What's the procedure for getting a new job without going through external recruiters?
1) Use a matching service like interviewing.io or TripleByte to get connected directly with companies. (Effectiveness: Questionable but promising)
2) Use a job listing site like Indeed.com to find positions that you're interested in applying to. (Effectiveness: It works, but is like throwing mud on a wall to see what sticks -- hard and not very lucrative.)
3) Use Indeed / AngelList / whatever to find companies that are hiring, then use LinkedIn or some other method to find the hiring manager directly. Email them directly with your resume and cover letter (since it's effectively a cold-call, make that cover letter damned impressive). (Effectiveness: works great, in my experience)
4) Use your network. Email old bosses and coworkers and let them know you're on the market. If you've left a good impression, they'll usually be more than happy to do whatever they can to get you into good companies. (Effectiveness: fantastic, assuming you have a network in the first place.)
There are tons of other ways, but those are the strategies I've used. In the mean time, study up for your technical interviews. Good luck!
Don't get me wrong, most recruiters are worthless and add little to no value.
Recruiting firms have guarantee clauses in their client agreements - meaning if a placed candidate ceases to be employed (referred to as a 'fall off' in the industry) for any reasons in a specific time period (typically 3 months) the recruiter must conduct the search again at no additional cost to the client.
Moreover, if a recruiter has more than a few candidates fall off, most clients will take their business elsewhere.
My personal experience with applying through recruiters is it puts you at a disadvantage right from the get go. Most hiring managers believe applicants that come through recruiters are more likely than not to be of low quality, so right off the bat their first impression is suspicion and skepticism. On top of that, if they hire the candidate they have to pay the recruiter a percentage on top of what they pay the new hire. If you're not exceptional in every way they could possibly imagine, you're not getting the job.
Of course, there are exceptions. If a company has worked with an exceptional recruiter in the past and trusts him or her, then things are different. I have yet to meet even one recruiter that fits that description, though.
Experience 1: 25 years old and applying for a $200k/year job. I didn't get it :( but the recruiter had my back and significant sway with the employer. He filled around 10 roles per year. He was also buddy of the person I sat next to but this was unknown to me, I was cold-called for the role. "This is small-fry for me, I usually just fill $500k+ roles."
Experience 2: Recently (10 years later) a recruiter asked me my expectation "It's in your interest to get me as much as possible" was my response. I _know_ there's more to a job than financial package, but that was that question dealt with. She called me after each interview within the hour, and gave me status updates every 2 days over a period of 4 weeks. Happened to be in the same city on a trip, and had lunch together. Nice lady. Didn't take the role in the end. Still in contact, no bridges burned.
I also agree somewhat.
Experience 3: I sit next to an HR Ops team that staff large tech companies. A team of 20 people that download and forward CVs all day. The level of technical questioning before forwarding a CV is "How is your XXX language" and that's that. Applicants are sorted and pigeon holed into buckets depending on existing role and package, and no more. They have no bargaining power with a client (on either side) as they simply don't understand anything related to the role. Their KPI is how many roles filled, that's all, and when the client gets unhappy they email the GM.
So, in my opinion, it's mixed. But some headhunters really are good. Differentiate yourself, make yourself special, then the good headhunters will seek you out.
I don't mean to detract from your overall assessment -- i think you've made good points.
Edit: My resume advice? Give me your work history with a few sentences for each one, and if you have a "skills summary" section, list only the skills that you've fully mastered. Include only the relevant jobs. This is a resume, not a CV, and it's only goal is to get you to the hiring manager who can make a decision to give you a phone screen.
This has even occurred in jobs with highly specific needs. I got grilled on GPU programming, then never wrote or read a single line of GPU code. I got grilled on how the Buffer Protocol works in Python, then never implemented an extension class making use of it and never touched anyone else's class that did either -- even though it was "critical" for someone to have "significant experience" in these technologies when I was interviewed. As it turned out, my limited exposure to Python's setuptools and distribution/package management, and my (very limited) experience with an open-source optimization library called CVXOPT ended up dwarfing the usefulness of GPU or Buffer Protocol experience, and neither package management nor quadratic programming were even mentioned anywhere in either of those job listings, nor spoken about at all during interviews.
Employers, generally, are utterly terrible at communication or understanding what they need in their next hire, and they revert to simple heuristics, like algorithm or programming language trivia, just to avoid that hard work.
