at the wall and see what
sticks approach.

Also, there are a ton of bad recruiters, just like there are a ton of bad
engineers. There are awesome recruiters out there and the sample of those who
have cold called you rather than going through trusted channels is likely
strongly biased towards the bad.

------
fooboy
This cuts both ways: looking for work takes a substantial, non-zero amount of
time, and it's extremely frustrating when startups decide to speak with you
even though they know hiring you is "a long shot."

Searching for work at a startup has been a protracted, fruitless process. They
have no problem conversing with you and checking out your background over
coffee, lunch, whatever. After a few conversations and a technical interview,
you find out there isn't a good fit.

Rinse and repeat for any number of tech startups, and you'll be waving goodbye
to a month or two of your life.

Has anyone else had this experience? To me, the whole recruiting process is
f'kd on both sides.

~~~
tomcreighton
My opinion: if startups aren't serious about hiring you, they shouldn't go
through the dance. Why are they wasting everybody's time?

~~~
wpietri
I go through this dance a fair bit. At least for us, we're totally serious
about hiring. It's just that we're very fussy.

To understand why, think about what we hope to happen. If we do things right,
then anybody we hire today will be a de-facto leader two years from now,
because they're one of the people who's been around since the early days. Any
code they write will be in core parts of the system. And they're going to have
a big effect on who we can hire next, because potential hires are going to
judge our company partly by them.

We definitely try not to waste anybody's time. But we also don't want to miss
a good candidate; some really solid programmers don't interview well. But as
soon as we're sure, we politely stop the process and thank them for their
time.

~~~
tomcreighton
Fair point. I suppose it depends what you considerable a reasonable amount of
time to evaluate a potential employee. All in all, it took me about two weeks
to run the gauntlet at my current job (a startup), and I don't think that's
unreasonable, given how busy everybody is.

If you keep getting passed over, however, I can see how that starts to really
mount up.

------
w33ble
I had expected this to be related to using recruiters to find jobs. I've found
that to be primarily a complete waste of time as well, but I suspect the
reasons are the same. To most recruiters, it's just a numbers game, as the
article points out; they simply "throw engineers at companies in the hopes
that one or two will stick and they’ll get their commission". In my
experience, it's quite rare to find a recruiter that will spend even a little
bit of time actually matching candidates to the position in a meaningful way.
It's also possible that, like the author, I've only ever dealt with really bad
recruiters before.

~~~
prophetjohn
I'll often get calls from recruiters telling me they've found a position for
which I'm a perfect match. And then they explain it's a senior developer
position requiring 5 years of experience, when it's very clearly stated on my
resume that I'm a college student looking for an internship.

They just keyword search resumes.

~~~
lotharbot
I've gotten similar e-mails and calls recently, based on a resume I posted to
a job site 5 years ago, trying to match me to positions with requirements I
don't remotely match. Further, I'm now a full time stay-at-home parent, which
is my dream career. What's sad is, when I tell recruiters this, on occasion
they'll still try to convince me of what a great fit their position would be.

------
brudgers
Back during the housing boom, I landed two consecutive jobs through
recruiters. Both were cases where the recruiter had a well established
relationship with the hiring company (and needless to say were only recruiting
me for that specific company).

But it took a lot of contacts with different recruiters to land each of those
jobs. Among my favorite experiences was the guy who asked me, "Have you ever
heard of _x, inc_?

"Uh, I worked for _x, inc._ and it is listed on my resume."

I have a couple of conclusions.

1\. All it takes is no regular job, a cellphone, a computer, and an account on
a resume board to be a recruiter - and it shows.

2\. The vast majority of recruiters stand between you and the job because they
have no relationship with the company hiring and therefor you are more
expensive to hire and more of a PITA to hire because the recruiter is trying
to get his cut (and if she doesn't get it, you will get the "company isn't
interested" phone call from the recruiter).

3\. Really good recruiters are a valuable resource, know their industry and
players, and won't put just any warm body forward in hopes of a score - they
will screen the hell out of you.

I learned the first question to ask a recruiter is about their contract with
the employer - the good one's have no hesitation describing their
relationship. The bad one's waffle.

------
gchucky
I think the title needs to be changed to reflect the gist of the post: that
for _startups_, recruiters are probably a waste of time. For a more
established organizations, recruiters tend to work, I think.

