
Technical Recruiting Needs to Focus on Selling the Position - leerob
https://leerob.io/blog/technical-recruiting-is-broken/
======
alkonaut
Can someone with _any_ insight in the recruiting business help me understand
how the bad recruiters think?

Typically you get a vague recruiter spam type message on email/LinkedIn which
seems to deliberately avoid saying anything about the position. Based on this
they want a _phone call_.

why do they write the messages in a way they must surely understand does _not_
make any employed developer eager to change jobs?

Usually I answer that without more information up front I’m not interested in
having a phone call, and I add some questions like “what in particular did you
mean when you said I seemed like a good fit for this role?” or “what’s the
role/seniority more exactly?”

Invariably the answer to that is: ”I can’t disclose this other than over the
phone”

 _what?_

The recruiter now has to be 100% aware that they risk losing this candidate
because they couldn’t reveal basic information about the position in an email.
So why _is_ that?

Are these some kind of low level minion recruiters who work on a commission
based on how many phone calls they do, rather than by commission for the
actual recruiting? That’s the only reason I can think of!

What actually _is_ stopping recruiters from writing

\- you’ll work language Z mainly. The team uses tools X and Y.

\- The person they are looking for is a Senior back end developer

\- the work is product based, not contracting

\- the team is 40 people

\- The position is in northern City X with occasional travel

WHY is it never like that? Why is it always some mumbling about “growth
opportunities” and how I’m a “good match” and so on?

~~~
pandaman
From my experience there could be different reasons:

1\. They want to learn something they are not legally allowed to ask. Most
likely your salary (not legal in California), but also citizenship (required
for export license jobs but still illegal to ask in the US) , guess your age,
gender, race etc.

2\. They think they are very good at persuasion and will manage to sell you
their crappy job if only they can get your ear.

3\. As you said, some agencies have metrics they need to meet every month and
those include number of calls. I learned this is from reading recruiters rants
on Linkedin.

~~~
dragonwriter
It is not illegal to ask about citizenship. It is illegal to discriminate on
it where it is not a bona fide qualification, which it is not outside of jobs
with legal requirements around it.

It is legally ill-advised to ask about it when it is not legal to discriminate
based on it, because you have no lawful use of the information and asking
about it is an action from which discrimination can be inferred.

There is a persistent myth that it is unconditionally illegal to ask about
things that are usually illegal to discriminate on, but this mistakes both
what is illegal and when.

~~~
miketery
Citizenship isn't a protected class so I believe a company is in their right
to discriminate if it chooses so. There are legal and timing issues associated
with authorization to work.

~~~
klodolph
Incorrect. This falls under “immigration status”, a protected class under the
Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Please consider reviewing your
training material if you are involved in the hiring process.

~~~
mattkrause
Kinda...

Assuming the person is allowed to work, you're not supposed to discriminate
based on how they got that right: native-born, refugee, whatever. However, I
can't imagine that you'd be _forced_ to help someone keep or obtain that
authorization.

~~~
klodolph
"Are you authorized to work in the United States?"

This is good enough. Citizenship is sufficient but not necessary. And of
course, you can ask for citizenship if it is a bona fide job qualification
(e.g. ITAR).

------
ryanianian
I've started giving formulaic recruiter responses to recruiters that send
formulaic inquiries. My response is along the lines of

> Dear PERSON. Thanks for reaching out. I'm happy where I am but for $Y base
> salary with SOME_OTHER_BENEFITS I would consider a move. Let me know if that
> sounds reasonable for your team otherwise I will be in touch if anything
> changes. Feel free to reach out again in 6-12 months either way.

This is a bit cold and focused on the money, but recruiters are usually
sending the same emails anyway - as the article points out. Ultimately why
waste everyone's time if you wouldn't really consider a move anyway? In the 4
months since I've been doing this, almost every recruiter that has responded
has responded with "thanks for responding and thanks for being up front."

