
Why I Hate Tech Recruiters - renownedmedia
http://obsceneart.net/quotes/578
======
spudlyo
I hate how recruiters use a lot of words tell you absolutely nothing about the
position and make up lies to make you feel like you're special. Below is a
boiler-plate message I got from a lame tech recruiter, followed by my snarky
response.

\------------------

 _My associate forward me your contact info. and the hiring VP of Engineering
is interested in your technical background for a senior position._

 _The company I’m working for is very successful, profitable and well funded
by several top VCs. Also can you please email me your current resume in word
so I can forward it to the hiring VP of Engineering so he can review it, the
resume he has is a bit dated..._

 _The compensation is excellent with great stock options, bonus, 401k and
comprehensive package. I can call you with all the details on the position and
company, please let me know the best # to call you at._

\------------------

Let me see if I get this. You're telling me that an unnamed associate told you
that an nameless VP of Engineering at an unspecified company thinks I'm great
and has a job that pays an uncertain salary.

Please call me at my undisclosed phone number so we can discuss my
unmentionable thoughts on this matter.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I wonder if you could send them a resume like

    
    
      Your Name 
      United States
    
      Education:
         Really relevant degree from a top rated university
    
      Experience:
         5 years doing excellent work at a company that has
         a strong reputation for this kind of work. I used
         skills that are in the most demand by top companies.
         Responsibilities included delivering really innovative
         products on time and under budget. Received many 
         awards from peers and management.
    
         3 years as a rockstar engineer with a company that
         made the cover of a widely read technical journal.
         Papers that I wrote were given best paper awards at
         some of the best industry conferences.
    
         Interned with one of the leading Internet companies
         that reach out to a significant portion of the billions
         of people that use the Internet. Applied the latest
         software development tools and methodologies to the
         companies most profitable product.

~~~
ArcticCelt
I think I am going to start answering a couple of offers this way once in a
while just to blow some steam :)

------
simonsarris
I do hope that I'm not alone in taking the opposite position as a default. I
love recruiters, the sincere ones at least, and the insincere one's have never
been a particular bother to dispose of. What remains, in my mind, is at least
a little flattering.

I had a long comment I was making so I turned it into a post. I hope this sort
of thing isn't improper on HN, but here is why I love recruiters (and a couple
of exampels of the replies I give to them):

<http://simonsarris.com/blog/626-why-i-love-recruiters>

(or if you wanted to discuss) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4434048>

~~~
jfb
I agree wholeheartedly. That there are lazy recruiters should be no more of an
indictment of technical recruiting than the current state of iTunes is of
software development.

------
jwwest
Having been both a developer and a hiring manager, I've come to the uneasy
acceptance that recruiting is necessary a lot of the time. However, recruiters
that I've dealt with I've personally vetted as being decent folks who don't
resort to this type of spam.

I become truly depressed when I commiserate with other hiring types. When I
bemoan the general horribleness of the recruiting industry as exampled by
these bottom-feeders, the other party simple sighs and goes "yeah, but that's
just how it is" Why is this acceptable? Why hasn't this industry been
disrupted yet? It's a huge, HUGE market, yet I haven't seen any significant
innovation in it except for yet another job site that pops up occasionally.

~~~
pemulis
The problem is that disruption generally means automation, and there's no good
way to automate the developer recruitment process. To really be good,
recruiters need to have enough of a technical background to understand what
they're looking for and take the time to do research and personalize each
pitch. Sites like Github are the most useful and potentially most disruptive
recruiting tools, because they take work that used to be hidden away or
scattered all over the Internet and make it public, centralized, and easily
searchable. Most recruiters don't know how to use those tools effectively,
though, because they can't understand the data they're looking at, and aren't
good enough storytellers to make just a few pitches per day and be confident
that some of them will land.

