[HN Gopher] Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
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Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter
Author : alexc05
Score : 459 points
Date : 2022-02-01 15:23 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (alexchesser.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (alexchesser.medium.com)
| Apreche wrote:
| The problem I have is that almost every recruiter that emails me
| lists the positions they are trying to fill. Almost all of those
| positions are ones to which I am morally opposed. It's a waste of
| both of our time to respond positively and interview for
| positions that I won't accept under any realistic circumstance.
| capableweb wrote:
| I'm not sure how you go from "Never ignore a recruiter" to
| "Always respond positively and interview with a recruiter".
| There is a middle-ground where you can reply, without being
| positive and not setting up an interview, while not burning
| bridges that you might want to cross in the future.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I get a lot of recruiters that are trying to fill positions at
| defense contractors. So right away I know two things:
|
| - I'm not interested - They aren't at liberty to talk about the
| technical details
|
| So I always respond with something like:
|
| > Oh yeah, I'm pretty decent at {language}. But I want to keep
| growing, so I'm really not interested in writing {very old
| version of language}. Can you tell me what version they're using?
|
| I figure it's a good balance between "screw off" and bothering
| with a phone call that won't be fruitful for either of us. It
| keeps me in their rolodex (in my experience, recruiters have a
| very high turnover rate--so who knows who they'll be recruiting
| for tomorrow). Also, I like to imagine that some poor engineer is
| trying to convince the machine to let him upgrade, and maybe I
| can help them out, whoever they are, by making the old version
| seem like a recruiting hazard.
| rharb wrote:
| Just today I responded to a recruiter who directly emailed me
| "because my LinkedIn bio looked promising", asking: 1) How he got
| my email address, since it is not affiliated with my LinkedIn
| profile (uses my work email and only contains information about
| my current position) 2) That I wasn't interested, thanking him
| for his time
|
| He responded, seemingly offended, that I "have a Gmail account, a
| very public account" that his "team of Search Engineers" found.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I've gotten a bunch of recruiters at work too and in a few
| cases they sent the email to the wrong Matt because they just
| spammed every common email name combo for corporate emails.
| dogman144 wrote:
| I'm always nice to recruiters if they make the bare minimum
| effort. If the job isn't a fit, I offer to stay in touch. It has
| led to great opportunities for me simply by taking advantage of
| the network effects offered by a recruiter link. Things turn up
| if you talk around enough.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I try to be nice to recruiters who demonstrate that they've
| actually spent 60+ seconds considering if my resume was a match
| for the position. (Including my stated location requirements.)
|
| Occasionally I'll tell them that I'm not working on a different
| level of the software stack than their position requires, and
| try to point them in the right direction. No idea if that's
| helpful to them, but it's nice to feel like I've been kind to a
| stranger.
| ibi5 wrote:
| The key to me is transparency. If they're going to beat around
| the bush about the details I ask for I'm not going to waste my
| time on them.
| [deleted]
| jen20 wrote:
| Every time I read something about recruiters, I am reminded of
| this fantastic post [1] (sadly the original has been taken down,
| and this is the only copy I know of).
|
| Anyone who has ever experienced third party recruiters in the UK
| will be nodding their head along after just the first few
| paragraphs...
|
| [1]:
| https://gist.github.com/CumpsD/696599d1bd4cd472a056586967293...
| Rd6n6 wrote:
| > ... and one in a hundred can double your salary.
|
| The time required to work with the 99 who can't double your
| salary isn't nothing, that's a part time or even full time job
| spent courting people who are just spamming everybody on linkedin
| with a pulse
| qubyte wrote:
| Most of the recruiter traffic comes from LinkedIn, which is not
| particularly surprising. The very first line of my profile there
| reads: Please do not contact me about
| cryptocurrency, blockchain, NFTs, or associated technologies.
|
| Almost all recruiters who contact me on LinkedIn are talking
| about... cryptocurrency, blockchains, or NFTs etc. If a recruiter
| isn't prepared to read even the first line of my profile then I
| think I'm fine to ignore them. For all other recruiters I'll send
| a polite and friendly "thanks, but I'm not looking at this time".
| dariusj18 wrote:
| I bet you it's those keywords in your profile that draw them to
| send you a message
| qubyte wrote:
| Up until I added that line it was "rust" which was doing it.
| Perhaps the line makes it worse, but at least I'm happy to
| ignore those requests now. :)
| makerofthings wrote:
| I added rust to my list of skills and then got swamped with
| blockchain nonsense. It's very odd, I took it back off
| again.
| drewm1980 wrote:
| It is ironic that so many companies are using such an
| efficient programming language to implement the most
| horribly, deliberately wasteful computations on the planet.
| I got into rust because I want to do meaningful work
| efficiently not proof-of-meaningless-work.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Not sure if you're just calling blockchain development
| meaningless work in general, or referencing proof-of-
| work, which refers to meaningless computation done for
| blockchain security despite the unnecessary wastefulness.
|
| If you're referencing the latter, maybe it's worth
| pointing out that all the blockchains using Rust (or the
| popular ones anyway) are proof of stake.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| I explicitly state in my LinkedIn profile "do not contact me
| I'm not seeking new opportunities at this time" and I _still_
| get a half dozen a week.
|
| Recruiters are the laziest humans on earth.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Recruiters work super hard with archaic, shitty tools. You
| may not like their methods, but (mostly) they are anything
| but lazy.
| noirbot wrote:
| Work hard, not smart, I guess...
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| If they can't be bothered to read the all-caps text stating
| I don't wish to be contacted, then yes, they are _lazy_.
|
| If they read it and contact me _anyway_? Then they're
| disrespectful of my wishes and not worth my time. But I'll
| concede that isn't lazy!
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I don't know what I've done to be so blessed as to not receive
| any blockchain recruiter spam.
|
| Everyone thinks I do Ruby on Rails though, because someone
| accidentally endorsed me for it once years ago. Somehow 50+% of
| the stuff I get is RoR.
| jedberg wrote:
| You can remove endorsements if you don't want to get those
| anymore.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I have one line from 2017 about working on blockchain
| proposals. I never wrote any blockchain code. But it is half of
| my LinkedIn inbox.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Honestly, I'd recommend taking that off your resume, or
| describing it in a way that avoids using keywords. Your
| resume doesn't have to mention every job you've ever had,
| especially if they aren't relevant to the work you're looking
| for.
| qubyte wrote:
| I think it happens to me because I mention that I'm dabbling
| in rust in my profile, and I guess that's a keyword they
| scrape for.
| cableshaft wrote:
| There are certain platforms that support smart contracts
| written in Rust (like Solana), so yeah, there's a chance
| that's triggering them.
| mabbo wrote:
| A simpler approach: just be nice to recruiters.
|
| Even the cold-calling, working-for-an-agency, just-wants-10%-of-
| your-salary recruiters. Most of them are simply nice people who
| are trying to make a living in a difficult and incredibly
| competitive business. Some are assholes, no doubt, but just being
| polite until they prove that they are cost you very little.
|
| I had a recruiter reach out this morning to tell me about great
| opportunities in <city> with <company>. I don't want to work for
| that company, ever, for serious ethical reasons. I don't want to
| move to that city (though it's not a terrible place).
|
| I simply said "Hi <name>, thanks so much for reaching out. I'm
| not really interested in any new opportunities right now. I'm
| also planning a fully remote career from now on, so moving to
| <city> doesn't really work for me. Thanks for reaching out
| though".
|
| It took 30 seconds. It burned no bridges. It made no presumptions
| about them and didn't try to harm them back for wasting my time.
|
| If they persist, I'll ask them to please take me off their list
| and not contact me again- as politely as I can manage.
|
| So far this strategy has proven 100% effective at handling
| recruiters, but it also makes me feel better because there's no
| negative emotions involved.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| Exactly. I don't get the hate. We are so privileged in the
| software industry to have people on our backs all the time
| offering us work that it makes me kind of sick when people take
| it for granted.
|
| Sure, some recruiters will waste your time, but a lot of them
| are quite good at their job. It's literally their job to
| matchmake workers and employers. You don't have to be an
| asshole to them for reaching out.
| matsemann wrote:
| > It took 30 seconds.
|
| I don't want to deal with that multiple times a day, though.
| They're not "nice people" when they disregard the only thing
| written in my Linkedin profile: " _please no unsolicited calls_
| ". If they didn't even bother to read that single sentence,
| they probably know nothing about me and have nothing to offer.
| It's arrogant of them to waste my time.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I'm happy to invest in a relationship with recruiters who will be
| around for a while. But I get the impression that most recruiters
| have only short stints in that work.
|
| P.S. I would like to give credit to one recruiter though: Markus
| Edmunds. He'd been recruiting for a particular technical
| specialty a year or two ago. He really got to know my preferences
| and strengths, and never ghosted me when individual companies
| passed on my resume. I know that's indistinguishable from him
| acting in enlightened self-interest, but it was still a
| productive relationship.
| frockington1 wrote:
| Add NYC to that list as well. There's no reason to move to either
| of those cities in 2022.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| > There's no reason to move to either of those cities in 2022
|
| Hm, and here I was, thinking that different people like living
| in different places for different reasons!
| eatonphil wrote:
| I like NYC. I moved here in 2017 though. But after the pandemic
| I moved to Central Queens where my rent is much cheaper
| (2400/mo) and the apartment is bigger (1,000sqft ish) in a
| doorman building. 30m subway to Central Park and the best
| Chinese, Thai, Indian, Vietnamese, and Korean restaurants in NY
| are the next neighborhoods over.
|
| The coffee and pastries nearby aren't as fun as Brooklyn
| though.
| wnolens wrote:
| Oops, just moved to NYC last year! :)
| reasonabl_human wrote:
| Can you elaborate on reasons for the move? I am facing a
| similar realization regarding another one of your child
| comments about not clicking as much with west coast culture
| but am concerned about a drop in tech opportunities
| wnolens wrote:
| Many reasons. But after 10 years on the west coast, I had
| many dozens of friends but almost none that I wanted to
| spend holidays with (i.e. felt like family, neither friends
| nor partners). I decided that it wasn't for a lack of
| trying or giving it time.
|
| The west coast felt judgmental and divisive. I couldn't
| always express myself for fear of alienation. I do not have
| strong views and I (used to?) consider myself liberal (I'm
| not American).
|
| I really enjoy how conversationally adept the average New
| Yorker is. It's simply more fun to be with people. And the
| diversity is refreshing. I'm a software dev more by
| circumstance, not temperament. I used to only talk to ~30
| y/o tech men/women. Now my day includes a sweet 75 year old
| lady, academics, health workers, and plenty of ~30 y/o
| folks who are living interesting lives without a mold.
|
| I kept my job and moved here, taking a 10% haircut thanks
| to taxes. Oh well. All the big tech firms have a physical
| presence in NYC (FB, GOOG, AMZN..). There's less kool-aid
| drinking startups, but I'm ok with that. It's a big city,
| you can have your pick. I think as a tech worker, you have
| the breathing room to give up the top 10% opportunities in
| the field and still be a top 1% earner in the larger
| society (with more job satisfaction).
| wobbly_bush wrote:
| Not the person you are responding to - what about NYC
| made you get in touch with non-tech people that wasn't
| possible on the west coast? Is there something different
| about NYC's culture that helps in mingling with more
| people?
| wnolens wrote:
| Hm.. It might be largely a numbers thing: higher density
| (more interactions), and more diversity. But can't ignore
| the general willingness to connect (ex: going to a bar
| solo in NYC yields me a lengthy convo 50% of the time,
| and I almost never initiate.).
| econnors wrote:
| not OP, but been in NYC for over 5 years and there's no
| shortage of interesting opportunities in tech
| boringg wrote:
| Outside of the fact that if you like the city, the surrounding
| land and the people that live there. As well as many other
| great reasons to live in the cities.
|
| Just because you guys don't like them doesn't mean many other
| people love those areas, please stop unnecessarily dumping on
| cities you don't like.
| [deleted]
| datavirtue wrote:
| I love city energy. Just have to opt out of the pollution.
| The automotive exhaust alone is rediculous (as a truck rolls
| coal in front of my house).
| 1270018080 wrote:
| I can understand the Bay Area, but it's a little bit crazy to
| think there's no reason to live in NYC.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| "No" reason is probably an overstatement. But it's certainly
| a different lifestyle than e.g. living in a suburban / rural
| area and working remotely. Many of us would consider it a
| step backwards unless the net increase in income was life-
| changing.
| wnolens wrote:
| Step backwards in take home pay and square footage. Step
| forwards in social life, romantic life, culture (if you
| weren't getting it elsewhere).
|
| If you're married with kids, NYC doesn't make sense. If
| you're single with passions outside work - it's great.
| rrose wrote:
| i grew up in a big city. great place to grow up. so glad
| my parents didn't move out to the suburbs. One size
| doesn't fit all
| datavirtue wrote:
| What if my passion is goat husbandry?
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| That's about how I figure it. Even if you try to split
| the difference by living in the suburbs of NYC, my
| impression is that housing is still pretty expensive
| _and_ you have a time-consuming commute.
| wnolens wrote:
| West coast of USA is easy-mode life. I don't fault anyone for
| living there and loving it. It just wasn't for me socially.
|
| NYC makes me feel more human and connected, even if that
| means higher taxes, smaller apartment, and generally more
| discomfort on a daily basis.
| daok wrote:
| What are you talking about? The Bay Area has one of the
| greatest weather of the world, lot of job opportunities,
| beaches near by as as mountain. Lot to like also.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30164267 and marked it off
| topic.
| throwaway202202 wrote:
| This may be familiar by now but developers are very lucky.
|
| I left computers to move to investments, make 500k+/year but I
| envy the stability and choices that developers have. If I lost my
| job tomorrow it is not clear I could find another similar job.
| You have lots of options.
|
| It looks like the situation will remain this way during our
| lifetimes (you never know), but you should at least appreciate
| it.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Great take. I turned down a path into finance to go computers,
| and did so to target the reverse of what you notice.
|
| Few other jobs offer pay and stability similar to a Dr. or
| Lawyer without the working hours and with geo-flexibilty. Few
| other jobs offer a shot at a massive personal liquidity event
| without the direct exposure to a recession like in finance. Few
| other jobs offer this pay for what's basically a trade without
| a tough physical lifestyle like working in O&G.
|
| If more "normal" people went into engineering, as in the normal
| white collar types who are smart but go into MBAs/MDs instead,
| I think we'd see interesting social impacts as more people
| discover that you can do flavors of digital nomad work without
| being the stereotypical tech bro. I think this is just starting
| to happen with MBAs who go into TPM roles.
|
| Eng paths re-enanble lifestyles that I feel were lost post-1970
| for much of the general working population. Now, you can live
| and work nearly anywhere. No requirements to suck it up in
| Cleveland, NYC, whatever for the kids because of good schools
| and a good local white collar job. If you want to pack up and
| go to Europe, you can grab a visa from big US tech there, or
| small startups. Just meet the right recruiter. Wild stuff.
| dboreham wrote:
| I think this means that your compensation reflects the cost to
| your employer should you decide to quit.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| I ignore 99.9999% of recruiters, but anything that interests me I
| just toss salary numbers that I find are funny.
|
| Makes it easier on all of us
| dbg31415 wrote:
| I Dissent.
|
| I've seen so many shady tricks pulled by recruiters. I'm sure it
| goes both ways, but never forget the recruiter isn't in the
| business of helping you, they're in the business of helping the
| people who pay them.
|
| Seen recruiters low-ball staff, or tell the person that they
| weren't as good as other candidates... "but if you lower your day
| rate to be more aligned with your junior-level skills..." So when
| the person shows up, they feel deflated since they think we
| thought they were junior... but in fact, we loved them and just
| didn't have enough budget to hire them at the right rate -- and
| the recruiter helped us get their rates down because at the end
| of the day the recruiter only cared about putting seats in chairs
| for us.
|
| Seen recruiters spam over candidates without so much as doing a
| basic screening interview. "Oh yeah, he's great... he knows
| JavaScript and English..." and they're literally just looking at
| the poor guy's LinkedIn and they haven't ever spoken with him
| past a few copy-paste emails. It's a numbers game to them. They
| don't want you, as the person paying them, to ever feel like
| their shelves are empty.
|
| Seen recruiters promise people visas along with the offer
| letter... then for whatever reason, if the job shifts, the
| recruiters just cancel the contract and the person would get
| deported. Saw this in Sydney A LOT. The recruiters and staffing
| agencies don't care at all what happens to the person, as long as
| they get a commission. They lie and over-promise, and sell-sell-
| sell... and even if they only have a 3-month contract they'll
| promise someone a year, then just switch it last minute or have a
| cancellation clause.
|
| As someone who worked for a Digital Agency where we hired a lot
| of people through recruiters... the number of times some poor
| bloke would come up to me and be like, "So... 3 months probation
| then I'm full time? That's what the recruiter said... now you can
| get me a visa and I'll be able to bring my wife over here too?"
| and I'd have to be like, "Yeah sorry, Johnny... this was just a
| 3-month gig." Had one guy, "But I gave up my family's visa for
| this... the recruiter promised me higher pay and that you'd take
| over my visa..." Felt awful. And the poor guy almost certainly
| had to leave Sydney when the job was done.
|
| Worse... my GM wouldn't let me fire that recruiter. "They give us
| the best rates..." Was all so shady. Left me with the solid
| impression that these people were all just bottom feeders.
| Willing to do anything to make a buck that day.
| junon wrote:
| No thanks. Most cold callers these days don't even work for the
| company. They always seem to say "I'm recruiting for an
| esteemed/up and coming/potential unicorn (lol)/hot/aggressively
| funded/blah blah blah company". I've bitten a few times and asked
| for details about said company and they say they want a call
| first.
|
| No thanks. Tell me about the position first. Then I'll tell you
| if I'm interested.
| FpUser wrote:
| In my whole life I've never been able to find any job / contract
| using recruiter. Obviously had to take matters into my onw hands
| ;)
| democracy wrote:
| not worth it - they have a very high turn over, making
| connections there with everyone is a waste of time
| gitfan86 wrote:
| Funny Story:
|
| A recruiter sent me a detail post about a job. I wrote back and
| said I was interested. He never responded so I applied to the job
| online and got it.
|
| 4 months later he messages me and says sorry but it looks like
| the position has been removed.
|
| I didn't write back.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| I had that happen with a house once. I sent a house to my agent
| (that I had an existing relationship with), and they never
| responded. So I found a new agent and bought the house. Old
| agent reappears two weeks later and I informed them of what
| happened.
