Ask HN: What things that tech recruiters do, annoy you the most as an engineer?

[pejrich]

For me it's definitely their desire for everything to be a call. If I'm even remotely interested, that'll be a 30mins call to setup. I really only have 3 basic things I want to know to see if it's even worth perusing: Salary range, tech stack, team size. And when you ask them about those things: "Oh, well cover all the on the call".

[nindalf]

There’s a lot of people in here complaining about various things recruiters do. Let me give a different perspective. For the first couple of years of my career, recruiters just ignored me. It was like I simply didn’t exist. I hadn’t studied computer science and didn’t work at a well known company. Meanwhile, my coworkers with CS degrees constantly complained about having to bat away recruiters offering them crazy money.

It’s different now. I worked at a well known company for a few years and get plenty of recruiter emails. Many of them are for positions I’m not interested in. Many of them use tactics I’d prefer they didn’t. But I don’t complain because the only thing worse than receiving these emails is not receiving them.

[muzani]

This reminds me of how excited I used to be to get spam emails. I'm a lot happier to get recruiter spam than I was before getting them. It is awfully tempting to be a dick and treat them poorly, but I rather entertain the calls. Most are very polite too and I'm happy to tell them my current salary and what I don't like about my current job; usually they offer some other career advice from their perspective like what other companies are offering.

[the_only_law]

A lot of what I hear about recruiters on the internet is foreign to me. I’ve never once in my life had a FAANG recruiter reach out to me. Most recruiters I’ve had reach out to me either clearly never looked at my resume, can’t figure out what they’re hiring for, or can barely speak English. Most of them hire for underpaid enterprise or body shop roles. Meanwhile I hear people talk about how Facebook or Amazon recruiters are contacting them all the time despite having little experience and no previous FAANGs on their resume.

[sleavey]

Stupid question, but how are they finding you now? LinkedIn?

[dave_sid]

I completely agree. If getting emails from a recruiter is your biggest problem then you’re doing just fine.

[onion2k]

I strongly disagree. If I want to move on from my current role then I'll reach out to recruiters. They don't need to come to me first.

[jacksonkmarley]

So you're saying the things they do that annoy you are: ignoring you until after you got a good job because you didn't have a CS degree, using devious tactics, and spamming you. And having so much power to affect your career that you don't even like to admit when they annoy you.

[rendall]

I don't mind tech recruiters as a class.

I despise the rare ones who dangle a job they do not actually have in order to get my information in their database.

These always seem to be the same ones who gaslight and neg: e.g. "We're looking for people who know what they're doing" and such. Not sure what they accomplish with that, but conversation is over.

That's comparatively rare, though. Most are just decent people, making a living connecting people who want a job with people wanting to hire.

Ghosting is annoying, but I've had good luck asking them in advance not to do that. "Tell me what's going on, even if it's nothing, or bad news"

However, I'm of a mind these days that full-time, salaried jobs are rarely the best option. Freelancing, bootstrapping, or founding are all usually better given today's market.

Finally, be unfailingly polite and kind to recruiters, and to everyone, really, even if they don't have anything you want, unless and until they give you a specific reason not to be (eg gaslight, neg). How you treat people is a reflection of your personal character. Be on the side of good.

[pschuegr]

It's very refreshing to see someone suggest you do a good thing because it's good and not for some transactional reason like "you may need their support someday" or "word gets around that you're a dick".

[AnimalMuppet]

> Finally, be unfailingly polite and kind to recruiters, and to everyone, really, even if they don't have anything you want, unless and until they give you a specific reason not to be (eg gaslight, neg). How you treat people is a reflection of your personal character. Be on the side of good.

Yes, and also because it's in your own self interest. That recruiter who has a job that you're not interested in? The next job they have may be a perfect fit. But if you're a jerk to them about this one, they aren't going to call you with the next one.

Especially, never be rude to an airline gate agent. They can look you right in the eye and tell you that the flight is full. Or, in the exact same circumstances, they can say "Let me upgrade you to first class." They're probably going to go with the first option if they don't like you.

Absolutely, be nice to people because it affects who you turn into, and you eventually have to live with who that is. But also be nice to others because sometimes it helps you.

[hiq]

> However, I'm of a mind these days that full-time, salaried jobs are rarely the best option. Freelancing, bootstrapping, or founding are all usually better given today's market.

Interesting, why do you think that? What has changed?

Naively I would tend to think that the quality of freelancing opportunities and that of full-time jobs are correlated, but your comment imply that they're not. What am I missing?

[mrfusion]

> However, I'm of a mind these days that full-time, salaried jobs are rarely the best option. Freelancing, bootstrapping, or founding are all usually better given today's market.

Sounds interesting. Care to expand on that?

[stevekemp]

Sadly I think the biggest pain I've suffered is from recruiters calling and making every conversation a rambly/chatty/friendly call that doesn't actually give any details.

I've been called by recruiters who won't name the company they're recruiting for, the salary range, and are incapable of actually describing the daily-expections beyond buzzwords.

I've found the best approach for me is to google "sysadmin helsinki", etc, and applying directly to companies. Any time I see an application form that wants facebook/linkedin/github details I just close the window.

Dealing with people (in-house recruiters possible) in the actual company cuts actually allows you to have a decent conversation about expected skillsets, areas that are involved, working hours, on-call schedules, salary, etc.

[71a54xd]

This is because in most cases recruiters chase buzzwords and are not technical in nature at all.

I've had a handful of good experiences with recruiters, this seems to mostly be with recruiters who at one point were engineers or have been hired by FAANG. However, my best experience with a recruiter lead to a job that after about two weeks didn't fit the description of the job at hand. In short, I was under the impression I'd be writing Go and Elixir and within two weeks was writing glue code to hold together a shit-tier ruby app expected to "scale to 9-9's reliability". Other times, I've ascertained I haven't gotten a job after a botched interview and heard "officially" from the recruiter weeks later. Sometimes they're genuinely just idiots or incompetent (which is mostly annoying because it sucks when your time is wasted by someone incompetent). In short, I no longer trust recruiters.

[cerved]

They're not saying the company name because they don't want you going there directly and applying without them getting their hefty bonus

[bartread]

> Any time I see an application form that wants facebook/linkedin/github details I just close the window.

