
Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue - TamDenholm
I detest recruiters with the fiery incandescent white hot burning heat of a nova, but unfortunately I feel like i have to deal with them because I live in Edinburgh but work in London, i dont take part in the local community because i'm not there.<p>I applied for a 3 month contract position online. I have this recruiter call me and give me the usual bullshit and it gets to the usual "can i send over your CV to them?", I say sure as i always do after they've wasted 15 minutes of my time asking if i know PHP, if i then know LAMP, then asking my if i know Linux, apache and MySQL, then asking me if i know HTML, then CSS and you get the idea. They ask me all these questions even though 1) my CV they are looking at in front of them says so and 2) they got my CV by me sending it on an online ad asking for these specific skills.<p>So after i've given them permission to send my CV, the woman asks me for 2 technical references, i say to her that if the company likes the look of my CV then i'd be happy to provide references but i dont just hand out peoples details on a whim because i'd hate people to do that to me. She tells me that she cant send my CV without first getting the references. Normally i'd tell her to piss off politely at this point but the daily rate was going through the market rate ceiling and i'm a whore for money.<p>So i say sure, i'll give you references, i'll go and get permission from them and get back to you. I do this and email her the next day with contact details. She emails back and asks what companies they work for, i tell them they're freelancers that i've done work for. She says that colleagues arent good enough and will need managers i've worked under. I explain they're clients, not colleagues, and that i'm not an employee, i'm a self employed developer with my own company and clients, i dont and have never had a manager, i'm the guy people come to because they're not technical, i take care of everything for them. The position i'm looking for requires me to be the main technical guy there, surely she'd get where i'm coming from. She asked for technical references, thats what i gave her, people who understood and could articulate my technical ability.<p>But alas no, i've been penalised for not being a corporate drone, i avoid working for large corporations because its soul destroying and i hate bureaucracy. I like working for other freelancers and small agencies, its far more friendly and less political and i dont have to write screeds of bullshit documents when a quick email is good enough.<p>Anyway, sorry for the rant but this pissed me off today, i really wish i could totally avoid recruiters as when i have found work without them its been orders of magnitude easier and faster, but they know where the good paying gigs are. Someone please disrupt this industry.<p>tl;dr
Recruiters suck and only care about arbitrary bullshit.
======
edw519
_...i say to her that if the company likes the look of my CV then i'd be happy
to provide references but i dont just hand out peoples details on a whim
because i'd hate people to do that to me._

You are right. She is wrong. It's that simple.

To you, TamDenholm, and anyone else here at hn:

Feel free to use me as a technical reference whenever you run into this
illogical and ridiculous road block. Just email me one line of code to print
"Hello World" to the screen. If it is correct, I will happily tell the
recruiter that 100% of everything I've ever seen you program was perfect. My
contact info is in my profile.

~~~
thomas11
Now that's a generous and tempting offer, but how would it actually work?
First, they usually want to know about the work relation you had with the
reference. Just inventing something is dangerous and ethically questionable,
recruiters or not. Then, what if the hiring company actually contacted you?

~~~
edw519
_but how would it actually work?_

Exactly as I propose in grandparent. Reread it if necessary.

 _they usually want to know about the work relation you had with the
reference._

I will tell them that we are colleagues on-line. Although we have never met in
real life, we participate in Hacker News together. Believe me, I know much
more about lots of people here than many I know in real life. For example, I
would heartily recommend patio11, kirubakaran, iamelgringo, or tptacek over
some guy down the hall who I know nothing about except sports conversations at
the coffee machine. It is 2010: in our industry, virtual relationships can
easily carry as much weight as physical ones.

 _Just inventing something is dangerous and ethically questionable, recruiters
or not._

There is nothing ethically questionable about my offer. I will tell the truth.
I will also include this thread. Recruiters have created an artificial
roadblock to keep people from working by protecting their turf. This is just a
handy method to turn that roadblock into a speed bump. If they are required to
collect professional references, this helps them satisfy their requirement.

I operate under the assumption that everyone is telling the truth until I find
out that they aren't. Then I have nothing more to do with them. So, your CV
and a phone interview should be more than enough for a recruiter to qualify
you. It they can't (or won't), then one of two things must be true: either
they are mining CVs or they are incompetent.

 _Then, what if the hiring company actually contacted you?_

I fully expect them to and I will tell them the truth, including this thread.
AFAIC, your CV, phone interview, and participation on Hacker News deserves at
least a minimal amount of respect from hiring people. Requiring references
prematurely is unnecessary and insulting.

I (obviously) feel very strongly about this and stand by my original offer to
anyone here.

A few asides:

1\. I _never_ give references until _after_ receiving a job offer (contingent
upon acceptable references). If a company is incapable or unwilling to make a
preliminary decision based upon the interaction between me and any number of
their employees, then I don't want to work for them.

2\. I have a great deal of respect for competent and professional recruiters.
But then again, you're probably not reading this because you were able to do
your jobs without references in the first place.

