Ask HN: noticed that recruiters are fronted by pretty young women these days?

[lifeisstillgood]

I occasionally get approached by recruiters / headhunters. But the people doing the approaching are more and more young, early in their career and female and "attractive" (to judge by their LinkedIn photos and voices)

Now one expects a young person to put up their best photos, and want to make a good impression, but I get the feeling that their "supervisor", whom they always have to "check with" has hired them solely for fishing in the mostly male IT contractor pond.

It all feels just a little off.

Anyone else?

Edit: I am a middle aged man so the chances are high I am blundering into yet another online Gender in IT debate with my size 11's. However there has always been young and desperate sales people in recruitment, but they were always hunting for their own commission, and always been "researchers" trawling for the actual recruiter. But somehow this is now muddled and the end result is as above. Just struck me as odd

[patio11]

In some industries (e.g. SEO firms doing linkbuilding) if they don't happen to have a young lady in the office they'll create the persona for one anyhow, because they get measurably better results from emails signed Jessica than emails signed Jeb. I've seen ones matching LinkedIn and Facebook accounts which would pass cursory inspection, if I hadn't recognized the stock photography model.

[lifeisstillgood → patio11]

That's actually not a terrible idea (I think you may have even mentioned the idea of having "Jessica in accounts" chase invoices so that a solo freelancer can hands free on the keep the first few "pay us now" discussions.

But it's notable that the purchaser in both cases (the AB tested SEO purchaser and the developer looking to move) are both assumed to be straight males, or that both sexes respond better to a young woman.

Just ... notable I guess.

[raarts]

No, it's just you getting middle aged. When they're young they are beautiful, and if you see a beautiful woman, it means she's too young for you..

[lifeisstillgood → raarts]

darn I can only upvote that once :-)

[unreal37]

These days? It's been like that forever. It's like that in real estate too. And client account management. Any client facing business has a higher ratio of attractive, younger women compared with the general population imho.

I can tell stories about how my former company won and kept the Guinness account for many years, but won't. It's everywhere in many sales industries.

[theorique → unreal37]

Also see: pharmaceutical sales reps.

Disproportionately young, attractive, and female. Very disproportionately.

[NoodleIncident]

As a not-old person applying for internships for the first time this year, every recruiter at every company was female.

At campus days, there were guys there, too, but those invariably were the programmers / interviewers. The actual recruiter, though, the one sending all of the emails and arranging all of the travel and such, was always a woman or multiple women.

[Osiris]

I've been working with recruiters for the last two weeks and most of them are younger women, but there are several men also. I'm not sure which I prefer to talk to. The women (anecdotally) talk more about the jobs when they call. The men, on the hand, keep things short.

[jrjarrett]

I've seen this in person. I got asked to lunch by a local branch of what I term a "body-shop" type consulting firm (just get you in the door so they get their fee). The two people from this company that attended lunch were a 20-something woman, dressed very attractively, and a "bro" type 30something man.

Totally missed the mark on influencing me :)

[gadders]

I do notice that some people have profile pictures that are... inappropriate (probably the best word). It could well be with men as well as women but I think a lot of the women seem to be aiming for "attractive" rather than "professional".

[lifeisstillgood]

Well it seems I am simply getting old. Thanks folks :-)

[lifeisstillgood]

Self tracking the thread