The Tenacity of Tech Recruiters
mattfriz.com
mattfriz.com
Recruiter:
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Hey Aerovistae, THIS IS A GREAT POSITION FOR YOU IF YOU WANT TO GET IN THE FIELD OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT. take a look please!
I am a technical recruiter and have a great job opening in Waltham that I was wondering if you would be interested in! Ive included some details on the position below, drop me a line if you have any interest! Thanks
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Me:
I WOULD LOVE TO GET INTO THE FIELD OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
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Recruiter:
Hey Aerovistae, Would you like to speak over the phone this evening sometime? -Eric
--------- Me:
I DO NOT HAVE A PHONE
--------- Recruiter:
Hey Aerovistae, My phone recently broke also, so I feel your pain, but will you have access to a phone in the near future?
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I HAVE RECENTLY ARRIVED IN SRI LANKA AND THE BROADBAND INTERNET HERE IS VERY GOOD BUT THE PHONE IS VERY EXPENSIVE, CAN YOU ACCEPT COLLECT CALLS?
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After that he finally stopped responding. I have a whole folder of these. I think my favorite one is the time I tried to get the recruiter to do a CAPTCHA to prove he was a real person and not an automated bot.
PLEASE SHARE I WANT TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS OPPORTUNITY FOR LAUGHTER
Recruiter:
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[Long email from "Steve" looking for Rails dev for a place called CustomInk]
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Me:
I only work for companies who recycle 100% of their paper and plastic and who have plans to run on solar power by 2017, could you tell me CustomInk's stance on these matters?
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Recruiter:
Unfortunately, I do not have this information. It is a fantastic company to work for, though.
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Me:
Okay, I might make an exception if it is really so fantastic. Could you please let me know whether there is a tactical obstacle course on the company grounds? I am used to having this available for exercise to break up coding.
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Recruiter:
Aerovistae,
There is not.
S
----------- Me:
This is sounding less fantastic by the minute, Steve.
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Recruiter:
I wish you all the best in finding an employer that offers you everything you require.
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Me:
Steve, don't take that tone with me.
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After which he stopped responding.
The more you delay the recruiters, the more it costs them and the less they pursue it.
I recently had one in The Netherlands that was trying to look smart by using expensive words but then failed to apply the basic syntactic rules of Dutch grammar. They also always start these days by : "I can understand that you're being spammed via your linkedin profile", and then provide no excuse at all and just spam you some more.
But it's missing one detail: Recruiters just about never "send" emails; they always "shoot" them. They put an email in the chamber, and they pull the fucking trigger. BLAM!
I completely understand frustration about being contacted for jobs requiring skills that are far out-of-date or that you don't have, the laundry lists of technologies, etc. On behalf of some in my industry, I apologize.
Although criticism of recruiters and their approaches are frequent, I don't see nearly as much guidance that might help recruiters in what information to share in an introduction. If you don't want to hear from recruiters at all, mentioning that on a LinkedIn/GitHub profile might prevent some of these unwanted contacts.
The signal to noise ratio from recruiters is terrible, and it makes it incredibly difficult for recruiters with a targeted and applicable message to get heard. I enjoyed the days post dot com bust and in the recession when inexperienced or ineffective recruiters had to leave the industry.
Instead of parody, I'd like to seem someone write something that they think would be appropriate. What type of approach might get you to reply to a recruiter? What would get your attention?
(1) http://jobtipsforgeeks.com has multiple pieces exposing recruiting tactics.
What you linked isn't so different from OP's post. We highlight the bad, but have you shown recruiters what they should be doing instead? The only thing I see in your piece that is potentially constructive is "treat me like a human being" with local jobs and applicable technologies.
If we're not complaining about relevant tech and geography, it's the list of too many skills (or not enough). Or it's not enough information on the company (OP's link is way more info than most recruiters would give, and the more common complaint is lack of info).
So we can agree that location and tech need to be relevant. Does that make for a good intro? "You look like a good fit for $COMPANY, now hiring $LANGUAGE developers for positions in $CITY. Let's discuss."
Is that going to catch your eye?
If the communication also indicated whether or not one/more of their clients were interested in remote employees, that would personally have been helpful when I used to use recruiters. (Now I don't any more.)
It's simple really, just put yourself in the recipients' shoes when writing emails, would you respond to the email you're sending them?
Someone in the comments here suggested they weren't interested in who the investors are or vacation policy. I imagine there are many who would be very interested in that information.
I think I do a pretty good job of keeping introductions on point and avoiding some of the less interesting elements of a job, but there's only so much you can say in these intros.
Telling me what VCs have invested, how 'fast-paced' the company is, how 'work-hard-play-hard' you are is pretty much irrelevant to me, other than I guess the somewhat desperate sounding angle that your equity will be worth a lot. Usually the reason you can't answer the questions I asked above is because you don't have a good answer to them - you are just trying to spam me by 'selling' a mediocre product with no differentiating advantages. So you're just spamming me, so don't send the email. If you can't answer the question of why it will be great for my career, past OMG WE'RE DEFINITELY THE NEXT FACEBOOK or WE HAVE MICROBREWS AND UNDEFINED VACATION POLICY, then you're just a telemarketer/spammer and there's no sane advice to give you other then don't click send. Keep it on the job board and out of people's inboxes.