3\. To recruiters who are mining CVs, representing jobs that don't exist, or
misrepresenting jobs to protect your listings, please understand that I (and
probably most of the competent professional programmers here) want nothing to
do with you. Please become professional or just go away.

~~~
thomas11
Thanks for your detailed response (and the original offer!).

I had understood your proposal just fine, and was wondering about the
recruiters' side. I and surely most of us on HN agree with what you wrote on
virtual relationships, fairly assessing a candidate based on the CV, and
handling personal references with respect.

However, will such an HN reference pass the recruiter, and then the hiring
person at the company? A technically clueless HR person won't be too impressed
by "this guy on a web forum says my Hello World is fine". Again, I agree that
in an ideal world, they would call the candidate and figure out his skills on
their own, but they don't.

In any case, I'll bookmark your original post, one never knows :-)

------
patio11
Remind me to tell you of the time a recruiter at a very large bank attempted
to place me as their VP of Technical Operations for the Tokyo branch office.

"If I might ask, what gave you the impression that I had sufficient leadership
experience to be appropriate for this position?"

"Your CV says that you ran a multinational software company from Japan for
four years."

"..."

~~~
tomjen3
To be fair, most people would properly assume that "a multinational software
company" was a bit bigger than bingocardcreator.com.

So I wouldn't blame the recruiter.

~~~
patio11
Hundreds of thousands of elementary schoolteachers manage to find my website
and read the about page. It's on the blue Googles _and_ the green Googles, and
the blue texty clicky thingy on my resume will take you to it, too. If reading
that prior to contacting me about my desire for a job is not in the
recruiter's job description, what do they _do_ all day?

~~~
angelbob
I have always, always wondered that. The answer seems to be "have lunch".

~~~
allenp
I think they surf linked-in after lunch too for what it's worth.

------
koevet
I have been freelancing in Europe for the last 10 years and I have learned to
avoid recruiters as much as I can. In the last 4 years I have managed to get
contracts through connections and skip middlemen all-together. It takes more
time but it's rewarding.

Few rules I use when I deal with recruiters (in Europe):

1) There are really an handful of recruitment companies with a good reputation
and history. By default, I distrust a recruiter calling from an unknown
agency. There must be thousands of small recruitment agencies in Europe, I get
a fairly high amount of emails/calls every week and I mostly ignore them.

2) Be suspicious when a recruiter knocks at your door or publish a job ad with
an out-of-market rate. Rates are low these days. They just want to harvest
CVs.

3) If a recruiter insists in having references is a contacts-harvesting
cowboy. Treat him like you would treat a zombie. I only give references after
the initial interview.

4) Don't waste time talking technical stuff with a recruiter. They don't know
shit. In 10+ years I have met maybe 2 recruiters with a real technical/dev
background. Most of the time, recruiters end up being recruiters just because
they failed at everything else.

5) Most of the time jobs coming from recruiters suck. A company with a decent
vision on how to build software will never use zombie recruiters. Maybe they
will contact one of the big player or, more likely, they will go on the market
themselves. Recruiters jobs are mostly financial/telco crap where Java 1.4 is
the standard.

6) Be aggressive when it comes to rates. Recruiters markup is around 20%
(again in Europe). It may vary dramatically. So think about it: You are giving
20% of your salary to a guy who phoned you one day, sent you to an interview
the next and disappeared. Also, some recruiters (very few) are transparent
about the markup. They are normally worth your trust.

7) When you leave a contract, keep good relationship with everyone at every
cost. It will pay back.

~~~
KoZeN
_Most of the time, recruiters end up being recruiters just because they failed
at everything else._

Ouch. You cut me deep koevet.

In reference to point 6, allow me to dispell a myth here.

Let's say I am approached by a client who is looking for someone to do XYZ for
three months and they want to pay the candidate £500 per day (nice round
number).

If you are the candidate, I don't then offer you £400 a day and take 20%. I
pay you £500 per day and charge the client in excess of £600. Every client
knows that if they want a £500 a day candidate it will actually cost them a
hell of a lot more than that to employ them through an agency.

Sometimes, if I have an amazing candidate who has been offered a job but is
stalling because the money may not be as high as they would like, if the
client won't pay more, instead I would lump another £25 per day to their take
home and walk away with 15% instead of 20% but that very rarely happens.

TL;DR: We do not take our % out of your salary. We add our % on top of your
salary and charge the client.

~~~
jules
I accidentally upvoted instead of downvoted. It it of course nonsense that you
are adding to the salary. If the employer is willing to pay £600, then you are
taking X% of £600 and giving the employee (100-X)% of £600. The £500 figure
that you are "adding" to is just an imaginary number that has no real
significance.

Do recruiters really take as much as 20%? This seems ridiculously high to me.
How much of their time are they investing compared to the employee?

~~~
KoZeN
An employer is willing to pay an extra 20% to save themselves the time and
effort of having to source & interview the hundreds of applications
themselves.

As for recruiters taking 20%, that's a comparitively low figure for such a
high daily rate. If one of my clients was requesting a £500 a day calibre
candidate I wouldn't touch it for anything less than 30% in reality.