| jackling wrote:
| Curious to know what their response was.
| kaydub wrote:
| No, I definitely ignore recruiters. Internal recruiters I _may_
| respond, but if you 're some consultancy firm or recruiting firm
| I'll never work with you.
|
| My skills are in demand. When I want a new job I'll reach out for
| it. It'll be there.
| onphonenow wrote:
| "It is a wonderful position of privilege to be in and I'm
| thankful for it."
|
| Insta-delete if I'm doing hiring... ? I've found folks who
| actually deliver seem to have less of this type of long winded
| stuff.
| Tehchops wrote:
| Do you have hard data to back that up or is it just anecdotal
| personal bristling whenever someone says "privilege"?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Real tech people don't blather.
|
| Yeah, I know, that's not "hard data". It's a pretty
| consistent pattern, though. Tech people have to be able to
| communicate with precision; they usually don't do "blowing
| smoke".
| Mockapapella wrote:
| Not a recruiter, but this has been my experience too
| Tehchops wrote:
| > Real tech people
|
| Ah this fun gatekeeping meme rears it's head again.
|
| So how do you define "tech" people? Do you have a
| scorecard?
|
| How do they meet your assessment for "real"? Cohesive
| organization of atomic matter generally constitutes "real"
| in a lot of physics definitions.
|
| I'd argue trying to label someone a "real tech person" is a
| laughably subjective exercise that's so corrupted by
| personal bias and toxicity as to be utterly useless in
| evaluating someone's capability to participate in organized
| software engineering.
|
| Case in point: I have worked with several folks, in FAANG,
| who by all technical standards were "real" tech people.
| Polyglot programmers, could tackle any sticky logic
| problem.
|
| Ask them to communicate their solution to other engineers?
| To communicate with others with empathy? Be able to
| navigate conversations with directors and VPs about broadly
| implementing their solutions? Absolutely, 100% fell on
| their face. Couldn't do it. They couldn't form a cohesive,
| understandable, actionable statement about their work to
| save their lives. They'd go off on some completely
| pointless technical tangent that had little to do with the
| problem at hand.
|
| Code reviews they participated in ground to a complete
| fucking halt. Not because they actually addressed
| meaningful technical issues. No, they wanted to pontificate
| and show off how much smarter they were.
|
| In my not totally hard-data experience, people that maybe
| didn't have quite the "real tech people" skills but were
| expressive, capable communicators often actually shipped
| more meaningful work, more often, and built organizational
| equity not just for themselves, but for their teammates and
| managers too.
|
| Software development at any scale, like it or not, involves
| working with other people. In my experience people that go
| around gatekeeping and using some hilariously subjective
| ruler to grade "realness" aren't very effective at all.
| 0des wrote:
| I take it by your confrontational response that their
| comment hooked you somewhat. I can assure you it's the
| truth, and though it may or may not have been relevant to
| you in a way that affected you emotionally, the words
| ring true in my experience. Those who can do the thing
| don't mince words about it, the ones who can't need to
| massage what they're saying a bit to not lay the bad news
| on you like a ton of bricks; it is natural for people to
| want to be accepted socially.
| Tehchops wrote:
| "Truth" and "rings true in your experience" aren't
| necessarily overlapping values.
|
| Sure, it's a confrontational response, because I've seen
| too many solid, empathetic, capable individuals run out
| of tech by toxic gatekeeping bullshit _just like this_.
|
| Then all I'm left to manage and work with are toxic,
| self-aggrandizing, "um akshually" engineers who rate
| appearing smarter than others over working well with
| others and getting things done.
| 0des wrote:
| What is the need to interject the word 'manage' in there?
| Is that a powermove?
|
| edit: Have a great day, I'm going to let this one go.
| Things to do, code to write :)
| Tehchops wrote:
| Have a good day as well!
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I agree that people trying to appear smarter is toxic, at
| least if done very often. (Even if not done often, maybe
| it's still toxic, just not a lethal dose.) That isn't
| what I meant.
|
| It really comes down to this: You can't blather at the
| computer. You have to make very precise statements to the
| computer. If you can't be precise in your communications,
| you can't program.
|
| That usually spills over into human communications, too.
| People who can talk to computers can usually talk to
| humans who can talk to computers, because they can use at
| least some of the same terms with the same meanings.
|
| And they can talk with the same mindset. You can't show
| off to the computer. You can't get the code to compile or
| to run by using more flowery wording. Tech people tend to
| carry that mindset into their communication with each
| other.
| onphonenow wrote:
| The point folks are making here is that folks who go on
| these long rants, demand "hard data" for every
| experience, write in over formal language, say things
| like "corrupted by personal bias and toxicity as to be
| utterly useless" may not be that able / focused on just
| moving forward on stuff - it's all tied up in ego ego ego
| type things.
|
| You like the posters approach? Fine. I don't find their
| style (or yours) to be either healthy or productive and
| it just can stress teams out to have to work with someone
| super high need.
| Tehchops wrote:
| > "corrupted by personal bias and toxicity as to be
| utterly useless" may not be that able / focused on just
| moving forward on stuff.
|
| It's the same recycled logic of people who want to return
| to the times of being able to say whatever they want, and
| people who are offended just "need to move on".
|
| This kind of thinking is why homophobia/misogyny/racism
| is still so prevalent in tech. Dog whistles like "real
| tech people" or "super high need" or "people that just
| can't move on".
|
| It's a lot more convenient and dismissive to associate it
| with some kind of lack of performance. "Oh they should
| just focus on the code, thank god for all the coders who
| never want to attend meetings and just code..."
|
| I know you don't like my "style", but I'm afraid most
| organized software development is starting to become
| _more_ aware of the need to be empathetic and accepting
| of the human element, not _less_ , and just "getting over
| it and coding" isn't an acceptable answer anymore.
| 0des wrote:
| 100% spot on. You can usually tell on which side of the
| sales vs tech spectrum someone is on organizationally by
| this.
| onphonenow wrote:
| I would add managers who have super inflated views of
| themselves but not technical so maybe with some
| insecurities mixed in?
|
| Maybe mixed in with all the microaggression / toxic work
| environment type stuff?
|
| The folks who code are usually like, hey, let me show you
| this, or do you have time to look at this.
|
| THe managers, sales etc folks never say this. They will
| schedule you for long long boring meetings on any topic
| they can think of.
| onphonenow wrote:
| "Do you have hard data to back that up or is it just
| anecdotal personal bristling whenever someone says
| "privilege"?" - Tehchops
|
| This is actually a perfect example of this! Let's take a
| minute here to look at your response.
|
| "Do you have hard data to back that up"
|
| I literally said "I've found". Folks who go on long winded
| discussions about privilege do exactly this - redirect,
| misunderstand, demand impossible things.
|
| I didn't say I had hard data, I said this was just my
| personal experience. I don't need hard data to back up my own
| experience - it's simply my experience.
|
| The "hard data" that you seem interested in is often
| horrendously weak in this social studies type area. This may
| be offensive or triggering, but measuring job performance is
| extremely hard, and measuring it relative to communication
| styles is harder. This raises a question in my mind, are you
| unable to evaluate the likelihood that hard data would exist
| so that it makes sense to demand it and you would believe
| what I presented if I found some? There may be some poor
| critical reasoning skills here.
|
| "just anecdotal personal bristling whenever someone says
| "privilege""
|
| Dismissing others experience rather than engaging on the
| comment. Is your experience positive with folks who
| communicate like this? Mine is not. The writer is using this
| over the top over formal language. Their language choice is
| all a bad sign of ego ego ego. Tech folks are in high demand,
| they are not gods.
|
| "While I very much appreciate the fact that exceptionally
| talented and engaged recruiters reach out consistently"... "I
| will be unavailable for further discussion."
| Tehchops wrote:
| > Dismissing others experience rather than engaging on the
| comment. Is your experience positive with folks who
| communicate like this? Mine is not
|
| I believe your original comment was:
|
| > Insta-delete if I'm doing hiring...
|
| Now who's being dismissive again? ;-)
|
| > Folks who go on long winded discussions about privilege
| do exactly this - redirect, misunderstand, demand
| impossible things.
|
| And I've found folks who respond defensively as you have
| tend to not reflect on their own privilege, and generally
| do not respond well to criticism or questioning.
|
| Of course... feel free to "dismiss" what I'm saying.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I personally bristle when someone says "privilege", but I
| don't think a recruiter should.
| hatware wrote:
| Strange article, if I didn't ignore 99% of recruiters that reach
| out to me, I wouldn't make any progress.
| serverholic wrote:
| Sorry but I do not care enough about my career to put in this
| much effort. Recruiters are a dime a dozen these days and it's so
| much easier to just wait until you need one. Even if it's a bit
| less optimal.
| abledon wrote:
| Love the idea of automating my linkedin email funnels... I might
| throw a GPT3 into the mix to spice things up...
| omgmajk wrote:
| I reply to InMail so that they get their LinkedIn credit back.
| They are usually thankful for that. Other offers there's a 50/50
| chance I have the energy to reply.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I simply turned my InMail off. I've never gotten a useful
| message in however many years I've been on LinkedIn.
| speedgoose wrote:
| I don't want to work for a company that needs recruter spam to
| hire. It must not be a very attractive place.
| llampx wrote:
| - Groucho Marx
| not2b wrote:
| In my view (your experience may differ): almost always ignore a
| recruiter, unless getting out of your current job situation is so
| urgent that you're willing to waste a ton of time, or the
| recruiter presents a very specific proposal that makes clear that
| they've done their homework meaning that you are a great fit for
| a unique opportunity.
|
| In some cases going through a recruiter is a guarantee that you
| _won 't_ get a position, because a third-party recruiter tries to
| sell you to a company that has its own recruiters and is
| unwilling to pay the third-party recruiter's fee.
| kache_ wrote:
| I always just respond with a "whats the salary range?" response,
| merely for data collection purposes
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| This. It works. And it saves time for both sides ( and remember
| that recruiters have no motive not to disclose it -- the more
| you get the better it is for them ).
| organsnyder wrote:
| Same. Also to normalize discussing salary up-front. I'd say at
| least half of recruiters are forthcoming with this information.
| dave_sid wrote:
| I'd certainly say don't be rude to recruiters. Some people seem
| to get unnecessarily wound up by recruiters and forget that we
| are all adults just trying to do our job. It doesn't hurt to be
| polite and might just work in your favour in the long run.
| klaudioz wrote:
| I have a dirty trick to ignore "bots" recruiters in Linkedin:
|
| I just put a greek character on my name or add an emoticon, so I
| got a lot of messages starting with:
|
| "Dear name ..
|
| So, it's safe to ignore the message. Even when probably I'm not
| interested I used to reply with a template message, but I won't
| waste 30 seconds with a bot.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| I think we have this post every few months on this site, so let
| me explain how recruiting works.
|
| There's 3 types/market for recruiters and they almost never
| overlap. The first are "body shop style" recruiters. It's
| basically a numbers game where they try to cold-call as much
| people with githubs/linkedin or blogs that reference programming.
| They don't know programming (not even what's the difference
| between languages or front-end/back-end) and are looking for a
| list of buzzwords. They'll send copy-pasted messages (you can
| tell because it references tech you never used or never even
| claimed to have used). If you respond (and really you shouldn't)
| you won't be able to get any relevant information about the
| position because... they don't have it. These recruiters are
| often contracted by external firms in "best value countries" and
| are given canned response to message you. That's probably what
| the author encountered.
|
| Second type are professional recruiters. Their salary is by
| commissions will often be a percentage of your salary. They are
| knowledgeable about programming and tech (often former engineers
| who wanted a break from coding!). They typically are looking to
| match specific profiles to specific jobs at client companies.
| This goes all the way to recruiters specialized in C-Suite
| executives (and you can picture the commission finding a CEO will
| bring in). Their messages will be personalized and you shouldn't
| hesitate to reply back even if you aren't looking for a job. They
| know that most great software engineers are almost never openly
| looking for a job so their goal is to be on good terms with a
| large number of talented developers so that the minute they start
| looking for a job they can match them with positions. You'll know
| when you encounter one.
|
| Third type is basically referrals. A players attract A players,
| smart companies know it. Make sure your referral bonus is a
| percentage of total comp. It's probably the most effective way of
| recruiting (it has an insane signal to noise ratio). But you only
| get access to that type of network by... bringing value and being
| part of it in the first place!
| thomasfromcdnjs wrote:
| I've been doing a variation of this myself over the years, it's
| gotten me good jobs. Sometimes, I'd simply say I want X salary
| that is ~20% more than I currently would have thought I was
| worth. Then sometimes the recruiter would come back and say that
| is actually possible.
| dboreham wrote:
| Always ignore recruiters.
| cletus wrote:
| I went into this thinking I was going to disagree because
| honestly I hate recruiters and the time-wasting involved but I
| actually agree.
|
| Here's why: by having a template that he just copy-pastes. This
| is extremely low effort and will filter out a lot of recruiters.
| I also agree with working with company recruiters over third-
| party recruiters.
|
| The first thing many recruiters will want to do is "hop on a
| call". Resist this urge. In fact, don't even give them your phone
| number. Force them to use email to contact you. A phone call is a
| good way of wasting your time. If you actually need to call them
| on the phone, call them.
|
| There are lots of techniques recruiters will use to waste your
| time. One common one is if pressed on compensation range you'll
| get the answer that it's "competitive".
|
| Use a template like this to simply filter out time-wasters. If
| they want to get on a call, resist giving concrete details or
| otherwise just give you bad vibes, just stop responding. They
| can't call you. They don't have your number. Move on.
| milkytron wrote:
| > There are lots of techniques recruiters will use to waste
| your time.
|
| Why is this? Why do they insist on wasting a candidate's time
| when answering some simple questions via email is much more
| efficient?
|
| I've talked to HR people about this, and the answers I've
| received are not satisfying. A common response is that they
| want to get to know you, hear how you speak, determine if you
| might be a good fit. BUT, shouldn't they figure out if the
| candidate is even interested by verifying basic
| needs/requirements?
|
| The responses come down to basically they don't value our time
| as much as we do.
| cletus wrote:
| > Why is this? Why do they insist on wasting a candidate's
| time when answering some simple questions via email is much
| more efficient?
|
| That's easy: they want you invested. The sunk cost fallacy
| works.
|
| Think about it another way: being a recruiter is being in
| sales. Sales people love pipelines (funnels) so if you think
| about the recruitment stages a simplified view might be:
|
| 1. Email candidate
|
| 2. Candidate responds to email
|
| 3. Discuss on phone
|
| 4. Candidate submits resume
|
| 5. Organize phone screen
|
| 6. Conduct interviews
|
| 7. Negotiate offer
|
| 8. Accept offer
|
| Each of these steps has a conversion rate. Imagine you get
| paid $20,000 for placing a candidate. Work backwards through
| this pipeline and you might figure out you have to send 5,000
| emails to place one candidate. That means each email you
| send, you've "earned" $4. Imagine if the response rate is
| 20%. Well, getting a candidate to respond by changing up the
| content or presentation of the email means you've now
| "earned" $20. If only 1 in 3 talk on the phone then each
| phone introduction you make "earns" you $60. And so on.
|
| it's a numbers game. They're just trying to get you to the
| next stage in the pipeline.
| convolvatron wrote:
| no. i think its more. i mean yes this is true.
|
| i've had lots of recruiters that really thought their value
| was to harass me me by phone. even though I've emphasized
| repeatedly that there isn't anything more that they can do
| personally to help me...the insist on calling me nearly
| ever day to 'see where my head is at'
|
| i'm pretty sure i've lost out on some decent positions in
| the past because i got so sick of spending 30 minutes here
| and there talking to the same idiot that said 'dont _ever_
| call me back you asshole'
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| Bad career advice I received early in my career: Don't talk
| compensation until late in the interviewing process after you've
| already convinced them to hire you.
|
| Compensation is the first thing I bring up now. "I currently make
| X salary, Y annual bonus, and Z equity. This position will need
| to exceed all 3 by at least 20% before I even consider it. Does
| that sound doable? If not, let's not waste any more of each
| other's time."
|
| Way too many lowballers out there.
| d23 wrote:
| Unless you're already extremely out of band and are pretty sure
| your range will be higher than 95% of your incoming offers, I
| do not recommend doing this. Never give first numbers, and if
| you're in software and haven't gotten past the middling,
| typical startup salary numbers and onto the mind-blowingly high
| numbers, you will not feel confident enough to handle a
| negotiation where you've already given away too much
| information.
| vincentmarle wrote:
| > Never give first numbers
|
| I disagree: the first one who gives a number is able to
| anchor the negotiation around their preferred outcome; it's
| much harder to negotiate up from a lowball number than the
| other way around.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| I have >20 years of experience and my comp is absolutely >95%
| of inbound offers. So yes, I definitely want to not waste
| time with those and instead focus on the 5%.
| d23 wrote:
| That's great, and I'm in a similar situation myself. But
| your intro mentioned this being early career advice, which
| could mislead people into making pretty big negotiation
| mistakes.
| pojzon wrote:
| I would consider that a good advice for anyone who is
| half-decent in current market.
|
| Good Engineers are at the value of gold. Can save you a
| lot of money down the road.
|
| I have like 8y of experience and salary requirement is
| the first thing I negotiate. Easy 30-50% jump each time
| in past few years.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Once you've reached a high salary, it's a "damned if you do,
| damned if you don't".
|
| If you talk comp early, you'll potentially (almost certainly)
| lowball yourself. If you don't, you'll spend a full time job's
| worth of time with hopeless positions.
| mosdl wrote:
| I do the same thing - I give them a ballpark of what I am
| making right now and depending on the opportunity what it would
| take to make me say yes (and if I em flexible/etc).
|
| Sets expectations and avoid wasted time, which everyone
| prefers.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| I have to imagine that it is good advice for early in your
| career. When you're applicant number x out of 1500 who all got
| good grades at a good school, have some good github projects,
| and do well at the leetcode, grating the interviewer by
| prematurely mentioning comp may not be your best move.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Fresh out of school, you're worth just about as much as
| someone you graduated with.
|
| 20 years into your careers, you may be worth 10x or 1/10 of
| that same person.
|
| Why waste people's time? It's a waste of time interviewing
| for a place if you know they aren't offering anything close
| to what you'll be asking. And if you're making 2-3x the
| median salary for that job title, you should probably get a
| comp range up front.
