
I’ve Worked with Hundreds of Recruiters – Here's What I Learned - ca98am79
http://firstround.com/article/Ive-Worked-with-Hundreds-of-Recruiters-Heres-What-I-Learned
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silverbax88
I just wish we could solve this recruiter problem. For an industry full of
problem solvers, nobody seems too keen on really fixing this.

1\. Programmers don't like recruiters and would prefer not to have to work
with them.

2\. Companies think recruiting firms are experts and are adept at finding
qualified candidates, which is false.

3\. There are good companies that need good employees and good employees who
want to work at good companies. Currently the 'solution' is to use the same
corporate middle men who shuffle bad employees to bad companies and mediocre
employees to mediocre companies.

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fecak
Recruiter here (independent agency), and I've always felt that the problem is
that fees are too high. With this much money being thrown at recruiters, it
keeps the bad ones in the business. If fees were lower, only the best
recruiters would survive - as well as those that are just best at making
money, which doesn't necessarily mean 'best' \- and eventually most of the
bottom recruiters would exit the market.

Contingency recruiting is the overall source of the problem. Someone could
make a few lucky hits a year and make good enough money to stay in business.
If fees were say half of what they are now, that would put many out of
business, and I'd assume those would the recruiters that everyone complains
about.

The size of fees also leads to the ethics problems. You may or may not lie for
$5, but what kind of lies might you tell for say $30,000? The large numbers
and competitive nature make it a high-reward game that gives incentive to
cheat and lie when necessary.

Smaller fees. I use small flat fees with a portion paid up front. The fees are
small enough that I have little incentive to lie, and the up front portion is
small enough that I'm going to hustle to get the second payment.

Contingency recruiters absorb 100% of the risk, meaning they can work hundreds
of hours on a search but if the recruiter down the street fills it they get
nothing. This is the reason fees are high - the risk factor. If you remove
that risk to some degree (or share the risk) by paying some money up front,
recruiters should agree to lower fees and companies should like the results.

As a recruiter, would I rather compete against 20 bigger firms for a 30K fee
or would I rather be practically guaranteed a 15K fee? The answer for me is
the latter, but may differ for others.

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kabdib
I frankly don't care much about fees.

I care a _lot_ about recruiters utterly wasting my time with garbage resumes,
even when I've told them what I wanted.

I would prefer to see two or three resumes a month of people I want to talk to
than two or three resumes a day of people that don't meet the bar.

Most of the good hires come from referrals anyway. Very, very few recruiter-
fed folks have passed interviews and worked out, at any company I've worked
at.

~~~
fecak
If you want two or three good resumes a month, you should pay recruiters some
money in advance as I suggest. When on retainer, you don't feel a need to send
unqualified candidates to give a client the impression you are working hard.
Contingency recruiting is the reason you get three unqualified resumes a day.

Take away the recruiters incentive to send everybody they see, and you'll see
quality go up.

~~~
poulsbohemian
You've given some good feedback here from the perspective of a recruiter, but
I think there's a point being overlooked in the conversation: most recruiters
don't seem to know that they are sending an unqualified candidates. That is to
say, they are either lazy and haven't done any due diligence on the candidate,
or more likely, they don't actually understand the skills at play and lack the
ability to assess whether the candidate is qualified. A candidate is a string
of buzzwords that they can bill out at X with margin Y. That seems to be the
only things the typical recruiter knows. I'm sure there are excellent tech
recruiters out there, but they must be as rare as good technical talent
itself.

~~~
fecak
Thanks. And I agree. I, and you as well it seems, would like to smoke those
people out of the market. If companies only used firms that did a good job and
didn't give out their searches to every firm out there, those recruiters will
be put out of business eventually. Some might get hired by these better firms
who now have increased demand, and hopefully the bad recruiters who now work
for good firms will learn.

Sounds easier than it is, but it starts with lower fees in my mind.

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reboog711
Are a lot of company founders really asking "How do I find a Great Recruiter?"
instead of "How do I find a great employee?"

~~~
fecak
In my experience as a recruiter, founders have a very easy time finding their
first few hires as they are all from the friends and family plan - all known
quantities to some degree, perhaps a 2nd degree connection at worst. Then
those few hires are probably good for a few more referrals.

Business starts picking up, all employees are working at capacity, and
suddenly the pipeline dries up. This is when founders (and engineering
leaders) start hitting up recruiters from their past. It's also the point
where the company might be on the radar of recruiters, so engineering leaders
are also getting incoming calls soliciting their business.

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pmiller2
Is there a version of this article for candidates? I don't have the network to
be able to make a couple of phone calls and have a job in a week, so I'm
interested in using a recruiter, but I don't know any good ones.

~~~
swillis16
[http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2013/08/09/pretty/](http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2013/08/09/pretty/)
is a good read for someone who is interested in finding a recruiter. One thing
that the writer didn't mention was that some recruiters focus on jobs for a
specific tech stack so you may want to look around their profile for a bit on
LinkedIn to get a good idea of what they focus on.

~~~
fecak
Hey, I wrote that! +1 on what you said about tech stack, but I think fewer
recruiters focus on tech stack these days. I think you are more likely to find
recruiters with depth in a specific geography than a single language/platform.

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maerF0x0
and I thought this was going to be for the hunted...

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mightybrenden
recruiters are old news, try using Mighty Spring
([https://www.mightyspring.com/](https://www.mightyspring.com/)).

