Tell HN: Tech Recruiters have no clue

[TamDenholm]

I detest recruiters with the fiery incandescent white hot burning heat of a nova, but unfortunately I feel like i have to deal with them because I live in Edinburgh but work in London, i dont take part in the local community because i'm not there.

I applied for a 3 month contract position online. I have this recruiter call me and give me the usual bullshit and it gets to the usual "can i send over your CV to them?", I say sure as i always do after they've wasted 15 minutes of my time asking if i know PHP, if i then know LAMP, then asking my if i know Linux, apache and MySQL, then asking me if i know HTML, then CSS and you get the idea. They ask me all these questions even though 1) my CV they are looking at in front of them says so and 2) they got my CV by me sending it on an online ad asking for these specific skills.

So after i've given them permission to send my CV, the woman asks me for 2 technical references, i say to her that if the company likes the look of my CV then i'd be happy to provide references but i dont just hand out peoples details on a whim because i'd hate people to do that to me. She tells me that she cant send my CV without first getting the references. Normally i'd tell her to piss off politely at this point but the daily rate was going through the market rate ceiling and i'm a whore for money.

So i say sure, i'll give you references, i'll go and get permission from them and get back to you. I do this and email her the next day with contact details. She emails back and asks what companies they work for, i tell them they're freelancers that i've done work for. She says that colleagues arent good enough and will need managers i've worked under. I explain they're clients, not colleagues, and that i'm not an employee, i'm a self employed developer with my own company and clients, i dont and have never had a manager, i'm the guy people come to because they're not technical, i take care of everything for them. The position i'm looking for requires me to be the main technical guy there, surely she'd get where i'm coming from. She asked for technical references, thats what i gave her, people who understood and could articulate my technical ability.

But alas no, i've been penalised for not being a corporate drone, i avoid working for large corporations because its soul destroying and i hate bureaucracy. I like working for other freelancers and small agencies, its far more friendly and less political and i dont have to write screeds of bullshit documents when a quick email is good enough.

Anyway, sorry for the rant but this pissed me off today, i really wish i could totally avoid recruiters as when i have found work without them its been orders of magnitude easier and faster, but they know where the good paying gigs are. Someone please disrupt this industry.

tl;dr Recruiters suck and only care about arbitrary bullshit.

[edw519]

...i say to her that if the company likes the look of my CV then i'd be happy to provide references but i dont just hand out peoples details on a whim because i'd hate people to do that to me.

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

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

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

[thomas11]

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

[patio11]

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

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

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

"..."

[tomjen3]

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

So I wouldn't blame the recruiter.

[cynicalkane]

You should have responded in the affirmative, just to see how far the rabbit hole would go.

At least that's what I'd want to do, except I'd probably wimp out.

[koevet]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[KoZeN]

Most of the time, recruiters end up being recruiters just because they failed at everything else.

Ouch. You cut me deep koevet.

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

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

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

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

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

[britman]

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

They're always fishing for people (a major alarm bell should be if they're asking for hiring managers or persons of authority) who they can then spam with offers of services.

[KoZeN]

tl;dr Recruiters suck and only care about arbitrary bullshit.

This statement acurately describes 95% of my colleagues.

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

[TamDenholm]

I have heard of you on HN before actually, a recruiter with moral integrity and a clue, i remembered it because its like finding a unicorn. My respect to you sir.

[koevet]

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

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

[mbubb]

That is really decent of you. I am on the wrong side of the Atlantic to take advantages of your services or else I would ask permission to send on my CV.

All in all I have found my contact with recruiters to be helpful in a few ways. The short semi-technical phone interview is a low pressure way to practice one's spiel. It is a good exercise to explain the tech to someone who doesn't know much about it. Also good practice for the soft questions: "Tell me a little about yourself" "Strengths and Weaknesses...blah, blah" "So why are you looking to leave your current position?"

I have interviewed about 8 times in the last year and have gotten one offer. All but one came through recruiters. In my experience the recruiters put me in a position to get the job. My failures I associate with not quite selling myself - or lack of knowledge in a key area and also with the level of the competition.

It has been a learning process and recruiters have been helpful at points.