~~~
davidhansen
Except large, established organizations usually have HR departments that
perform the functions of recruiters anyway.

Or at least they do in my idealized fantasy world, where the role of HR is to
acquire, foster, encourage, and compensate talent.

~~~
gujk
That's crazy talk. A hiring manager's job is to acquire talent. HR's job is to
smooth the details of the process and keep it legal.

------
vijayr
It is outrageous when they take 20% of the billing rate (or more) hour after
hour, every hour. All for sending a few emails, making a few phone calls, and
arranging the interview. Among the middlemen in all industries, tech
recruiters do the least work, and are least knowledgeable of the industry they
work in - a real estate agent for example, does far more work than a
recruiter, and could actually be very helpful.

There has to be a better way to do tech recruiting.

~~~
danssig
Actually, I would pay up to 25%... for the first (6 mo or less) contract. They
got me that, how ever they did it. But _I_ got me the extension so why do they
expect more than just a payrolling fee for the extentions?

------
kabrummett
As a technical recruiter I am not shocked by this post but I am a little
frustrated with the large brush that is painted on the industry as a whole. I
mean, I have worked with some BAD Developers, everything they write breaks the
minute it is in production, you can never pry them away from the foosball
table or lunch room, they smell and can’t speak in complete sentences BUT I
still recruit for technical talent because not everyone is alike. Just like
every industry there are rock stars and other guys just trying to put food on
the table.

I have been honored to survive this tough economical climate in the confines
of a corporate recruiting gig for a technically forward high frequency trading
firm in my hometown of Houston. Over the last few years I know more recruiters
who have lost their jobs than I can count, some have lost their homes and
their families. Does this sound familiar to anyone, maybe say the days of 2001
for the tech set?

If the stories I have heard our true (I got into the biz in '04) developers
making 150/hr one day are banging on recruiters doors begging for interviews
the next.

So ya, I get it, some recruiters have zero technical skills, know little to
nothing about the job/client but at their core they are human beings. And just
maybe, the client doesn't have a lot to sell at the moment, maybe they are
still working out the kinks to their "value proposition" but they know they
are onto something.

So ignore the calls, politely say you aren't interested but remember, the
tides can turn…quickly. The recruiter who doesn't know squat about server
level architectural may be next door neighbors to someone who has enough
funding to throw you a bone.

~~~
Shengster
Good developers are hardly ever on the market. The majority of them are happy
at their current jobs, and they know they could go anywhere else they wanted
because their skills are highly valued.

I'm sure it gets annoying when they frequently receive emails about
"Technically Forward High Frequency Trading Firms" from recruiters who
happened to find them through playing buzzword bingo.

These recruiters tout that this new "opportunity" will give more money,
benefits, responsibility, good looks, and sexual prowess, but never do the due
diligence to make sure that their client is actually a good fit.

It's the shotgun approach that most recruiters use that turns good developers
off.

Maybe once these recruiters treat developers with more respect, so will they.

~~~
kabrummett
So great point, the best developers are never out of work. How would you
recommend a recruiter network with said developers? How do we build mutually
beneficial relationships? I tend not to cold call people, just because I think
there are better ways to meet people but not all recruiters have that type of
network.

I suppose I am interested in a solution oriented debate. I hear how you don't
like be contacted, how can we do it better?