There has always seemed to be this silly and inexplicable emphasis in hiring on acting like candidates need to be perfect. They can't say they have a skill unless they are the world fucking grandmaster of that skill. Any honest admission of weakness means you're garbage, instant rejection. It's the same with performance during an interview. Someone clearly articulated an O(N^2) solution under time pressure? Firing squad. If they can't rattle off the optimal solution without hints then omg how did they ever get a college degree?
It's just nuts. People don't seem to think much at all about the person's aggregated productivity over time, what they can learn on the job, how their performance in a real-life, low-pressure situation will be different than a gimmicky interview. It's just all of this "we only hire the best" nonsense that leads to an arms race for candidates to overfit to interview processes and creates a whole generation of vapid engineers with no substance beyond looking pretty on paper.
Also, since you represent about 0.000001% of the people who might make decisions based on what's on my resume, it's not really optimized just for you. It's unfortunately optimized for something like the average, and I'd expect you to be mature enough to understand candidates really can't afford to do otherwise, even if they also don't like trying to do SEO on their own background and experience.
I might get dinged for not having one, but at least I don't have to worry about it.
The main draw, in my opinion, is that they routinely host interviewers from top-tier companies to perform anonymous technical screens. After which, if you perform well, can expedite you to late-stage interviewing with those same companies. For those with non-traditional backgrounds like myself, interviewing.io gives you a helping hand in bypassing unwarranted resume and recruiter bias. This is especially true if you're competent, as interviewing.io will help shine light on your abilities.
The platform also has routine practice sessions each week to expose you to real interviewers and sharpen your interviewing wits.
I realize I may very well sound like a zealot, but interviewing.io is a must-have in your interviewing arsenal. I understand it is relatively new to the scene, but it's free and at the very least gives you the ability to practice interviewing. For the company rounds, you will definitely be able to start dialogues with some pretty interesting/reputable companies that would have otherwise rejected your application in the ever-present fear of false-positives.
Hope this helps.
I actually have some experience interviewing.io. I initially starting using it as a way brush up on my technical interviewing skills (it had been years since I was last an interviewee vs. interviewer) and it ended up being through interviewing.io that I was introduced to Mattermark where I was eventually hired. It was a great tool to have in my job-hunting tool belt as I was able to 1) brush up on my tech interviewing 2) meet/network with interviewers (when an interview went well) and 3) do a few 1st round interviews with a couple of prospective companies.
I wouldn't use interviewing.io as my only means to land an interview with a company. Especially since everything is anonymous, and thus only in specific circumstances do you know the company that your interviewer is associated with. But it was a great way to do low/no risk interviews that at least had the potential to count as a first round interview.
Currently interviewing.io is setting up and testing system, where engineers who did well at the practice interviews can choose companies to have anonymous interview with.
I emailed any technical contact I could find at all the interesting companies in my city. I was following up all these emails with phone calls when I could get a number.
I found a blog article interviewing one of the researchers (call him Bob) at "Company A".
I sent this email that eventually led to my job:
Hello Bob, I've been researching [Company A] and came across this article from [BLOG SITE] that featured some of your work. I'm quite impressed with your assessment of the need for better data analysis tools in the [AREA OF RESEARCH], and the work you get to do in that area interests me. I found from your linkedin profile that part of your current research with the Company A Research Group is on [technical area I talk about below].
My recent PhD work at [University] involved a number of overlaps with your current work, both in technology ([short example]) and modeling physical processes ([short example]).
I am now looking for industry jobs in [City]. The Company A Research Group may be a good fit, but first I would like to learn more about what you do. Can you meet for coffee to discuss?
Best regards, -[my name]
He responded and asked for a resume. After further conversations, it turned out they didn't have room in their group (headcount freeze in their department) but we found another group at the company that needed someone with my skills. I was then "the guy Bob knows" during the interviews (which helped) and landed the job.
Having said that, I have found a couple of ways of finding jobs that I want:
Approach 1. Decide a company that you want to work for. Go to their careers page if they have one and then find a relevant position. Then go to Linkedin and search for "HR <company name>" in linkedin and try to find an HR contact in that company. Send them a short email that you are interested in that specific position. You never know and they may just connect you to the right hiring manager (has happened to me). BUT the trick is that you need to write effective and precise email. Don't send generic "I need a job" type of email.