We are providing a service, plain and simple. The service fee is calculated in
relation to the calibre of candidate as the more senior the candidate, the
more difficult they are to find.

~~~
ataggart
>An employer is willing to pay an extra 20%...

I'm sorry, but this is an accounting fiction. The cost of an employee to an
employer is the total cost; dividing up the total cost and ascribing it to
this or that is irrelevant from the perspective of the employer, and
disingenuous from the perspective of the employee.

In the US we have social insurance taxes which are sold as having an
"employee" portion and an "employer" portion, but this too is just accounting
fiction:

    
    
        Perceived:
         Gross Salary:      $100,000
         Employee Tax Rate:     7.65%
         Employee Tax Amt:    $7,650
         Net Salary:         $92,350
         Employer Tax Rate:     7.65%
         Employer Tax Amt:    $7,650
    
        Actual:
         Gross Salary:      $107,650
         Net Salary:         $92,350
         Tax Amount:         $15,300
         Tax Rate:              14.2%
    

The employee is worth $107,650 to the employer; that part of the money goes to
taxes, or to a recruiter, or to a gym membership is wholly irrelevant.

------
KoZeN
_tl;dr Recruiters suck and only care about arbitrary bullshit._

This statement acurately describes 95% of my colleagues.

I will happily accept the challenge of changing your perception of our
industry. I'm a technical recruiter that covers the London market. Feel free
to send me your CV. My details are in my profile. Also, feel free to have a
look through my comment history. I'm not on this site to pick up leads or push
for business, I'm here because I have a legitimate interest in the industry
and I find that HN is a fantastic gauge as to the pulse of the industry.

~~~
koevet
I was actually hoping to read a reply from a recruiter. Good to hear that
there is someone in the IT European recruiting business with a genuine
interest in doing the job properly.

How would you go regarding changing the current "95% of my colleagues suck"
situation?

~~~
KoZeN
You can't. My industry is driven by one thing only, money.

Recruiters get paid incredible bonuses for placing candidates and are less
interested in how you feel and more interested in ticking off keywords fed to
them by their client.

Example: One role I have on my books right now is for a 3rd line support
analyst. My colleague, a guy who makes about £50k to £60k, submitted a
candidate who he listed out the tech requirements to and asked the candidate
to answer 'Yes' or 'No' if he had exposure to those systems/languages. No
probing questions, no challenge of his competencies, no understanding of what
the various languages were but purely and simply ticked the boxes.

People like him are the norm so when I get on the phone and ask the same guy
to explain the difference between powershell and the command prompt and why
the powershell is more advanced, a straightforward question for a techie but
not what you expect from a recruiter, it throws him for six and those who know
what they are talking about stand out from that point forward.

~~~
charlesdm
How much do you guys make per placement in general?

Lets say you have someone with a salary of £60-70k. On average, how much do
you earn when you place them and how long do you spend to fill a position? I
know that there are extremes, but still.

Looking at the amount of spam I get on LinkedIn, I'm always under the
impression that recruiters are looking for like 100 different positions at a
time, but that's probably wrong.

~~~
KoZeN
That's so hard to quantify but I'll do my best.

Assume that my example is based on a recruiter working for a specialist agency
in London. I'll base my estimate on that:

Salary of £60k would probably give you a fee of about £15k meaning the total
charge to the client would be about £75k, probably a bit more but you get the
drift.

From that £15k fee, the recruiters cut would vary based on his companies bonus
structure which is generally based on overall fee's per quarter as opposed to
individual placements.

Assuming an average performance per quarter (slightly ahead of predefined
targets) a recruiter would probably take home around a grand for that
placement.

A general rule in recruitment is that you aim to take home at least the
equivalent of your salary in bonus every year. I've worked with guys who were
earning in excess of £120k a year after about 3 to 5 years with the same
recruitment company.

As for quantity, this once again varies from agency to agency. I have what I
consider to be a busy desk and I have 8 open, fillable vacancies in front of
me right now and they will be workable for about a week at a time.

~~~
charlesdm
Interesting, why not start your own firm then? Is it that hard to get the
actual vacancies?

If you know what you're talking about in comparison to 90% of the other
people, wouldn't it be a lot easier to place one candidate and get £15k from
him rather than the £1k you're getting now.

You say that the general aim is to earn your salary in bonusses, so that means
that an average recruiter has to place around 60 candidates per year. If they
earn around £15k per person for the company, that makes +- £900k of which they
take home £60k. Rough calculations of course, but seems like pretty good
margins for people that know what they're doing.

~~~
KoZeN
Part of the reason agencies command such high fee's is because of the
influence their brand & network has with candidates. There are thousands of
self employed recruiters fighting over the scraps and a lot of highly
successful self-employed recruiters earning a mint by utilising the personal
network they have cultivated from being in the business for many years. I
personally haven't been in the game long enough to be able to rely on my own
contacts to build a business.

------
papaf
I recently applied for a programming position with some knowledge of maths.

The recruiter phoned me up and asked me if I was good at maths. I explained
that it depended on the subject area because, although I have just finished a
PhD involving mathematical modelling (as stated in my CV and cover letter), I
wasn't a mathematician by training and it would depend on what methods the
company were using.

I learnt an important lesson that honesty doesn't work with these people. He
cut me off and said I wasn't suitable because this position required somebody
that was good at maths. My CV wasn't put forward.