Oh, and a technically forward HFT means that we are using decently cutting
edge stuff, HPC, low latency code, etc. As for offering you better looks and
sexual prowess I think I have to opt out on that one. If you find that job,
let me know I will send it to a few ex boyfriends. :)

~~~
danielk015
"So great point, the best developers are never out of work. How would you
recommend a recruiter network with said developers? How do we build mutually
beneficial relationships? I tend not to cold call people, just because I think
there are better ways to meet people but not all recruiters have that type of
network."

As a recruiter myself, understanding the what it is like to be a developer and
connecting on the "what makes them tick" level is important. Going to meetups
and getting immersed in the startup scene is great, but going the extra mile
will have long lasting impact. I am a non technical guy, but over the years, I
have tried my best to learn code myself. HTML, CSS, Ruby. Just leveraging the
vast amount of learning tools on the internet makes this possible. Although I
might never be an employable programmer, I have had a lot of great chats with
developers on my own experiences and that breaks the ice and creates trust
immediately.

------
datadon
I had a call from a recruiter once, asking if I would be interested in a Ruby
on Rails position. I said no, that's not what I'm looking for.

She then asked me to explain what Ruby on Rails was, how it related to other
technologies and was it popular because a lot of people seemed to be asking
for it.

Of course I explained the best I could, to make the world a better place and
all that, but it seems (as other commenters have pointed out) that there could
be a real niche for techies to run a recruiting firm that know what they're
talking about.

~~~
simon
"but it seems (as other commenters have pointed out) that there could be a
real niche for techies to run a recruiting firm that know what they're talking
about."

I'd love to do that. What would such a company look like?

------
gujk
Recruiters are marketplace makers, not matchmakers.

A recruiter is completely incapable of determining who is a good fit or of
asssessing talent, and traditional compensation models (x% of annual salary,
paid on hire) are not aligned with succession outcomes for business.

Recruiters are superior to staff at one thing: maintaineding a Rolodex. They
have no ability to choose competently from that Rolodex, though.

If you have good PR and a good jobs page, you don't need a generic recruiter.

------
danielk015
As a third party executive recruiter, I definitely have to agree with many of
the comments and frustrations that have been expressed. Unfortunately, at best
the perception of recruiters is that they are a necessary evil sometimes in
getting access to job opportunities. No recruiter is perfect and even the best
retained ones do some cold calling during the week to establish relationships.
However, I do agree the approach should not based on gimmicks and sales
tricks, but have the intent to establish good rapport with those that are
contacted.

But at the end of the day, a recruiter that is in tune with the market, cold
calling should really make up less than 20% of their "deal" flow. Great hires
are made through referrals, and great recruiters gets constant networking
referrals to keep their pipelines full and their days busy. If the recruiter
is doing their job, either they are getting warm leads from their networks
when jobs are broadcasted, or their networks is referring strong talent to
them.

Like a lawyer or accountant that desires to create a reputable brand in a
particular marketplace, recruiters needs to see themselves as resources within
this marketplace and not view recruiting as purely a transactional game. From
my experience, just because I don't collect a fee does not make a relationship
unsuccessful. Providing great customer service and building strong
relationships will usually evolve into mutually beneficial interactions in
subsequent years.

------
TomNomNom
What amazes me about a great deal of the recruiters I've dealt with is their
inability to do basic word-matching.

Recruiter "I have a great role for you as a Ruby developer!"

Me: "Do you have a copy of my CV?"

Recruiter: "Yes indeed, I have it on my screen right now!"

The word "Ruby" does not appear on my CV, _at all_. This has happened to me
more times than I can remember; with Ruby, C++, C# and a whole bunch of other
things not mentioned _anywhere_ on my CV.

You don't even need to have _heard_ of a technology (never-mind understand it)
to narrow candidates down more than this.

~~~
hga
Indeed. I've been out of the job market since 2004 and today after a
(thankfully) long dry spell I got a "cold email" asking about a .NET position.
I was working on UNIX(TM) when .NET came to be and therefore it's never ever
been on any of the resumes I left behind.

Then again, since wherever resumes of mine that are still floating around are
so old, a shot in the dark like this has a higher chance of working than your
situation, where I assume your resume is reasonably up to date.

------
csel
There is a big difference between agency recruiters and recruiters within a
company. I have not had any bad experiences with recruiters who work for a
company (that is not an agency). In fact, even agency recruiters, there are
definitely some bad apples but a lot of them generally are fairly good to deal
with.

If I were you, I might change the title of your post to be more specific on
the type of recruiters you are referring to.