~~~
markkanof
Based on the quality of recruiters I've dealt with I honestly think you could
automate their job comPletely. They seem to do key word searches to find my
resume and have zero idea about development tools, process, and technique. At
least a computer would know the difference between Java and JavaScript or that
asking me if I prefer VB.NET or ASP.NET is a nonsensical question.

~~~
jaylevitt
Actual recruiter cold-call question in 2011: "So Rails, is that like Java?"

------
actsasbuffoon
My company has been using a recruiter to try to fill two openings; one for a
Rails developer, and one for embedded work. Weeks passed, and they hadn't sent
us a single résumé. They claimed they were just being really thorough at
screening out unqualified candidates.

A few more weeks without résumés passed, and we finally confronted them about
the lack of candidates. They explained that despite their best efforts they
couldn't find any embedded device developers who were also senior Rails
developers.

I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

------
encoderer
I probably get 3-4 inquiries a week from recruiters. About 2/3 from LinkedIn.
I suspect that most software engineers in the Bay Area (and other hot markets)
share my experience.

I usually politely ignore them. I changed jobs a few months ago and during
that process I talked with a few. Not surprisingly, there are good ones and
bad ones. That's the final word on it I think. Not all recruiters are idiots
and scumbags. Not even most of them.

The worst ones, to me, were the ones that just spammed me with any remotely-
related job instead of curating and sending me what I'm looking for. I also
loath it when they give me pep-talk style, "Just be on time and don't sound
too arrogant or cocky." Seriously? I'm a professional with a decade
experience. This is a highly paid job. You're not talking to a University
Career Fair candidate.

For some, I cut off contact. For others, I told them to remember me and
contact me if they had anything that matched very specific job descriptions or
outlandishly high salaries. Others I worked with pleasantly.

The best, to me, were internal recruiters and recruiters working at VC firms.
Both of them have a deeper interest and better connections.

~~~
rogerbinns
I've got what seems like a good solution. At the very top of my resume and on
Linkedin I have a link titled 'Note to recruiters'. It is pretty trivial to
tell if the recruiter actually read it (after all the majority are
clueless/useless). I also add their domain to my email server blocklist.
(After all if the recruiter is unable to recruit competent recruiters - its
own industry - then why would I trust them for anything else?)

The content also helps ensure I am the right person for good recruiters - for
example it points out I only want to work for small companies/startups and
why.

Some of the things I put down are that I want the company names (so I can
google them), I'm not sending a resume in Word format, phone calls won't
happen until there are enough details, and including long details about
industry concepts that can be googled (eg virtualization) is useless.
<http://www.rogerbinns.com/recruiters.html>

~~~
jfb
SPELLING PEDANT IRONY: you (rightly) upbraid recruiters who use sloppy
spelling, but you misspell "hustle" in the same letter.

~~~
rogerbinns
You are the first person to notice in the many years that has been up. I am of
course ashamed.

------
rmason
You should have posted your question in an attachment labeled 'resume'.
Hopefully then he will have read it.

If instead he blindly sends it to the client you won't have to worry about him
much longer;<).

~~~
toomuchcoffee
He definitely _read_ those mails. He just doesn't care, in the slightest, if
he happens to annoy you. So he sees no reason to respond.

~~~
ChuckMcM
And worse if they _told_ you the source then you would figure out how to make
that source stop giving our your information and might even tell your friends
and a that would make his life less fun. Clearly the OP isn't actually
interested in the job so not responding is the best strategy.

~~~
eropple
I've found that it's more blatant than that. Often their "source" is LinkedIn
or Google.

------
redmattred
On the bright side, you have a skillset that is highly in demand. There are
worse problems to have than being bombarded by job offers :)

~~~
vonmoltke
Recruiter spam != bombarded by job offers. Far from it, in fact. The majority
of third-party recruiter emails I receive are for openings that have very
little to do with my actual skillset[1]. Even the ones that do match never
worked out for me.

Getting bombarded my emails from internal recruiters at major companies is a
different story, but still far from being offers.

[1] I'm particularly tired of the ones who were sending me 6-month contract
Django developer openings just because I put Python on my resume.

------
georgeecollins
The worst recruiter experience I ever had was in 2000-- admittedly the height
of a very tight labor market. The recruiter sent me a pile of resumes. One of
them was the resume of a person we had recently hired.

I don't know where the recruiter got the resume. But he wasn't aware that we
had already hired the guy. Recruiters used to do things like that-- hang on to
your resume and send it around even if you aren't looking for a job. The
results could be embarrassing. I think social media has at least helped them
avoid that mistake, but it tells you a lot about how much they care.

I used to always say, avoid the recruiter and ask for a signing bonus. If you
don't come from a recruiter employers can afford to pay that fee to you. I
think everybody knows that now.

~~~
ntkachov
How does one avoid the recruiter?

~~~
sarhus
There are few things you can do:

* don't leave your CV (especially in word format) in any job board

* send your CV directly to the companies/startups via email

* buy a twilio number, setup call forwarding on that and use it as a disposable phone number in your CV. After you've got a job, you can delete the number.

------
mundizzle
i got 99 problems but recruiters spamming me with job opportunities ain't one.

given the economy and the unemployment rate, i'm thankful for what i've got.

just a bit of perspective

------
ajdecon
I can't stand recruiting houses like this, but I _love_ working with in-house
recruiters. The times I've worked with a recruiter who's actually employed by
the company I'm interviewing at, they have:

\- Asked intelligent questions \- Followed up in a timely manner \- Helped out
when flights were delayed traveling to an interview (arranged hotel) \- Been
unfailingly polite and helpful

On the other hand, I have never once had a good experience with a dedicated
recruiting firm. So maybe all the good ones are working for tech (or other
domain) companies?