~~~
rlpb
That doesn't sound like an issue of honesty. Context is important. Questions
must always be answered from the questioner's point of view.

If you've finished a PhD involving mathematical modelling, from the
recruiter's perspective you are definitely good at maths.

So the correct answer to "Are you good at maths?" from a recruiter is simply
"Yes". If he wants more details then he'll ask for it. The correct answer is
not a really long winded answer which the person who asked the question will
not be able to understand because he doesn't know what mathematical modelling
is.

Most people give long winded answers when they're trying to weasel out of
giving the straight answer that they don't want to give because it'll make
them look bad. Listen to any politician, for example. I think it's perfectly
reasonable for the recruiter to come to the conclusion he did given that he
didn't understand your answer.

Whether you think that recruiters should be able to understand your answer is
another matter. We all know that most don't have sufficient domain knowledge,
so the best thing to do is to answer appropriately.

~~~
edanm
"Most people give long winded answers when they're trying to weasel out of
giving the straight answer that they don't want to give because it'll make
them look bad."

It's well-known that "geeks" generally try to answer questions literally, and
as accurately as possible. It's also pretty well known that the better at a
field you are, the less highly you think of yourself (the Dunning–Kruger
effect.)

Put those two together, and you'll see that geeks who are very good in a field
will tend to give long-winded answers explaining exactly what they know and
don't, instead of a simple answer. I do this myself all the time.

~~~
billswift
Your use of Dunning-Kruger isn't quite accurate. The better you are the less
likely you are to overestimate yourself, unless you are in the very top, in
which case you are likely to underestimate yourself _in relation to others_.
Basically, because people have relatively little interaction with people that
are _very_ different from themselves, most people tend to rank themselves in
the 3rd quartile, whether they are from the bottom two or from the top. That
is very different from not knowing what you are capable of.

------
leftnode
Also, remember the old recruiter line: "The more money you make, the more
money I make, so I'm going to do my best to get you the best salary possible!"

While it's true: the more you make the more they make (usually, its about 30%
of your first years salary, which is huge), what is also true is that they're
more determined to get you hired at any amount than the amount you want.

This is why you'll see recruiters offer jobs for $90k+, but then when you get
to negotiations, suddenly you're being presented ate $60-$70k.

If you take the job at $90k, the recruiter would get $27,000. If you take the
job at $70k, the recruiter would get $21,000. If you don't take the job, the
recruiter would get $0.

While an extra $6k is nice, $21k is a lot better than $0. So be sure to watch
out for this common misconception. When dealing with recruiters, get them to
introduce you to the company, and then do everything on your own. Don't let
them negotiate for you, don't let them tell you not to tell the company your
salary requirements. It's your job and career, you do all the talking and
negotiating.

~~~
mikeryan
This reminds me of the bit from freakonomics about real estate agents.
Basically when they're getting 3% of the sale price of your house, holding out
for 1 month to get you $20K (and them $600) isn't worth it to them.

[http://www.wisebread.com/why-you-cant-trust-a-real-estate-
ag...](http://www.wisebread.com/why-you-cant-trust-a-real-estate-agent)

------
wccrawford
You have failed to understand her job. Her clients are requiring these things.

I know this, because the company I work for has had to draw hard lines on
recruiters. Before that, they would send us utter crap and waste our time.
Now, we don't get many hits, but most of them are actually worth talking to.

She asked you all those questions because when she assumes things, her
customers get really angry. Sending bad recruits can get her banned from that
company altogether.

She asked for corporate drone references because you'll be doing corporate
drone work and her clients want to make sure you can do it.

~~~
illumin8
I respectfully disagree. Every reputable company I've ever been offered a job
at requires references after they've decided to hire you.

Any recruiter trying to harvest references of "managers and people in
authority" is just a weasel trying to fill their sales contact database.

~~~
PakG1
Bingo.

------
dcminter
I'm a contractor in the UK and I get the "references first" request very
often. I always say no. As far as I can tell this only happens when the agency
doesn't have a real job and is just looking for corporate contacts to add to
their rolodex.

My real beef with agencies is that they are yet another lossy filter in the
process that goes:

Manager with role <-> HR Department <-> Agency <-> Jobserve <-> Me.

Neither the HR department nor the agency knows that Sybase and SQL Server are
profoundly similar databases. The manager doesn't care - he wants a Java dev
with some basic DB skills. But the hiring spec says "Sybase" so Sybase it must
be.

------
briandon
Her insistence on getting managers for references makes me wonder whether she
wasn't mining you for new prospective customers (on the employer side).

~~~
hcho
She definetely was. It's the oldest trick in the book of recruitment. She
first got herself 2 UK CVs and went for more.

There was probably no job, and she was doing "market research".

------
dlnovell
Just yesterday I received an email from a recruiter saying that she had come
across my resume and I looked like a great fit for a position she's hiring
for. She asked me if I'd give her a call to chat about my experience and so
she could tell me about the position. She obviously didn't remember that five
weeks ago we talked for 30 minutes on the phone when I explained what I've
done and exactly what I'm looking for. As I recall from that conversation, I
kept telling her what type of company I was looking for, and she seemed to
ignore me and ask me repeatedly if I knew .NET, which it clearly states on my
resume that she liked so much that I do. Are recruiters incentivized to ignore
everything you say?

~~~
adaml_623
Yes. Recruiters are incentivized only to listen to Managers. They are the ones
with the money.

Oh I feel dirty... I really don't think incentivize is a word.