|
| I've been burned by this a lot. Don't talk comp, go through
| hours of interviews, taking afternoons off for in person
| interviews (in the before times), all to find out that their
| maximum for for the position is a 25% pay cut.
| saberdancer wrote:
| Agreed, but it depends a lot on how much you value your time.
|
| When starting out, you are usually not going to be low balled
| as you are cheap. Your time is not worth as much either and you
| are trying to climb the ladder.
|
| Once you get to proper level of compensation, your time becomes
| much more valuable and the number of offers that meet that
| level of compensation become much lower. This means your best
| call is probably to move to talking money first.
|
| Of course, you might miss out on some opportunities but you'll
| save a lot of time.
| jedberg wrote:
| If you're going to start with salary, at least don't tell them
| what you currently make, because that will instantly be their
| baseline. Just tell them what you desire and don't tell them
| that it is 20% or whatever more than what you currently make.
|
| But really you shouldn't start with giving a number. They
| already have a huge advantage because they negotiate salary all
| day and you do it once every few years. Just ask them for the
| range and make sure the minimum is above your X+20% number. If
| it's not, let them know that their range is too low, and if
| they won't tell you, say, "thank you, next".
| alkonaut wrote:
| Does the baseline matter though? If I'm not switching for
| less than 1.2x does it matter if they know what $current pay
| is? Either they can offer it or they can't?
| jedberg wrote:
| It still matters because of mental anchoring. In their mind
| they are being very generous by giving you 20% more than
| you make so their offer will be the minimum.
|
| If they don't know what you're making now, they will think
| the minimum might be too little and if they really like you
| they will go higher than the 1.2x.
| opportune wrote:
| I don't think this true if you are already near top of band
| (very lucky place to be in). Right now I have golden
| handcuffs and just ignore almost all recruiters because I
| know only a few select big companies (plus quant) can match
| my pay.
|
| Startups are a bit more hit or miss though, and if they are
| small enough they probably won't even have pay bands. You
| need to do more due diligence there
| douglee650 wrote:
| TLDR
|
| - everything is signal, even/especially noise in aggregate -
| engineers are particularly subject to blind spots - know yourself
| - ymmv
| mikece wrote:
| I like the template but I bristle at the notion that being a
| software engineer is a "privilege." I have spent countless hours
| training and re-training myself on technologies that change every
| few years: don't confuse my work ethic and interest in software
| engineering with some sort of passive privilege that fell into my
| lap. There are people far smarter than me who either cannot or
| don't have the perseverance to stay in this industry because it
| means having a never-ending commitment to learning and starting
| over (as opposed to having the privilege of getting hired as a
| manager at a company because of your blood line).
| cortesoft wrote:
| It probably depends on how you got into the line of work.
|
| I always say I am lucky and privileged because through random
| chance, I developed an interest in programming as a kid and it
| became my favorite hobby, long before I chose it as a career. I
| spent hour and hours at it because it was how I played, and I
| became good at it because it matched my way of thinking about
| the world and I spent all my free time doing it.
|
| This was luck. I could easily have had gardening as my favorite
| hobby, or art, or playing music. I would have had a lot harder
| time turning those into a lucrative career, so in that sense I
| am lucky.
|
| Now, many people came into the field in different ways, so not
| everyone in the industry is lucky in the same way, but that
| doesn't chance the fact that I am personally lucky.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| There is nothing privileged about being passionate in things
| that may earn you good money.
|
| Luck? Sure
|
| Privilege? Definitely not
| nsv wrote:
| What is the difference between luck and privilege?
| q845712 wrote:
| Is it easier if you reframe it as "good fortune"? For instance
| suppose that you or an immediate loved one suddenly developed a
| condition which was treatable and tolerable within your current
| life but took up 10+ hours per week. It sounds like thus far
| you've had the good fortune to always be able to find the time
| to continuously learn and re-train.
|
| Or if you think back to your earliest contacts with technology,
| whether someone gave you a book, told you the name of some tech
| to learn, helped you get access to a computer, etc., I think
| all of us who are working in tech have had the good fortune to
| have access to technology and resources that helped us train
| ourselves but I can imagine having had substantially less
| access earlier in my life and the deficit that could've left.
| So I think I've been overall very fortunate, and that's part of
| what's meant by the word "privilege."
| stretchwithme wrote:
| I'm very impressed with your ycombinator skills.
| koonsolo wrote:
| Worst jobs I got through recruiters.
|
| Best jobs I got when I picked the company and applied.
| anonygler wrote:
| Strong disagree. I've made it my policy to never work with a
| recruiter that isn't affiliated with the company they're hiring
| for. Recruiting farms like Cyber Recruiters (yuck) will do
| everything in their power to waste your time out of sheer
| incompetence and disinterest.
|
| I've "doubled" my salary plenty of times through this policy.
|
| But the real secret sauce is referrals. Companies always
| prioritize a strong referral, ignoring mediocre interview
| performance, and will even skip the reference checks so I don't
| have to bug my network.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Unfortunately, you are correct. Nepotism has always been the
| key to professional success
| lhorie wrote:
| My takeaway from the article wasn't to work with every
| recruiter that spams you (in the sense of actually spending
| time in their funnel), but rather, take the opportunity to
| "interview them" with a "standardized test" of sorts.
|
| As the article said, most of the time, you're not actively job
| searching, but you generally do care about salary data points
| and what sort of roles are available. For unicorns, you can
| find salary info through levels.fyi, but for those not making
| those 300k+/yr, the pool of better paying jobs is much larger
| and recruiters still remain a useful source of data. Sniffing
| for roles is an underused technique. Recruiters have like 3
| paragraphs to catch your attention, so they optimize for bang-
| for-the-buck. Which means they aren't going to offer EM roles
| if you don't already hold that title, even if the company has
| an opening. A lot of times, if your next career ladder rung is
| a title upgrade or a role pivot, you need to ask explicitly.
|
| As for your policy, I feel like it's attributing all your chips
| into one thing while ignoring everything else you've done. Like
| many here, I've had my share of salary bumps over the course of
| my career, and each time it was through different methods
| (diagonal internal move, OSS lead, unicorn recruitment,
| promotions). It'd be naive to not have more than one tool in
| the arsenal.
| alexc05 wrote:
| I love this response. Thanks Leo!
| castlecrasher2 wrote:
| Agreed, though I still pay attention in case something
| interesting shows up. For example, I got my current role
| through a third-party recruiter (an individual, not a farm like
| Cyber Recruiters) and it was a great experience through and
| through.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| > Companies always prioritize a strong referral, ignoring
| mediocre interview performance, and will even skip the
| reference checks
|
| I wish this were always true. When I worked as a recruiter, I
| saw referrals routinely get tossed onto the stack of resumes
| with no special preference. How candidates are treated
| completely depends on the preferences of the hiring manager &
| corporate red tape, even at smaller companies.
| busterarm wrote:
| I was hired to my current company through an external recruiter
| that had a great track record but was expensive. We dropped all
| of those external recruiters in favor of internal ones who are
| absolutely useless at finding us worthy candidates because
| unlike the external recruiter I worked with our internal ones
| don't have an engineering background.
|
| My recruiter started his career as a software engineer.
| reincarnate0x14 wrote:
| I'm sure there are great recruiters out there (somewhere), but
| totally agree on this. Had real days of my life wasted on
| interviews and such, sometimes only to have everyone at the
| table realize it was a completely bad fit with no hurt feelings
| about a minute into us talking directly and not through "the
| process". Meanwhile got an out of the blue referral from a guy
| I had worked with ten years prior that started my consulting
| years.
|
| Not everyone is a superstar networker but be kind, supportive,
| and professional to your coworkers. People talk.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > I've "doubled" my salary plenty of times through this policy.
|
| Meanwhile, I doubled my salary by responding to a recruiter.
|
| Though FWIW, I was actively looking for new work at the time.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Well, let's be honest - when you're just starting out, making
| $50,000/year, you can probably double your salary in one
| jump. If you're making $200,000/year, you're not going to
| double your salary, recruiter or not.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| You're absolutely correct.
|
| In my case, I doubled from $100K to $200K. I would not
| expect to double it again. I'd be lucky to even see 50%.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I've had great experiences with local recruiters who had
| relationships with the client companies. They will tell you the
| max salary you can get, the interview process, why past
| candidates failed, the actual must have requirements, etc.
|
| My success rate from my application being submitted by a
| recruiter to a phone screen with the client company is 100%. My
| non rejection rate was close to that.
|
| That's when I was hopping around in corp dev. I have a
| specialty now that's slightly more niche. I am working for by
| far the largest company in that niche so I don't really need
| the middlemen anymore. If I ever decide to leave my current
| employer, no one is going to ignore my resume.
| alexc05 wrote:
| You make a good point. This advice is strongly weighted towards
| people who still have multiple salary doublings left in their
| career ladder. At each step up the career ladder, you can
| afford to be more and more selective around what you're looking
| for.
|
| This basic script is designed to remove or greatly reduce that
| time-waste from the early process.
|
| I'd argue that it makes early ghosting a non issue, by reducing
| the cost of the initial and clear response it cuts through
| multiple layers of that dance that the spam-cruiters go
| through.
|
| You're also right about referrals and I don't think this is
| mutually exclusive with them, instead it is a complimentary
| passive search protocol.
| kodah wrote:
| > I've made it my policy to never work with a recruiter that
| isn't affiliated with the company they're hiring for.
|
| This is a massive privilege. A lot of companies interview in a
| way that I couldn't pass years ago, so I depended on external
| recruiters to get me jobs. This was basically how I made a
| living in the South without a CS or CE degree.
|
| The universal truth I see throughout every career advice thread
| is always take this advice with a grain of salt.
| obmelvin wrote:
| Yes, it's interesting to see how many people here are 100%
| against 3rd party recruiters rather than recognizing there
| are those good and bad at their job - just like anything
| else. My best friend from growing up had a 3rd party
| recruiter go completely out of their way to help him, and he
| was very appreciative of that.
| conro1108 wrote:
| I think it's possible to recognize that 3rd party
| recruiters can be good or bad at their job while also
| coming to the conclusion that the bad outweighs the good to
| a degree that it's not worth the time to figure it out.
|
| It's certainly a privilege to be in a position where you'd
| still have an excess of inbound job opportunities even
| without 3rd party recruiters. But if that's the position
| you're in, it's one of the more effective strategies I've
| seen to increase signal:noise.
| andrewnicolalde wrote:
| What form did the help take?
| [deleted]
| l30n4da5 wrote:
| > Strong disagree. I've made it my policy to never work with a
| recruiter that isn't affiliated with the company they're hiring
| for. Recruiting farms like Cyber Recruiters (yuck) will do
| everything in their power to waste your time out of sheer
| incompetence and disinterest.
|
| 100% agree. I'd go a step further and say: don't bother
| applying for any job on Indeed where they say "we're looking to
| fill a contract position with <insert some info about another
| company (a top industry producer!)>" because they're just a
| front for those same recruiting farms.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Ah, but if someone doesn't have the secret sauce, are you then
| suggesting that person is doomed?
|
| Industry sanctioned nepotism doesn't feel like a good look for
| the SWE industry, especially given our diversity problems.
| bboozzoo wrote:
| > Industry sanctioned nepotism doesn't feel like a good look
| for the SWE industry
|
| Is it nepotism though? Your friends are not your family.
| Unless I'm missing some fine details of what nepotism means
| as a non native English speaker.
|
| Besides, if you are a reliable employee, I doubt any
| reasonable company would miss out on an opportunity to
| consider a strong referral. Regardless of industry.
| vanusa wrote:
| It's not nepotism. That isn't even what "nepotism" means.
|
| People have always gone through their in-network to seek
| advice and find others to work with, since the beginning of
| time. It's how nearly anything really great or interesting
| gets done, actually.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I don't think, "It's always been done this way." is as good
| of an argument as you think it is, especially considering
| the discrimination that takes place when you hire referrals
| over searching for the most qualified candidates.
|
| Maybe we should shoot for doing better than how it's been
| done in the past? I think we can as an industry do a lot
| better than where we are currently.
| kritiko wrote:
| Hiring for "culture fit" is problematic. Hiring known
| commodities is not.
|
| I'm interested in hearing how you think the search for
| the most qualified candidates can be improved.
| Interviewing is, necessarily, a messy process and full of
| uncertainty.
| colmvp wrote:
| A person who is referred (especially in SWE) doesn't
| automatically mean they'll get the job, they'll still
| have to pass checks from members who may have never even
| interacted with the referrer. The advantage lies in the
| fact that it means their resume/cover gets reviewed while
| the 200th applicant doesn't. The reality is companies get
| tons of applicants and on paper most of them might be
| qualified.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| When you have multiple people on this very thread saying
| they've hired or been hired as referrals without any
| interview at all, it's hard to say with a straight face
| that these people still had to pass any quality check
| whatsoever.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| You had me until "diversity problems". That's a made up thing
| to push identity politics, which is also a load of bullshit
| that needs to die in a fire. Other than that, yes, finding
| the best candidate for the role is always preferred, but
| often not feasible, so shortcuts are taken. As with any game
| in life, it's more beneficial to learn how it's played, than
| what the "rules" are.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Diversity problems are not a, "load of bullshit that needs
| to die in a fire".
|
| Straight white men dominating the software field is a load
| of bullshit that needs to die in a fire.
| datavirtue wrote:
| You make it seem like straight white men conspired to
| take over the industry and box everyone else out. Last
| few teams I have been on were very skin diverse. They all
| had privileged cushy backgrounds though...except for one
| of the white men who was self-made.
|
| The power base in the US is white middle class. It's not
| just software that is dominated by white men. Law,
| medicine, construction, management at corporations. Not
| just white men. Privileged white men and the few
| "diverse" people mostly come from a level of privilege
| that would make my white lucky ass sick to my stomach.
|
| Nice comment.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > It's not just software that is dominated by white men.
| Law, medicine, construction, management at corporations.
| Not just white men.
|
| By what metric is software dominated by white men? Are we
| counting Indians as white?
| TameAntelope wrote:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2021/04/01/stem-jobs-
| see...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| That would seem to indicate that 54% of "software
| developers" are white.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Yeah, that sounds about right. Over half.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Thanks, I appreciate it.
|
| It's not very important, when you focus on outcome,
| whether or not a group of people conspired to create that
| outcome, or if that outcome was simply a consequence of
| other factors. The impact here is that straight white men
| over-represent the software industry as a whole, and
| there are things we can do to fix or improve that.
|
| It's a _super_ bad idea to hire anyone who is not
| qualified for a position, but I 'm not going to pretend
| there's any kind of even remotely objective or precise
| way of determining who maximally fits into that position.
|
| Instead, it seems optimal to acknowledge that there will
| always be more qualified candidates than there are open
| positions, and once you've found each qualified
| candidate, selecting the candidate that brings the
| largest difference in perspective (regardless of
| representation group) will be the best candidate. Given
| the saturation of straight white men in the SWE field,
| the odds that another straight white male will give the
| largest new perspective is not super high (though it is
| not zero).
|
| The "action" here, if we need to walk away with one
| "thing" to do, is to saturate your pipeline with
| candidates from very diverse backgrounds, and _then_
| select the best candidate. It 's a bullshit move to say,
| "only straight white men applied" if you did no work at
| all to reach out to other communities explicitly.
| labcomputer wrote:
| > Instead, it seems optimal to acknowledge that there
| will always be more qualified candidates than there are
| open positions
|
| This is a wrong assumption, in my experience. As a rule
| of thumb, for not-principal/staff SWE roles, I would
| estimate that it takes:
|
| 1. 10+ resumes to find someone worth phone-screening
|
| 2. 10ish phone screens screens to find someone worth an
| in-person interview
|
| 3. 3ish in-persons to find someone worth an offer.
|
| In other words, a hiring manager has to look at 300+
| resumes to find one qualified candidate. So... imagine
| you get a reference from someone you trust. You go from 1
| in 300 odds of finding someone who is basically qualified
| to 1 in 3.
|
| This is after recruiters have pre-screened the resumes,
| btw. The candidate pool for Step #1 excludes all the
| people who apply to a senior SWE role with no Github
| portfolio, no relevant claimed skills, no degree and no
| work experience other than Burger King.
|
| I'm curious to hear other people's experience, but I've
| literally never been in the position of "Do we hire
| candidate A or candidate B for this tech role?" It's
| always "Do we think A is good enough, or should we keep
| looking?"
|
| > but I'm not going to pretend there's any kind of even
| remotely objective or precise way of determining who
| maximally fits into that position.
|
| Sure, defining who is "optimal" is challenging but that's
| a cop-out. The situation is usually: Person A can't
| finish FizzBuzz (literally FizzBuzz) in 45 minutes in any
| language in coderpad, while Person B can do FizzBuzz,
| some easy recursion problem and maybe some kind of stats
| brain teaser. There is no world in which both of those
| candidates are "approximately the same".