Approach 2: Go to sites like indeed.com and shortlist a list of relevant jobs you like. They may not provide a direct HR/hiring manager contact but it could be a recruiter. That's ok for starters. Now take some of the keywords from that job posting and run a google search on the exact words. You may be surprised to get a direct listing from a company's career page. Now go back to Approach 1. (Done this as well)
Approach 3: The "good" recruiter can be very useful if you have found one. Then just go through them as it will be worth your time (done this as well)
Rinse and repeat.
Look for job aggregators like Adzuna, Indeed, etc, which scrape all jobs on the web. When you see results, it should be easy to work out which jobs are posted by recruiters, and which have been posted directly by the company.
In my (massively biased) experience, you are better off applying for a position when you've been put forward by a recruiter:
* The recruiter knows what the client's salary range is, and wants you to get paid as much as possible (as the role is commission based) - they'll be able to make sure you're getting a good deal out of the client
* The recruiter is a professional sales person, and will chase the hiring manager for feedback, technical interviews, etc etc, in a way that as a direct candidate you'll come across as too pushy if you do yourself
* The recruiter will genuinely have a good view of other similar jobs you may not have found that you'd be a good match for.
* The recruiter will get much much more candid feedback about you than you'll ever get directly from the client
... and a whole bunch of other factors.
I think recruiters can be great, but don't put too much stock into this point. Recruiters are similar to realtors- yes, they get more if you get more, but they would rather close the deal then to risk no deal at all over a few more thousand dollars.
Also, if they know the budget, they may know how small it is too. If they are no other jobs, they may try to convince you to take whatever's in their book.
So from a candidates pov, it's very hard to see if the recruiter even has a relationship with the companies they are passing to. If you have a way to ascertain a good recruiter from a bad (maybe through personal recommendations) then sure go ahead. But I don't think it's useful to use cold call emails.
As another datapoint, I've had several friends go through the job hunt where we each applied to 20+ companies. All of us independently stopped using recruiters when we saw that it was more efficient to work directly with companies.
This is my experience as a junior dev. Ymmv with other roles but I find that the SNR is too low to get any benefit from recruiters.
I have about half a dozen recruiters I trust. All of them contacted me with a cold call email after finding me in LinkedIn or elsewhere.
Yes, the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty bad, but you can essentially pattern match the good from the bad really easily based on the emails they're sending out. The bad ones look like templated emails. The good ones send personal emails clearly not sent to anyone else.
If you're not well networked and you're not enough of a rockstar to have companies approaching you out of the blue, your best bet is to control where that salary anchor is placed. There's hardly any way to verify your claim and you're almost always better off placing it at a believably higher position. I mean, companies aren't going to tell your their actual upper bounds for what they'll pay in salary, why should you tell them your actual lower bounds?
One time I was contacted about a role in London offering between 65k and 90k (can't remember exactly, but a range along those lines). I said I would only consider moving for the 90K end. He asked what I was on. I refused to tell him then eventually got wore down and told him my relatively small Spanish salary. He refused to put me through for that saying that it was not usual to get more than 10% more than what I am on.
The company was willing to pay more for "the right candidate", but my salary at the time meant I wasn't that candidate.
Don't disclose your salary to recruiters.
Stay away from those recruiters and never negotiate your salary with recruiters.
It's somewhat like lying about a credential.
Also, I could be wrong but I don't think a new employer will contact a previous employer to specifically learn how much a particular individual was earning.
But don't lie to them, especially if they're going to pay you more because of that lie.
This isn't the question that I answered. It was asked how stating a specific, untrue salary might be fraud.
Refusing to answer and giving an untrue number are different.
> Also, I could be wrong but I don't think a new employer will contact a previous employer to specifically learn how much a particular individual was earning.
Lying doesn't mean you'll get caught.
Also, be careful. For example, during a background check for one my jobs (a rather "ordinary" one), they said they couldn't verify one of my previous employers, and asked if I could send them proof. I sent W2s for both years I was employed and my offer letter, which satisfied them. Maybe some would feel that's too remote a risk to worry about, but it's not out of the question.
The salary negotiation is a completely separate event.
If the potential recruitee said "I'm looking for $X" they're not deceiving anyone.