~~~
dlnovell
btw, Merriam Webster seems to disagree:

<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/incentivize>

------
abailin
I almost started to cry last week when I had to explain the difference between
Java and javascript to a recruiter that had found my resume online and called
me. She couldn't make up her mind about what the client was looking for. I
tried explaining they were vastly different technologies but I still don't
think she got it though :(

~~~
eitally
The safest thing is to just say "yes, yes, yes" and let the actual interviewer
sort it out.

~~~
koevet
One recruiter once sent me an email for a position in "the Nordic countries".
At the time, I was looking into working in either Finland, Denmark or Sweden
so I replied the guy I was interested. He called me back straight away and
when I have asked him in which city the position was, he replied "Brussels".
After my initial silence of disbelief, he went on explaining that he had to
write "nordic countries" because Brits don't want to go to Brussels, but they
consider Nordic countries more attractive because girls are supposedly hot.

------
moonwalker
Here's my experience with HHs from the financial industry. There is a large
batch of newbie HH's coming straight from college who are pushed hardly to
overperform and 'make it'. I've found that the inexperienced recruiters can be
quite pushy and aggressive and so frankly, in situations like you describe
just say thank you and bye quickly.

The established and more senior recruiters will be much more professional and
polished. They all have their quirks and little tricks, but just learn to deal
with it and if you're senior enough, be patient to find appropriate
recruiters.

------
adaml_623
Having spent a 3mth contract working on the IT systems for a decent sized IT
recruiting company I can tell you that recruiters get rewarded for calling
managers and nothing for calling and talking to candidates. And I find it hard
to believe that that a recruiter would actually insist on seeing your
references before putting a CV forward so I'd assume that it was a fishing
exercise. Another clue is that if the rate is higher than market rate then why
would the recruiters not be just taking a bigger cut.

------
revorad
Come along to the next Hacker News meetup in London -
<http://www.meetup.com/HNLondon/>. The organiser Dmitri is inviting people to
give talks. So, if you want to show off your work and make connections, this
is a good chance.

------
swombat
Why are you going through recruiters?

You already know how to market yourself. You're just trying to market yourself
to a different set of people.

Also, you can't at the same time say you're a whore for money and then
complain that you have to prostitute yourself to make your money.

~~~
projectileboy
Oftentimes as an independent contractor you _must_ deal with recruiters in one
way or another, because they're on the dreaded "preferred vendor list", which
is the only way you're getting work from any company bigger than a few hundred
people. It's a total scam, but there's no easy way around it.

~~~
Dylanlacey
Except figuring out how to get on the preferred vendor list yourself.

~~~
projectileboy
True, but in most cases that's not worth the effort, unless you want to have a
really long-term relationship with a particular client. Where I work, that's
not usually the nature of the gigs, but ymmv.

------
charleso
Keep in mind that recruiters "get people for jobs, not jobs for people".

You, as a potential employee, are not their customer -- you're the commodity
being sold. It doesn't change the way you feel about how you are treated, but
awareness of that relationship may help keep your patience and a level head.

(Quote taken from this "What about your job do you wish other people
understood?" Reddit thread:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/e1dsi/what_about_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/e1dsi/what_about_your_job_do_you_wish_other_people/)
)

------
Tycho
So many hoops to jump for. The last company I worked for demanded full
references for the last five years (it was a bank so apparently this was a
legal requirement), but later I found out that their company policy is to
'never give personal references.' (ie. the reference would just go to the HR
department who would confirm your presence, your actual managers wouldn't get
to say anything) I thought at first this must be something to do with
liability, but then I wondered if it was merely another barrier to discourage
employees from leaving their lowly jobs, to make it harder for rival banks to
employ them, and to eliminate the man-hours cost of providing references.
Either way, one minute they're requiring all these references, but when its
their turn to provide, they opt out.

------
barnaby
Some extra information to consider:

0) Many employers hate recruiters just as badly as most job seekers hate
recruiters

1) Recruiters earn their money off of getting employers to sign with them,
they lose money on trying to find employees (and pretending to screen them the
way the lady did in this post).

2) Proportionally they spend a great deal of time being very courteous to
employers, yet are very brisk and rude to employees

3) They feed your MS Word document through a program that scans it for key
words, they never actually look at it

4) They just copy and paste your information into their resume template which
removes any of your contact information but has their huge logo on top

5) I've been in 2 companies that went under and had to find a job fast, all 3
times I found a job it was _never_ through a recruiter.

So yeah, just avoid recruiters. Your time is too valuable for that.

------
ig1
My startup is working on fixing this problem :-)

However we're avoiding the contractor market at the moment, because for
contractors the recruitment agency often acts as an employment agent as well
as recruitment agent (i.e the company will pay the agency and the agency will
pay the contractor). Companies prefer this model so they can just have a
handful of agencies they can pay rather than having to deal with paying
hundreds of contractors directly.

I'm currently playing around with a couple of ideas how to innovate in the
contractor market, but essentially they involve minimizing the pain of dealing
with recruiters rather than replacing them. Although as my focus is more on
the permie market initially, it may take me a while to get around to turning
those ideas into a reality !

------
gallerytungsten
When faced with such nonsense, hack the system.

Invent a couple "companies." Give them a web site and an important gloss of
Serious Business. Have a couple friends or clients act as the contact point
for the reference. Even more amusing: hire an offshore outsourcing company to
act as the "human resources" department of your reference company. They should
be under strict instructions to act very haughty with the recruiter, and tell
them that "Mr. X" is far too busy to take their call, and to then sing your
praises to the sky. Most recruiting drones will be quite satisfied with this
encounter.

Recognize that they are only jumping through the hoops of their own corporate
policy. Your hack is to grease this path for them and get that sweet, sweet
money you desire.