You might be doing yourself a disservice there. It varies by company but I ask our HR team to offer the option of LinkedIn profile as an alternative to uploading a CV/resume in case you have the former but don't have the latter to hand or prepared. It's still a minority but I do see people come through who use their public LinkedIn profile as their CV.

Github is a complete waste of time as a guideline to anything useful. If there was any doubt about that in the past the recent trend I've seen of people setting up separate GitHub accounts for each job they have and keeping their personal account separate has completely removed it. (Sometimes this behaviour is company mandated, but often it's peoples' own choice.)

I've never seen the point at all of asking for other social networks because that stuff is none of my business.

[Hnrobert42]

I am on the other side of this. As a hiring manager using recruiters, I am annoyed by:

- lack of diversity in candidates. (not just virtue signaling. if all I see are nearly identical resumes, I assume the recruiter is just phoning it in.)

- candidates “just a little out of your price range” who are 30% over the top end of my budget.

- “confidentially” telling me what other offers a candidate has because then I know they are also leaking my offers to my competitors

- telling me every candidate is great

- telling me every candidate is a hot commodity like they are hotels.com

[b9a2cab5]

You aren't getting what you want if nobody in those demographics is choosing to get a degree in CS in college. I choose to believe this is a cultural problem (which is why Nigerians are even more overrepresented relative to U.S. population in higher education than Asians, despite being black [1]), but certainly there are many factors that play into it.

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-10-13/it-isn...

[stuckonempty]

Probably annoying as a hiring manager, but one of the best ways for workers wages to rise is by using competing, “leaked” offers against each other.

This is in effect how you gauge what your talents are worth in the labor market. I’m glad offers get leaked for this reason

[garmaine]

> - “confidentially” telling me what other offers a candidate has because then I know they are also leaking my offers to my competitors

The only problem here is that they're claiming confidentiality which is obviously not true. Workers and their agents should be playing offers off each other.

[lordnacho]

The diversity thing is really hard to do anything about. I think I've seen maybe 10-15 relevant (in the loosest sense: person was a dev of some sort, not a career switcher) CVs from a woman over my entire career. And I did hire three of them, compared to dozens of men and thousands of CVs. Perhaps my estimate is wrong or something, it's hard to keep track of this number, but I do tend to give it an extra good look when it's a woman just because it's so rare.

I think it's the pipeline as well as selection: I work in finance and usually in smaller firms.

[spuz]

> if all I see are nearly identical resumes, I assume the recruiter is just phoning it in.

Could you explain what you mean by this? I don't quite understand the language.

[e38383]

Calls. Everyone wants to talk or even video chat. It’s the most annoying thing, not only by recruiters; everything is a voice/video meeting nowadays instead of mail or text.

[vlfig]

A request for a synchronous form of communication is a request for your time. People should earn it first.

[Booleans]

I just say "please send me the job description" instead of agreeing to a call. If it looks like a good fit then we can arrange a call.

[gedy]

One 3rd party recruiter told me once that this is so they get paid in case the lead bypasses them and applies directly to company. Anyone aware if this is common?

[jopsen]

I'm guessing it's a good way for recruiters to gauge your interest too..

You're not going to take a call from someone you couldn't imagine working for.

[barnaclejive]

Calls++

The initial intro and description can be handled via email or text. If not, well that is a red flag right away.

[austincheney]

Normally recruiters are super excited about their tech stack, framework, and tools. Somehow they are looking for a senior developer to be thrilled by tools. There is no such thing as a senior hammer user or a senior shovel user, so I don’t know why software gets this so blazingly wrong.

Worse is when this becomes a conversation with a hiring manager and they are somehow shocked by your complete lack of total excitement about their framework. Once it becomes clear they are wanting a tool jockey instead of somebody to write software I have already lost complete interest. It might as well be a dead end career telemarketing at that point.

[touristtam]

Once told the recruiting party during an interview that software languages and framework are tools for a job. The interview ended then and there.

[hunglee2]

Reason why recruiters (and any other type of sales person) prefer synchronous vs asynchronous communication is because of 'conversion rate'. Note, this is NOT converSATION rate, this is conversion rate, the opportunity to 'convert' you from being a prospect to an active candidate, now in process.

Asynch is ignorable (which is why they are good for the receiver), but Synch if accepted can become a negotiation (which is good for the sender).

My advice for engineers is: understand what manner of communication you most prefer, state this clearly whereever you have a profile and stick rigidly to this. There is really no reason why a recruiter should have your number, and if they do, no reason for you to answer it if the number is unrecognised

[bartread]

Understand that I'm not singling you out here because I see similar kinds of comments on lots of recruitment related threads on HN, but this comment:

> My advice for engineers is: understand what manner of communication you most prefer, state this clearly whereever you have a profile and stick rigidly to this. There is really no reason why a recruiter should have your number, and if they do, no reason for you to answer it if the number is unrecognised

I understand what you're trying to convey to recruiters here but, and please understand that my intent isn't to be unkind (and certainly not to you specifically because I'm talking about a whole class of comments), what you may not understand is how this comes across and why it is not good advice for other engineers who may read your comment.

It comes across as entitled and demanding, and marks you out as somebody who possibly lacks flexibility, and might be difficult to work with.

You might like to think that you are very special and very talented, and maybe you are, but here's a dose of reality for you: I work for a company that nobody's ever heard of and, even here, we get far more applicants for our engineering roles than we have roles available. Inevitably that means we unfortunately turn down some very special and very talented people because there are simply too many of them in our pipeline to employ them all (much as I might like to).

This in turn means we get to be choosy about who we hire and who we don't. If you come off as maybe a bit difficult to work with, or a bit inflexible, or maybe nursing a sense of entitlement, you're probably not going to get the job. Why? Because we know there's somebody else in the pipeline with the same skills and who is going to be easier and more pleasant to work with. So, at every stage of our selection process we're selecting against those former traits, and for the latter traits.

And, let me state this again, I don't work for a famous company that loads of people want to work at. I've never really worked for a famous company, apart from one multinational retailer on a contract, yet this is the way it's worked at every single one of them and they've never really struggled to hire. (Of course companies moan that it's hard to hire engineers but what I've come to realise is that most of the time what they mean is that it's more effort than they expected or would like - a sort of reverse entitlement, if you like: "well, these people should obviously just fall into our laps.")

