[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?

[KoZeN]

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

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

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

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

[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.

[dasil003]

As tempting as it is to think they just need a clue, maybe the reality is that HN readers tend to already have jobs or own their own businesses, and they aren't as good a target for recruitment which is more of a numbers game.