~~~
danenania
Vandelay Industries!

------
techiferous
Some advice: If you don't like dealing with recruiters, come up with your own
marketing strategy that doesn't involve recruiters.

~~~
PakG1
Easy to say, hard to do, no? If he could, wouldn't he already be doing it.
Assuming that it would actually work better, of course, otherwise there
wouldn't be any point.

------
cawhitworth
In all probability, the job didn't exist, and she was just mining for
information.

------
sp4rki
You have to understand one very important thing. Recruiters are the email
advertisement newsletters of the real world. Someone (or yourself) places your
email in a bucket and boom, you're getting this great offers, so yo go check
one out. Then the offer is asking you to provide more info about yourself and
then asks you to get other people involved. After a while of this process you
start to get the impression that the offer is not worth it, and if you ever
actually bought something you realize it was actually vastly overpriced
(underpaid?). So you then click on the unsubscribe link, but alas they keep
sending you stuff, and then you get emails of the people you placed in a
similar position. Six months later you get emails from people you don't know
asking you how you could be so stupid to start a chain reaction of people
giving out other people's details, and then by chance you save a telemarketer
from suicide and he then tells you the story of how he used to be in charge of
a newsletter. He helps you unsubscribe and all, and then tells you: "Oh who
cares about the offer (job?) it was no good anyways, we just wanted to get as
many names and emails from you so we could tell our bosses that we deserve
that 20 dollar bonus at the end of the month."

Conclusion: Don't deal with recruiters, you need to build yourself as a brand
and create your own reputation wherever you want to work. No excuses.

------
illumin8
To give you an idea of the completely unqualified recruiters I've dealt with:
I'm a Systems Engineer/Architect. I do hardware, Linux, UNIX, etc. On my
resume somewhere it says I have experience maintaining Java application
servers, Tomcat, BEA Weblogic, etc.

To this day, I still get random emails from recruiters trying to post me in a
position as a Java developer. I think the only qualification for a recruiter
is the ability to type "java" into a Monster search field.

------
pluc
I'm not sure what you think your problem is. When someone asks you for
reference you don't have, whether it's a landlord or a new employer, and you
don't have the kind of references he wants, call up your best friends, and
tell them that today, they're senior developers at this big company, they've
worked with you and they love and respect you.

You're a freelancer. Nobody's gonna do this shit for you.

------
alexwestholm
You say you can't engage with your local community because you're not there,
but what about online? You're participating in the HN community, which a)
takes time, and b) may very well include others in that area. Branching out
from here to find more location specific outlets shouldn't be too difficult.

(A _very_ cursory search reveals startupcafe.co.uk, for instance)

------
metageek
My favorite recruiter story:

In summer 2008, I was looking for work. At one point, I saw a job listing at
The Hive [1], calling for Erlang. I don't have much Erlang experience (one
proof-of-concept DNS server), but it's on my résumé. I applied, just in case.

Well. It turned out that, when you Googled "erlang resume", I was on the third
page. Over the next month or so, I heard from about 20 bottom-feeder
recruiters, with that same job. Most of them were trying to claim that the job
was with a client of theirs, but none of them knew anything that wasn't in the
listing on Dice. It got to the point where my wife could recognize a new one
on the phone, even if they didn't say "Erlang" to her.

(Mind you, I've also had _good_ experiences with recruiters. But "he wasn't a
fool" doesn't make as good a story.)

[1] <http://www.thehive.com/>

------
rams
"The glorious history of HR in software companies"- A footnote from one of
PG's essays that I made into a blog post.

[http://cycle-gap.blogspot.com/2007/09/glorious-history-of-
hr...](http://cycle-gap.blogspot.com/2007/09/glorious-history-of-hr-in-
software.html)

------
topbanana
Don't worry, it wasn't a real position. She's just looking for people to call
up and sell to.

------
lusis
It really is unfair to paint all recruiters with such a wide swath. Don't get
me wrong, I've considered becoming one because I have a technical background
and feel like I could provide a real value to a client just to show the bad
ones up.

However, you do find some gems. When I find them, I keep them updated at ALL
times about where I'm at what my situation is. I even have a few friended on
FB (which is a big deal for me) because they're friends now.

They will always call me when something I'm a really good fit for comes up
just to see if anything has changed since the last time we talked. They trust
you because you make them look good and in return you get "first dibs" on
really good positions.

------
geekdesigngirl
I've just started working with a recruiter a former manager introduced me to.
While I appreciate what they are doing, as jrockway pointed out with playing
hardball regarding salary, I often feel that they don't have any interest in
me whatsoever. Communication is, at best, sporadic and every time I've been to
their office, I hear a bunch of yelling, see paper airplanes flying and
general lackadaisical attitudes.

This is my first experience with a recruiter and I can't say I'd recommend it
to anyone. It's much better to market one's self than to rely on others, even
if they can negotiate a better salary.