We all have our preferences, and I hate talking to recruiters and going through selection processes but, when all's said and done, if you want the job you've got to play the game. I know there are far too many recruiters who appear to have picked up their social skills from the local reptile sanctuary, but (and especially if you want the job) do not be a pain in the ass to the recruiter, whether they're external or in-house.

FOR ADDITIONAL CONTEXT ONLY: I am not a recruiter (I'm very much a programmer at heart), but I do recruit people for my own teams, and in fact I regard building a strong team as possibly my most important responsibility. This is because without that strong team I can't really discharge my other key responsibilities effectively.

[mouzogu]

- Ghosting

- Sending totally unsuitable vacancies

- Refusing to disclose company name

- Refusing to disclose salary

- Not respecting your time

- Fishing for your information without disclosing anything to you

Generally having a kind of condescending, slimy, sales like approach in communication, although this is far less common then it used to be.

[f6v]

> Generally having a kind of condescending, slimy, sales like approach in communication

Gives you an impression they could by selling anything. In the morning - you to the company. After lunch - a house or a used car.

[f6v]

There’s a whole cohort of English recruiters who hire for the EU roles. They wouldn’t name a company or provide any relevant details unless you agree to have a call with them. And when you do, they’ll ask incredibly annoying questions that show how incredibly non-technical these people are. Moreover, they can’t provide you any relevant company details even if you call them, since their only goal is to push you to the next stage and forget about it. I have no idea why this industry is specifically in the UK, but “English recruiter” is something of a meme in the European tech.

[fsloth]

Yes, this. "I have a SECRET client" is the most annoying thing ever. Especially since the client (in my domain) is either immediately recognizable or just irrelevant.

[petesergeant]

England doesn't regulate who can work as a recruiter, and there's a very active and competitive recruitment industry there.

[leovander]

New wave of Amazon recruiters stumble upon my previous application. Each one uses the same cookie cutter email, telling me that they have since updated their hiring process like that of Google, e.g. interview for the company then you'll pick a team. Followed by asking me to tell them when was the last time I interviewed and/or took the programming assessment.

You are reaching out to me because I was in your system, to then ask me when was the last time I interviewed?! Once that batch of recruiters is gone, rinse and repeat for the next wave of recruiters[0].

[0] https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/a511708c-e058-4488-958b-56f7ed5...

[halfdan]

Ugh,.. same with Facebook. They reach out to me every 2-3 months and every time I tell them that I live in Germany and I'm only looking for remote jobs. "Thanks we'll update that in our system"

[onimishra]

As a danish developer, recruiters are not that bad. They will usually start reaching out through LI, and will happily do the first part of the back and forth on text. I usually tell them I’m not interested in switching, but that I'd be happy to know what goes on in the industry. This usually leads to a phone call where I question them about the business, the job and what they have to offer. The one exception is, I usually don’t take the call if it’s a dedicated recruiting company, as they don’t know anything about the company they are trying to recruite me into.

I also lecture them at the end of a call sometimes. One of the more recent calls, they recruiter was looking for someone to fill “an architect position”. I asked him if he knew anything about software, and he conceded that he didn’t and that he was a psych major. I asked him if the people who told him to find an architect had told him what that entailed. They hadn’t. So I broke down three different types of architects there is in software development (code, systems and enterprise) told him he was most likely looking for a systems and what profile they could have and had a general good discussion with him. When I’m done at my current position, I have a good repor with this guys to have him find me an interesting position :)

So advice to recruiters:

1) Know what you have to offer

2) Know what you are actually looking for, even if it’s complicated. If you want to hire experienced people, seem like you know what you are talking about.

3) Proof read you written communication. You main job is to communicate and make a good first impression, but if your outreach mail/message is filled with spelling mistakes or contradictions, I’m not gonna respond.

4) Don’t try to sell me the cat in the hat. With experience come the ability to look right through your babble. If you want people like that, be open and honest. We might cut you some slack if the position is interesting enough to us ;)

[ismayilzadan]

This is very interesting but I think culture is the key factor here as well. In UK, when I tried "to know what is going on in the industry" I was very close to be labelled as time waster.

[tonfreed]

I think my top 5 is

- Sending really unprofessional messages and not even doing the smallest amount of research before talking to me. I've had one call about a Ruby tech lead position this week, nowhere on my publicly available CVs do I even mention Ruby.

- I've got multiple messages from "lol we're so quirky here" type recruiters, all I can think is "silence, brand!". Emojis evoke a very visceral and unpleasant reaction from me, and I'll always forward the messages onto my boss asking him to make sure we never use those recruiters

- I'll say things that amount to "if they're offering less than $x, they can't afford me", and they'll try to haggle. That's incredibly disrespectful IMHO

- Pretending they care about social issues. If they mention anything about workplace activism I get as far away as possible.

- Being too friendly. I'm a potential recruit, not your new best mate.

[yibg]

Clearly not reading my resume and sending me a job that's obvious not a good fit even given a cursory glance.

[avh02]

Or responding to "I'm not interested" with a canned "great! Find a slot on my calendar to talk about the role!"

[dkdbejwi383]

Yeah, this is the biggest annoyance for me. I haven’t used PHP for about 6 years but still get offers for PHP roles.

[halfdan]

Just had one reach out with "I really love your IoT skills".. of which I have none.

[ChristianGeek]

I had a recruiter call me once, and as part of the conversation asked me what I was looking to make. I told him, and he replied that I’d be lucky to make 2/3 of that. I asked him if he had my resume in front of him and he said yes. I told him to delete it. I ended up working with a different recruiter and accepted an offer 20% higher than the number I gave the first one..

[dsomers]

Haha I’ve had this happen multiple time too. They try to convince you that they’re on you side, because if you make more they make more. But really, most of them would rather you take a lower offer than risk the deal not going through at all.

[valbaca]

Here's my recent gripes:

1. Nonsense spam messages. No content about their company or anything that shows they know anything about me. "Your experience at $COMPANY" doesn't count either.

2. Not using the Calendly (https://calendly.com/) link I send them for scheduling and instead trying to have a email chain of "What's your availability like?" "Does 8:30am work for you?" "What's the best # to reach you?" OMFG use the calendar schedule link I sent you at the beginning of our conversation! Also, my # is at the very top of my resume, so you just showed you didn't even glance at it.