To be "honest" with this approach, put a number in $Y that would _really
really_ make you consider changing jobs. 1.5x your current salary? Double if
you're super happy where you are? Maybe SOME_OTHER_BENEFITS becomes "really
high equity percentage" or "fully remote" or "work 3 days a week"?

I put my $Y pretty high so most companies can't afford me, but I've got 1 or 2
companies that may be able to pay it in the pipe. Win-win.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
I’ve used this strategy before, but I find recruiters do not respond politely
and I end up getting increasing amounts of spam over time; I suspect from
recruiters sharing email addresses and especially addresses that are linked
with any kind of recent response.

When recruiters do respond to these types of messages, my usual experience is
that it’s an even more aggressive hard-sell on positions based on some poorly
copy / pasted sections of a job description, incoherent lists of buzzwords or
technologies that make no sense as skills belonging to one single person (e.g.
years of machine learning experience as well as expert in rails), and various
all caps or bolded promises that they are paying a lot of money.

This comes from every type of recruiter too, from giant big box headhunting
looking for contractors to the latest and greatest stuff like cybercoders to
boutiques like phaidon / huxley / other finance crap, on down to lone
individual recruiters who have been doing it for 20 years and only got my
email because a friend highly recommended them as a legit recruiter.

Truly, in over a decade of working with all types of recruiters, I have never
seen a recruiter add value for any party at any time. It’s pure loss to engage
with recruiters.

~~~
fphhotchips
> Truly, in over a decade of working with all types of recruiters, I have
> never seen a recruiter add value for any party at any time. It’s pure loss
> to engage with recruiters.

Strong disagree.

Good recruiters work for employers by maintaining a strong network of
candidates across a number of fields, and also by finding candidates for roles
that are cheaper/better than others because they come from recruitment pools
outside those traditionally used for the role. Example: a company might be
looking for a Sales Engineering role - typically pretty difficult positions to
recruit because there's a small pool of candidates. But, if you can find
someone in consulting or traditional development/engineering that has the
right skills, they can be brought on relatively cheaply. Good recruiters know
this, and they know how to find and evaluate those candidates so the company
doesn't have to.

By the same token, recruiters that I maintain a relationship with have made my
last three job searches significantly quicker and easier - I know them, they
know me and they know who is looking for what. They've added significant value
for me, and for the employers that I work with.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
Your comment reads like buzzwordy double-speak. Private recruiters
_absolutely_ do not know sophisticated nuances of the skill set for different
organizational sales engineering needs. Hardly any of the managers or
executives _in that company_ would even know the skills or experience they
need for sales engineering, let alone how to recognize them in someone not
already working in that position.

It’s frankly crazy to hear this, just knowing how incompetent even the most
prestige-dripping boutique recruitment firms are, how many totally
inappropriate candidates they foist onto firms (I used to run all recruitment
for my team at an asset management company and know very well how unhelpful
recruiting pipelines are).

The other thing is that these types of recruiting pipelines are exactly the
well-worn, used-by-everyone pipelines. You mention various times that this
approach somehow draws up unusual or untapped recruits, but it’s exactly the
opposite. You’re just playing musical chairs with the same pipe of recruits
that everyone else is looking at.

As a final note, I appreciate how you blow right past the idea that recruiters
are supposed to be negotiating in good faith on behalf of the candidate, even
going as far as to suggest the recruiter would disingenuously represent a job
to someone who shades outside that skill area just for the sake of “getting
them cheaply” and not getting them a salary that would more fairly reflect the
actual labor value they would be adding.

You’ve pretty much made a great case for exactly why nobody should be working
with these recruiters.

The employer’s going to end up with a wrong-skills / wrong-experience
candidate who is sold on one job but walks into the real job and quickly sees
they didn’t want it, while earning below market compensation, and everyone’s
unhappy in a year.

------
henrik_w
This matches my experience too. In my opinion, the way to sell the job is to
explicitly mention all the advantages - the company name, the tech stack, why
it is a great place to work etc. The most annoying recruiters are the ones
that have "a fantastic opportunity" and want to set up a phone call to sell
it. I work in Stockholm, Sweden, and I have noticed that recruiters from
England often try to talk to you instead of simply listing the position(s).

Extra points for the recruiter if they write something indicating why _I_
would be a good fit - only happens rarely.

Also, checking back later (a year or two) to see if I am open to a change,
even if I wasn't before, is OK by me. Sometimes you don't want to change, no
matter what the offer is.

We developers should not complain too much about recruiters though - we are
extremely lucky to work in a field where there is such high demand. Most
people aren't so lucky.

I also think being contacted by a recruiter puts you in a great bargaining
position: You are in a much better position to negotiate salary and benefits
than if you applied directly. You already have a job, so if the offer isn’t
interesting enough or good enough, you can just say no.

I wrote a post similar to this a few years ago, making the above points:
[https://henrikwarne.com/2015/11/22/recruiting-software-
devel...](https://henrikwarne.com/2015/11/22/recruiting-software-developers-
initial-contact/)