~~~
anthonyb
Recruiters work on commission, so they're in the same boat as real estate
agents and used car salesmen. There are good ones out there, but they're all
constantly looking for the next payday. It's like sharks - they have to keep
swimming or they die. If you're not likely to get them cash in the immediate
future, then you're exactly right - they don't care.

~~~
jobmatchbox
Recruiters are more like Doctors than used car salesmen. They are a necessary
evil for some companies who have a problem that they can't solve on their own.
People don't like going to the doctor and they don't like going to a
recruiter, but sometimes you just have to do it to get on with things. You can
self-medicate before going to the doctor and you can go to the online
classifieds, but that isn't the answer for you every time. Just remember that
recruiters are not all STAFFING AGENCY PEOPLE.

~~~
anthonyb
Sorry, but I have to call bullshit on this one. I've been working in the IT
sector for more than 15 years and I haven't seen a recruiter yet (whether
agency or in-house) that cared that much about any of their candidates ...
unless they had a position open at the time and could cash in.

It's not much different from the employer's point of view either. Unless your
vacancy is for something which is very low skilled, you're much better off
making contacts through your existing programmers or reaching out to local
user groups.

------
sjtgraham
It's not arbitrary bullshit to the recruiter, it's her bread and butter. She
really wants managers because they are decision makers whom she can pitch her
services to, nothing to do with the client.

Never give contact information for other people to recruiters, whether that
person is a developer or employer, they will be spammed relentlessly because
that is how recruiters make money. Some of them are so despicable they might
claim you referred them.

Recruiters (with very few exceptions) are the lowest of the low, always keep
that in mind when dealing with them and act accordingly.

------
jeffreymcmanus
Stop dealing with recruiters. Figure out a way to market yourself directly to
clients.

Your geographic location should not be a barrier to this; you have the power
of the intarwebs at your disposal.

------
angelbob
Most recruiters really are terrible. What we need is some kind of peer-to-peer
job-hunting site that will let you find out what jobs other people are doing
in software engineering, and just go straight to other engineers who _know_
what the job actually requires.

I call it wantmyjob.com, and I launched it a couple of days ago. The current
(few) jobs on it are US-based, but you can be the first to change that if you
like.

------
tocomment
Is it normal for freelancers to pay recruiters a referal fee? I figure
normally they have a set of contracts they're trying to fill and they're not
going to submit me for anything else since they wouldn't get paid.

But what if I paid a 10 percent fee? Would they then be out there finding
contracts for me? Is that something that's ever done?

~~~
pcampbell
Check out www.careerelement.com; our agents will find you a job for a 10% fee.

------
dpio
I agree. Recruiters suck. They never ask for references for your benefit, it's
always to extend their sales reach. They tend to drag you out to their offices
for a 'face-to-face', for no relevant reason whatsoever because all of that
'stuff' you had to do there could've been done online anyway.

~~~
jobmatchbox
Of course they don't. If the recruiter doesn't ask you for a reference then
the hiring manager you are interviewing with will.

You are right about the face-to-face meetings though. A lot of staffing
agencies require that their people do this. It is a core metric for many of
them. If you are frustrated by this then find a good recruiter and don't
bother with the others. You should want a good recruiter to know you are out
there - they are going to be thinking about ways to help you. The flip side is
that they only call you when you showed up in their search.

------
slater
You have to ask yourself why the position of "recruiter" even exists in
today's market.

------
pornel
Similarly job sites are filled with keyword-spamming agency offers
("Java/Javascript, LAMP, .Net, AJAX, PHP and Photoshop mobile developer
required!")

I wonder if one could recruit and interview recruiters?

------
andrewstuart
Recruitment pays well enough to fund any startup. All developers should
consider it as a source of startup funding.

------
mbubb
I thought techiferous made a good point - but in many cases the direct contact
with the company might re-direct you to the recruiter. I am not sure how it is
working in London area but it seems to me that many of the financial firms in
NYC are only hiring through an outside agency. Techiferous's point works well
if you take the Pareto principle and target that 20% of companies in your
sector/ area and write targeted letters about what d you can do for them, etc.
I am not sure if there are too may other alternatives at this point. If
companies are using recruiters (and I am seeing this in the NYC-area) then
they are a necessary evil. Precisely because you are in Edinburgh and your job
search is in London

TamDenholm, I agree with your basic principle. But - in my experience you
don't really want an adversarial relationship with the recruiter.