I've seen how a hiring company might look at a person who wants $X, but earns lower-paying figure and think, "Well, market pay is $X, but if the company before was paying them $X-20%, we can get away with offering $X-15% or $X-10% because it's a marginal increase for the applicant and we still save money."
evilduck, below: nails it with this[0]:
"companies aren't going to tell your their actual upper bounds for what they'll pay in salary, why should you tell them your actual lower bounds? "
I'm just saying that lying about your previous salary in order to get a higher starting salary is pretty clearly fraud. While it's unlikely to ever be prosecuted it is probably grounds, as has already been said, to withdraw the offer or to fire someone.
It's total BS that a potential employer would base their offer on your current salary, but at the same time lying about what you currently make is dangerous
When asked, I always say "I am looking for between $Y and $Z" to set the tone. If they continue pushing for my current salary I end the conversation.
To which you respond, "Then I guess we won't be working together". If he really cares about your business, he'll come around. If not, then it really doesn't matter either way because your likelihood of getting what you would ask for otherwise is slim.
I have worked with a great recruiter in the past, but lately I've been turned off by the whole process, I talked to one the other day and he said "Do you have any MVC experience? MVC is a big technology these days, you didn't list that on your resume ".
are they putting you in front of the right companies? are they asking you questions about your needs? are they pitching you on the job (it should be worthy of a pitch), as well as vice versa? are they working with the right hiring budget?
these are the basic questions you use to judge the quality of a sales person. they have to "get it" on a relationship level, not a technical level.
I would also look for ones who are investing heavily in one community. Someone who does exclusively Python in London, sponsors all the conferences, and has done for a while is likely to know which places are nice to work at, where pays well comparatively, and so on.
Why should I do this myself?
I hate sausage on pizza. If I order a pepperoni and mushroom slice, I'm gonna get mad if the guy gives me back a pepperoni, mushroom, and sausage slice and tells me "it should be easy to pick out the sausages if you don't like 'em".
Near as I can tell, AngelList does this, for example.
This is why I really appreciated going through recruiters early in my career. Companies will never give feedback directly to candidates, but for some reason they feel perfectly comfortable passing it along when there's a recruiter acting as a middleman.
I am interviewing today with a great company, and meeting with another great company on Friday and I have a bunch of leads in the pipeline for next week. Here is my advice:
1) Figure out what companies and specific roles you want to work for.
2) Make sure you have your resume tailored to those roles and make sure you know how to answer the technical questions related to those openings.
3) Reach out to 1st, and 2nd connections to companies that interest you and ask to grab a coffee to learn more about the role.
4) If you are personable and seem like a good fit, they will ask what you are interested in and they will help make introductions. When possible, ask to meet someone else in the company closer to the role you are interested in. For example, if your friend works in sales, but you are in engineering, ask for an intro to someone in engineering. This is important because that other person will be better at vetting you.
5) You will enter the formal interview process with people already liking you and wanting you to succeed. You just walk in, have a good time and answer the technical questions.
6) Negotiate an offer.
6) When you get there, be a good person, help people out, build relationships and do great work. 5 years down the road, you will have more connections and more opportunities.
Don't make the mistake of letting leads come to you. That is how you end up in so/so companies and situations. Go after what you want.
Most agency recruiters are a pain in the ass because they are not actually recruitment professionals. Sounds odd, I know, but having worked for a few firms I can tell you that many will hire SALES people rather than folks who actually want to recruit, let alone have a clue as to what the f*ck it is.
If you want to try and figure if a recruiter is going to be a tool or not, look them up or ask them what their job is. Do the do business development and account management as well as recruit? If so, ask them which half the like better. Should be a neat chat.
Bigger recruitment companies will always claim to be HR Consulting/Service firms in all their media and PR propaganda, when internally, they hammer home that they are sales companies first. I worked for one of the largest recruitment firms in the world and that is EXACTLY how they operate.
Small/mid-sized agencies tend to offer a better candidate experience because their staff aren't focused on KPIs and arbitrary activities to keep their bosses off their backs. Instead, those firms just care about closing business and doing it well so the big firms don't kick the shit out of them.
In general, most recruiters are shit. I've been headhunted more than once and man oh man has it been painful. But I've engaged in the process because the opportunity at hand was worth the nonsense. Not pursuing an opportunity because a recruiter is an idiot is cutting your nose to spite your face.
But, yeah, recruiters definitely do that.
If a recruiter wants to bring you in for an interview, they had better have a job for you. If they can't tell you about the job in any substantive way let alone tell you who the client is then I'd say they're full of shit and don't bother. I can count on one finger the number of times I couldn't say who that client was at that point (psycho client).