~~~
alkonaut
Exactly this. Same experience with vague spammy UK recruiters, also in
Stockholm. Not sure what it is in particular about UK recruiters and why they
are so hellbent on getting a phone interview without revealing _any_
information. There has to be a reason behind this (such as some weird
quota/bonus system for phone calls made) and I’m very curious what the reason
is.

~~~
r_c_a_d
UK recruiters are frightened of losing their client (the company) to other
recruiters. Unless the recruiter has managed to agree an exclusive deal on a
particular role, every time they give out the name of that client they risk
another recruiter calling the client and saying "I see you are recruiting for
X, we have some great candidates, would you like to see them?"

And some UK recruiters play very dirty. They post fake CVs and fake job ads to
mine the market. They pose as candidates to get info from other agents; and
ask real candidates what other jobs they have applied for.

~~~
alkonaut
I can see how business practices and contract obligations get in the way. I'm
not asking to know the exact address or company name. Or even enough info to
know which job it is (such as company age, company size, product type).

All I'm asking is basic things like "what tech are they ussing" or "what type
of role is it" etc.

Of all my theories for why they can't say up front I'm now leaning towards
this one: they need to gather my info so that if the 5-10 minute phone call is
fruitless, they'll have enough candidate info on ME to be able to pay for that
call, when they say that info in bulk. If they gave away the big parameters
first (location, pay range, tech, ..) they know that's when most conversations
will end. I haven't tried, but I'm guessing that if I just tell them enough
about me first, they'll eventually allow the call to contain details about the
position. At that point I'll just say "no thanks, I can't move to city Y", but
they are happy they got some good info.

------
rm999
I'm not a recruiter, but I spend a lot of my time building up teams so I
figure that makes me a de facto recruiter.

I've personally gone both extremes:

1\. Spamming linkedin, message boards, etc.

2\. Seeking out specific candidates, emailing them, offering to grab coffee or
do a call.

I've had more success hiring with #2, in which regard I agree with the
article. But it comes with a perverse side-effect: I am ignoring 95% of
potential candidates, likely a similar group everyone else is ignoring. I am
mostly contacting people with years of experience at good companies with a
decent web presence. Because if I didn't, I wouldn't have time to do my other
job duties. When I (or our internal technical recruiters) spam out a job we
are giving more people a chance at the job, and are introducing fewer personal
biases.