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| The reality at all the companies I've worked for is that
| you are handed resumes, one or two at a time, from HR or
| a recruiting partner. You interview those 1 or 2 until
| you find a good/great candidate. Then you stop
| interviewing, make an offer, and wait for reply. You
| don't interview 50 people then choose the best and most
| diverse candidate.
|
| Your "action" doesn't fit with the reality I've
| experienced.
| [deleted]
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I think the popular definition of "nepotism" is hiring one's
| family or close relations. I doubt anyone is advocating that.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Closeness isn't a requisite for nepotistic behavior, only
| undue bias due to personal familiarity.
|
| I don't think it's any less bad to hire someone you don't
| know all that well because you share friends than it is to
| hire people because they're you're close friend or a family
| member.
|
| The point is that it's exclusionary to outsiders, and
| outsiders tend to be the exact people tech needs more of.
| andrewf wrote:
| Family is nepotism, friends are cronyism.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Cronyism is more in politics, nepotism is more in
| business.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| Personal familiarity is a great tool though.
|
| If a hiring manager knows someone, the kind of worker and
| individual they are, they are in a great position to know
| if they should hire them.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I was just trying to state the _popular_ (AFAIK)
| definition of nepotism.
| vanusa wrote:
| _Closeness isn 't a requisite for nepotistic behavior,
| only undue bias due to personal familiarity._
|
| Actually it is; it's how the term is defined.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Actually it is not; _this_ is how the term is defined:
|
| > nep*o*tism - /'nep@,tiz@m/ - noun - the practice among
| those with power or influence of favoring relatives or
| friends, especially by giving them jobs. [0]
|
| > Nepotism is a form of favoritism which is granted to
| relatives and friends in various fields, including
| business, politics, entertainment, sports, fitness,
| religion, and other activities. [1]
|
| [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Anepotism
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism
| vanusa wrote:
| _The practice among those with power or influence of
| favoring relatives or friends,_
|
| That's precisely the point - "close" relations. When we
| talk about _business_ referrals, it by no means implied
| that the person being referred is a "friend" in the
| usual sense of the term (let alone relative). Usually
| it's just someone you vaguely know (by their _work_ ,
| and/or a chance encounter at a meetup or conference), but
| don't know too well personally.
|
| And just because they come in via a referral does not
| mean, _ipso facto_ , that "favoritism" is happening and
| all objectivity is thrown out the window in the
| evaluation process.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| We may be violently agreeing here; what is bad is the
| idea that someone can get a job because they know someone
| else, over a more qualified candidate who doesn't know
| that person already. We agree this is bad, yes?
|
| Our industry is _uniquely_ , as in above-replacement-
| industry, plagued by a diversity problem, and I'm
| asserting the practice among those in power of favoring
| relatives, friends, _or even friends of friends_ over
| other, more qualified candidates is a contributing factor
| to that diversity problem.
|
| It is not guaranteed that this always happens, but I am
| asserting it often is (as evinced by the "lack of
| interview" or "going by reputation only" as reputation is
| rife with bias), and _that_ is a bad thing.
| vanusa wrote:
| _We may be violently agreeing here;_
|
| Violence is completely counter to my way of being - so
| No.
|
| _What is bad is the idea that someone can get a job
| because they know someone else, over a more qualified
| candidate who doesn 't know that person already. We agree
| this is bad, yes?_
|
| We keep going in circles - with this idea that person
| that someone in the company already "knows" (or who came
| in via a referral anyway) gets the job at the expense not
| just of a comparably qualified (but not known to the
| company) candidate, a hypothetical _more qualified_
| candidate. You just keep assuming that this what happens
| when companies act on referrals (and implicitly, that it
| happens a lot).
|
| That's now that I see happening, when referrals are made.
| But if it's what you want to believe, then it's what you
| want to believe - and there probably isn't anything I'll
| be able to say to dissuade you from this belief.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Violent agreement is just a term for when people seem to
| be disagreeing but actually aren't. [0] If _that_ is
| completely counter to your way of being, then it 's
| possible your way of being isn't compatible with the
| concept of constructive argument.
|
| And I'm confused about where I said anything about
| certainty. I'm not talking about how all companies
| operate all of the time, I'm talking about how some
| companies operate an unfortunate number of times.
|
| > Holding everything else constant, from job title to
| industry to location, female and minority applicants were
| much less likely to report receiving an employee referral
| than their white male counterparts. More specifically,
| white women were 12% less likely to receive a referral,
| men of color were 26% less likely and women of color were
| 35% less likely. [1]
|
| This is not good. Can we agree on that?
|
| [0] https://wiki.c2.com/?ViolentAgreement
|
| [1] https://hbr.org/2018/03/how-to-use-employee-
| referrals-withou...
| vanusa wrote:
| _I 'm not talking about how all companies operate all of
| the time, I'm talking about how some companies operate an
| unfortunate number of times._
|
| In between these opposite extremes -- your language
| clearly indicates that you think this level of what we
| might call "aggravated bias" (hiring not just someone in
| your network; but hiring them _over_ a more qualified
| candidate, presumed to exist and be interested in your
| opportunity) is _commonplace_ , or something close to it.
|
| Such that in your mind, "including referrals in your
| hiring funnel" == aggravated bias (in the sense above),
| basically.
|
| As to the bias stats you liked to: the findings
| interesting, to say the least -- if they can be
| validated. Unfortunately the link to the original
| Payscale "study" seems to be broken (if we can call it
| that -- since remember, this is the work of a private
| company, with products to push).
| TameAntelope wrote:
| > Such that in your mind, "including referrals in your
| hiring funnel" == aggravated bias (in the sense above),
| basically.
|
| Can you show where I said anything approaching this? I do
| not believe this, nor do I believe I said or even
| suggested this to be the case.
| vanusa wrote:
| _I 'm asserting the practice among those in power of
| favoring relatives, friends, or even friends of friends
| over other, more qualified candidates is a contributing
| factor to that diversity problem._
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Not sure where in that statement I referenced hiring
| funnels.
| vanusa wrote:
| I'd continue, but you're getting awful slippery.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| You made an assumption that turned out not to be true.
| That's okay, it happens!
| pwinnski wrote:
| So you're defining closeness as not including blood
| relation or friendship?
|
| You are quoting definitions which disagree with your
| assertion. You used the word incorrectly, and now you're
| doubling down on that rather than leave the word behind.
|
| Better hope good recruiters aren't seeing this! ;)
| TameAntelope wrote:
| What is my assertion, in your own words?
| vintermann wrote:
| I once had a former team leader tell me that "I warn you,
| I practice nepotism", and she did not refer to familiar
| relations, she just meant that she favored people she
| knew and liked when looking for people (it included me, I
| guess, since she "got me in" at a consultancy when I was
| looking for a job).
|
| So at least some people use the word that way.
| ehnto wrote:
| That's the career advice I would give, build good bridges and
| make friends with people. Everyone is moving around enough that
| you'll be able to cross into new companies and skip whole song
| and dance prior. You also get the benefit of having a heads up
| on the company you're joining too.
|
| I don't have a professional network per se, just a bunch of
| friends I clicked with at various companies. I know if they're
| enjoying somewhere, I probably will too, since we value similar
| things in the work.
| belval wrote:
| > I don't have a professional network per se, just a bunch of
| friends I clicked with at various companies.
|
| You might not want to label it as such, but that is exactly
| what a professional network is. People can genuinely be your
| friends and still be part of your network.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Eh, I find work "friends" to be even more ephemeral than
| school friends. Nobody I've ever worked with in the past
| has ever contacted me after I left the company we worked
| for. At least school friends are around for a more or less
| guaranteed period of several years.
|
| Edit to add: I have initiated contact before and been well
| received. Nobody contacts me. It's tiring to have to do
| 100% of the work to maintain these relationships.
| Cd00d wrote:
| I think that's a little strange. You haven't maintained a
| single relationship after having been coworkers?
|
| Try messaging someone you used to work with to check in -
| you may enjoy catching up or even stumble into being able
| to give or receive help.
| XorNot wrote:
| I've had the same experience. I have no idea how this
| advice is working for people in most job markets - it
| certainly doesn't seem to be a thing in Australia.
| jpmoral wrote:
| I'm in my second role in Australia. Can't say whether
| it's a thing but people from my previous role (people
| still there and people who have moved on) definitely keep
| in touch with each other.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Sounds like it's on you for either not being someone they
| liked working with or not putting any effort at
| maintaining contacts. Can't always expect other people to
| pull all the weight.
| ehnto wrote:
| Hence the 'per se'. Some people go out of their way to
| groom a network of people specifically for their careers, I
| was just trying to articulate that difference.
| pydry wrote:
| I did this for a while and certainly got some leads but the
| really well paid roles still seemed to come mostly via
| recruiters.
|
| The "networking" was also very time consuming. It was also
| fun but if i had a wife and kids I wouldnt have had the time
| for it.
|
| The good recruiters seemed to have a knack for finding the
| companies that were the right combination of rich and
| desperate whereas companies I found through my network were
| generally from companies that were always keen on talking to
| a decent technologist but werent exactly craving somebody
| with my precise skillset to start next week.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| > I don't have a professional network per se, just a bunch of
| friends I clicked with at various companies. I know if
| they're enjoying somewhere, I probably will too, since we
| value similar things in the work.
|
| I wish this were true for me. I do have people I click with
| but I have a personal value not to work for anywhere whose
| main revenue source boils down to "more eyeballs / clicks"
| and this rules out pretty much everywhere my past
| coworkers/friends have gone to work.
| kcarter80 wrote:
| That is a professional network.
| ZhangSWEFAANG wrote:
| I think he meant that he dosen't have a huge professional
| network, just something slightly informal.
| FredPret wrote:
| That is a professional network.
| ehnto wrote:
| I was just trying to articulate what I see as a
| difference between a purpose built career network and a
| network of actual friends from work. There is a
| difference between those two types of networks not
| captured when you call them both a "Professional
| network".
| azinman2 wrote:
| To me all you've described is a professional network with
| strong and weak ties.
| ehnto wrote:
| The difference is the intention behind the relationship I
| suppose. I don't think it matters if we disagree, it was
| an off the cuff statement. I see a difference, I consider
| it important. No one else has to.
| notdonspaulding wrote:
| Not to beat a dead horse, but the reason you keep getting
| these kinds of replies is because it seems like you have
| an idea about a second type of Professional Network that
| is different than what you described as your network of
| friends. Everybody's just trying to say that the real
| Professional Network is exactly the network of your
| friends, and if there is another kind of "purpose built
| career network" that people are talking about, it's the
| imitation of what you've got, not the other way around.
|
| What you've described from your own experience is the
| _substance of what a professional network is_ , and has
| always been. LinkedIn connection requests are trying to
| create a digital product _in the form of_ the real-world
| phenomenon that you 've experienced and described. If
| we're going to call one of them a professional network,
| everyone in this subthread is saying, let's give the real
| thing the name professional network, and the imitation a
| different name.
|
| (None of this is intended to disparage LinkedIn. It is
| what it is, but if it's trying to be a substitute for
| real relationships between humans, it will always be the
| shadow, not the substance.)
| ehnto wrote:
| That is the case I think, the two ideas about types of
| professional networks seems clear, and it would seem I
| probably see it differently to some. To me, "professional
| network" is better at describing a network curated for
| your career.
|
| It's a tough one, because while I can see that it is also
| a professional network, said network would be pretty
| offended if I called them that. So I don't necessarily
| disagree with you, or even with the other commenters, but
| there is at least some room for subjectivity about what
| to call your own personal relationships.
| caddemon wrote:
| Eh I think there is a huge middle ground between "network
| consisting of work friends" and "LinkedIn network". Maybe
| it's different in academia but I know plenty of people
| that have a strictly professional network built from real
| world interactions - conference meet ups, seminar series,
| collaboration projects, etc. They would be happy to call
| each other up for work purposes but would never do
| something purely social together or consider each other
| friends.
|
| I don't think the type of network I've just described is
| imitating anything. They are mutually beneficial but
| purely professional relationships. The fact that the
| internet has enabled people to have a much larger number
| of superficial relationships doesn't mean that what the
| poster was describing is the only way to have a "real
| professional network". Yeah it's a professional network,
| but it's not the only kind.
| djrogers wrote:
| All you're describing here is a professional network with
| 2 group of people in it - those you have beers with, and
| those you don't.
| fecak wrote:
| Former recruiter here. You are spot-on about referrals, and
| having an insider advocating for you or just their willingness
| to make the recommendation starts things off at a great spot.
|
| Here's where I disagree. You haven't doubled your salary
| BECAUSE of your policy of not working with recruiters, but
| rather DESPITE this policy.
|
| Deciding to disregard any recruiter opportunity is just
| shutting out quite a few things that you probably won't hear
| about otherwise, especially at the higher levels. Exec roles
| are often handled by retained recruiting firms and aren't as
| well publicized as entry level and junior roles. So just saying
| "I will never work with a third party recruiter" can certainly
| be your policy, and you may save yourself a fair amount of time
| by sticking with it, but that policy is doing nothing to
| advance your position (career, earnings, etc.)
|
| The reasons that there are so many incompetent recruiters are
| many, but a few are:
|
| - low cost: companies hire entry level recruiters and pay them
| next to nothing in guaranteed compensation (mostly commission-
| based). The good ones will make the company a lot of money, and
| the bad ones can't afford to stay in the industry because they
| aren't making enough in commission - so they 'go away'.
|
| - low skill: the skills required to be a good recruiter aren't
| typically taught in school, so they aren't coming out of
| college with a strong foundation. They need to learn and be
| successful quickly (because it's commission-based)
| scarface74 wrote:
| I stayed at one job too long until 2008. I was looking to
| restart my career and I spammed every ATS I could find. I
| didn't have a network and I had no choice. I found a job that
| paid around $80K as a mid level .Net dev - still more then I
| was making. But about $10K below the local market.
|
| Over the next three years, I did build out my network of
| _local_ external recruiters who had relationships with the
| hiring managers.
|
| I hopped around between various corp dev job - one generic
| corp dev CRUD job looks about like any other - by leveraging
| recruiters. By the beginning of 2020, I was making $150K and
| hearing opportunities of $165K locally. Then Covid hit and
| external recruiters had absolutely nothing to offer me paying
| more than I what I was making.
|
| I hopped on the FAANG bandwagon because of an internal
| recruiter in mid 2020. Almost two years later, I still
| haven't had an external recruiter ping me about anything
| mildly interesting.
| fecak wrote:
| I'd bet your LinkedIn isn't optimized at all for discovery.
| Populate a skills section with languages and tools you use,
| and you'll often see an immediate uptick.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The companies paying in the BigTech compensation range
| don't care about what languages or tools you are using.
|
| The same recruiters see I work for BigTech and they are
| still sending me "exciting opportunities for .Net leads
| paying up to $150K".
| ibi5 wrote:
| "but that policy is doing nothing to advance your position
| (career, earnings, etc.)"
|
| Why does everybody assume that the goal is to advance to an
| exec role?
|
| I'm sure that you were a competent recruiter, but the reality
| is that I don't have the time or the energy to waste on you
| to figure out if you are or not.
| fecak wrote:
| The OP mentioned doubling salary multiple times.
|
| I don't assume everyone is looking to advance to an exec
| role - in my experience, most actually are not looking for
| that at all. I tend to assume people aren't looking for
| exec roles.
|
| "Advance your position" could refer to improved work/life
| balance, more time off, remote, whatever you value. I was
| referring to overall position (life quality), not on an org
| chart. I can see how that wasn't made explicitly clear.
| piva00 wrote:
| What's your suggestion on fostering relationships with
| recruiters?
|
| I do ignore the vast majority of contacts due to the
| sheer overload of them, I don't have the energy or time
| to parse through each message and see if it's worth
| pursuing the recruiter in the future or not.
|
| My CV is no unicorn, I have a lot of experience in
| different roles and company sizes but I'm not a deep
| specialist or a very sought after technologist, just a
| decent engineer. Even then I get dozens of contacts per
| month, it's impossible for me to actively engage with
| that...
|
| If I decided to keep some recruiters in the loop when I
| look for new jobs, how should I do it? I can't just
| answer all these contacts and filter out, are there good
| places to match decent professional recruiters and job-
| seekers? I'd love to have an ongoing relationship with a
| good recruiter who could match me to openings offering
| things like a 4-day work week, etc., but usually I'd have
| to go searching for these openings and then contacting
| the recruiters for them, how can I invert this
| relationship?
|
| I feel like tech recruiting became a new gold rush,
| noticed it got progressively worse the past 15 years with
| recruiters just blasting me with spam. The increasingly
| higher bonuses for hiring attracted a crowd that I'm not
| very fond of.
| fecak wrote:
| The article's methods are actually quite good. You should
| ignore most of the recruiter contacts - if the recruiter
| approaches you for a job that is clearly not a fit for
| your background, I'd dismiss that person as either not
| respectful of your time or incompetent, and both are good
| reasons to ignore that person down the road.
|
| If you're getting a fair amount of incoming traffic,
| you're already optimized for discovery, so that is
| working. Telling recruiters "I'm only looking for jobs
| that fit these parameters" and then paying attention to
| the ones that are respectful of that will work to start a
| relationship. I had some relationships for the entire 20
| years I was in the business, and some of those people I
| didn't make a dime off for maybe 15 of those years.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| That's actually the problem with third party recruiters: the
| bad ones so greatly outnumber the good ones that it's
| extremely hard to filter out the bad from the good. I could
| easily spend half an afternoon or more every week on random
| calls with third party recruiters and never get anywhere.
|
| What I've started doing is only dealing with the ones who
| both show a little evidence of having seen my profile on
| LinkedIn (since this is generally the ultimate source of
| these contacts), _and_ mention a specific opportunity (not
| just "full time Python role with my direct client").
|
| That brings me to the second problem, which is that most of
| these third party recruiters are working for companies that
| are still series C and earlier. I've done the startup game
| twice now, and figured out that working for a company that's
| going to pay me partially in lottery tickets that won't pay
| out for 7-10 years isn't that great of an opportunity. There
| are the odd exceptions out there, but they are few and far
| between.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > The reasons that there are so many incompetent recruiters
| are many, but a few are... companies hire entry level
| recruiters and pay them next to nothing in guaranteed
| compensation (mostly commission-based). The good ones will
| make the company a lot of money, and the bad ones can't
| afford to stay in the industry because they aren't making
| enough in commission - so they 'go away'
|
| Wouldn't that be an explanation for why there _shouldn 't_ be
| so many incompetent recruiters? Why don't the incompetent
| ones all "go away"?
| fecak wrote:
| Good question. The bad ones don't go away immediately. They
| go away eventually, and are quickly replaced with another
| round of new hires. So you have maybe 10% of the industry
| that stays for the long haul, and 90% is a revolving door
| of college grads.
|
| There are probably other industries that have similar
| models where most of the workforce is newbies at all times,
| but I don't have an example that won't be dissected.
| selfhifive wrote:
| That's a great description of software consultancy firms.
| Most people are fresh college grads who leave after their
| first contract is up or earlier.
| fecak wrote:
| The bigger ones, yes. Not boutique/niche firms, but large
| ones tend to churn.
| nsv wrote:
| Well, retail and food service is a classic example of a
| high-turnover industry.
| ozim wrote:
| I think only true part in that description is "Exec roles are
| often handled and retained by recruiting firms".
|
| But that is level where normal developers are not finding
| themselves. I am senior developer but I don't imagine being
| approached for exec level role.
|
| There are different worlds of recruiting - world where I am
| is low level spamming that I get every day and most of it is
| just predation on unhappy people that would be open to switch
| job.
|
| World where there is super specialized recruiting like exec
| level or really niche skills might work as described but that
| is super specialized and most people are nowhere near that
| world.
| fecak wrote:
| All of my recruiting work was retained for the last 5-10
| years I was in business, and I wasn't recruiting
| executives. I'm not saying that is the norm (it definitely
| isn't), and you are correct that senior developers will not
| be approached for executive roles.