SOMETIMES, and I do this, I will ask someone to meet even though we don't have a job (at that moment) that's well suited for them. I'll do it because they're awesome as a person and professional and because they are looking for work in a core business of ours. But I will tell folks as much, and most are interested in meeting and chatting.
That usually makes them stop insisting. What I don't get is why some of my previous recruiters only ever call me to ask me that. Guess I'm just dead weight to them, OR there are too many recruiters and not enough open positions!
Generally you probably want to work for people you like and respect. If you know some people like that, then finding out how to reach them on LinkedIn is a good way to let them know you are interested in working with them.
Sometimes they won't be interested in working with you, its a fact of life and you have to let that go. Sometimes they are open to the idea but they don't have any budget. And sometimes they will get you interviewed and move you over right away.
If you are in the "any job but this one" mode, you are at a disadvantage. If you don't know what you want to be doing then people will have a harder time knowing if you would work out well in their position. Its painful when there is a job available but you know it isn't what you really want to be doing, do you suck it up and work there because its a job? do you turn them down? Depending on your financial status it can be a very tough call.
When folks ask me "should I look for a new job?" I have two pieces of advice regardless, one is that you should always be considering new opportunities, and two you should think about what you jobs you like doing while you are not under pressure (say being unemployed) because it helps you be more honest with yourself on what you like and don't like.
Recruiters can sometimes get your name in front of a manager at a company you want to work for when you don't know anyone there. But generally their value is more to hiring managers than the people they represent.
It's also given me another axis on the graph. I'll routinely get email from a recruiter about a position, which I'll ignore because I'm either happy where I am, the job isn't a total fit, or you see the typical signals that their comp is out of whack.
Then, a week or two later, I'll get another email about the same job from a different recruiter. Now I know the target company is having some trouble. Are they flailing about? Are they using multiple recruiters for some reason? Pay too low? Hiring criteria impossibly high? Is the place a black hole for developers?
Now I have more information to work with.
Corporate hiring is a massive shit show and I consider recruiters to be an incredibly useful sanity saving device. People that want to deal with corporations directly, I just have to ask, why in the world would you want to do that? So annoying.
Imagine you worked in any other profession than coding. Having someone else manage your job search is an unimaginable luxury. When I talk to my non-coding friends, and they ask how many hours I've devoted to a job search, they're amazed and jealous when I tell them about my recruiter-enabled workflow.
I interviewed for a position a while back where the person interviewing me at the end asked, "What firm sent you again? Was it Firm A?" when I had been sent by someone with Firm B. I'll also get contacted by recruiters from different firms for the same position.
There have also been a couple cases recently where I've been submitted for a position by a recruiter, interviewed with a company, and got a pass or didn't hear back at all. And then I'll see the position show up a couple weeks later on a site like StackOverflow Careers. I got the impression that a recruiter jumped on an opening they came across and just kind of threw me in there and the company hiring decided they weren't getting much in return for the potential money they'd be laying out. I was pretty well qualified for one of these positions, so I wondered if they wouldn't have been more enthusiastic if there hadn't been a recruiter between us.
My conclusion after about a year of working with a number of recruiters in my area (Southern California) is that the industry is dominated by a few big firms (I refer to CyberCoders as the McDonald's of recruiters, but that may be being too generous) and has a lot of turnover. I suspect they have most their success placing more junior developers in less critical let's-get-this-seat-filled kind of positions. I've come across a few that I would call real professionals. Unfortunately, they always seems to be focused in areas or locations that don't line up with my own.
I still look at a number of recruiters emails each week. But now I only respond if I am convinced that they have an actual working relationship with the company they claim to be representing and aren't just trying to win some race against the rest of the rodentalia out there.
I also put together a page on my wiki for Recruiters to which immediately I refer them any time I am contacted:
http://klenwell.com/is/Recruiters
This has been helpful in quickly filtering out the most callow practitioners.
> I got the impression that a recruiter jumped on an opening
> they came across and just kind of threw me in there and the
> company hiring decided they weren't getting much in return
> for the potential money they'd be laying out. I was pretty
> well qualified for one of these positions, so I wondered if
> they wouldn't have been more enthusiastic if there hadn't
> been a recruiter between us.
