
Ask HN: Is there anything like Glassdoor, but for recruitment companies? - aledalgrande
Would be nice to have a service that lets you know which are the firms that care about the client and the potential employee.
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mmanfrin
I've been slowly working on a sideproject for this. The tricky parts are in
defending against recruiters gaming the system, and in making it something
other than a venue for complaining (i.e., getting people to rate 2-4 stars,
not just 1 and 5).

~~~
aledalgrande
Curious to see how it will evolve.

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hkarthik
I think you need to expand on your review criteria.

Recruiters are incentivized by the companies that hire them for two things:

1) Providing a steady pipeline of candidates for their clients.

2) Maximizing the compensation numbers for candidates they close.

It's arguable that a recruiter that pushes hard to get you a good salary
"cares" about you. But they won't care too much if the company they get you
into completely burns you out and treats you poorly. Nor will they spend much
time prepping you for interviews if they don't see you as a sure bet to land a
position with one of their clients.

~~~
aledalgrande
Why would they suggest you to interview if they don't believe you are a fit? I
think that's one of the criteria that differentiates good recruiters, that
don't want to bring someone in to interview just to "keep the pipeline going".

~~~
hkarthik
That assumes they can read the client and know the industry terminology well
enough to evaluate a candidate's "fitness".

In my experience, far too few recruiters can evaluate fit effectively.

~~~
aledalgrande
Exactly :) that's why you want to know who they are.

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fsk
I use gmail. I can use it to keep track of how often they've been spamming me,
and how often they've ever sent me on an actual interview.

If someone has been emailing me for years but never sent me on an interview, I
configure it to remove their messages from my inbox.

There also are a couple others I refuse to deal with. They insist on meeting
me in person each time, but never sent me on an interview, or sent me on a
large number of low-quality interviews. If I was unemployed and desperate, I
might give them another chance. I already have a (mediocre) job, so I'm trying
to spend my limited job search time efficiently.

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mrfusion
I've always thought this would be an interesting business (side project?)

It would be like a whitelist of recruiters. You could go and enter your zip
code and get a recruiter in your area. Maybe see various metrics as rated by
employees.

Maybe to start you could let all recruiters sign up, and remove them as soon
as a poor review comes in. Maybe set up some "honey pot" resumes and see if
they spam them, and remove them that way too.

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vonnik
Why would you go through a recruitment company when hundreds of startups are
scouring Angel List everyday? I'm genuinely curious. I happen to be an in-
house recruiter for a YC startup, and I always wonder why talented people
don't just approach us directly, or post their resume in a public place...

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redmattred
There is one called Scout ([http://goscoutgo.com/](http://goscoutgo.com/)) but
their target audience is companies that are looking to use 3rd party
recruiters, not the candidates themselves.

~~~
aledalgrande
Compared to Glassdoor it is also closed, and it places emphasis on automation,
instead of humanity and quality.

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debacle
There's no way to really prevent a system like that from being gamed by
recruiters without entering into agreements with employers that have little to
no upside for them.

~~~
aledalgrande
That was the same hypothesis on Glassdoor, but to me it seems it works well.

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gk1
I know of at least one company that games Glassdoor by posting dozens of fake
positive reviews for themselves. (I'm not aware of any options to report this
to Glassdoor.)

From their FAQs:

> Since we're unable to fully verify the identity of an anonymous user, we
> require each user to certify their employee relationship to the company when
> they post any content. We also require all users to validate their email
> address before their posts are made available to the community. This
> verification process allows us to put measures in place to identify
> suspicious users and/or posts. And all of these, combined with active
> community moderation and our commitment to review every post, allow us to
> have confidence in our information.

What a joke. By "certify their employee relationship..." I'm guessing they
mean tick some checkbox, because I don't recall having to prove anything when
I've posted reviews. And verifying email addresses? Gee, nobody is going to
get around that...

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Hasu
I know of a company that does this, too. It IS possible to report individual
reviews, and I did just that with several obviously-faked reviews from
management. Glassdoor responded that management and CEOs have a right to post
reviews, too. That's great, and I totally agree, but I reported multiple
reviews that didn't claim to be management at all, they claimed to be
developers and designers who loved their jobs.

Meanwhile, I had to rewrite a negative review because someone claimed that I
was revealing trade secrets. Unless treating your employees like shit is a
trade secret, I did no such thing.

In my experience, Glassdoor reviews aren't worth much. They can be taken down
for inane reasons, but won't be for legitimate problems.

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a3n
The client is the employer.

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aledalgrande
That's why I put both.

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a3n
I've always read "a/b" as a and b referring to the same thing with different
names.

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MichaelCrawford
It's not the firm that matters, but the individual recruiters. I know a few
good recruiters, but the other people at their same firms totally suck.