3. Having blinders on when looking at a candidate. One thing I run into a lot is recruiters or interviewers trying to pigeon-hole me into some box like "backend Java developer" or "front-end react developer" or "swift iOS developer" I mean it when I say senior full-stack web and app software engineer. Don't try to reduce my experience and skills and scoff at me when I know what my time is worth and what salary I can expect, because I'm already making that much! You want a candidate that can do *everything* but at intern rates? Don't waste my time and don't ever, ever neg me for having standards that reflect my reality.

4. "Why do you want to work for this company?" Because you're hiring and money is a requisite for existence. Give up this whole "passion for the product or tech" nonsense. You sell a service that pipes data; anyone that pretends to be passionate about that is full of it.

[SkipperCat]

It seems like most folks here are not inclined to talk on the phone with recruiters. I think that is a mistake. I get pinged about once every other month by a recruiter in the FinTech space and I usually speak with them on the phone. They are usually senior recruiters who know about the industry. I find out what skills companies are looking for, what salaries they are willing to pay and other tips about hiring practices.

When I am ready to make a switch, I now have a better understanding of what's out there.

Sure, sometimes the calls are a waste of time, but its not like I haven't also wasted at least that much time in a week scrolling on reddit.

I guess what I'm trying say is don't be so dismissive about a conversation. Building a relationship with the folks who are a gateway to new jobs is not a bad thing.

[makeitdouble]

I thik people have issues with professional recruiters, whose whole job is to match candidates to offers.

Compared to a discussion with an HR member who also happen to deal with recruiting it's night and day. The gold standard being of course talking to an actual manager or team member who can explain why they need people, and for what.

Even talking to my own company's HR people felt like a chore in a lot of jobs, and we took a lot of time to get them to understand what we are looking for. It's just not simple, they don't do the same job, and the further the people are from us the harder it is to have efficient recruiting discussions IMO.

[jlokier]

I agree with you, when it's not so often. Having a certain rate of calls is worth it, even if you don't like calls much, and it can even be enjoyable with the subset of recruiters who behave like empathic human beings.

It can become too much when it's several call requests a day, and some of them can become rather pushy, e.g. demanding references up front before you've even applied for something. I don't get many approaches at the moment, but last year the number ramped up to a point where I had to be selective about phone calls.

Part of it is that a 15 minute call isn't just 15 minutes. If you want good outcomes, there's some preparation involved. A bit of research on the company helps. Refreshing what you recall about $X that they mentioned. And just getting into a good frame of mind to have a productive call. Maybe get a nice drink ready. Even finding somewhere quiet to take a call, if you aren't normally in a suitable place. And there's stopping what else you were doing.

Personally I've enjoyed chatting with many recruiters over the last couple of years, and it has led to some pleasant relationships, and a much better understanding of what's realistically out there. It's also been an opportunity for me to share with recruiters things they didn't know but were interested in, mostly technology areas and terminology.

My current role came from taking a long call with a recruiter more than a year earlier about a different role in a different company. I enjoyed the chat, we talked about the industry in general, technology trends, different skill areas, how to manage projects and so on, as they tried to figure out how to pitch me to the company. That one didn't work out. But a year later I came to their mind for a role somewhere else, I remembered them as well so the new call started out well, and the role turned out to be a great fit for me. They also ended up negotiating for me, undoubtedly helped by the chat from a year before, and I'm pleased with how it turned out. As a result of all the positive interactions I ended up enthusiastic about the new job too.

[elcapitan]

Mixing up Java and Javascript in 2021 for one thing.

Though I leave my little Java experience (just some side tasks, no career in it) on the CV as a honey pot that allows me to identify stupid recruiters earlier. If they contact me because of it, I know they're just chasing buzzwords and don't care about actual experience.

[eitland]

Calling me after finding me on LinkedIn, telling me they have one or more very interested companies, then after wasting as many minutes as they get asking me to give them a CV.

Seriously: it is right there on LinkedIn and if someone is interested I tell them to forward the link to my profile.

In fact that is my acid test now.

If they insist on me sending anything more it is game over.

[HatchedLake721]

It doesn’t work that way.

Recruiters take your CV, remove identifiable information (to avoid company going directly after you), add 1-2 cover/intro pages and send it to the company.

No ones gonna PRINT PDF your LinkedIn page and send it to a company as an application.

Also from company’s point of view, even if you were an applicant with a printed LinkedIn page as CV, it would add more questions than give any you brownie points.

While you can learn about someone’s experience on LinkedIn, it is not a CV replacement in the world recruitment.

[indigochill]

Just the bullshit salesiness of it. If someone with a network wants to have a normal human conversation about interests/goals/tech and maybe find whether or not there's a good fit among their contacts, I'll make the time to have that conversation with them even if I don't necessarily expect anything to come of it.

But if the recruiter obviously can't even be bothered to read my interests I've published on my profile, they can take a long hike off a short pier.

[victor9000]

Our hiring process includes a call with an internal recruiter as the first step and it's entirely by design. The goal is to make sure that there's a good high-level fit in terms of the role, your background, and our respective expectations. But one of the big unspoken objectives for us is to assess your communication skills. Our company is forever remote, we're globally distributed, and right now over 90% of our company speaks English as a second language, so having good communication skills is absolutely critical. We also need to make sure that you can explain technical concepts to non-technical team members, people like PMs, designers, the CEO, etc. I say all this because it may seem like a waste of time, but in our case, we're collecting information on soft skills to determine if you can succeed in your role.

[andrewstuart]

God it really pisses me off when they find great people for my team.

Even worse is when a recruiter finds me a well paid job that I like.

I hate those jerks.

Wasting everyone's time with wanting to "talk on the phone", trying to clarify details about my "skills" and "experience" or "salary expectation", ugh such pointless questions - can't they just send emails, which I can slam the "delete" key on?

[na85]

Your sarcasm gets your point across but what I think you're maybe not seeing is that for a lot of people, dealing with recruiters is a complete negative.

There are a lot—a lot—of shitty, slimy, unprofessional and rude recruiters out there. The number of actually-good recruiters is dwarfed by the teeming masses of bad recruiters. The vast majority of recruiters reading this probably think they're in the good minority but they're just Dunning-Krugerrands and they're actually shitty too.