The telemarketer comparison is interesting, but telemarketers aren't generally offering things that change someone's life. Being "offered" a job is significantly different than being offered pet insurance.
It's hard to determine how a job will help your career until we learn more about you. I don't know if it will pay more money until I know what you make.
I agree that most people don't want to hear about the nonsense that you've listed. But the things you want to hear about, or at least a couple of the things you listed here ($, leadership, help your career), are almost impossible to determine via a GitHub, LinkedIn, and even a short conversation.
Not in a sellers' market, which tech hiring is right now.
The email/messages from recruiters at issue are the ones that are obviously the result of lame mailmerges and/or show a complete lack of time or effort to understand the person being recruited.
Additionally, a job offer from someone you know, and who knows you, is much more valuable than a job offer from someone contacting you out of the blue who is working to bring people in. A job offer from some who knows you, is a peer, and who is recruiting for the company they work for is even more valuable (because by working there, they are vouching for the company).
What kind of work do you like to do? What are important elements of company culture to you? What motivates you? What leaves you feeling accomplished?
Stop telling me what the company needs and stop guessing what I want and listen for a change.
1. respect my time. Three people from TekSystems called me in one day. There was no "Is this a good time to talk? I know I am calling you during business hours and your resume says you're employed", or any explanation about the course of conversation they were trying to have - just a whole lot of questions, which seemed to be scripted. Then one dude told me to go online to take a technical evaluation. "Please do this tonight." How about I have plans tonight, and please fuck off?
2. Respect developers, generally. I have been told repeatedly times "I never would guess you were a technologist" based off of appearance and personal presentation. What exactly do you think of the class of people I belong to? I spent years figuring out how to present as normal, so it's kind of flattering, but not very far down at all I'm a weird dude, and I take the contempt personally.
3. Respect me, personally. The relationship is sour to start with, because I am a resource to be packaged and sold. The trick - and I'm not saying this is easy - is to actually empathize with me.
4. Be concise. This is about respecting my time, but it's also about putting in respectable effort. Tell me in five sentences or less why you think I might want to work at this place. "You're a python developer with experience in GIS. This is a position writing python for GIS systems. It's a quail hunting company and remuneration is in-kind: 6-10 quail per week, depending on experience. Are you looking for work?" If you can't do that, you don't understand what you're trying to sell me, and you are an obstacle to get past rather than a facilitator.
5. Don't try to impress me unless it's with financial remuneration. "We have 20% growth and $50 million in gross income last year!" is worthless to me when asking for $55/hr ends the conversation. I don't care about your income if you're not sharing.
6. If I ask, be up front with me about how much money you stand to make off of me. It's hilarious how uncomfortable recruiters get when I ask what their take is. The only value to hiding it from me is to maintain a power imbalance, and I assume you're negotiating against me rather than for me.
2 - I'm guessing you wouldn't just get that from recruiters though, do you? I'd think recruiters aren't any more apt to say something like that than other technologists. That seems like social skills issues, and I don't think recruiters are generally considered poor in that area.
3 - The relationship is often sour on both sides, to some degree, for a variety of reasons. Recruiters would have to be blind not to see the contempt from many technologists. I think part of this is the knowledge that the candidate holds the final say in a transaction that might net the recruiter tens of thousands of dollars. That gives the technologist a feeling of power - "If I turn down this offer, the recruiter 'loses' 25K". Some recruiters make more money than the technologists they represent, which might also cause some issues.
4 - Agreed. Concise makes sense for both sides of the equation. Time is money for recruiters on commission. And if you are a Py dev that knows GIS, we should talk. (sorry, couldn't help myself)
5 - Again, as I've said to others here, we can't even try to read your minds. One candidate doesn't want to hear about benefits, one doesn't want to hear about the office, and you don't want to hear about company growth or stability. The problem here isn't that they are growing, the problem here is that they aren't paying you what you want. They could say whatever they wanted and you probably wouldn't care if they offered you 100/hr.
6 - This is a genuine problem, and I have no problem sharing that with candidates. I actually make a point of sharing it on most occasions, as I want to make sure candidates weigh my advice based on my incentives. If I stand to make 50K off a transaction, you might think I could be less truthful than if I only stood to make 5K. Incentive to lie decreases as the value of your reputation increases.
You mention hourly rate, so I assume you've done contract work. One interesting aspect of recruiting is that a recruiter increases his/her personal income when negotiating higher salaries for permanent hire candidates (where FEE = $SALARY x $FEEPERCENTAGE, but in contracting the recruiter maximizes income by negotiating hourly rate down (where the recruiter earns $BILLRATE - $PAYRATE).
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, interesting perspective.
Sometimes we'll negotiate just because the candidate wants to maximize the offer, but negotiation isn't usually as intricate or time-consuming as it's portrayed.