|
| Higher level candidates will probably attract higher level
| recruiters, because the amount of time to place someone
| making $100K is the same amount of time to place someone at
| $500K, with the only difference being a $25K fee for the
| first person and a $100K fee for the second.
| ASinclair wrote:
| How am I supposed to get any sense of a recruiter's skill
| when they reach out? Do I need to be looking at their
| LinkedIn profiles to see their tenure? I've dealt with maybe
| one or two competent recruiters out of dozens.
| fecak wrote:
| Tenure is a good one, but can be misleading. There are a
| few ways to make money in recruiting. Being really good at
| it and ethical is one way, but there are also people who
| are unethical and it hasn't caught up with them.
|
| I would always suggest looking at their tenure. A new
| recruiter doesn't have the depth of client relationships to
| be all that helpful, but most new recruiters are 'sourcers'
| and not handling the client side (they are responsible for
| researching and bringing in candidates).
| dvtrn wrote:
| _Deciding to disregard any recruiter opportunity is just
| shutting out quite a few things that you probably won 't hear
| about otherwise_
|
| and
|
| _that policy is doing nothing to advance your position
| (career, earnings, etc.)_
|
| Are readers supposed to read this as a suggestion that
| missing out is synonymous with _losing out_? I kind of take
| exception to these phrases because it strips a lot of agency
| out of otherwise exceptional people who are more than capable
| of navigating their careers to where _they_ want them to be,
| maybe not necessarily where you as a recruiter _think they
| should be_.
|
| Seems to me the market is very strong for employees and those
| with in demand skills and experience to back them up are
| probably missing out on job x but probably aren't losing out
| by any equal measure-all other considerations being equal.
| One of the most common refrains I've been hearing _right here
| on HackerNews_ in response to the 'Great Resignation' isn't
| that people are leaving the workforce, they're just finally
| leaving jobs they've been wanting to anyway and taking their
| labor elsewhere.
|
| So
|
| That said, what does it really matter if someone decides they
| want more autonomy in who they decide to interview with?
| Shouldn't we be _encouraging_ more of this?
|
| Especially given some of the fees that come with hiring
| through a recruiter?
| fecak wrote:
| I don't think missing out and losing out are synonymous.
| I'm simply stating that if you decide to ignore any subset
| of potential opportunities solely due to the source, you
| are limiting your exposure to possibilities.
|
| For example, if you don't have a LinkedIn profile, you will
| probably get far less incoming inquiries from hiring
| entities (external/internal recruiters, hiring managers,
| etc.). That's a decision many people make.
|
| Everyone has autonomy in who they interview with - I'm not
| sure where that comment is coming from.
|
| This isn't about autonomy or interviews. It's about the
| ability to say "yes" or "no" to additional information
| about opportunities. Nothing more.
|
| EDIT: To address the Great Resignation thing, agreed there
| as well. I'm a resume writer/career advisor now and my
| business has been brisk. Lots of clients are changing
| industries to find more impactful work, better working
| conditions, etc. Obviously if someone IS leaving the
| workforce they aren't calling me to write their resume, but
| I'm seeing a lot of activity from people looking to find
| work they "feel better" about in one way or another.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I read it as a fairly mathematical statement of fact. There
| is a tree of opportunities, and one can choose to prune
| some of them at the root. By definition, any
| direct/anticipated; _and_ any unanticipated, indirect
| opportunities; are gone. Which is a 100% valid personal
| choice, I interpreted the minor quibble being whether this
| is a net positive creditor to their overall success. On one
| hand, pruning opportunities is in principle a negative; on
| the other hand, time saved not dealing with undesired
| channels is a positive.
| fecak wrote:
| The reluctance to work with recruiters is mostly the
| "time suck" element. If you were to chase every
| opportunity sent by recruiters you'd waste a ton of time,
| but you'd also maximize your potential for getting offers
| that meet your criteria (whatever those criteria are).
|
| It was meant as a statement of fact. To oversimplify, if
| you limit the information you are willing to receive, you
| won't have all the information you could have.
|
| My main issue with the original post was that OP was
| crediting a policy of reduced information with doubling
| their salary. That just isn't the case.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| Sounds like just a general statement of opportunity cost.
| If you're disregarding all recruiters, and someone comes
| along with a possible job that fits with a $200k raise that
| you would normally disregard out of hand, and most of your
| average raises you find on your own are $50-75k when you
| switch jobs, spending time talking to the recruiter would
| likely be worth it.
| moron4hire wrote:
| That doesn't sound like a thing that ever happens.
|
| If I took every recruiter call I receive, I'd be spending
| half my week talking to recruiters. All for a tiny,
| small, infinitesimal chance that they might find me a job
| that A) is in a field I want, B) at a company I want, and
| C) at a decent salary.
|
| I've been unemployed with next to no professional network
| before. And I took those recruiter calls. And they were a
| waste of time. I'd end up in companies doing slimy stuff,
| I'd get low-balled on salary, I'd get bait-and-switched
| on my role.
|
| In the end, the only way I've ever gotten good jobs is
| through the professional network. It was faster to build
| a professional network from 0 by working on open source
| projects and going out to meetups than to go through a
| 3rd party recruiter.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I agree with everything you say until you are out of
| work. At that point I start taking calls.
| vintermann wrote:
| As far as I can see, the only thing outsourced recruiters
| provide is blame-shifting. They're not better at judging
| candidates. They're not better at finding candidates.
| They're almost certainly worse at understanding what the
| company needs than the company, and worse at understanding
| what the candidate has to offer than the candidate.
|
| But, if the company hires a few people they're unhappy with
| through a recruiter (which is bound to happen from random
| chance no matter how they hire), they have someone to
| blame. They can switch to another recruiter, and assure
| their further-ups that the problem has been addressed.
|
| There are many corporate roles that are mostly about
| providing blame-shifting opportunities, but outsourced
| recruiting is an unusually pure one. Along with
| "networking"-logrolling, it's one of the things which I
| really can't stand about working in software development,
| and on darker days they makes me wonder if I shouldn't go
| be a hermit in a cabin in the woods or something instead.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Does this blame shifting really happen though? I've never
| seen recruiters get blamed for a bad hire. I've seen them
| get blamed for sending people that fail at the first
| interview though.
| fecak wrote:
| A bad hire isn't on a recruiter unless they are basically
| lying to the employer about the hire's credentials or
| background, and even then it's the employer's job to vet
| what is being said.
| stretchwithme wrote:
| My policy is if you hear 18 other recruiters murmuring in the
| background, decline, then block that number and that email.
|
| Sometimes you get multiple contacts from different recruiters
| with the same company on the same day.
|
| If they won't tell you what company is interested, they don't
| have a contract with that company.
|
| Don't be open and honest with a recruiter if they aren't open
| and honest with you.
| jeffalbertson wrote:
| Very much agree with this comment. Just had an awful experience
| with a Jobot recruiter and will 100% never work with anyone
| affiliated with that company again.
| hamburglar wrote:
| Also strong disagree. I literally ignore several obviously
| useless recruiters a week. I occasionally humor one long enough
| to confirm that they know exactly nothing about me and have put
| zero actual thought into their inquiry. Asking "what about my
| resume made you think of me for this position" is usually very
| enlightening.
|
| I do have an exception, however, and it's not recruiters that
| are affiliated with a particular company, it's _high quality_
| recruiters that my friends refer me to and who will work on my
| behalf. I had one spend a TON of time really getting to know
| what I was looking for, what my skills were, and what made me
| happy, and he looked at companies with an eye toward making
| both me and the company happy long term, because he knew that's
| where the big payoff was.
| dvtrn wrote:
| _Recruiting farms like Cyber Recruiters (yuck) will do
| everything in their power to waste your time_
|
| Or share your data.
|
| I made a throwaway, but not obnoxious email on my domain just
| for recruiters a few years ago, so I could try tracking who I
| was talking to.
|
| Via three consecutive third-party recruiters I started getting
| cold calls and e-mails from recruiters I'd never contacted,
| never met, or never before engaged with from agencies that
| weren't the ones I spoke to or sent a CV to. Soon I started
| getting other completely irrelevant email. Then the robocalls
| came. I later found that email address among five different
| data leak sources.
|
| Just so happened to be a different popular recruiting company
| that has "Cyber" in the name.
| lelandfe wrote:
| I highly recommend using a Google Voice number for recruiters
| for just such a reason.
|
| I keep all my interviewing data isolated from my private
| data.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| These days I just never answer the actual phone for anyone.
| I don't even bother to look who is calling.
| jjwiseman wrote:
| A scenario I hadn't thought about, that you might want to
| be aware of: I had to call 911 recently. I talked to the
| dispatcher, and hung up. A few minutes later they called
| me back to give me instructions. The call showed up as a
| regular Los Angeles 323 area code number. In fact, it was
| flagged by my phone as spam.
|
| It made me wonder whether reverse 911[1] calls, which are
| used to warn about hazmat situations, fire evacuations,
| and other public safety issues, show up similarly.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_9-1-1
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Yeah, me too. I have my 3 best friends and my mom
| whitelisted; everyone else can leave a message or SMS.
| dvtrn wrote:
| I have a nice collection of "throwaway" phone numbers for
| all kinds of reasons, while one of them is dedicated to job
| hunting, I don't think merely having it would have stopped
| this agency from sharing my CV across to whomever they
| shared it with, or stopped whatever leak occurred for said
| email address to end up in so many collections of leaked
| data.
|
| That was the reason: to understand where my data was
| leaking from, not to duck recruiter calls.
| imglorp wrote:
| Same experience.
|
| It seems like an old flea market where most people don't buy
| anything but the vendors all buy and sell old stuff from each
| other to supplement.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I always ask where do they have this number from.
|
| One time the guy told me that the person who referred me
| "preferred to remain anonymous".
|
| I asked him if he realised that this is a violation of GDPR
| and that a typical candidate would recognize it as such?
|
| No coherent answer.
| Cd00d wrote:
| I've more than once asked a cold-call recruiter how they
| got my number where the answer has been a rather candid,
| "there are markets for such information".
|
| Kinda makes me regret the few years my LinkedIn profile had
| my phone number public, but I do wonder how successful
| these questionable personal data marketplaces are. I
| certainly haven't had a conversation get beyond "this is
| spam".
| dvtrn wrote:
| Check out http://intelx.io, depending on your risk
| tolerances, putting your email and phone number in yet
| another search bar may not be in the cards. If you can
| swallow it though, depending if (1) anything you care
| about has been leaked at all and (2) anything you care
| about being leaked has been indexed by this site...the
| results may be illuminating. Or nothing at all.
|
| Interesting resource nonetheless that supplements my day-
| to-day line of Devsecops.
|
| This site and a few other OSINT tools was how I
| discovered who 'sold out' my CV to some of the
| questionable 'recruiting agencies'.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| Even non-recruiter HR will share your data without concern
| these days.
| chana_masala wrote:
| I legally changed my name two years ago and I still get
| recruiting emails addressed to my old name. It hasn't been on
| LinkedIn for equally as long, so I can only anticipate that
| my data was sold and my old name is cached in some database.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| > Recruiting farms like Cyber Recruiters (yuck) will do
| everything in their power to waste your time out of sheer
| incompetence and disinterest.
|
| Cyber Coders, I think that is the actual name, is pretty bad.
| They use a lot of automation to build funnels and send out
| messages automatically. There are several thousand other
| recruiting firms that do the same thing with more or less
| technology.
|
| That being said their goal isnt to waste your time. They are
| just playing a numbers game. They are trying to hit the postgre
| DBA who just got told their contract is ending with an email
| about a postgre DBA contract that starts ASAP. If you are that
| person and you get that email you might have good results.
|
| I think people get angry when recruiters don't personalize
| messages or make sure that they are actually qualified for a
| job or that they actually are helpful during the interview
| process. But they sold for 105 million in 2013. Their model
| works despite having one of the worst reputations in the
| business. They generate a shit load of revenue by spamming
| massive amounts of people and getting enough emails to the
| right person at the right time.
|
| If you view third party recruiters as someone who is going to
| be your job agent and work for you, you're going to have a bad
| time. If you think of them as street vendors who are slinging
| wares of questionable quality and price and who offering no
| refund no return one supply items... You might have a better
| experience and save yourself a lot of grief.
|
| TLDR: Recruiting companies print money by getting the right
| email to the right person at the right time. They don't work
| for you. Don't expect their service to be tailered for you.
|
| [1] https://www.cybercoders.com/insights/press-release-
| cybercode...
| LinearEntropy wrote:
| I completely agree with you. Every single job offer I have
| received has come through direct listings from the company
| itself.
|
| Safe to say the quality of tech recruiters in New Zealand is
| even lower than those elsewhere.
| Mandatum wrote:
| Because the market is tiny. Recruiters can't specialize, and
| those that do get eaten up by the likes of Datacom or
| Australian-based providers.
|
| Most recruiters in NZ start from labourer/contracting/HR
| firms and then move into tech because it's better paid.
| Whereas in Australia you get people who trained specifically
| to be a tech recruiter, or migrated to recruitment from tech
| (usually BA and QA type roles).
| winternett wrote:
| Agreed. Mu primary test for a recruiter call is to ask them if
| the position is funded and what the title is. Recruiting
| warehouses will often say they want to ask me a few more
| questions before answering that, and the truth is they're
| scouring Indeed for the same jobs I could find on my own and
| adding a recruiter commission to the bid.
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| Great Third party headhunters can be good too
| subsubzero wrote:
| Strongly with you on this one. I have had recruiters from the
| UK reach out to me(I'm based on the west coast in US) from
| agencies and made the mistake of replying to one. Complete
| waste of time and total incompetence on their side. I have a
| rule like this(recruiters have to be from the company they are
| soliciting for):
|
| - If I am interested in the company I will reply right away.
|
| - Somewhat/not really interested ignore first email they send
| out and if they followup a reply I then email them stating I am
| not looking for work now but could change my mind in the
| future.
|
| - Not interested in company at all just ignore the unsolicited
| response.
|
| I have also completely given up on startups as the comp they
| have been getting back to me with is 50-70% lower than my TC
| and its a waste of my time. Your time is the most important
| resource you have, don't waste it on unsolicited responses from
| recruiters in positions that are not right or companies you
| have no desire to work for.
| codegeek wrote:
| There are 3 types of recruiters:
|
| 1. Internal company recruiters. They couldn't care less about
| contacting you directly unless things have changed in today's
| market (My last interaction with in house recruiter was circa
| 2010).
|
| 2. Scummy recruiting farms where they hire a bunch of people on
| commissions and they spam anyone and everyone
|
| 3. Recruiters who actually have relationships with a customer,
| prospect good candidates like a salesperson, keep their
| pipeline full and understand the hiring needs. They work
| diligently to find good candidates who fit the job description.
| They do exist but are rare unfortunately.
|
| I have no problem with #3 above and I have worked with some
| great ones in the past and right now as a hiring manager,
| working with one who is trying to find a senior level candidate
| for a while now (lot of work there).
| gbronner wrote:
| I got my current job through an internal company recruiter.
| He's the best I've ever seen in this business -- the
| introduction was extremely well targeted, the process was
| very low-pressure, and he's measured on the long-term success
| of the people he brings in.
|
| He spent time explaining the role, the skills, and the goals,
| and offered feedback throughout the process.
| jnwatson wrote:
| That's a great categorization.
|
| I've accepted a job through a very good internal recruiter
| once in 2015.
|
| I can distinguish between a 2 and a 3 in a 5 minute phone
| call.
|
| I don't understand all the hate about recruiters. I cut off
| the bad ones and the folks left are great. The overhead is
| quite low.
| ravenstine wrote:
| My exact experience. I've had one actual great recruiter that
| was in the #3 category, one okay recruiter from #2 who a #1
| recruiter farmed out to, and then dozens and dozens of
| sleazeballs from #2.
|
| For the most part, I just say ignore recruiters entirely,
| unless the job is for a great company and there are no red
| flags, instead opting to network and send emails directly to
| people in charge of hiring.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| #3 = headhunters
| silisili wrote:
| Same. Sorry for any good recruiters out there, but these people
| are generally used car salesman like scum. Multiple keep
| emailing my work address even after asking them numerous times
| to stop. One I worked with on a potentially good role - acted
| like my best buddy, constantly texting and calling for weeks,
| and when I decided not to take the offer, just ghosted me. Not
| even an 'OK thanks anyways'. I think even an annoyed reply like
| 'Sigh, OK' would have been more professional.
|
| Anymore I just ignore them all.
| polote wrote:
| > I've "doubled" my salary plenty of times through this policy.
|
| Let say you started at 50k (which is very low) and you doubled
| your salary 4 times (what is plenty ?). Then you make now 800k.
| Which is unlikely, so your main argument is probably wrong
| ThalesX wrote:
| I've doubled my income some times but I started out at around
| $200
| picture_view wrote:
| I was recently talking to a 3rd party recruiter who started
| asking me for detailed salary info of all my past jobs. I told
| him that I didn't feel comfortable answering that, then when he
| pushed back I told him I'm legally not required to give him
| that info in my state (and the potential employer's state.) He
| abruptly cut the call off and ghosted me.
|
| I decided to apply to the company directly. They were happy to
| talk to me because my experience was a really good fit for
| them. I come to find out that the recruiter emailed them saying
| that I was a poor candidate and that he suggest they don't talk
| to me. Luckily they didn't listen to him.
|
| I am also done with 3rd party recruiters.
| larkost wrote:
| It is ok that you did not feel comfortable with that, but pay
| negotiations are exactly why you would want to have a
| recruiter: they handle that for you, and are generally
| incentivized to get you as much money as they can since they
| generally get a percentage of your yearly salary as their
| pay. So by telling the recruiter you were not going to share
| that with them you were hamstringing them... of course they
| thought you were a bad candidate (for them).
|
| It is a bit petty that they told the company that you were a
| poor candidate, but you seem to not understand what was
| happening. And it could have been they had already mentioned
| your name to them, and then had to explain why they suddenly
| were not representing you. I don't know, but that is a
| reasonable explanation.
|
| I personally have had a mixed bag with recruiters: many I
| have dealt with are worthless in that they don't understand
| the jobs they are recruiting for (so give very bad matches to
| both sides), but I have been lucky twice and had recruiters
| give me great jobs and handle the pay negotiations so well
| that I probably got $20-40K/year more than I would have by
| myself (if I had somehow found those positions).