For real, most recruiters are awful and dealing with them has zero upside.

[isaacremuant]

Dishonest takes are always properly masked in smug tone such as this.

It's like saying "ugh, it really pisses me off when police tries to do their job and protect me." in a conversation about police brutality and overreach.

[pjc50]

Those would be great. It's all the mishaps along the way from people who are one notch above spammers that cause the problem.

Skills and experience? Those are on the CV. Salary? That should flow in the other direction, from the hirer.

[ben0x539]

I mean, if I ran a team and I paid recruiters to find people to hire, I think I'd be disappointed if they ended up antagonizing the candidates in the process.

[MillenialMan]

-

[Mandatum]

Lack of salary range

Lack of information about culture or team policies (working hours, time tracking etc)

Always wanting to do a phone call before giving basic info - I get 10+ targeted outreach a week, I don’t have time and anyone good will have similar issues

[0xB0D]

Don't run spellchecker on their adverts, what is "kernal programming"

Give highly generic position descriptions "innovative company based in your country doing stuff"

Call you up even if you haven't posted a CV in years and ask for a CV

Not listen to you "I'm a contractor, I'm looking for contracts" - "would you consider full time" - "no" . Arrive at interview to find company looking to hire full-time because hey the word "no" means something different in recruiter speak

[astrange]

Not to humblebrag, but Google recruiters like to email me about vague exciting projects that they don't describe, and of course I just don't reply to them, and this seems to make them really mad to the point they called me at work to complain about it.

[b112]

The "job" is really a team of Google researchers, trying to understand why no one calls back recruiters.

By ignoring them, you become more and more interesting to them, and their study. Be wary. Soon they will stalk to IRL.

[stuckonempty]

Persistently messaging you to get you to apply but ghosting you and being unable to provide any status updates after you do.

Will add to the OP’s list by saying they often also leave out even the hiring company’s name and if it’s a defined length contract in the initial message. Why do I need to get on a call for this?

[petesergeant]

> but ghosting you and being unable to provide any status updates after you do

Ghosting you is definitely not ok, but the inability to provide status updates usually comes from the end-client, not the recruiter.

[ericpruitt]

Sending emails to my work address. Even if I'm considering new roles, that's a hard pass from me regardless of whether the role sounds interesting.

[TheBolivianNavy]

This happens to me too. I find it incredibly unprofessional and immediately blacklist any recruiter that emails my work address. I purposely don't post it publicly (though it's not hard to guess). They found me through LinkedIn, contact me there and I'll get notified on the site and my personal email address.

[raverbashing]

Agreed.

Easiest way for me to not even consider your opening (and don't worry, 99.9% of the time they're not worth it)

[b9a2cab5]

Saying the offer isn't negotiable but oh hey, I got your email about offer from XYZ and we'd like to bump our (lowball) offer.

Saying they'd like to "chat" instead of just telling you you passed the interview and got an offer.

[elondaits]

Contacting me, at all. I have a job, I’m not looking for another one, and it irks me no end when they email me (spam) or do a connection request on LinkedIn with a job offer in the body of the request.

I feel it’s disrespectful to me and my current employer… Like asking out on a date someone that’s walking down the street with their partner.

I imagine I might be a bit particular here for feeling this way. I’m not American, maybe it’s that… I’d just wish that I could set my status to “not looking for a job, don’t contact me”. At least not through a completely impersonal spammy message.

[avmich]

For me it's what company does - does it do something useful enough, meaningful for people - and how the team in the company approaches reaching goals - do people in the company have a good, healthy, positive dynamic and attitude.

Salary range is more a function of the market (yes, there are companies which seem to under- or even overpay), tech stack is changeable if needed, team size's flexible - if it's too big, it splits into parts.

The most annoying thing... is that you often don't know what was not good from the company standpoint.

[yakshaving_jgt]

A simple solution to the problem of recruiters always wanting to speak over the telephone is to set up a premium rate phone number and have them call you through that. You can sit at home on the sofa and chat with people about their hot new gig while the dollars roll in.

[shiftpgdn]

AFAIK premium rate numbers no longer exist in the US.

[Matthias247]

Starting with „the manager of Team xyz has an interesting position and wants to talk to you informally“. And as soon as one agrees, they schedule a full interview loop which contains lots of leetcode madness and zero information about the actual position.

[Seb-C]

The same happened to me with many recruiters, but the worst was a recruiter from AWS who wanted to "have a quick chat".

I only had a simple yes/no question about the job that was important enough to me to either refuse or stay considering the position.

The recruiter just uploaded my cv in his database to start the normal long process and never bothered answering to me ever again.

It was a waste of time for everyone involved.

[quicklime]

For me, it's reducing me down to a set of "$X years experience with the $Y language/framework/tool" dot points.

Followed closely by "how much are you currently earning?"

[hypnoscripto]

If they ask what you are earning, is there harm in just bumping it by 20%?

[denton-scratch]

I once met a really good recruiter.

He was polite, urbane, efficient, well-informed and helpful. He got me an interview with a well-known company, and I got the job.

Two years later I was ready to move again; so naturally I went back to the same recruiter. But he had been promoted, and was now the managing director of the recruitment company; he no longer handled clients personally. His client-handling staff were run-of-the-mill.

Never before or since have I dealt with a recruiter that didn't seem like an ignorant, slimy salesman.

[Edit: I'm British. I worked for a year in the USA; I got the job through a local recruitment agency in Richmond, VA, who were pleasant, hard-working and well-connected. My remarks were about my UK experience.]

[sdeframond]

Sending automated messages based on your LinkedIn profile, without actually reading it?

[markplindsay]

My "one weird trick" for spotting this behavior is using my middle initial on LinkedIn. LinkedIn stores it as a part of my first name, so their spam always starts off with "Hey Mark P.!"

Those emails get ignored. I ignore most automated agency emails as well.

I will always reply to personal emails from in-house recruiters or employees, however. I am starting a new job soon, though, so it's only to thank them for writing.

[healsdata]

Not following up after an interview is a definitely deal breaker for me. I won't ever work with a recruiter again if I've go on an interview and don't hear back because they don't want to share the bad news.