I'm not saying either approach is right or wrong, I just think there's room
for both. Maybe the ultimate solution is a single centralized marketplace for
jobs, but it doesn't seem like there's been a clear winner in this space.

~~~
leerob
Thanks for the insight. Some really good points here, especially:

> When I (or our internal technical recruiters) spam out a job we are giving
> more people a chance at the job, and are introducing fewer personal biases.

That is something I didn't even consider, but you're absolutely right. You're
naturally going to be more attracted to candidates who fit your profile
(unless, of course, you're _really_ aware of your unconscious bias).

I think spamming LinkedIn can have success if you properly target and give
ample information on who, what, and why. Something I didn't even consider
until this was posted on Reddit was the fact that even though I have Java
listed in "do not want", it's still going to be picked up as a keyword.

------
lordnacho
> Good recruiters focus on building relationships versus solving an immediate
> need.

The problem is they get paid only when immediate needs are met. A placement is
hard to do, but results in 25% of an annual salary when done. This results in
two kinds of strategy:

1) Spammers. I get this all the time on both sides (as a hiring manager and as
a potential hire). The worst is when I get forwarded someone's actual CV out
of the blue. It's happened a couple of times recently: a guy who works at
Google or Amazon at a high level has his CV sent to me by a recruiter who's
never spoken to me. In both cases I found the person on LinkedIn and told
them, much to their surprise. Of course there was never a conversation on the
other side either. Normally it's not as egregious as this, but it's still not
a way to do business.

2) Relationship people. These guys will actually take the time to meet with me
and talk about what kind of stuff I do. Both as a hiring manager and a
potential hire, there's no sense that they are bucketing me in either, we can
potentially do either business. There's no sense of urgency either, just two
people discussing the market. I've made business contacts through recruiters
this way, nothing expected in return, no hard sell. I've told them we're not
even using recruiters, and they still check in for a coffee now and again. I
do try to throw something their way, esp when it comes to giving them
candidates.

The big problem for the good guys is they somehow have to get paid while
maintaining all these low probability relationships. Not only that, they
actually need to speak intelligently about every technology and business in
the market. They need to know what kind of thing c++ is, how it's different
from JS, and what kind of function it might be useful for. This is no easy
task.

You can easily see how someone needing to feed themselves could get desperate
and go for some version of spamming.

~~~
scarface74
For #2. I’ve had a recruiter that I first spoke to in 2012 after I was laid
off. We kept in touch over the years and he didn’t get a chance to place me
until 2018. I think the $30K he made off of me was worth the few emails he
sent over the years.

You only need about 6-10 placements a year to make a decent income.

~~~
komali2
Corporate doesn't let you stop. Even if you hit the 2 placement a month kpi,
your other ones don't go away (candidate calls, manager calls, cold resume
sends). And I'd you hit all the kpis, they just give you higher ones.

~~~
scarface74
This particular recruiter was a partner at a small company where he owned it
with another recruiter.

I worked with another guy in both sides, from getting a job and hired people
through him. He was definitely under corporate pressure. He would routinely
send job descriptions with salaries and they were well targeted.

------
opportune
I’ve had recruiters try to set up a call before even telling me the name of
the company, big red flag. Last time they did that it was because they wanted
to hide that the position was machine learning to make murder robots

~~~
avip
If someone approached you on LI to build "machine learning to make murder
robots", do consider the (99%) possibility you're just a sample point in some
social science "research".

~~~
opportune
It wasn’t social science research, the recruiter was working for an actual
robotics company with almost exclusively military customers

~~~
kerng
Always be suspicious of anything like that. Probably wasn't the case here but
nothing prevents one setting up a network of fake profiles to appear legit and
get data from others. The Internet is a scary place.

~~~
opportune
That may be true but considering the job was based around where I live and the
company has many news articles written about it and lots of publicly
verifiable funding, I don't think it was fake. Of course like I said it's not
like the recruiter was like "hey wanna make killer robots??" it's more that in
doing research for the company and my own job description that's what it
seemed likely I would be partially working on

------
hash872
Yes, spamming is bad, and yes, recruiters should read your profile prior to
messaging, but for practical reasons the actual outreach message is gonna be
largely not personalized other than with your name. Reading an individual
developer's Medium posts and then crafting an individualized message based on
that is, like, the definition of unscaleable. It's like insisting that cars
not be manufactured in factories anymore, but instead be lovingly hand-crafted
for each individual owner, one car at a time. This is obviously economically
impossible. Also, in practice, the actual response rate for way-personalized
messages isn't much higher. It just doesn't make sense in practice.