I wish sometimes I could get brutal honesty from recruiters/HR. After you have gone through 3 interviews and have the indication that they are considering you - you wonder what went wrong?

It would be great to get such input from the other side. How do recruiters see tech candidates? What are common pitfalls, etc?

[spinlock]

I think recruiters would do a better job if they spent more time reading HN. You probably understand your "product" better than most of your competition ever will.

[papaf]

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

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

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

[rlpb]

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

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

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

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

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

[alexophile]

"When someone asks if you're a god, you say YES"

[leftnode]

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

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

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

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

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

[mikeryan]

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

http://www.wisebread.com/why-you-cant-trust-a-real-estate-ag...

[wccrawford]

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

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

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

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

[illumin8]

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

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

[projectileboy]

I'm with what you're saying, but what I find frustrating is that it seems then fair to say that the recruiter has a professional responsibility to their clients to know something about software in order to effectively screen candidates. But 99% of recruiters I've ever dealt with don't even pretend to make an effort.

Interestingly, most IT managers hate recruiters as much or more than I do, but - like me - they're at the mercy of their corporations' "preferred vendor lists".

[ig1]

I agree the recruiter should be filtering candidates before submitting them; I disagree that it should be by using references.

There's an inherent conflict of interest for recruiters in handling references who are also potential leads, hence it's a situation that they should avoid placing themselves in. If they're going to do it at the very least it should be done by an outside agency.

[anthonyb]

If the recruiting company sends you utter crap and wastes your time, why put up with it? Would you do the same for a hosting company who had crappy servers and didn't know PHP from Python? Fire them, and hard.

[Dylanlacey]

Then perhaps she should have educated the clients on the desirability of her client, rather then just kowtow. That's what she's there for, after all.

[dcminter]

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

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

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

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

[briandon]

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

[hcho]

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

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

[gjm11]

Therefore, TamDenholm should get back to those people and warn them that this recruiter is not likely to do a good job for them.

[yakisoft]

That is exactly why she was asking for references and why you shouldn't give them to a recruiter, only to the employer.

[praptak]

This is probable. If I ever give a reference to a recruiter, I will also warn the reference of this possibility, so as to make it harder for the recruiter to pull this trick.

[dlnovell]

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

[abailin]

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

[moonwalker]

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

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

[adaml_623]

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

[revorad]

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

[swombat]

Why are you going through recruiters?

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

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

[jrockway]

There are two reasons to involve recruiters. One, many companies only accept your resume if it comes from a recruiter. If you know someone personally (or online), then you can come in through the back door. But for 99% of companies you want to work for, you don't know anyone to vouch for you. So it's either deal with a recruiter, or leave some doors unopened.

Second, recruiters get paid as a percentage of the salary they get you, and aren't afraid to get you an amount that gets them a good amount. I always hate to play hardball (effective as it is) and talk about how much money I want, but recruiters love doing that it. It's their job. And, if they are a jackass about it, you just say (after you start work) "oh, sorry about him, recruiters, sigh" and keep whatever they negotiated for you. Then you are the good guy, but you get the benefits as if you were the bad guy. :)

FWIW, I doubled my salary by working with a recruiter. And I like the job better! Being a corporate sellout is highly underrated.

[projectileboy]

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

[TamDenholm]

I can get work myself but its only about half as well paid as the jobs i can get from recruiters. I can live on what i make as a freelancer, but i get a much larger injection of cash if i take on an on-site contract. This is the only reason.

[zeraholladay]

The reality of the situation is that if you want to work for a large corporation, then you're stuck playing their games. I've had a recruiter ask for references upfront. They don't always check them, but references are required for their software. Also, the other commenter noted that the recruiter is likely using your references to build a list of contacts. A list of line managers is more valuable to a recruiter than a list of technicians since the line managers make hiring decisions and serve as contacts for additional sales.

[charleso]

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

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

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

[Tycho]

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

[barnaby]

Some extra information to consider:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ig1]

My startup is working on fixing this problem :-)

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

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

[gallerytungsten]

When faced with such nonsense, hack the system.

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

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

[danenania]

Vandelay Industries!