> But now I only respond if I am convinced that they have
> an actual working relationship with the company they
> claim to be representing
We're working on this problem at Paysa [1], trying to enable employees to find and be alerted about relevant jobs that match your skillset as they become available, in your desired locations, and meeting the pay requirements that you specify.
We're also interested in helping to solve the matching and communication problem, by putting candidates directly in contact with companies that they're interested to work with - in positions that actually match their skillsets, pay their market value, and further their careers.
Check out our salary and experience based jobs search at https://www.paysa.com/jobs, and sign up to receive job alerts as we find new jobs that match your skills/experience and meet your target criteria - around location, and salary expectations.
The comments in this thread are really interesting. I'd love to hear any more feedback/thoughts about what we at Paysa could do to provide the best job matching and communication experience from the candidate side. Feel free to email at zach at paysa.com any time.
I'm at The Muse (YC W12) - I think we have a pretty good selection of jobs as well, especially in NYC/SF: https://www.themuse.com/jobs?job_category%5B%5D=Engineering&...
Feel free to email me too if you're looking for something specific, I'm happy to help. yusuf @ our site's domain.
> I'd rather talk to a company directly.
Why? What benefit do you get from that? You're not like to negotiate a higher salary than you would without the recruiter, and you're not in a better position to get hired either (over the total spend of an employee's lifespan the recruiter commission is a drop in the bucket). Some companies I've worked for place candidates they receive through external recruiters higher than self-selected candidates because they've already presumably gone through some sort of screening process.
A good recruiter will understand what you're looking for and won't put crap in front of you. That doesn't mean you'll get the perfect hand-picked job, and they'll probably challenge you on some of your assumptions, but if you're a .NET developer they're not going to try to get you to take a PHP job.
But here's how I generally go about looking for a new job:
1. Email bosses I've had who I would want to work for again and let them know I'm on the market. Just a quick "Hi _______, I wanted to let you know I'm ready for a change from my current environment. If you hear of anything I'd love to take you out to lunch and discuss the opportunity." LPT: They will buy the lunch 95 out of 100 times :)
2. Email recruiters I've used in the past and send them an updated Word resume, salary/commute requirements, and what I want v. my current job (bigger, smaller, different sector, whatever).
3. If I'm very gung ho I will go on Ladders, Indeed, etc but the above typically hasn't taken very long to find something.
This is a bit facile because it depends on if you know how to ask, the financial standing of the company, if you can actually find a recruiter that'll go to bat for you, and a dozen other things that can affect the final outcome. I think the average outcome to expect however from the recruiter side of things is that they would rather make a deal now, than spend time negotiating for you. The same can be said for real estate agents. This is admittedly anecdotal from my experience, but I think a lot of people will agree.
Companies know this, so recruiters have no negotiating leverage.
I didn't mean that I trust the recruiter, I meant a common (and incorrect) assumption, especially among developers, is that they can negotiate a small salary increase because they don't come with a $20k+ price tag for a recruiter. This is not accurate for any company who can afford to have you on for more than six months.
So have I. I really don't get the whole "I hate recruiters" thing. Sure there are crappy ones. Tell them you found a job if you don't want them spamming you any more.
To me, a recruiter is a tool: I tell them the kind of work I want to do, the salary I want and where I want my career to go. Then we discuss the leads they have and why I do/don't want them. If it's not working out, we end the relationship. If they aren't sending me good leads, I find another recruiter: it's not like they're hard to find. However, if they can listen and fine tune the leads, I have found that they are a great way to help me understand what I want in a job.
Last time I was looking, my recruiter (nice company: took time to understand me, bought me lunch at a nice restaurant, etc.) pointed out that he was finding tons of jobs that my skills matched, but none that paid as much as I wanted. I remembered that my current job was partially technical leadership, and that gave him the insight to look at a slightly different category and he found me a great fitting position shortly afterwards.
Misaligned incentives.
The recruiter is incented to get you to accept the position. Their compensation isn't tied to maximizing your happiness, job fit, or salary. While every recruiter I've worked with wanted to see me find the right fit, ultimately they wanted to find a position that was good enough that I would accept. An extra $15k in your salary is not material enough to the compensation of a recruiter.
Personally, I don't have a problem with recruiters. My skills are marketable enough that it doesn't hurt to have someone else looking to place me in a job.
It's baffling. Don't tell me you've read my resume if you clearly haven't. These people are not helping themselves by blasting a canned message to those who match whatever keyword they're filtering for.