I have had recruiters misrepresent me and even send me to the wrong place for
interviews. There is a real disconnect at times and often they completely
misunderstand the technology they are trying to find someone for. When I deal
with them I try to be as simple and 'transactional' as possible. Clearly in
your case the recruiter had little or no idea as to why you were not complying
with what looked like a simple request (ie to him/her). It might come across
as simply being difficult. Don't misunderstand me - I think your point is
completely valid. You are being very considerate of yout contacts. I would
read your hesitation as coming from a place where you value privacy and where
you do not see your contacts as instrumental.

When I was in high school I had what might end up being the best job of my
entire life. I cleaned kennels at a veterinarian's office and held the
dogs/cats/sometimes horses when the doctor treated them. Great fun everyday
learned something new, worked with animals, etc. We had a simple filing
system. When someone came in with their pet we would retieve the paper file
and on the outside edge there would be a place for a colored sticker - a
indicator of the animal's temperament. Red meant extreme caution, yellow meant
the animal was fearful and might bite defensvely...

I guess I have internalized this in that I imagine, in this current job
market, an absolute flood of applicants. The recruiters are making flash
judgements on each person. Since they often do not understand the underlying
technology they are basing alot on either simple metrics (number of
certifications, etc) and soft skills. Something which comes across like
evasion throws up a red flag and in my imaginary world merits a red sticker on
the side of your folder. From his/her point of view this is a simple request
that you did not comply with. What nefarious crimes are you hiding? I
sincerily doubt that s/he thought for a second about privacy concerns.

For me this is where LinkedIn fills a need. My few references are people that
are 'pre-approved' to provide this sort of need. The way references are done
on LI is that they show the relationship and give the amount/type of contact
the person is willing to grant. I am sure that other social networking sites
may have a similar function - I only know LinkedIn... When I get asked for
references, I have 'preapproved' ones

tl;dr - Use social networking sites (ie LinkedIn) to handle this in advance.
Streamline interactions with recruiters.

------
jobmatchbox
Have you EVER encountered a bad software engineer? Maybe one who managed to
over-write something you contributed to a project more than once? Better yet,
someone who just annoys the hell out of you? There are probably some who you
would never work with for a variety of reasons. Zed Shaw swore off the whole
of the Ruby on Rails community. Now imagine that there were bad recruiters
too. There are good and bad people in every category and for you to flame
everyone in a community because you had a bad experience with one, several or
even all of the recruiters you have ever encountered is flat out missing the
problem. You should be looking for recruiters who get it just like any savvy
person who is willing to hire you for whatever it is that you do right has to
look for you. More importantly, you should direct your frustration at the
company that hired the recruiter you are frustrated by. When I hire a
programmer I do a paired programming session with them and take the time to
get to know them and the other way around. Maybe you should spend some time
recruiting some recruiters who are with-it by your standards.

Last, but not least, you have to realize that there are some companies that
choose to use bad recruiters as a standard business practice. The prefer this.
If they do then your recruiter pal isn't the problem.

You should know by now that if a job pays too well then there is a reason. If
you are willing to take on jobs that others are most likely passing on then
you might want to think about this.

A good recruiter, on the other hand, can create some really good conversations
and teams that lead to some really successful companies. A good recruiter is
not going to bother asking for references unless there is a reason to, unless
they work for a big huge staffing agency and that company requires them to in
much the same way that some programming jobs require CMMI. Contrary to
britman's comments, recruiters ask for hiring managers because they do serve a
role that is SUPERVISORY and that part of their job is to see the team as a
big picture. They are often more reliable as a source than a peer. However,
peers can be highly reliable too. Think of it as best of 3 - you might not get
the truth on the first or even the second try.

Recruiters are a lot like detectives - they have to figure out of you are
telling the truth or not, whether you can assess your own capabilities or not,
and whether or not you can work well with others. In your case it sounds like
the latter might be an issue. A good recruiter might find this post and not
ask for a reference from you at all.

To leftnode's point, the "I make more, you make more" line is only true when
there is no contract to hire or temp to hire in play. This ONLY applies when
someone is doing a fee for placement that is straight up. NOT EVERY RECRUITER
WORKS ANY OF THESE WAYS. Some work for the company, some freelance, etc.
ASK!!! You are probably not going to get the particulars of how they are
getting paid (e.g. the % if it is a fee for placement), but you should
reasonably expect that they will tell you that they are getting a % of your
hourly or a % of your first year's compensation, or if they are being paid for
their time. If they don't want to give this to you then tell them to have a
nice day.

If you, or anyone else here, want to talk about this in more detail feel free
to email me - hackernewsrecruiter@jobmatchbox.com

------
berntb
I have the impression that the British recruiters are slimier than in other
places?

At least, most of the horror stories I've read about European recruiters come
from England?

(My limited experience from e.g. Sweden is bett... hrm, not as bad. An article
written by me would use the word "clueless" often, but just a few "sleazy" and
maybe one "evil". I'd even use some positive adjectives, like "human",
"working hard to learn" and "serious".)

~~~
pitdesi
I don't know how to adequately compare, as I've never used a recruiter in
Europe, but I can safely say that recruiters in the US are quite slimy as
well. There are good ones, for sure, but as a whole the industry doesn't have
a great reputation.

------
shareme
HN user should just start their own tech recruiting agency: Recruiting
HackersBYHackers..