If there are say 500 Node.js developers with the right amount of experience &
CS degrees in a given metro area, the amount of time it would take to research
each individual and craft a personalized message based on their Github or
Medium posts or Stack Overflow answers or Twitter is literally 10,000x what it
takes to just shoot each of then an InMail or e-mail. Again, a recruiter
should read each profile to make sure they're on the right track, but the
messages are likely going to be mass-produced

~~~
leerob
/u/rm999 had experience with both spamming and personalized messages and had
more success with the latter.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19186331](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19186331)

~~~
hash872
Without quantifying anything it's kind of meaningless. The point is that
recruiting is a business process and that we should treat like any other type
of process, by being systematic.

The information we need is how many interested people responded with a generic
message vs. how many responded to the personalized message, and the amount of
time spent on each approach. Note that 'responded' here is defined as 'I'd
like to pursue this opportunity' or 'I'd like to learn more' which then leads
to them pursing the opportunity. Not social niceties like 'I'm not looking but
it's wonderful that you took the time to read my Medium posts, you're so
different from the other recruiters', etc.

------
danielovichdk
It often seems that recruiters think they are doing one a favor by offering
you this shiny new job.

I am so tired of the mono directional process where you have no idea really,
what you are getting into before you have been working somewhere for at least
3 months.

Recruiting is about personality and knowing how people thrive in a certain
environment.

They are so low in the food chain, IMO, that I find it really difficult to
take any of them serious.

~~~
leerob
> It often seems that recruiters think they are doing one a favor by offering
> you this shiny new job.

Exactly. The people they're trying to recruit already have a job. So they're
going to need to sell us on the position. _Especially_ if I've never heard of
the company.

------
lxe
This is about scale. Technical recruiters sometimes need to be able to reach
out to hundreds and maybe thousands of candidates at once, and making
"personal connections" does not scale in this case.

Even if they automagically parse the keywords and plug them into a template,
sometimes things are missed and mis-placed (Java vs JavaScript, etc...).

~~~
alkonaut
But sending vague initial messages to hundreds of candidates and saying they
are a great match and that they want to discuss over the phone _can’t scale_!
It must be much better to just give the basic info (level, tech stack,
location, salary range, job description ...) so that you don’t waste time
calling people who will realize 10 minutes into the call that the position is
in the wrong city or whatever.

If such a message actually leads to a phone call, then it’s bound to be with
the most desperte candidates and not with the best match candidates.

If they send out a more detailed message to 1000 people, and get responses
from 25, then there should be time to research these candidates further to
build a personal connection, including having a phone call.

~~~
hash872
I'd like to see you read the Medium posts of 1000 developers and develop a
personalized message for each person based on that, and see how long that
takes and how that scales. No defender of the current recruiting system, but I
think the expectation of extreme personalization is a bit much. Like my
example below of scrapping factories and having Toyota craftsman handmake each
individual car for the buyers

~~~
alkonaut
What I said was they should spam 1000 devlopers and then read up on those that
actually respond - exactly because they can't be personal with 1000 people.
Personalized would be great and costly. However, being mass produced spam
doesn't explain why critical info is left out, such as

\- in what city is the position?

\- what job would I do in this role? Developer? Project owner?

Details like these are deliberately left out, so I'm wondering why that is.
Theories I have seen that don't quite fly are:

\- They think they are so good they can convince me if they get my ear in a
phone interview (Phone interviews are expensive if 99 of 100 calls end with
the person realizing after 5 minutes that the job is for a skill they don't
have, or in a city they can't move to).