------
johnkchow
tl;dr: While not all recruiters are bad, I was better off just directly
applying to companies and avoiding recruiters as much as possible.

A couple of months ago, I was interested in what the SF market had to offer,
and I started responding to some of the emails coming my way.

Over the three month period, I've probably been approached by 3 retained
recruiters and 10 contingent recruiters. All the retained recruiters (i.e.
internal company recruiters) were thorough, thoughtful, and curated the
opportunities to my career goals. Not only did they make sure that I was a
qualified for the job, they made sure from the get go that I'm a good cultural
fit and the position aligns with my personal goals.

Contingent recruiters, on the other hand, rarely asked what I wanted to do.
Every single interview that they'd supposedly set up for would fall through,
either because they didn't double check the position's needs or that they had
communication problems with the hiring company. Additionally, the recruiters'
coworkers would call me in the middle of the day several times a week to tell
me about some new opportunities. I was still working at the time, and it was
annoying to constantly step out of the office to hear nothing substantial. The
whole process left me feeling like I was just a piece of meat.

In the end, I had a much better experience just getting a list of companies
that were hiring from the recruiter and directly applying with the companies I
was interested in myself. When the HR asks how I was referred, I'd usually
mention the recruiter out of karma. If I were to do it again, I'd probably
avoid the recruiters altogether and go directly for the companies I actually
care about.

------
angelbob
When they answer this question, my experience is that the answer is "it's a
trade secret."

Even when you start with, "look, the only way to get this number is by
scraping it from my online resume --"

"I'm sorry, that's a trade secret and I can't tell you where--"

"No, look, I don't care, but _take me off your list_."

"Oh. Right."

------
timjahn
This sort of thing is exactly why we're creating matchist (matchist.com). If
you've ever worked as freelance developer with a recruiter to help you find
gigs, you've probably had the recruiter propose some Java work because you had
Javascript on your resume.

#facepalm

------
ntkachov
My personal favorite is the recruiters that don't seem to go past the skills
section on a linked in profile.

"I noticed your profile - you have a nice background in software engineering,
specifically in core production environments. I have clients looking for
Senior Engineers who know the cutting edge technologies, and have a passion
for making great software."

I'm graduating next year, my last job was an internship, and I do mobile
development (seriously everything on my resume is an app or mobile website).
Its like they don't spend more than 2 seconds on your profile.

------
ved_a
I recently a got from a recruiter asking me if I had 8 years of Android
development experience. I laughed so hard on the phone, she got offended

------
blantonl
_1607 E. Big Beaver Road, Suite 250, Troy, MI 48083_

Good old Big Beaver Road, coincidently, Exit 69 off of I-75 :)

------
suyash
Mee too, but this is nothing, recruiters spam call me at Office phone at the
middle of the day :(

------
pm24601
I LOVE recruiters. They are working hard to get ME a job. Do I talk to them?
All the time.

I got some of my best jobs through recruiters.

The recruiter "spam" is not to try to con you out of money. They are trying to
get you more money.

Seriously what is wrong with you people.

------
benguild
I've found recruiters often use Domain Tools to look up historically available
WHOIS information. I'm not sure if it's legal for Domain Tools to cache that
stuff if it's been removed by the owner.

------
Too
Boo hoo, someone didn't reply to you within 6 working days during holiday
season. Obviously they are idiots!!

------
supercanuck
Their emails (and by extension yours) are probably getting picked up in their
spam filter.

------
squonk
You need to call. Recruiters are verbal. Reading? Not so much.

~~~
slurgfest
Recruiters want to get you on the phone because it's in their tactical
interest, not because they are illiterate.

~~~
mehrdada
Actually, my personal, unscientific, experience indicates a fairly high
correlation between being a recruiter and not being able to send an email
without spelling or grammar errors (unless it is a pre-existing template, in
which case it'll be damn obvious cause they are so poor at adjusting the font
of the mail merged part appropriately for it to not blatantly show.)

------
jsemrau
Recruiting : The one industry in dire need of disruption.

My bet is on LinkedIn

~~~
eropple
I'm not convinced. To me, LinkedIn is exacerbating the problem rather than
providing any help. Instead of trolling Monster and spamming anyone with a
resume out there, they're doing keyword searches on LinkedIn and spamming
anyone whose name shows up.