[PopGreene]

I list my skill set in a prominent location on my resume and in the appropriate location on my linkedin page. Why do I keep getting contacted about jobs that require something that's not in my skill set? Linkedin should have the ability to filter on this information. I understand the recruiters are just spamming us, but couldn't they just add this filtering functionality to their spamming system?

I got on the phone with one of them and he started talking about devops - which is not on my resume. I guess he expected me to catch that, I missed it, and ended up wasting his time.

[andrewstuart]

Imagine this scenario:

I offer you $10,000 to maker a phone call and ask someone if they might like to do something. There's a 1 in 50 chance you'll win the $10K.

Would you do it?

[devoutsalsa]

>> If I'm even remotely interested, that'll be a 30mins call to setup

Not showing up for the call they insisted on :P

[magneticnorth]

My last job search, I got stood up by the same recruiter twice for the initial information call (and they didn't want to email). Felt pretty dumb I'd given them a second chance, and I contemplated letting the company involved know that they were working with someone who was representing them so badly.

[leipert]

Soliciting via emails scraped from git commits. There seem to be tools that help recruiters identify email addresses based on GitHub profiles. I never asked for that. Please don't do it, it is even illegal in Europe. Furthermore it is super unprofessional to send emails to my current place of employment as well.

On LinkedIn, etc. reaching out may still be fine (even though I have set my profile to: "I am not interested in opportunities right now"), because you have no other chance me because of the pandemic (no places to mingle with engineers).

[rambojazz]

1. calls

2. ask me to write code for them for free, to be "evaluated". This has always seemed like a scam to me. Either I'm working for free, or it's code that they won't even look at

[p0d]

As someone who hired using recruitment services one of my most memorable experiences was a quick Google highlighting a proposed candidate was wanted by Interpol for fraud :-)

[avh02]

I think and hope you dug further than just a name match, names aren't necessarily unique!

[lun4r]

Offering a position to someone who is working at that position at the very same company the recruiter is hiring for ... (it happened more than once)

[woutr_be]

That it’s mostly just a cold call type of thing; I get emails and LinkedIn messages with the most generic company and job description, with at the end just a “lets have a call when you are interested”. Interested in what? Your generic “fintech startup with founders from Google, using Java and Node”?

I have a pre-typed response asking for all the basic details first, otherwise I won’t engage any further.

[void_mint]

The only thing I think is unacceptable, is when my LinkedIn profile or resume aren't even close to the role they're sending me. If all of my experience is in a certain role/tech stack, don't send roles outside of that role/tech stack. Sending every Sr. JS role you have to every email in your list is just not acceptable.

[matt_s]

Unless I see evidence in a communication that they have read something in my info, I assume its a bot/script. I'm amazed this hasn't been commented in this thread especially because I'm assuming most people work in software here on HN. They have databases of leads and scripts that send out personal sounding emails about jobs.

I believe they want to talk live because that shows you are interested enough to put some effort in. If someone can't commit to a 30min call, then they probably aren't actually looking for a new job. If a candidate will only deal with them via email and never talk live, they may make conclusions from this related to the communication skills (not judging but think about it). For a lot of companies, communication skills for developers are as important as coding skills since you will be working with other humans.

[domano]

If the message is obviously based on a template i just feel like cattle and definitely wont answer that recruiter. I will add them nonetheless, since i can just post a general "looking for a job" message in case i urgently would need to find a job.

[z5h]

As someone who has a decent enough CV to warrant a stream of incoming offers/connections my perspective is that the majority of the process is mechanical. At the top of my linkedin profile is “Dear recruiters: tell me what’s amazing about the job before you ask.”. Because way too often recruiters think a job is its requirements. Amazingly, many connect without this information because too many recruiters won’t even read a profile. Once they connect and are super friendly, if they don’t sense you are desperate or willing to take the first gig thrown at you, they ghost you.

Not all recruiters of course. I’ve had some who are super helpful, keep in touch with friendly and useful checkins, etc.

[amarant]

Calling me about positions I've explicitly said I'm not interested in on my LinkedIn profile(which is where they get my number)

Some of them even start with (I know you're not interested, but what would it take to tempt you into....)

I usually answer with a salary figure that would match what I earn as a freelancer, plus taxes, and then they leave it at that. (I live in Sweden, one of the most heavily taxed nations on earth, so that +taxes is quite significant)

I do however agree with another poster that recruiters are a luxury problem to have, and I'm grateful for their harassment, in the sense that it represents a job security. Still, I do hope they would read this thread and stop it with the worst practices

[uncomputation]

I don’t mind everything being calls, in fact I find more security in that since they are generally harder to “fake” than emails or other text-based media. i.e. A high quality call gives me higher confidence in the company than a high quality email. What I have always been frustrated by is recruiters - with no technical experience - being the gatekeepers of technical positions. I have always felt if I could just call the actual team or whoever for the position I am interested in, it would be better. I find it annoying when recruiters have just been coached on the “surface level” of a technica problem without ever having genuinely solved it or been in my shoes themselves.

[beforeolives]

- having calls for the sole purpose of getting my name in their pipeline with no intention to actually help me find a job

- ghosting

- asking for my current salary

- asking for my desired salary for a job that I know very little about

- not sharing the actual salary range for the position we're discussing

[thelastinuit]

- Ghosting although is better than saying meaningless words/phrases. - Say meaningless words/phrases. - or they don't say what they meaning. - the whole thing about protecting someone's feeling. what are we in kindergardeng? gosh. Just say you think I suck. It's what you believe and think. It's not necessaryly true and if that makes me feel terrible, that's my issue not yours. Damn. I clearly have issue with human communication or use of language. I apologize what the f*k do I know.

[znpy]

One of the most annoying thing is that recruiters think is okay to ask for my actual compensation on the first message but don't want to disclose the salary range in that same message.

[jlokier]

The worst of those I've had was a message that asked "What is your current salary?", while saying nothing whatsoever about the role they have. Not even whether it was a tech role.

To add a cherry on top, they began with "I'm a headhunter and my client has asked me to contact you specifically..."

I engaged with that one, but only enough to confirm that the client hadn't asked for me, that nobody had read my profile, and the recruiter was not a headhunter.

[kbd]

Having no understanding of the tech they're recruiting for.

[barnaclejive]

Totally, but that is something I'm not sure we should ever expect.