| throwaway6532 wrote:
| >and are generally incentivized to get you as much money as
| they can since they generally get a percentage of your
| yearly salary as their pay
|
| This is not quite true. They're optimizing for throughput,
| not max dollar value. If they optimized for the maximum
| amount of money they could get you that would come at the
| cost of their time which would lower their throughput of
| placing candidates and hence the maximum amount of money
| that they can personally earn in aggregate.
|
| They'll still try to spin you that line though.
| picture_view wrote:
| So the only good candidates for a recruiter are the ones
| willing to let their recruiter break the law and make a
| salary history a requirement for consideration?
|
| WA state law makes it very clear as a candidate I don't
| need to share salary information, and by some readings of
| the statute it's illegal for them to even ask.
|
| My most recent job is at a very large public company where
| the salaries are well published (levels.fyi) - there was no
| need for me to give a detailed salary history of all my
| recent jobs.
|
| If the value-add of a recruiter is getting a better
| negotiated salary, what is the value-minus of putting
| another point of failure between me and a job I want.
| Surely it's possible that over time the minuses are greater
| than the pluses.
| robin_reala wrote:
| _Who else has real and direct insight into how much money any
| given role pays?_
|
| Your union?
| mrweasel wrote:
| I get access to salary statistics every year via my union. They
| collect everything from the member, support is almost always
| around 80%. Just plug in area, experience, title and if you
| have a management role. So yeah, my answer would be: most
| people have insight in salary levels.
|
| Also remember that in some countries you income is public
| record that can be looked up by anyone.
| [deleted]
| gloryjulio wrote:
| You can get better data points from levels.fyi and teamblind
| alexc05 wrote:
| This is for part two!!!
| rodiger wrote:
| Those are great for larger companies but most smaller places
| won't have much listed there
| gloryjulio wrote:
| I agree. Although as someone who has been burnt before, I
| would not consider the position from a small company unless
| its a very senior and generous offer.
| blizkreeg wrote:
| Q for engineers on this thread: would you be more open to a
| "recruiter reach-out" if that person _is_ an engineer themselves
| but independently also helps startups build teams as a recruiter?
| deathanatos wrote:
| I'd rather talk to another eng, but the problem with recruiters
| isn't that they're recruiters, it's that their email _wastes
| people 's time_; cf. the article, and the canned response the
| article recommends writing: what if... what if the recruiter
| just _told_ us those things up front? Then I 'd instantly know
| this is worth responding to! Instead, we have to waste a
| mostly-automated round trip asking for what ought to have been
| done up front.
|
| Of course -- the offer would need to be actually palatable.
| ebiester wrote:
| The more you differentiate yourself, the more likely I am to
| listen. My priority is: 1. Internal recruiters. They have real
| pull. 2. External recruiters that give me real information and
| give me quality information before I get on a call and why I
| might be interested. 3. External recruiters that are working
| with a company that I have prior interest in.
|
| Below this, I usually don't respond.
|
| 4. Recruiters that ask if I can "get on a call" to get me
| details. 5. Recruiters from big name firms. (Robert Half et.
| al) 6. Low quality recruiters that have no connection to what I
| do.
| onion2k wrote:
| I don't ignore recruiters. I tell them to $%^& off.
| tomrod wrote:
| Depends on recruiter quality.
|
| There are some 3rd party groups that are solid. Most are a waste
| of time.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Good advice on salary negotiation, awful about "answer all the
| calls".
|
| Truth is, many first contacts are just to add you to their
| database. In some cases, there aren't any immediate openings
| either.
| gadders wrote:
| After reading the responses, all I can say is that the US
| recruiting industry must be a lot different from the UK one. Or
| maybe it's different because I'm not in a popular niche like
| Python dev or something.
|
| I'm in the UK and I just looked at my latest linkedin recruiter
| message. They told me the company type, the role, the skills they
| were looking for. An accurate enough description to make me think
| it was a real role. They didn't include the rate, but that would
| have been my next question if I had been interested.
|
| If I'm not interested in the role, I normally reply with "Thank
| you for thinking of me but it's not right for me because
| [reason]. Good luck in your search." I might even refer them on
| to a friend if I know one that fits the requirement and may be
| looking.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Honestly that autoresponder reply reads a bit condescending and
| borderline rude, but it could be just me. 'This means I don't
| have the time to hop on a call' is not how my mother taught me to
| talk to people.
| lbriner wrote:
| Your mother probably didn't teach the recruiters to call you up
| without invitation to interrupt your day either.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| Here is my version:
|
| _Thanks for reaching out. I 'm okay to travel to spend a week to
| work together every now and then but I'm working remote only and
| permanently from X1-Country and I'd only be interested in
| opportunities with compensations around X2 plus benefits and if I
| like their tech stack. Let me know when you have something that
| sounds like a match for that. Thanks again._
| rietta wrote:
| Completely disagree. I have found recruiters to be nearly
| useless. However, my experience is through the lens of someone
| who created a consulting practice bit by bit and have gained a
| good reputation in my niche. Recruiters don't help people like
| me. Those on LinkedIn who don't even read your profile are the
| worst.
| mkl95 wrote:
| When you are a junior engineer, recruiters ignore you or use you
| to boost their career. When you are a senior engineer, you ignore
| recruiters or use them to boost your career.
| eatonphil wrote:
| That's a pretty big wall of text when most recruiters reach out
| with a single sentence or few sentences.
| coolso wrote:
| It reads like the author really wanted to get that "privilege"
| line in there, and then came up with a lot of other words to
| put around it to hide that fact.
| alexc05 wrote:
| I like to think of it as spamming the spammers! The marginal
| cost of extra words in a "select all -> copy -> paste" is
| pretty low so I think it makes a lot of sense to be very clear
| and address any objections they might have in advance.
|
| I also have found through experimentation that posting one
| liners like "how much?" just results in the recruiter reverting
| to their own script of "objection handlers"
|
| The size and clarity of the message really does say "this isn't
| a conversation", "no bullshit" and "let's not fuck around here"
|
| This is my own experience though. I've been running with it and
| refining for about 6 months to a year. Maybe It could be
| better. :)
| lhorie wrote:
| Hey Alex, fancy seeing you here :)
|
| I'm going to agree that the "if you want me, do some work
| first" thing seems a bit overkill. For me, usually just a
| single sentence asking for salary range and job description
| gives me more than enough to figure out whereabouts in the
| spectrum they are.
|
| This is the way I think about it:
|
| 1) there are different types of recruiters. At least in the
| city where you are, I can tell you that there are actually
| some good recruiting firms that consistently send appealing
| opportunities while avoid wasting your time with emails about
| lowballers, if you just spend the 30 mins upfront to chat
| with them about your expected salary range and
| specialization. These recruiters understand that there's an
| entire subsection of the workforce that is very capable but
| has zero online presence, and they build their own moat by
| connecting w/ professionals directly, to build a long term,
| high quality, proprietary network. Being part of such
| networks and having the recruiter sift and prescreen jobs for
| you can be valuable. For one-off linkedin cold mailers, the
| signal to noise ratio is generally pretty low IME because
| they optimize for volume. While they can give me data points
| about what lowballers offer, I personally haven't gained
| anything from this info, so I'd optimize elsewhere. YMMV.
|
| 2) you can often infer salary range from the company name and
| job title alone. As a rule of thumb, if it's an no-name
| company, they're almost always going to lowball if you're at
| senior level. If your goal is to raise your salary quickly,
| then rather than looking at sideways increments, you'll want
| to target "obvious" upgrades (e.g. if one is junior, look for
| "senior" roles; if you're senior at a local non-US company,
| look for US-based multinationals; or just go for broke and
| try for unicorns exclusively)
| alexc05 wrote:
| Those are incredibly good points. If you look at the
| levels.fyi data I think this pattern applies really well to
| the people within the bottom half of the graph.
|
| There's ALWAYS the option of trying to go from "No Name" ->
| "Big Name" but I also feel like that can be a harder path
| to take. When the person reaching out is a "Meta" or a
| "Netflix" I know that I don't need to ask how much.
|
| I'm pretty sure the number I got there would be a 4x or
| 5x... in Meta's case though, it's the leetcode stopping me
| (2 mediums in 45 minutes? Maybe if I wasn't dad to a
| toddlerI could study enough to get there, though my other
| problem is I keep getting bored of the grind and wind up
| building cool shit for fun instead), in the Netflix case
| it's because they keep saying "NO" (hahahahaha)
|
| The optimal path here for the bulk of the developers in the
| middle of the pack is to make a move when the person
| reaching out has a role at a different no-name shop that is
| 50% higher than their current.
|
| Remember there are a few vectors for that big salary bump.
| One where you were grossly underpaid from the moment you
| were hired, but another one that pops up might be that
| you've been in the role for a couple years and you have
| been so busy and engaged that you didn't even NOTICE that
| the market popped in the meantime, your no-name-company
| doesn't really pay attention to keeping up with the market
| and the persona reaching out is ALSO picking you for a spot
| that has a significant increase in responsibility.
|
| I do think that the "reply to everyone" model starts to
| fall down once you're at an Uber, or some other big logo.
|
| The best part about advice is once you've heard it you can
| choose to ignore it on a case by case basis.
|
| :D
|
| I've PERSONALLY only ever heard the "I ignore recruiters"
| jokes so the idea that they're this tremendous fountain of
| untapped knowledge was pretty wild to me.
|
| OOOH!! One more thing about the leetcode grind. I'd ALSO
| argue that if you're in the middle of your grind and a 50%
| raise comes along, it's probably a clever move to pause the
| grind for long enough to take the raise and then get back
| to work on the grind while you're making way more.
| lhorie wrote:
| > The optimal path here for the bulk of the developers in
| the middle of the pack is to make a move when the person
| reaching out has a role at a different no-name shop that
| is 50% higher than their current
|
| I think it's worth noting that 50% bumps were
| historically nowhere as realistic as they are today with
| the current job market. At least from my convos w/
| recruiters over the years, large bumps would normally
| imply some very tangible upgrade, like a corresponding
| job title change. A 30-50k bump back in ~2015 typically
| meant moving from a dev role to a role w/ significant
| leadership/managerial responsibilities.
|
| Being able to command 50% bumps without a significant
| change in levels of responsibilities in today's market is
| definitely an anomaly from a historical perspective, but
| under these circumstances it definitely makes sense to
| consider lateral job changes to get in on those juicy
| market dynamics.
| eatonphil wrote:
| I think you could get the same effect but in like 6-8
| sentences, 1-2 paragraphs.
|
| If I saw this text in a response, personally (and I'm not a
| recruiter), I'd move on since the person seems hard to
| handle.
|
| But yeah my approach is different in the first place. I only
| respond to recruiters who seem to put good thought and
| background research into their conversation starter.
| alexc05 wrote:
| I'd love to see your version of the same thing. The exact
| response isn't really as important as writing something
| that is authentic and in "your voice"
|
| You're probably right that a different response would work
| well for you.
|
| Though if a recruiter wasn't willing to read through that
| for the ~$30k payday I'd represent if they are successful,
| maybe that's one that I don't want to work with either.
|
| But we all gravitate towards people who we think we'd fit
| with. Maybe someone skips over me for coming across as a
| stuffy and a lot of work and maybe someone else says
| "finally a type-a jackass like me! we're gonna crush this
| thing"
|
| ha ha ha
| notapenny wrote:
| I'd cut that whole message down to this:
|
| "Thanks for reaching out, could you send along the
| company name, a job description and total compensation
| details for the role?"
|
| Get to the core of what you're asking. The rest of the
| response is needlessly long-winded. You don't want them
| to waste your time, and that is a fair ask in our
| industry, but you also don't need to waste theirs.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| What is sad, is what has happened to the industry, over time.
|
| When I was younger, recruiters would woo you, and would act as
| your advocate. They would sing your praises (sometimes, with a
| bit of "embellishment") to the prospective employer.
|
| They also made quite a bit of money.
|
| I suspect that outfits like monster.com devastated the
| "concierge" type of recruiter.
|
| Also, there were contractor specialists. They acted almost
| exactly like talent agents, getting a commission, whenever they
| successfully found a contract for their clients. I dealt with a
| number of them (as an employer) over the years.
|
| I think the "agents" are a thing of the past. Not exactly sure
| what killed them.
|
| These days, everybody, in every profession, is obsessed with
| scale. Lots of small numbers, as opposed to a few big ones.
|
| I assume that "self-service" sites have accelerated that
| transition.
|
| If anyone ever saw the movie _Jerry Maguire_ , it sort of laments
| the same kind of metamorphosis, in the sports agent field.
|
| I have been rather shocked at the uncouth behavior that has been
| directed my way, by recruiters. I've been told that it's because
| I'm older. They haven't done or said anything to dissuade me from
| that point of view.
|
| Dealing with today's recruiters was one of a number of reasons
| that I threw in the towel on looking for work, and just accepted
| that I'm in early retirement.
|
| In any case, I am sad to see the change, but folks seem OK with
| the state of the industry, so I guess that it's really just sour
| grapes, on my part.
| tra3 wrote:
| Great advice, in my opinion.
|
| The incentives for recruiters are clear; to get you hired. They
| cannot however force a hire and there's a threshold for
| submitting duds -- their clients will stop working with them.
|
| I look at recruiters as a helping hand in the hiring process.
| That said I've had a couple that have wasted my time, so there's
| that.
|
| Typically, unless you're getting flooded, it takes almost nothing
| to engage with them temporarily. I like the approach the author
| recommends. Recruiters are folks that are trying to make a living
| too, there's no need to be nasty.
| emilyridler wrote:
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Eh, you need to use some heuristics on them. Any with "urgent
| requirement" should be utterly ignored. A personalized LinkedIn
| message is worth taking.
|
| The problem is that far too many of those companies are using an
| external recruiter to fill the job as the job is low paid
| garbage.
| beeskneecaps wrote:
| Ignore recruiter if they:
|
| * are a part of a large firm
|
| * use multiple fonts, sizes, or any color in their emails
|
| * send an email _and_ an InMail
|
| * text or call you
|
| * jokingly or seriously refer to themselves as a stalker
|
| * automatically substitute in your skills or past company name
|
| * ask for your resume when they can obviously download the
| LinkedIn pdf
|
| * don't disclose comp
|
| * don't disclose the company name
|
| * use tracking pixels or redirect links
|
| * send an automated sequence of follow-up emails (4 follow-ups =
| bot)
|
| Write them back if they seem like a human! "Not interested at
| this time, but let's keep in touch. Thanks for your time" should
| do.
| lbriner wrote:
| It's no unreasonable to check if the Resume on Linked In is up
| to date by asking for an up to date one is it?
| l33t2328 wrote:
| How can you detect tracking pixels?
| woodruffw wrote:
| Tracking pixels are just embedded 1x1 images in HTML emails.
| They're not hidden; they're just stuffed in the rendered
| HTML. For example, here's one from B&H photo:
| <img src="https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bimages/email-
| icons/1pximgfortracking.jpg?email=status" />
|
| Detecting them automatically is probably tricky, but you can
| avoid the entire problem by not loading external resources in
| HTML emails (or, better yet, always load the plaintext
| version of the email.)
| asadlionpk wrote:
| Turn off "auto-load images in emails" option in gmail. If a
| plain-looking email has that banner at top "click here to
| load images", there is a pixel-tracker in there.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Or just a company logo..
| orangepurple wrote:
| Fastmail shows a banner that indicates image links are
| included in the email and asks you if you want to load them
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| I recently switched from Gmail to Fastmail. I have to say I
| really like it.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| If they seem like an intelligent human, don't just write them
| back. _Keep their name._ When you decide that you 're looking,
| let them know.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I have one rule about life: I do not work with spammers. This
| includes my career.
|
| Recently, I've been solicited for jobs where it was clear that
| the recruiter never looked at my resume. (I'm a software
| engineer, and the roles had nothing to do with software
| engineering.) I flagged these as SPAM.
|
| Reading resumes is _work._ Reading job openings is _work._ When a
| recruiter spams a job opening without screening the recipients,
| they 're just trying to push their work onto strangers.
| thrower123 wrote:
| Recruiters need to pass the bozo test to prove that they have
| read and understood the first sentence of my LinkedIn profile
| before they rate anything beyond having their email reported as
| spam.
|
| It's a high bar for them to cross; I've only seen two or three in
| the past few years, and those I think were sold my data by
| Triplebyte instead.
| michelb wrote:
| Obviously this is geared towards software development, and my
| personal experience with recruiters for software jobs is similar
| to most here.
|
| However, I sometimes help out my client's HR departments and the
| recruitment experience for other jobs is vastly different. Like
| searching for expert welders or other specific skillsets, not
| unlike the ones that exists in software development (+10 years
| java, +15 years embedded C, etc.). They almost always use
| external recruiters for the first filtering, and they deliver
| quality candidates. Expensive fees, but worth it.
|
| Why is this such a problem with recruitment for software
| development? Are there recruitment shops that DO understand the
| differences in software development?
| mulmen wrote:
| The uncomfortable truth is that quality doesn't matter in
| software. When you need something welded you need an expert.
| Most companies don't need or even want a candidate with 10
| years of Java experience. They want someone with barely enough
| skills to ship the minimum portion of the feature the business
| will accept. It's an evolutionary process. If companies wanted
| high quality candidates the market would deliver a solution. In
| software it just doesn't matter for most cases.
| valdiorn wrote:
| I'd argue that it does matter, however it's incredibly
| difficult to measure "quality" of a software project, so
| there's no real way to distinguish crappy software engineers
| from good ones. Even people with 15+ years of experience have
| often just been delivering dogshit for 15+ years.
| jyu wrote:
| You know how everyone hates real estate agents? Imagine if a real
| estate agent did not need to take courses, become licensed, and
| face repercussions for unethical and illegal conduct.
|
| That's what a recruiter is.
| city41 wrote:
| I think there is a better middle ground.
|
| > you don't want to be a jerk to the one in 100 who have taken
| the time to carefully craft a high quality message to you alone.
|
| I agree with this. If I get the sense the recruiter put effort
| into the email, then I will usually respond. I'm sure I still
| fall for automated messages with this. But some recruiters really
| do their homework, really research you, have interesting and
| fitting opportunities, and can be valuable.
|
| The 99.99% of recruiters who are just spamming? Totally ignore
| them.
| dsr_ wrote:
| The typical recruiting-house recruiter has a script that was
| given to them by someone else, has no particular job in mind for
| you, and does not know the difference between Java and
| JavaScript. They are, in short, one small step above spammers.
| Unless you are currently thinking about changing jobs, you should
| definitely ignore them.
