Ask HN: Do you know any competent recruiter?

[oriolgg]

I'm sure that, like me, you have many stories of how a recruiter wasted your time, but this is not one of those threads :P

This time I'm looking for the other ones. The only time I had a great experience with a recruiter was in Japan a year ago, with an indie guy working in his own small niche agency. First he took his time to understand my situation and needs, and then matched me with positions that made perfect sense with my experience and professional goals at the time.

I think a competent recruiter can actually very useful when looking for a new job, but most of them are useless.

Do you know any competent, indie/small firm recruiter? Why do you think she/he is competent?

[auslegung]

Jordan Zmick. Not sure why he is competent, but here’s the first paragraph of the unsolicited LinkedIn message he sent me:

> Hi _____ - Your profile came up in my search today for a Sr. Software Developer (100% remote) opportunity with HubTran where your tech stack at _______ matches well with the experience we are looking to add to the team (we have 5 openings).

He then goes on to list the technologies we use at work, and the ones HubTran uses, and they actually match! He says they need several functional programmers, of which I am one. So he did his homework, and that was impressive.

[oriolgg]

Your experience matches mine, doing their homework and knowing that what they offer you matches your skills is great. This seems common sense but it's usually not like that. Thanks for sharing!

[janbernhart]

What region of the world are you interested in? Most competent recruiters will only really know the market in a specific region.

[oriolgg]

Good point, being region-specific is a good way to niche down to really know your market.

I am personally interested in US and western Europe, but I'm also curious about others' experiences with competent recruiters around the world.