1) they got crap requirements from the company to begin with

2) even if they got great requirements, if they could talk about them all fluently, they would probably be a developer themselves and not a recruiter.

[maccard]

Phoning my employers office to speak to me to ask me about a job you sent to me unsolicited on LinkedIn, and then calling me rude when I ask you not to contact me again.

[wilmoore]

What the entire recruiting industry (this isn't unique to recruiting industry) fails to understand is, if the process isn't time optimal and fair, then engineers will eventually learn the nuances of the industry and build something more automated, time optimal, and fair. If you've been an engineer for more than a few years and have been paying attention, you probably already know this.

[alfiedotwtf]

There always seems to be a lot of hate for recruiters here, especially the ones that call out of the blue. I'm the opposite. I love taking these calls. Although I'm not interested, I'm always happy to find out more detail about the role so I can pass it onto others who I know may be interested. I've even gotten nice bottles of whiskey for helping out. Drinking from one right now :)

[intricatedetail]

Those who want to setup a phone call instead of just mailing the details. Nobody has time for that. If offer looks good I may call.

[lordnacho]

I'm holding a number of offers (as a candidate) at the moment, and here's my experience.

- The good recruiters have a high hit rate and are quick. One of these guys called me about 4 weeks ago. We did a chat about my history, and what I wanted. The next day, he suggested 4 firms. The day after, I had 3 interviews booked. This bit is the real value: if they are good they will suggest people who have a chance of wanting you. The last firm never responded, which I'll chalk down to the hiring firm being disorganized. I've been there myself, so I don't mind. But 3/4 is pretty decent for an interview rate. Got an offer from one of them, and another one wanted to talk about stuff to explore, but were more wanting to explore with me than having a specific thing to do.

- High hit rate comes from good relationships. There's a group of firms that are very picky with their hires (FAANG, HFT) that every recruiter in London will mention to you if you are a dev. Knowing which ones actually know these hiring managers is hard. They all claim to have gone to school with them. But also, the filter is pretty generic. If you look like a good coder, you will get an interview if the firm is hiring, regardless of whether the rec knows the guy. And past that there's nothing the rec can really do for you. So what are good relationships really? They're when there's an exclusive relationship. "I have this role at this salary for this profile, go and find me 4 CVs". A good rec will return with 4 CVs, one of which is wrong, and 3 candidates. The firm can now interview two of them and get the first one that works (and wants the job), knowing that probably the backups are just as good and one of them will want it.

- The less good recruiters have the goods but can't move the conversation forward. A couple of firms were in the same position as the offer above, same kind of role, weeks before. If you just take it easy, candidates will pass by. "Hiring manager is really busy, they're expanding, but they want to talk to you" just sounds a bit silly after a few weeks, and as a rec you need to move the hiring manager. What is fast? A guy is calling me today, on the weekend, knowing that I have offers (yes with details), having phoned me on Friday. That's giving yourself a chance.

- The really bad recruiters don't know how the business works. As a CTO I get this from the other side. I have a load of emails from various randoms along the lines of "Angular engineer, £60K, available immediately". There's no reason to think I'd want one of those, it's just a spray and pray. The whole point of the recruitment industry is to be a broker. You wouldn't run a dating agency where you just randomly tried pairing people either. Or a real estate agency where you randomly match people with houses in random places. The recruiter is supposed to know who wants what skills, and who has what needs. In that sense there is no difference from any other marketplace business.

- Regarding the thing you bring up: if they don't tell you the salary, stack, and team details, they have nothing and are just adding you to a database to be matched later. I responded to an advert during this last search where the guy admitted to not actually having a job. He'd just put up the ad with some keywords to attract people, and then the plan was to scan the firms to see if there was a match for me. I didn't proceed. I can appreciate you need to do this if you are a new recruiter, but it is indeed annoying.

- But the thing that is the most annoying is this: They will claim to put your CV forward for a role, and then do nothing. The reason is they may know the manager at firm A, B, and C. Firm D is also a likely destination for your profile, but he doesn't know them. So then they tell you that they will put your CV forward for A, B, C and D. This way you can't apply to firm D through another firm, and they are more likely to collect your placement fee. Sounds like an urban legend but a couple of people told me this in the last month, and sometimes it is indeed possible to find out from the inside whether your CV arrived.

[objclxt]

> There's a group of firms that are very picky with their hires (FAANG, HFT) that every recruiter in London will mention to you if you are a dev. Knowing which ones actually know these hiring managers is hard. They all claim to have gone to school with them.

I have been a hiring manager at several FAANGs in London and these recruiters are all bullshitting you. We never used external recruiters, we had no need. Lead generation was entirely internal.

[a10c]

Spamming me with SRE roles when I haven't been an SRE (or an IC) in over 5 years. I'm an Engineering Manager...

[muzani]

I've never had any problems with recruiters themselves. I've had problems with HR, often when the interviews are disrespectful, like asking you to go to another state without reimbursement or refusing to say pay range, but asking for salary figures for the last three jobs before the first interview.

[impoppy]

Saying “We have few nice engineering positions in our company, would you consider them?” after one night stand

[Niksko]

Agree about the call thing. I assume it's because getting you on the call increases the chance that they'll be able to sell you on a lemon of a job.

Another thing: just tell me who the job is with. This makes a big difference, and is also going to influence whether I'll get back to you.

[slifin]

Have you ever mentioned your first programs were written in C# then got .NET roles on your inbox forever?

[dcminter]

An early contract involved integrating front-end code with a back-end TPF (IBM platform) mainframe app. I had to remove "TPF" from my CV because in the run-up to Y2K I was getting constant pings about TPF programming roles.

Still not as clueless as the fool who changed my CV from "Visual Age for C++ for OS/2" to "Visual C++" and assumed neither I nor the client would object to this minor amendment.

[buggeryorkshire]

I did Teradata stuff right at the start of my career 28 years ago, it's not been on the CV for 20 and I still get cold-called for Teradata roles.

[odiroot]

Ex ecquo:

* spamming me with job offers that absolutely would never fit my profile (you haven't read my bio, you're lazy!)

* hiding the company name from me (you're being dishonest or wasting my time, trying to recruit me to a company that has a generally bad image).