|
| None of that applies to an in-house recruiter. Someone who works
| in HR for the hiring company, directly, may have years of
| experience, good training, and have a good idea of what the
| hiring manager is looking for. You shouldn't ignore them,
| although if you're entirely happy you should have a short message
| prepared -- "Thanks for thinking of me. I'm happy with my current
| position, but you never know what the future holds. Feel free to
| check in with me again in six months or so."
|
| TL;DR: reputation counts.
| mymllnthaccount wrote:
| My experience has been the opposite. 3rd party recruiters cold
| messaging me have led to my last two job changes and
| significant bumps in salary. One of them put my salary in at a
| higher level than I had asked for.
|
| In house recruiters on the other hand have not been more
| knowledgeable about the team they are trying to fill for. Also,
| I have a theory that companies that are willing to pay a huge
| commission check to 3rd party recruiters are more likely to pay
| more for talent.
| alexc05 wrote:
| Hmmm... maybe I should have been clearer and more explicit
| about the fact that there are times when you ignore the script
| entirely.
|
| Companies that are known to pay top of market... Like you're
| not going to hammer Facebook or Netflix by saying "how much
| sucker?" if you're in a bottom of the market bracket.
|
| I also ignore the script when it is a company that I'm really
| interested in and excited by.
|
| I should clean that up. Thanks for the comments.
| llampx wrote:
| I liked your article, you don't need to cover every edge case
| imho. Its on people who want to take inspiration from your
| script whether they apply it like a sledge hammer or a
| goldsmith's tool.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Absolutely true. 3rd party recruiting agencies have very
| different motives than an in-house HR department recruitment.
|
| An easy tell-tale sign is that they withhold the name of the
| company until they get you on the phone. They have a contract
| saying once you're in direct contact with the recruiter, you
| are in their pipeline and they get rights to bill a portion of
| your contract.
|
| 3rd party agencies are incentivized to get you the most amount
| of money they can, so they can skim off the top. They are
| highly motivated to move you through and get you signed as
| quickly as possible, qualified or not.
|
| In house recruiting doesn't have this constant need to move
| candidates, and will be fast or slow depending on the needs
| within the company.
| lifeplusplus wrote:
| Not sure how this got upvoted
| jedberg wrote:
| A great tip I heard was to put something at the top of your
| LinkedIn profile like "If you're messaging me about a job
| opening, please tell me your favorite song at the top of your
| message".
|
| That way you can throw away any message that doesn't start with
| the answer because you know it was a bulk mail and they didn't
| actually read your profile.
| rendall wrote:
| I dunno. I've been a SWE for almost 20 years now, and I just got
| a recruitment email for "Senior Manager of Partner Relations".
| I'm honestly not sure what that even is, but it's definitely not
| code monkey. Email included all kindsa reassurances, which, even
| if I were in the field of "Partner Relations", would make me
| pretty nervous:
|
| We do not conduct fake interviews
|
| We will not ask you for references unless you are being
| considered for a job
|
| We will give you feedback the moment we get it from our customer
|
| etc.
|
| Do I really have to "not ignore" this recruiter?
| dokka wrote:
| I also strongly disagree. All the jobs I've taken at the advice
| of a recruiter were the worst jobs I've ever had. Even if the job
| matched everything on my checklist and I was able to visit the
| company and talk to the employees before signing on, it was still
| a terrible place to work. Why? Because it was in everyone's best
| interest to hide how miserable the job actually was. And yes, the
| salary was higer, but the jobs didn't last. The longest I was
| able to tolerate these jobs was about 2 years each. Which didn't
| look very good on my resume. Switching jobs every 2 years is
| probably ok for some, but I wouldn't hire anyone that has a
| consistent record of that. My advice is to find places that you
| would want to work and apply there on your own.
| yupper32 wrote:
| I ignore all recruiters for a few reasons:
|
| 1. It's not like they give up. I've been receiving the same
| emails from the same firms for years and years.
|
| 2. You can't just respond. The few times I've responded years ago
| meant that they follow up at an even more frequent pace, even
| when I made it clear I wasn't interested. Sometimes calling me
| after I said no!
|
| 3. It's clear very few of them actually read my profile.
|
| 4. Very few are upfront with compensation.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Counterpoint: Always ignore recruiters.
| [deleted]
| bravetraveler wrote:
| I ignore recruiters all the time lol.
|
| I haven't had issues with finding good paying work - history,
| references, and a good bit of research in the places where I
| apply has served me well /shrug
| rr808 wrote:
| Does anyone know what the salary range is now though? It seems
| pretty random. Levels.fyi has a lot of very high numbers. Blind
| has crazy high numbers. I'm not sure if people are lying or
| including RSUs that have gone up 10x.
|
| Most experienced people in HCOL areas still earning 150k-200k
| max. When I talk to a recruited and ask for 300k often they'll
| say its possible but dont say if you have to be a superstar to
| get that. Meta seems paying 500k+ often and random big tech cos
| are all over the place.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I'm not replying to the guy who wants me to move to Tampa for "up
| to $60K" as a PHP developer. (Nothing against Tampa or PHP. I'm
| just not moving there for that.)
|
| But occasionally I'll get an email like:
|
| "Hi! I saw from your LinkedIn that you used to do X, but now
| you're doing Y. That's an interesting progression! I'm working
| with a company who needs people with experience in X who'd rather
| be doing Y, because they'd like to be on Y. I also see that
| you're interested in Z, and you'd be reporting to our CTO who
| wrote a book about Z. Want to hear more?"
|
| I'm not looking, but I send them a nice reply and remember their
| names. If I _were_ looking, that's the kind of recruiter I'd want
| to talk to.
| ghostoftiber wrote:
| I like forcing recruiters to voicemail. It's the same for email.
| This doesn't mean I am ignoring them but it does give me a way to
| filter who I even reply to. If they send me a badly written, very
| generic email for something like Helpdesk Level 1, something I'm
| not even doing or isn't on my resume, or CEO of Company X for
| $10/hr, I don't even reply. The voicemail works the same way - if
| they can't seem to render a sentence, be topical, or sound
| conversant in the local language, I just delete it.
|
| If it sounds remotely interesting, I might send them an email
| back. The exception is AWS/Azure/Google which is heavily
| recruiting for TAMs and they're having a heck of a time filling
| the seats and keeping them filled. If they're
| $MAJOR_CLOUD_PROVIDER I always ask them if its for a TAM or
| similar role up front.
|
| I have a small blacklist of companies too - folks I know who are
| going to go through the entire interview process and it doesn't
| matter whats said because they're going to lowball the crap out
| of people. I don't want to work for bottom-feeders.
|
| The "good offers" I get typically come from someone who has seen
| an open source contribution from me, or someone I know from
| consulting. If you find yourself jammed up in your career and you
| can't find that next lillypad, try consulting to build up your
| connections. It's a good way to get the inside story at
| companies, and also if you find a company you really like, it's
| very possible to arrange something so that they hire you on some
| split between your consulting rate and your pay rate so you and
| them win. Check your employment contract first, local laws, etc.
| Check my profile for an email to send your resume to if you want
| to chat.
| mv4 wrote:
| Horrible email response: long-winded, cringe-inducing, poorly
| structured.
|
| Just state clearly what kind of information you need in order to
| continue the conversation (or not). Even a simple "what's the pay
| like" would be more effective.
| honkycat wrote:
| Two years ago I quit my job, then covid kicked off and I was out
| of work for 6 months.
|
| During that time I was relying on recruiters to hunt down leads
| for me.
|
| Nothing was coming up! They kept trying to feed me full-stack and
| front-end roles, and I kept saying no thank you.
|
| Then, I just started sending out my own resumes. And I instantly
| got more callbacks in the MONTHS I spent with recruiters.
|
| I have a few suspicions:
|
| 1. The recruiters present themselves as having a "relationship"
| with companies, but they actually don't, they are just
| bullshitting you.
|
| 2. The jobs people actually want end up getting filled, so if you
| end up with a recruiter, you are going to be ending up with
| bottom-tier opportunities.
| caffeine wrote:
| I've been doing this for years. It's good advice.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| >> If you respond, does that mean you're being disloyal to your
| current employer?
|
| Is it a thing? Am I Sir Worker of Devs I?
| vmception wrote:
| How could anyone come to this contrarian conclusion, even after
| reading the article it is baffling.
|
| There is a time and place for in-house recruiters and third party
| recruiters. This article does not identify them and obsessively
| takes the contrarian view with no supporting rationale for doing
| so.
| alexc05 wrote:
| Hey! Thanks for your feedback. I would love to try and
| understand what you're saying but I'm struggling a little.
|
| Can you explain what you mean by "There is a time and place for
| in-house recruiters and third party recruiters." what is that
| time and place?
|
| I honestly tried to be really nuanced (but clearly failed a
| little, thanks for that data point).
|
| I think it does speak to the fact that I have seen 20 years of
| the prevailing narrative that there is zero value to recruiters
| and this realization was, to me, pretty mind-blowing.
|
| I appreciate that "never" is a word that lacks nuance, maybe
| that was a little too clickbait of me.
|
| Sorry for that.
|
| Thanks again for the feedback.
| vmception wrote:
| I like third party recruiters because I like to use them
| strategically. I know how they are compensated and they learn
| what I want to do, so I could get raises every 15-18 months
| by switching companies that they placed me at and they could
| get paid multiple times because turns out I'm a reliable
| employee!
|
| We knew to ignore each other for 15 months. It was a good
| symbiotic relationship. Sometimes they knew I wanted side
| gigs and would hook me up with the companies that "needed
| something yesterday!" while they knew I was employed at one
| of their client companies. sometimes the recruiter hired me
| on their payroll directly instead of letting me be a
| contractor with their clients. it was a fun time for some
| time.
|
| This has almost nothing to do with random outreach from them
| on linkedin. It is barely the same topic. But thats what I
| used them for.
|
| In-house recruiters are distinctly different animals with a
| couple of overlapping daily tasks and the same name, but the
| way to use them is very different. A company with one of
| those wouldn't be using third party recruiters and thats
| fine, in house recruiters can somewhat bat for you in a
| unique and more holistic way but they are still just
| gatekeepers you want to get passed so you can talk technical
| stuff with hiring managers.
| Kalium wrote:
| I wouldn't go so far as to say _zero_ value, but I would say
| that engaging with third-party recruiters is generally an
| activity with a negative expected value. Generally they don
| 't actually have or aren't willing to share the incredibly
| useful real and direct insights you wisely point to.
|
| Personally, I've found that high quality messages from
| recruiters are usually painfully obvious. They lead with the
| name of the company and show evidence that the recruiter read
| my profile. These are so rare that I completely skip any kind
| of bot-ish response to handle them.
|
| Most of the responses I can expect to the kind,
| compassionate, empathetic script you've so helpfully provided
| will not contain all three data points requested. At best, we
| can expect to get a JD and maybe a company name. Comp is
| usually withheld and the cycle goes around again.
|
| Treating the recruiter-spammers as humans, unfortunately,
| does not really seem to produce the results we would all love
| it to. It mostly seems to be treated as proof that the
| spammer has hooked a fish and just has to reel them in.
| jugg1es wrote:
| My problem with responding to recruiters - especially FAANG - is
| that once you start a conversation it's hard to stop. I find it
| very hard to leave if I'm in the middle of a big project.
| pizza234 wrote:
| I give an extremely simple answer, where I state that in the
| present, for $real_reason, I'm not looking for other
| opportunities, but in the future, I may. It worked!
|
| I actually spend a little bit of effort to filter out (block)
| incompetent recruiters, but that's all.
| stakkur wrote:
| I have to say--none of this advice would be actionable in all my
| previous experiences with recruiters.
|
| The truest statement is the one the author makes up front:
| >Recruiters are just cold calling
|
| More accurately, they're contacting a _lot_ of people who 's
| profile contains their search keywords. _No recruiter is
| contacting only you for a req they 're trying to fill_.
| lizknope wrote:
| A lot of recruiters won't list the company that they are
| recruiting for. I assume this is because you could just apply to
| the company directly and they wouldn't get their fee.
|
| One time I asked the company who they were recruiting for. They
| told me the company name and I replied with "I already work
| there."
|
| This was on LinkedIn where my current employer is on my page and
| anyone can see it.
| tudorconstantin wrote:
| I loved the article. I worked in sales for ~2 years before
| starting my career as a software engineer +15 years ago, so
| knowing how downputting rejections are, I try to treat all the
| salespeople as human beings, so I try to respond to all of them.
| My strategy is to make them refusing me, by requiring "only" a
| +30% i increase.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| A recruiter got me my first job a decade ago when I was fresh out
| of college and my internship place didn't hire me and I was
| panicking to find something as I didn't have a backup plan. He
| helped me interview at multiple places until he found one for me
| (the pay sucked but it was a job). So yeah, they're annoying, but
| I do understand their place.
| Spinnaker_ wrote:
| I also recommend a response to every recruiter, but you don't
| need to explain your privilege, you don't need to suck up to
| them, and you don't need to justify your actions.
|
| "Hey ____. Before we move forward, can you provide me with the
| company name, a job description, and the expected compensation.
| Regards"
| wnolens wrote:
| This is what I do. That email in OP is gross.
|
| "Hi, thanks for the message. I would appreciate as much detail
| as you can via message. Interested in location, compensation,
| and what specific problems they need help solving. Thanks!"
|
| I don't take a call unless the work description is specific
| enough. I don't want to work on your "backend". If asked, I
| tell them my comp expectation is min +50k over what I currently
| make. And I sure as hell am not moving to the bay area.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I don't like to ignore recruiters, but it's hard to answer them
| correctly. I'm always looking for a nice way to articulate "I'm
| comfortable with my current job, but interested in exploring
| whether I'm being compensated fairly. I don't want to slam any
| doors. But, I am also not up for the hazing session of grinding
| leetcode, filling out online forms, doing take-home tests,
| phone screens, and 5 rounds of interviews, just to find out at
| the end of it all what my current market value is."
| jeremywho wrote:
| Yes, his response template is way too verbose.
| Kalium wrote:
| > "Hey ____. Before we move forward, can you provide me with
| the company name, a job description, and the expected
| compensation. Regards"
|
| I've found that this makes 80-90% of recruiters go completely
| silent. For some reason, asking for this basic information
| scares off the vast majority of recruiters.
|
| I'm genuinely unsure what I - or they - get out of dragging
| this out into a screenful of blah blah blah.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| That hasn't been my experience. I always get the salary
| range, equity package, and what stage/growth the company is
| at currently and where they want to take things. All in the
| first 30 minute call.
| Kalium wrote:
| I've tried a fair number of those calls. You might be
| surprised by how many recruiters don't really have salary
| range or meaningful equity details (preferences, shares
| outstanding, etc.) but _really_ want me to be excited for
| the great opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a
| rapidly growing business.
|
| To my eyes, thirty minutes is a pretty expensive way to
| find out if a position is in line with my comp and the
| company one I want to work for. It could just as easily be
| handled in thirty seconds.
|
| Last month I had a quick 20-minute call with a recruiter
| who couldn't tell me anything about the company or the
| position that I hadn't found in thirty seconds of
| searching. This is not an unusual experience,
| unfortunately. The only explanation for that call I can
| find is that the recruiter sincerely expected to impress me
| with a phone sales approach.
| joezydeco wrote:
| They go silent, or they also give a canned response about
| being competitive in the market when it comes to comp
| (without naming a number).
|
| If they do name a number and you reply it's too low, they
| again go into a canned response of "we're willing to reach
| (++x) for the right candidate", which is just as much
| bullshit as before. You'll complete an interview cycle and
| get the lowball offer of (original x).
|
| TLDR they'll lie about comp and never completely answer you.
| Kalium wrote:
| Sometimes I say something like "I'm glad to hear you're
| competitive! I'm currently being offered
| $REAL_BIG_COMPANY_NUMBER, so I look forward to our
| conversation." Generally this ends the conversation.
| lbriner wrote:
| One of the most common reasons is simply that they don't want
| you to go direct to the company in question and bypass their
| commission. If they give you too much, it is very easy to do
| and many companies will recruit directly and the recruiter
| would have no legal basis to do anything about that.
|
| On the other hand, because of commission, it is in the
| recruiter's interest to get you as much money as possible so
| you might get a better offer via them than you would if you
| went direct.
| joezydeco wrote:
| 9 times out of 10 the job description you get from the
| recruiter is a lazy cut-and-paste from the actual company's
| input.
|
| It's never anonymized and simply pasting it into Google
| will almost always get you a lead on the hiring company.
|
| Another lead is if they give you the company location.
| There is only one company on the planet, for example, that
| has R&D offices in both Mossvile and Aurora, Illinois.
| bengy5959 wrote:
| Also 9 times out of 10 its a bait and switch for a
| different company. Whenever I've worked with these
| recruiters they always "see whats a good fit" with my
| resume and its never the company that was in the job
| description.
| ornornor wrote:
| > it is in the recruiter's interest to get you as much
| money as possible so you might get a better offer via them
|
| Up to a point. They get a fraction of the marginal increase
| in salary, and they'd much sooner "close the sale" than
| risking having someone else fill the job to try and get an
| extra 500$ commission.
|
| It's the same story with real estate agents: selling your
| house for an extra 20k might be a lot to you but to the
| agent it's an extra 400$ in commission (exact percentage
| varies). In other words, it's hardly worth risking the
| seller losing interest or working an extra 2-3 weeks for so
| little.
| pishpash wrote:
| You can split the extra margin 50/50 so your motivations
| are exactly equal.
| wnevets wrote:
| > it is in the recruiter's interest to get you as much
| money as possible so you might get a better offer via them
| than you would if you went direct.
|
| Unlikely. Its way better for the recruiter to focus on the
| quantity of hires rather than trying to increase the
| salaries of a smaller number of them. It takes way more
| work and makes them less money to help increase your salary
| by 20% than just finding another role and hire.
| mcrider wrote:
| I think the _one_ time I responded to a recruiter and went
| through the process was because they told me the company up
| front. Unless its an internal recruiter, I never get that
| info. I was interested in the company and I figured they
| could help speed me through the process (which I believe
| was true). I didn 't take the job but I appreciated this
| person not BSing me.
| Kalium wrote:
| I understand their fear of being cut out.
|
| I want them to understand that I need to know up-front if
| the position is interesting enough to be worth investing my
| time in at all. I _could_ sacrifice my time and energy to
| assuage their fears, but every time I 've done that in the
| past ten years there has been zero return on investment.