~~~
larrik
If you actually read the article, that distinction is completely irrelevant,
since the proper title is more like "Recruiters are a waste of time _for
start-ups._ "

------
motters
I've had very mixed experiences with recruiters. At best they ask reasonable
questions and provide informative information about companies. At worst
they're rude, condescending, unprofessional and openly confess that "I know
nothing about software". I think that the probability distribution is skewed
more towards the latter than the former.

------
tonyedgecombe
There is a bigger problem with recruiters and that is there is a whole group
of candidates who don't need them and won't use them. The best candidates are
falling over opportunities, they find positions through their own network, not
agencies. If you only use recruiters you will never find these people.

------
randall
<http://www.hackruiter.com/> is maybe the only exception to the rule. But
they're sort of an invite-only thing... so not exactly useful for most
startups.

------
ticks
As far as I can tell, it's like choosing between paying for display
advertising or affiliate marketing. Two different mindsets and neither are a
bad thing.

You either do the recruitment in-house and absorb all the risk to your
business, which means lots of extra interviews, staff looking through high
volumes of paperwork, etc. Or you hand it over to a third party, pay them
nothing for the process (i.e. they take on the risk) but then pay highly for
results.

~~~
wpietri
Except that, most 3rd-party recruiters being clueless, you still have to do
all the work. The only sensible way I've seen to use them is as a pure resume
source. The folks at Wealthfront explain how:
[http://eng.wealthfront.com/2011/07/hire-best-forget-
rest.htm...](http://eng.wealthfront.com/2011/07/hire-best-forget-rest.html)

------
9085
I think if you use a recruiter to help find new people to put through your
interview process then they can be highly effective. It doesn't make sense to
trust in a recruiter to bring you the perfect fit. They bring you people and
then you must determine if they are the proper fit. I see no harm in
recruiters. You don't have to hire anyone they bring you.

------
veritas9
Try CodeEval.com. It's free to use and we've helped dozens of awesome
companies hire awesome talent through out platform. We run the only free
technical screening tool out there.

And with out sourcing product, unlike annoying recruiters - we send very
little but high quality candidates that are pre-screened.

------
oleg_kikin
Shameless plug:

<http://recruiter-review.com/>

~~~
Shengster
Pretty awesome idea, thanks!

------
livingwithgeek
As an in-house Recruiter at a startup, I thought I'd throw my $0.02 in.

The bottom line: you're right. There are a LOT of "bad apples" out there
spoiling the names of the decent Recruiters. One person here said they've
never had a call from a good Recruiter; that's because we know better. I don't
call people for jobs they're not suited for. In fact, I rarely call Techies at
all; you don't answer your phones.

Anyway, it's NOT always the Recruiter that sucks, as I demonstrated here:
<http://bit.ly/pokYV1>

Loved this discussion though. Thank you all for solidifying so many of my
beliefs.

------
chollida1
Mabye the title is a little off, but from my experience we have an inhouse
recruiter and she is worth her salary and more.

I'd be interested in wow do other companies hire without a recruiter.

------
djhworld
I'm not sure what it's like in the states but here in the UK, recruiters are
nothing more than glorified salespeople.

The problem also lies in the fact that many recruitment agents get paid a
woeful base salary, the rest being topped up by commission payments based on
successful candidates they pass on. So it's in their interest to ring as many
people as possible and put forward as many people as they can because there's
a good chance they'll get a "bite" somewhere down the line

------
namidark
Everyone seems to be hating on recruiters -- I actually just found a near
dream job by me actually getting in touch with one. I'm using the language and
tools I love, and I'm rolling over into a full time position with awesome
benefits. Yes they take a cut of your hourly wage -- but I quoted it so up
there that its not that big of a deal anyways (don't undersell yourself).

------
dsr_
The comments here about how bad contingency recruiters are point to a lack of
three skills:

\- listening \- industry knowledge \- politeness

Now, a new recruiter might not have much industry knowledge, but you can pick
up listening skills and politeness (for any given culture) in a myriad of
jobs. Why don't they have these valuable skills?

Recruiters aren't very good at recognizing people who would be good
recruiters...

------
car
It seems that the author is confusing placement agencies with recruiters
working directly for a company (also see pg's comment).

I've had great experiences with experienced recruiters at a startup, to help
us find candidates, while at the same time getting pounded by unethical,
moronic agencies.