[raverbashing]

> Salary range, tech stack

Yeah at least for tech stack and overall description of the opening I am clear with them I won't take a call without knowing the basic job description

My time for a call is not worth without knowing if the job is not minimally a fit.

[Antoninus]

Offering roles outside of my experience and current knowledge stack. Lowball salaries.

[akomtu]

Most recruiters are a lot like lazy real estate agents: the useless middlemen who only care about their commission. I bet most of them buy email addresses and bulk spam them in hope someone replies.

[switch007]

"Can you let me know the best number to reach you on?"

"What would be a good time to schedule a call?"

"I just need a phone number to get the ball rolling"

"Up to £100k" [this range includes £1]

[brundolf]

Hah I came here to say the exact same thing. I've found that if you just save their number and ignore all their calls, they'll follow up each call with an email :P

[giantg2]

Their very existence. They seem like overhead that doesn't provide any added value in 95% of cases. It would be better if companies used that money to train people.

[carlmr]

I'm mostly annoyed by the recruiters not caring to even ask me what I want. Instead they always have a job lined up which is about the same as my current one.

[postalrat]

They call to see if you have a pulse and to ask how much compensation you are looking for. To them that's all that matters.

[Moto7451]

To be fair that’s very handy to shortcut a lot of unnecessary interviewing to get an offer 80k below what you’re making. Local employers, aside from the regional Google and Microsoft offices, are never interested in paying me what I make.

[arkadiyt]

Pretending to be the hiring manager / sending their reachout through the hiring manager's email.

[gorgoiler]

Interesting phrasing. These emails are sent with the hiring managers consent. The hiring manager is the senior partner in the endeavour, so your gripe is with the orgs themselves, that do this? Which is basically FAANG and anyone who aspires to be them?

[Mc91]

I have been working in IT for 25 years. In the early days independent recruiters, especially good ones, were very helpful.

Nowadays I am not sure what a lot of them do. Almost any job they know about, I already know about, as it is posted on Linkedin and in other places. A lot of them seem to be people one or two years out of college.

Annoying things - pitching me jobs I do not have the qualifications for (like a C# job if I have worked in a Javascript stack) and if I defer they say "why not give it a try". So in the older days I relent, apply, do not get it for the reason I had told them, and then they don't want to talk to me any more because I couldn't close the deal.

Suggesting to me I come to their office and meet them, despite only having given some vague words about some possible openings. Springing a surprise tech quiz on me when I arrive at the office (happened once).

While their usefulness has gone down, the one useful thing they still give is feedback on how the interview went. Of course, having been on the other side of the table and interviewing people, sometimes there is nothing wrong with someone - they are mediocre, just like the last three interviews, and the next person who comes in was suggested by the best coder on the team as a great coder, and they come in and impress us all as well - so they get the offer, not you.

[KhoomeiK]

Reaching out to me about Senior SWE positions when I'm literally an undergrad

[Aeolun]

I think this is just title inflation. I’ve seen “senior engineers” with 2 years of experience.

I guess it’s so they can hire out some rando they just plucked off the street as normal engineer.

[Labo333]

Post an Ask HN :P

[antonvs]

Exist.

[phreeza]

Imo complaining about recruiters is really just a kind of humble-brag way to let people know how in demand you are.

[tjpnz]

It's not about how in demand you are specifically, more a function of demand in the area you live. Live in such an area and you can expect to get InMails from recruiters every other day of the week.

[andrewstuart]

Yeah the bitching about recruiters is really boring.

It's also silly and shortsighted seeing posts like this where the poster doesn't understand why we need to talk on the phone. Isn't it self evident? To make a job happen, it requires human contact at every step of the way. Sending out emails hoping people reply results in....... zero.

Who is it that genuinely thinks that jobs are black and white? Who is it that thinks salaries are written in stone? "We're offering $50K", do you want the job? Obviously it doesn't work like that. Recruiting is a negotiation - with everyone - the employer and the candidate.

And talking on the phone is absolutely essential. Things need to be discussed, understood, clarified.

AND, it's a SALES job.... we're trying to catch your attention, interest you in a possible new job, entice you with the positives, lead you to do what we want you to do which is meet the employer and build up relationships on both sides such that the consummation happens, which is an employment deal. None of that will happen without personal talking on the phone.

Really frankly if you're meant o be be an intelligent person, can't you understand that finding someone for a job involves lots of personal communication and discussion and working around grey areas like salary? If you're not smart enough to get that, well.....

And honestly, when people say these two things, I give up on them:

"Can you just email me the details? I'll decide then."

And

"It's all written in my resume, why are you asking me these questions?"

Because these questions make it clear that you're not interested in actually pursuing possible jobs.

The thing that annoys me most about the "how much do you hate recruiters?" posts is that companies pay us alot of money to find great people and they are very happy when we succeed and the job seeker is very happy too when we succeed - why the hate?

If you are bitching about recruiters then you are not the CTO or development manager who is paying them and working with them and wants them to succeed.

[Dayshine]

I will happily talk on the phone at great length with a potential employer or internal recruiter. They understand the role, they can assess my skills correctly, they can give me the important insights into what working there will be like, and they know their actual compensation range.

I have no real interest in talking with the majority of recruiters, who will generally do at least one of the following:

- Misrepresent the role to me

- Misrepresent me to the employer

- Under or oversell me (A recruiter almost refused to put me through for my current job because I was asking for the top end of the range)

A good recruiter should be able to make the decision on whether to pass a candidate on from reading a CV plus 4/5 questions (in a single email).

If you know what you're doing, just set up the phone call with the employer.

>who make the effort to actually get people on the phone and make it happen

You might make it happen faster if you skip the phone screen with people who can't assess candidates because they don't understand the role nor the candidate!

[stjo]

> Because these questions make it clear that you're not interested in actually pursuing possible jobs.

Correct, I'm not interested in bureaucratic processes that you pulled out of your ass. If you don't understand how I want to be communicated with, you are not a good recruiter.

[beforeolives]

> If you are bitching about recruiters then you are not the CTO or development manager who is paying them and working with them and wants them to succeed.

This implies that you only care about the experience of the people who are paying you. Which might be honest but if it's true, it shouldn't be a surprise that so many candidates have negative experiences with recruiters.

[MillenialMan]

We understand that you have many motivations that are counter to our interests. That's the point - they irritate us, because they're counter to our interests.