|
| A reader might, at this point, optimistically point out
| that the next recruiter could be different. This reader
| would be correct. That could indeed be the case! Yet every
| time I wind up deciding to try the optimistic approach I
| wind up on a phonecall in which I learn that the company
| isn't someone I want to work for, the JD isn't one I
| actually want to work on, the comp isn't nearly enough, or
| some combination thereof. Generally the comp is so far off
| it has no change to even be negotiated to something I would
| consider. Often they try to sell me on a 40%-60% pay cut,
| because a slice of that is worth a lot to them (it's
| happened twice this month).
|
| At this point I'm quite tired of paying optimism's price to
| assuage the fears of recruiters. The kindness is not
| returned. I understand others might choose differently.
| seneca wrote:
| > On the other hand, because of commission, it is in the
| recruiter's interest to get you as much money as possible
| so you might get a better offer via them than you would if
| you went direct.
|
| This isn't my experience at all, having worked with
| recruiters both as a hirer and hiree. Recruiters typically
| are looking to close as many positions as possible, making
| money on volume. Their incentives are to spend as little
| time as they can getting candidates just enough so they say
| yes.
|
| They typically are paid a percentage of a candidates first
| year salary. At first glance this might seem to mean
| they're motivated to get you as much as possible. In
| reality it means that the effort to get an extra $20k,
| which might make a big difference for the candidate, only
| results in an extra e.g. $2000 for them. They're not going
| to spend time on that that could be spent on closing
| another candidate, and getting another full commission, if
| they think the candidate will accept either way.
|
| The money a recruiter is paid also often comes from the
| same budget a potential signing bonus would. The fact that
| they take 10% of the first year salary makes companies less
| forthcoming with extra money for the candidate.
| datavirtue wrote:
| A lot of the recruiters have different businesses. Some
| may be recruiting for direct hire but alot of them retain
| them as employees as they contract for six months or
| however long...sometimes years..for an hourly rate. They
| pocket the difference over what is paid to the engineer.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Yep, at least tell me who your recruiting for. I have a list of
| companies I don't care to work for, so let's not waist time on
| those.
|
| A number of recruiters are also just bad at their job. I worked
| as a .Net developer 12 years ago, but most recruiters
| apparently aren't smart enough to figure out that not only is
| my knowledge horrible out of date, it might also not interest
| me anymore.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| Yep, short and sweet. If they can't answer that then they
| aren't worth your time.
|
| Works most of the time for me.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Or just a canned, "Thanks for getting in touch, but I'm not
| looking for a change right now."
| dewey wrote:
| If it's just that you might as well just ignore it and not
| cause any additional noise.
| derwiki wrote:
| Not GP but I can't shake that it feels rude, even if
| expected.
|
| But more practically: if I decline after the first, I don't
| get the other 4 emails they have queued up for me
| wccrawford wrote:
| If they cold-contact you, it is _not_ rude to simply
| ignore them.
|
| If you have an existing relationship with them, then it
| could be considered rude, but it would depend on your
| relationship.
| taormina wrote:
| I can tell Amazon isn't banging down your door.
| Seriously, it's insane how no one at Amazon Recruiting
| talks to anyone else in Amazon Recruiting.
| weeblewobble wrote:
| Amazon is getting ridiculous. I get an email from them
| almost every day
| delecti wrote:
| I've started getting very firm with them. I respond to
| each email with "no thank you, also stop contacting me,
| also here's the last person I asked to stop contacting
| me, but who didn't." We'll see how long it works, if at
| all, but after 3 separate Amazon recruiters contacted me
| last month I was fed up.
| muh_gradle wrote:
| They're all cold emailing you with a canned email. It's
| about as close to automated as possible.
| OJFord wrote:
| I replied to a first follow up (~'I don't think I'm a
| good fit', nevermind anything else) this morning as it
| happens. Almost always ignore; took one as far as
| interview a few years ago, which I never heard back from
| (no result/feedback) until a week or so ago! But I might
| make that a policy, if they 'just check in' after the
| first email then may as well try to head it off there I
| suppose.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| This is what I'm doing so far. I typically answer stating how I
| would like to work and hint my conditions and let them know
| that I'm happy to follow up if they see a fit.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| It's amazing how these basic questions are often like
| kryptonite to these people.
|
| Protip: If you want senior people to respond, you should
| probably include that information up front.
|
| I've done several interviews at places only to get to the stage
| we're talking money and suddenly it becomes clear they were
| expecting to pay about a third to half of what I currently make
| for someone in a senior position. Each time I think it could
| genuinely save a lot of time and effort (and thus money) by
| just being up front about that stuff.
| lxe wrote:
| I only reply to recruiters from companies that I'm actually
| really interested in (but not currently looking to move), or
| places where my former colleagues work.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| Like most things in life, 90% of everything is crap. That goes
| double for recruiters. I've worked with only two competent
| recruiters in my very long career, who have, at most, gotten me a
| low double-digit raise at best. I've had one recruiter royally
| screw up an offer to the point the company rescinded, and I've
| had another recruiter use coercion on me to not work at SONY for
| 20% more than the other company was offering. But as only a
| single data point, I can quite emphatically say no recruiter has
| ever doubled my money for me.
|
| I will also say that most recruiter outreach, even in this hot
| market, is absolutely lousy, and the compensation on offer is
| below what I am currently earning at a company I am exceptionally
| happy with doing work I love, and I don't consider myself to be
| overly compensated.
|
| Most recruiters that do any outreach immediately ghost me when I
| ask about compensation range, and if compensation range is
| mentioned, it has yet to be more than what I currently make. Once
| or twice in the past three months I've had an "upto $X for the
| right candidate" where $X is only 10% more than what I am
| currently making, so it is highly unlikely I will get that upper
| bound.
|
| If I responded to every recruiter that reached out to me via
| email and LinkedIn I'd spend many more hours per day wasting my
| time than I would care to think about. And most recruiters that
| reach out to me these days are of the exceptionally low quality
| churn'n'burn variety.
|
| I currently have three recruiter messages open on LinkedIn, one
| for an animator with 2+ years of experience, another for someone
| wanting a mid-level front-end web developer for an AR
| application, and another for a "senior" Java programmer. I don't
| do any of those things, didn't even look at my profile or C.V.
| Just a scattershot approach, which you would think on LinkedIn,
| with its targetted InMails, it wouldn't be the case. But here we
| are.
|
| Of the one recruiter out of the three who didn't immediately
| ghost when asked about compensation (always my first question),
| the upper bound is $80K below what I currently make, and again, I
| don't consider myself well compensated.
|
| My recommendation is never waste your time with any recruiter,
| but if you must, expend it on those that actually work for the
| company they are hiring for.
| eez0 wrote:
| There is no one better than yourself to get what you're looking
| for, so instead of relying in a third party to give you the edge,
| make sure you're already on the top of the wave.
|
| I never work with external recruiters (staffing agencies)I have
| made the exception three times, and all of them ended with a poor
| experience, basically repeating the same information over and
| over again between them and the people from the actual company.
| atum47 wrote:
| Maybe once you're a respected programmer with some solid
| companies on your resumee recruiters maybe nice to you. Fresh out
| of college, like I was a few years back, recruiters really don't
| care about you. They spam you likedin inbox and you email with
| generic messages to see if anyone bites. Back in my day they went
| as far as sending me whatsapp messages - the funny thing is -
| they don't even bother to properly answer you.
|
| I was coming back from the south of the country to my city, a
| long drive, and I received a whatsapp message from a recruiter
| telling me about an opportunity, since I was fresh out of college
| looking for a job, I stopped the car to talk to them, only to
| find out they won't respond you right away. I only got a answer
| from this person like 3 days later.
| alexc05 wrote:
| That's baked into the assumption of the script though. If your
| response is a copy and paste, who cares about the ones that
| ghost you after one message? Doesn't matter because the cost of
| interaction was quite low.
|
| If they send the ball back after your initial response THEN you
| know you can open a conversation up until that point, just
| assume it is spam and you're spamming them back.
| throckmortra wrote:
| * no 3rd party recruiters * won't respond if compensation isn't
| posted up front
|
| My simple rules of engagement
| Ekaros wrote:
| To me it's pretty clear that I really shouldn't bother with ones
| that have position I'm not clearly interested in or isn't line
| with my own career. These are pretty clearly not desirable
| positions. So why even follow up with that spam.
| andrew_ wrote:
| I run a small agency in addition to my full-time gig. Every time
| a recruiter sends me a message I respond with a script that
| includes criteria for work that I'll do, work that I won't do,
| and interview limitations. I also include an agency hourly rate
| which makes most of them run for the hills. Every great once in a
| while I'll get a short-term contract out of it.
|
| The lone full-time contract I took on came about from recruiter
| contact, but he wasn't one of those keyword carpet bombing mooks.
| I've only ever landed one full-time job without a referral in 20
| years in the industry. Referrals and niche market sites (e.g.
| AngelList) are the way to go.
| throwingawayyou wrote:
| I've gone back and forth on this issue. The bottom line, some
| recruiters help and can get your resume into the right hands.
| Aka, not on the shit heap.
| JuanitaYoung wrote:
| Even a handyman can have a good resume. A friend of mine is a
| handyman and he needed a resume, they wouldn't hire him without
| it. He needed a resume for part time work
| https://resumeedge.com/blog/how-to-write-a-resume-for-a-part...,
| but he didn't know how to do it himself. He got help from experts
| and the resume was successful. Now he was easily hired.
| xutopia wrote:
| I reply gently saying that I have no interest unless it is my
| absolute dream job and describe exactly what that is. They are
| happy to receive a reply even if my demands seem bonkers.
| praptak wrote:
| I am currently at my 4th full time job. Each and every one of
| them I got via someone I knew, even the first one.
|
| I spoke to recruiters but they were pretty useless for getting a
| job.
| duxup wrote:
| My current approach:
|
| I don't have time ... the volume of messages is too high, and the
| amount of 'legitimate' inquiries are too low. And the odds of
| getting ghosted by the recruiter too high.
|
| If they're a recruiter from a company that I know and they WORK
| FOR that company, I'll respond.
|
| Having said that I think that is a good article and I really like
| that email.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Is there a decent way to determine that?
|
| I know there are two extremes: (a) recruiter is a regular
| employee of hiring company, vs. (z) recruiter works for an
| unaffiliated placement company.
|
| But i.e. if a recruiter is a temporary contractor with the
| hiring company, they'd still have an email address from that
| company, right?
| macksd wrote:
| I suppose it is possible that a temporary contractor has an
| email address from that company, but I think you can get
| reasonably high signal by looking at their LinkedIn history.
| Switching positions every few months is a red flag. Even if
| they're an independent contractor, longer-term arrangements
| with each client suggest better relationships and better
| commitment to real outcomes.
|
| I see plenty of recruiters who just work for recruiting firms
| and don't hide that fact. Anyone who won't immediately tell
| me who they're recruiting for gets ignored. I'm sure I end up
| talking to the occasional contractor but you can easily
| filter out a lot of obvious low-hanging (and rotten) fruit).
| duxup wrote:
| I find that a lot of people working for a recruiting company
| actually make it clear in their email with the address or
| signature.
|
| To some extent a contractor who working for the company I
| know ... I'd still consider that a direct company reaching
| out to me type situation that I'd be more inclined to
| respond.
|
| I don't find that it is hidden all that often, but that's
| just my experience.
| Tehchops wrote:
| I don't know if it needs to be this elaborate. I like the idea
| though.
|
| However...
|
| > Can you send along the company name, a job description and,
| total compensation details for the role you're reaching out in
| reference to?
|
| Should be table stakes. I've started having to walk away from any
| recruiter that insists on a 15 minute call without providing
| these details up front. I wish there was some collective
| awareness around the fact that if someone took a 15 min call with
| every recruiter ping they got, they'd be on the phone 5-8 hours a
| day.
| tgtweak wrote:
| Taking this post to publicly shame a recruiting technique I was
| victim to:
|
| I entertained a reference check call by a recruiting firm (not
| standard but he was a good coworker and it was a serious position
| with a serious company). The interview was normal and standard
| fare except the last question which I found off-putting and
| dishonest: "Are you looking to fill any positions?"
|
| Although I was, it's not the kind of professionalism I expect
| from any company representing mine so I politely declined and
| ended it there. My friend got the job and all's well that ends
| well.
|
| Fast forward 3 months and I get cold called by the same company
| asking me if I would consider a position at XYZ inc (new company,
| unrelated to the first).
|
| I was blown away that a company would think this is acceptable,
| and that information given for reference checks by employees are
| somehow automatically made into leads owned by the recruiting
| company. I escalated to legal at serious company and explained in
| no unclear manner how serious of a matter this was, to which they
| terminated the hiring agreement over.
|
| So just a reminder please vet your recruiting companies before
| you mandate them to represent your company.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Sounds like this was written by someone who has very atypical
| experience with recruiters. Perhaps they haven't had their
| resumes copied into the database that gets bought and sold by
| every recruiting firm in existence.
|
| I could make a full time job out of replying to recruiters,
| because I get probably 100 "opportunities" a day. Most of them
| have never actually read my resume, or they are working off of a
| 10 year old copy that was bought from a data broker. And probably
| 10k other people get that same exact email, so even if I did
| respond, the odds are bad.
|
| If a founder of a company reaches out with a thoughtful message,
| there's a 100% chance I'll respond, even to decline. If an in-
| house recruiter for a copy reaches out, and shows that they
| understand why I'd be a good fit, there's a 100% chance I'll
| look, and a 50% chance I'll respond.
|
| I did get my current role by doing roughly what the article
| states. A recruiter for a startup reached out to me, explaining
| what the role was and why I might be a good fit. I interviewed
| with an intent to only leave for a 50%+ salary bump, and they
| offered 80%+ and equity, so I left. That being said, I ignored
| 99.9% of the other recruiters who reached out.
| jppope wrote:
| Great article, very thoughtful and definitely a useful template/
| concept
| rthomas6 wrote:
| I wonder if it would work to respond with a link to an online
| form to fill out with the job details. This website would also
| contain your resume and descriptions/code for your software
| projects. Kind of a script flip, making potential employers apply
| to you, rather than the other way around. Obviously this will
| only work if you are really good, and know it.
| alexc05 wrote:
| I've heard of that being done. It's actually the thing that
| inspired me to write the note in the first place.
|
| I didn't have time to take on the overhead of setting up a cool
| site / form to go with the response, but I could have the
| response.
|
| The form version of this works as an even bigger filter. Fewer
| leads will come though, more leads will be higher quality.
| habeebtc wrote:
| I make a habit of responding to each and every recruiter.
|
| The ones who send me jobs I am way overqualified for, or simply
| don't pay enough, I tell them my current compensation package
| with the advice to send relevant offers in the future.
|
| Realistically though, every external recruiter I have talked to
| since I got into my current big tech company has been a waste of
| time. They can't usually touch my comp package, and only the
| other big tech companies are likely to be able to (or internal
| recruiters).
| bdamm wrote:
| The only value a recruiter brings to me these days is someone to
| practice light interview skills with when I'm feeling like I need
| a reminder that I can still do it.
| k__ wrote:
| There are few people in my life that wasted as much of my time as
| recruiters.
| muh_gradle wrote:
| The trick is to ignore them. Then they can't waste your time as
| effectively.
| hsn915 wrote:
| If you want a high salary you're not going to get one by going
| through recruiters.
| vultour wrote:
| Maybe in SF, but in London you'll often see recruiters working
| for hedge funds which offer pretty much the best compensation
| around.
| db1234 wrote:
| I just want to say I feel blessed to work in a field where
| companies bombard you with opportunities. I may not reply to
| recruiter emails but don't consider them spam.
| karboosx wrote:
| My idea for recruiters was special website with referral link
| where they could fill out all information I was interested in
| (the fields was required in order to submit the form) and big red
| information that stated: "If your offer will be interesting I
| will contact back on linkedin".
|
| In addition I made small control question, for example: "Whats
| the first letter on my LinkedIn description?".
|
| That way I know I don't talk with a bot and they really read my
| profile.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Possibly, but they left out the possible outcomes of "simply
| refuse to talk salary, or to talk salary in email" and "just lie
| about the salary and/or the job".
| alexc05 wrote:
| I did have that in there at one point. In _my case_ I tend to
| either practice refining my script, or just thank them and walk
| away. It 's in the autoresponse "without that data I'm unable
| to continue further discussions"
|
| You do have to stick to that, but it's IMO pretty clear but
| also concise enough that you don't well on it.
|
| Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts!
| mmastrac wrote:
| As others on this thread have pointed out - avoid unaffiliated
| recruiters, talk to affiliated/salaried recruiters from a
| company.
| dschuetz wrote:
| Interestingly, I have employed a similar sentiment so far,
| without knowing that it might be actually a good thing. I am
| trying to give at least one short and comprehensive answer that:
| I am not looking for new challenges, thanks though. Exceptions
| might apply to especially annoying recruiters who just don't care
| and ignore my wishes and send me useless messages regardless.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I don't ignore them, I give their email or voice mail a quick
| perusal. Maybe 1 in 4 pass that I'll reach back out to them.
| Things I look for
|
| 1. did they name someone/some company that I know
|
| 2. Does it look like a form letter
|
| 3. Do they have a "give me all these details" section of the
| email on the 1st email. Instant trash can on that one.
|
| 4. Does it fall under the regime of things I do.
|
| 5. What email address alias/phone number did they have access to.
| civilized wrote:
| Does anyone, recruiter or otherwise, want a screenful of auto-
| response text? I'd cut it down to 2-3 sentences and make it much
| more direct.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Always worth talking to ones with opportunities that seem
| interesting. Those are rare. But if you do and follow up every
| 6mo/year..you can just ping them whenever you're ready to move on
| and you'll have an interview.
| aluminussoma wrote:
| I don't think the recruiter gets 10% of the salary anymore. I
| have seen recent recruiter fees for 20% of the first year base
| salary. People should know that.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| I pretty much always respond to recruiters that seem to have
| understood what I do, even if I'm not looking. They are gold.
|
| I usually ignore the others.
|
| The ones that spam me with positions that are clearly absolutely
| nothing to do with my career, I sometimes respond to asking why
| they think I'm suitable. And that's just for the childish
| pleasure of wasting a bit of their time.
| buttsecks wrote:
| Lol Wut?
|
| You should always respond to recruiters at your OWN discretion.
| Use 3 digital condoms (throwaway numbers, etc.), and don't
| continue the Convo if they won't disclose details such as salary.
| Ain't nobody got time for dat.
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