The recruiter helped us wade through hundreds of CV's, and eventually found an
awesome Stanford CS MS that we ended up hiring. And this was while the
recruiter worked for us as a contractor, so no 30% salary fee.

So a great recruiter is worth their weight in gold, because they can
potentially find that perfectly fitting candidate, giving a boost to a
fledgling startup. Unfortunately, such recruiters a far and few between.

Opposed to that, I got daily calls from agencies, that weaseled their way past
our operators to talk to me directly, being super aggressive and downright
rude when I politely told them to stop calling. This all, of course, because
of the 30% fee salary fee when they place someone.

~~~
joshu
The problem is that placement agencies also call themselves recruiters.

------
z5h
I had an idea of making recruiters put their money where their mouths are.
Want to represent me? That'll cost you $2000/year. If you find me a great job
in the next few years you you get many times your money back.

~~~
snorkel
Recruiters would not consider such an arrangement unless you're a celebrity of
the industry with a stellar resume. The candidate pool is too large to spend
time and effort trying to place a single candidate in a great job.

~~~
mrgoldenbrown
At least this might force the recruiter to admit what his true assessment of
your chances are - if you don't call their bluff, they will forever tell you
that you are a perfect fit, and that the job is the best ever.

------
sgdesign
If it's a designer you're looking for, skip recruiters and check out my
project: <http://folyo.me>

It'll cost far less than a recruiter, and I'll refund you if you don't find
someone.

~~~
oneplusone
Are you using the same model as dibbble, or why are you not accepting signups?

~~~
sgdesign
It's not the same model, every application has to be accepted by me
personally.

I've got enough designers (about 250) compared to the number of job offers
currently on the site, so I've decided to close sign-ups for now.

------
Rinum
Perhaps we need a startup to disrupt the job recruiting industry?

------
johnnygleeson
LinkedIn both relies on recruiters for revenue and reduces their necessity in
the market. I would like to know how they think that will play out.

------
lanstein
cue Peroni...

~~~
Peroni
Typical. The one day I chose to ignore HN in order to make a dent in my
mountain of work and this article gets posted.

For what it's worth, I agree wholeheartedly with the majority of the article.
Recruiters who focus on start-ups are wasting their own time as well as the
start-up's time. Yes there are a huge number of start-ups hiring and yes some
will engage recruiters but the vast majority don't have the budget.

I would happily wager a months salary on the fact that 99.9% of recruiters
don't understand how a tech start-up works and even if they make the effort to
learn, every start-up is different with their own individual challenges and
quirks and it requires an immense amount of time and effort to truly
understand what these companies need. No recruiter will invest that level of
time. Instead they will throw a few CV's at the role and hope something
sticks.

I'm giving a talk at Hacker News London tomorrow night and the topic is
'Recruiting for start-ups'. It's a brief talk on how to improve your chances
of finding the right people for your start-up and how to keep them. At no
point do I even attempt to suggest they engage a recruiter, in fact I strongly
encourage them not to.

------
BiWinning
So where do you search for engineers if you're a startup?

~~~
Nate75Sanders
Go to various tech meetups/meetings that seem relevant and then try to
identify smart people by what they say in meetings. Then approach them.

Maybe sponsor a relevant meeting by buying the pizza/beer for it. This buys
you the opportunity to give a company introduction and let people know you're
hiring. Very cheap advertising.

meetup.com is probably the generic place to look for these types of meetings,
but every city probably has its own, better site. In Seattle, among others, we
have <http://www.seattletechcalendar.com/> and <http://www.seattle20.com/>
among probably others.

Sitting in your office waiting for resumes/cover letters is the absolute worst
way to try to get people. It also leaves you with only an interview to get to
know the potential hire, while at the meeting you may find out all sorts of
desirable or undesirable characteristics about them. Additionally you may get
input from that person's peers.

~~~
gujk
Yes.

An onsite interview is 4-hour sell meeting: sell your coworkers on the
candidate, and sell the candidate on the coworkers and office and etc.

If you aren't pretty confident in a hire before the onsite, the onsite won't
help.