Theories that are more plausible, still don't seem likely:

\- There is a 419-scam element where the emails are crafted to attract the
most desperate candidates, and actually repel any qualified ones which would
likely reject the offer anyway. (This seems like bad economics even at scale
since no one will do good business recruiting bad candidates, but together
with the above theory it might work)

\- The recruiters are incompetent. They actually do waste time in phone
interviews with peoplethat could have been filtered away because of e.g. the
wrong skills or location. They actually thought that being vague and talking
about "great opportunity for personal development" would attract devs more
than "Backend Go gig in Boston". This is plausible (explains what is observed)
but it seems far fetched that a large fraction of the industry would be this
incompetent.

Curiously, even when the first contact is a _phone call_ the details are
hidden!

"Hi this is Bob from X recruiting, I want to talk do you about vague vague
thing, when is a good time to talk?"

If they _already have my ear_ what makes them reluctant to use the info then?
They have to spill these details at _some point_ so why not open with "Hi, I'm
Bob from X recruiting. A client of mine is looking to fill a position as a Go
Backend dev in Boston. Not sure what your status is right now, would you be
willing to discuss this?"

The most plausible theories if you ask me:

\- There is recruiter subcontracting going on, where a top level "good"
recruiter uses spam-recruiters for leads, and don't give them more than a
minimum information and compensation to get those leads. Possibly even with
multiple levels so that the top level firm doesn't even realize what goes on
at the bottom.

\- There is no position at all, or there is a position but filling the
position isn't what drives the recruiters business since these are low-level
recruiters (see above). Instead they want a 5 minute chat where they can ask
me questions and build a profile with info they can't find in e.g. LinkedIn.
This info they can then aggregate sell to other recruiters for good money, way
more for a good money than the cost of a 5-10 minute phone call.

------
foobiekr
"Executive recruiting" basically works this way. They talk to you about your
history and interests and then follow up with a dossier of possible
projects/GMs that they will introduce you to in order to see if there is a
fit. The whole process is very personalized.

This is basically the terminal point of engineering recruiting, though.

------
xavk
> Good recruiters focus on building relationships versus solving an immediate
> need.

This is exactly the focus of the startup we're launching in London this
summer. I'd love to chat to people from HN about their experiences with this.
Contact details on my profile.

~~~
leerob
Thank you for setting a positive example of how recruiting should be done!

------
raincom
The business of recruiting has changed in the last two decades. In late 90's,
recruiters used to know candidates in person, and know what they were doing,
etc. Now recruiters work like assembly line workers or offshored workers, who
have no clue beyond buzz words. If your profile matches with one of the buzz
words, you get spam.

------
ctab
The author of the OP lists in his LinkedIn profile things that he wants and
does not want in a job, but saying "I am not interested in X" is a little
counterproductive if that causes your profile to come up in keyword searches
for "X".

For related reasons I no longer mention on my resume that I have Magento
experience. :)

------
mnm1
To be honest, without getting the salary range up front or within the first
email exchange, I typically end the interaction there. I've had way too many
days and weeks wasted only to find out the company can barely pay 2/3 of my
current salary. I don't care how great the perks are or job is, if you can't
pay competitively, I'm not wasting my time. The rest is just details including
tech stack etc. The right amount of money for the right job could easily make
me overlook such unimportant details (pretty much never happens). You want to
sell the position? Offer a ton of money and the position sells itself. Don't
have that? Offer a competitive salary with remote work. Don't want to do that?
Fuck you, no one will shed tears for your bankrupt business.

------
steelframe
Perhaps what you really mean is that technical recruiting by Big Companies is
broken?

~~~
seattle_spring
Not really. I get way more horrible, poorly targeted recruiter spam from
crappy SV startups than I do large companies. In fact, the large companies
usually actually read my profile.

Edit: It does depend on the "class" of large company though. I get truly shit-
tier spam from C-list companies like GE, Boeing, or Panasonic ("Hey,
interested in relocating to Missouri for a $18.27 hourly Java contract!?")
Tier A companies like FB, Google, etc. always send great recruiting messages
that suggest they read my profile and did at least some due diligence matching
it to an appropriate position.