It does benefit me to close a deal quickly, but the easiest way to close quickly isn't by convincing candidates to take low offers - the best way to make a deal happen quickly is to convince the client to pay my candidate at or above market rate.
If candidate tells me $n gets their acceptance, the easiest way for me to close that deal quickly is to get $n+5 from my client - not to convince candidate to accept $n-5. And $n+5 also nets me more than $n-5.
The risk isn't the time spent in negotiations over a small difference to the recruiter's bottom line - the time is minimal. The risk is losing the deal entirely (and getting $0).
2 - I think other technologists don't carry the same prejudices against technologists, so they don't accidentally showcase those prejudices. I guess there's a
3 - Spot on.
4 - I think the incentives are against concise initial communication. It's like online dating - from a strictly rational perspective, spamming out a halfway witty message gets better ROI than individual messages. It feels gross, tho. Being reasonably concise would involve some targeting, which would cost timemoney. So you get gross (in both senses) messages. Also, maybe expect an email from me.
5 - That's legit. Maybe my perspective is a little myopic on that point. Oops.
6 - Interesting. My current contract seems to be a fixed percentage, though they won't share the number ("A percentage in the 40s"). I assumed this meant they were lying, but I applied for FTE here and lied about what I make, and HR caught it.
Interesting to hear about it from the other side.
From my experience with recruiters, something like 90% of them DON'T GIVE A SHIT. I tried offering them constructive feedback and they acted like it went in one ear and out the other and kept doing the same shit they always did.
You know what they say about those who won't listen to reason: the only recourse is mockery.
Part of the problem is it takes actual effort to engage with an experienced candidate in a way that will interest them, and recruiters -- almost invariably -- go for breadth not depth. You gotta act like you read their résumé and it didn't just pop up as the top hit in a database search. You gotta look at their relevant experience and guess at their interests or even -- gasp -- ask them! You gotta learn something about the work they've done and help them find work in line with what they'd enjoy or be skilled at -- in a manner that goes beyond mere keyword match. For example, C++ is not a "technology" -- it's a programming language and it's broad enough to encompass many fields. A person who wrote robot control software in C++ for instance is unlikely to want to get a job writing Win32 COM client-server apps for a bank. So DON'T TELL THEM WHAT A "GREAT FIT" THEY'D BE FOR THE BANK APP ROLE JUST BECAUSE IT SAID C++.
This isn't exclusive to recruiters, but I get it. I sometimes get the same resume without context applying for every job I have listed. I'll suggest they might want to mix up their job search tactics, and then the same resume hits my inbox 10x a month later. Happens more frequently than you'd expect.
>You gotta look at their relevant experience and guess at their interests or even -- gasp -- ask them!
I don't find the candidates answer questions like this in an intro. Responses to "I'd like to get to know you so I can share relevant jobs" aren't as likely as one might hope.
I understand the complaints. I obviously don't get emails from recruiters, so my insight is largely based on the mockery that we all see everywhere.
Seems like the worst of both worlds - the recruiters who actually read your profile and have something of value to offer will pay attention and not contact you. The annoying ones who spam everything won't pay any more attention to that than they did to the rest of the profile.
This one is a bit painful since it's so hard to escape this mentality.
He sent me an email for an 8-month contract on the other side of the country. This despite my profile on every job site saying "full-time only" and "I am not willing to relocate". I ignore it.
Later that day (or maybe the next day), he calls me. I tell him no, and I make it abundantly clear I'm not interested in any kind of contract position. He starts arguing with me, and he starts going into how it's more like a full-time job since the contract is long term. I say "don't call me again" while loudly speaking over him, and then I hang up without waiting a response.
A week later, he sends me another email for the same position. I reply with a strongly-worded email telling him to cease and desist from ever contacting me again and that I will never work with him or his firm.
An hour later, he calls me again. I chewed him out and hung up on him right away.
I planned on calling his recruiting firm's HR department and reporting his extremely inappropriate behavior, but I never got around to it. And if I'd had the money, I would've hired a lawyer to properly C&D him.
As far as I'm concerned, this guy is a spammer. I've dealt with dozens of recruiters offering contract and/or out-of-town positions, but none of them have been as pushy as him. With everyone else, I just ignore their emails without reply, and they never call me or send a follow-up email.
Other terrible recruiters include the legion of people who insist on asking for me by my old name, despite me having legally changed my name (first, middle, and last) well over a year ago.
And just for fun, I saw a recruiter link his LinkedIn profile by posting the URL that takes you to editing your own profile.
PS: Pro-tip, add a middle initial to your LinkedIn - the guys using auto-fill without even looking are an easy filter since it is part of your first name.
It went on for 2 full weeks before I lost it and finally replied to one of her emails with a simple "Stop calling/emailing me" and it stopped.
>>> "With your underwater basket-weaving chops, the Cloud Fabric Services team will surpass its goal of exceeding 100M users by 2015."
Very funny and completely true
I think the whole industry on the topic of "let's spam everyone and see who will get our bite" seems absurd.
Hi,
I am currently only available for consulting. My bill rate is $1000/hour, with a minimum commitment of 20 hours.
I rarely get a response email.