------
nkingsy
In my most recent job search, I was really surprised to find that about half
of my initial calls were with engineering managers, not recruiters. They're
certainly in a better position to sell the company, but I found that I was
uncomfortable asking the basic "how much, what are the benefits, what's the
work life balance" type questions that I would generally want to get out of
the way before being sold.

------
purplezooey
"genuine, personal connections"

Isn't that kind of a high bar to jump over for this?

~~~
bassman9000
Isn't the hiring process too? Standard today seems to be

\- 1-2 phone screen interviews

\- 1-2 remote coding exercises/interviews

\- 4-5 45-60min round of interviews, on site

\- Optionally, and extra interview day for culture fit

Is asking the recruiter to actually look at your profile and take an interest
too much to ask, given what they're asking you for, and given how the market,
at least in SV-like areas, is today?

It's great to work in this industry, don't get me wrong. But if some
candidates don't want to even acknowledge automated requests, that's just how
the market works.

~~~
lovetocode
This isn’t my experience. I have never done more than two interviews for a
position. None of which involved coding or exercises. Perhaps this is the
standard for businesses in the valley.

------
testbotlo2
My name is Mark. I work with C and C++ in computer graphics.

I often receive 'Hey David, I was impressed with your marketing & sales
skills'.

Sigh.

------
joeax
The real problem is the signal-to-noise ratio in legitimate, well-focused
recruiter emails to the typical recruiter spam one receives on a daily basis.
I sometimes miss the legitimate emails, and although I am not usually looking,
I like to respond with a friendly reply asking to keep in touch.

------
curtis
Can we get rid of recruiters altogether?

Yeah, I know that's an absurd idea, and I don't know any way we could really
do that. But we are always going to have problems if we continue to insist on
having non-technical people serve as the initial point of contact for
technical positions.

~~~
mgkimsal
Met with a company at a conference last year. They were there at a booth
saying "we're hiring people". Met, talked some, they indicated I wouldn't be a
good fit. Got a call from a recruiter last week, and... have already had and
passed a first call screen, another tech call set up for this week. I realize
a lot can change in a 6 month period, but... it's also slightly frustrating.
If I was paranoid, I might say it's ageism at play (I have visibly gray hair
and certainly couldn't pass for late 20s anymore). But I suspect there's
multiple factors at play here which still make 'going through a recruiter'
somehow feel like a safer bet for some companies.

------
vkaku
Oh Please. Anytime someone tries to hard sell a position, I'm usually just
impressed by their sales skills but I know that it usually sends a red flag
for me.

------
saagarjha
Psst…you might want to blur those names out more (or even put boxes over
them), since it’s possible to make them out if you squint.

~~~
leerob
Thanks - I could see how if you really zoom in you might be able to make out
some letters. Just deployed new images that are more blurred.

------
bayesian_horse
At the moment they focus on 10 years experience in a job that didn't exist 2
years ago.

------
bradknowles
This is why I deleted my LinkedIn profile.

------
augbog
title is a bit click baity. It's not broken just poorly done. I agree with a
lot of the thoughts though.

------
leerob
I'm not sure why the title of the posting was changed. The title of the
article is "Technical Recruiting is Broken".

~~~
wool_gather
Personally, I found the (more specific) current title very helpful in deciding
to click through. "Technical Recruiting is Broken" is awfully vague -- not to
mention that I'm pretty sure I've seen blog posts with that title before --
and (for what it's worth) I would have continued scrolling right past it.

You have a distinct, concrete facet of recruiting that you're talking about --
which is great! -- and the current HN title accurately reflects that.

~~~
cubano
"Technical Recruiting is Broken" is very click-baity IMO, as the "is broken"
bon mot has become rather popular and reveals absolutely nothing about what
the article is about.

~~~
leerob
True - perhaps my overly simplistic title was not the best choice. Well,
thanks to the mods for rephrasing it.