It's the same thing with searching listings on Dice or wherever, especially if you see multiple organizations posting for the same job.
I simply don't see any value add to 99% of the recruiters out there. So many of them just keyword match and are unqualified to actually vet the candidates, and give the clients terrible lists. A company's own HR department can post the listings onto Dice or do LinkedIn searches just like the headhunters do, for FAR lower cost than going through an organization.
I have zero problem with bypassing the headhunters via a bit more web searching.
There are some places where they bring in a huge number of candidates, interview them, and then never hire anyone. For instance, at a local Uni, they had a position open for 2.5 yrs.
If there is a recruiter involved there is a sense of urgency at least.
desperation, laziness, no idea about hiring at all
I'm not a fan of teams beyond single digits so I don't see the value of recruiters.
> is that if a company is hiring a recruiter they are
> serious about hiring somebody
When I am looking for a new job, I try to think about where I actually want to work. One of the core issues I have with recruiters is that I am a developer to be placed in a development role, when in reality I have a set of wants and needs in a job that I'm sometimes not even aware of myself until I read a description and see the part that sticks out like a sore thumb to me. So, my advice is don't go looking for any old job, find the company/companies you'd like to work for and check what vacancies they have. If none, pay attention to what events etc. people from that company go to and make a point of meeting them.
This has never occured to me, thanks for that tip
The benefit of a recruiter is that you won't have to do the whole "meet for coffee" thing, where the company does an initial check to make sure you don't have any crazy red flags. With a recruiter, you "meet for coffee" once, he vets you (or tells you you have a big red flag), and then does your leg work.
A recruiter is also your negotiator. The money they make is dependant on your salary, so it's in their best interest to get you the highest salary possible. I suck at negotiating, so I really appreciate this aspect of recruiters.
And if you picked the right recruiter and they are open with you, they can really help cut through the bullshit that are most job postings. They'll say things like "This posting says X, but I talked to the CTO and he really just needs someone to take a functional spec and build an interface out of it".
Without a recruiter, you'll need your wits about you, lest you end up being deceived by a flowery job posting. And you'll need to have confidence and a firm understanding of your abilities so you can negotiate a good salary. You'll have to pour through job sites and you'll submit the same application form over and over and over... It's tiring.
Also find out if they're hosting any events or speaking at any and attend. The process is a lot easier once you've actually met someone who works there.
Though I'm a developer now I got my last job in Sales/VC when I went to see the founder speak at an event, he intro'd me to the hiring manager who rejected me initially as I didn't have a start-up network (the job was finding start-ups deal-flow for funding). I got that job as I said I could create a network in 3 days and proved it.
https://medium.com/tech-london/not-a-hacker-or-a-hipster-how...
I agree with you about the spam. I've been gradually disabling my Linkedin as a result.
Rewind 2 years, looking for a more-legit DB dev job, coming out of a hybrid client-facing analytical role, with somewhat light dev work.
Resume is up in all the usual spots (Indeed, Dice, etc) get a call from a Tech recruiter asking if I was interested in a position paying nearly 2x what I was making. Jumped on it, and less than 24 hours later I was hired. I've come to see now that that was a HUGE red flag. The interviews were non-technical, among many other things.
Fast forward to this last month, workplace is horriffic, no process, no management, all the worst things. But I do have 2 more years exp in DB dev, so it's time to start looking again.
Put resume back up on the usual sites, this time I also put it up on a smaller, more focused site here in CO: builtincolorado.com which is aimed at start-up and post-start-up IT jobs.
Had a few interviews through companies I found there. Tons of calls/emails from recruiters, nothing catches my eye. Found a company thru BiC, and they go through a recruiter for a lot of their tech screening.
This recruiter is completely different than the previous one. Actual assessment testing, recruiters who've working in the field for years. Process took about 5-6 weeks.
So all in all, recruiters aren't always bad, but many are. And like some have pointed out, many have conflicts of interest in trying to just fill positions. The company I was hired by only uses them for tech screening, and doesn't to CTH, which I think helps lessen the conflict of interest, and only uses this recruiting company because they bring quality candidates. The moment they cease providing that, I don't doubt they'd use another screener or do it all themselves.
I ask this as someone who's been dealt that card 10 times in the past few months. I've got a good idea as to what the actual reasons might be, but looking for confirmation. Thanks.
These people will get to know you, will find out about jobs you might like way before the recruiters do, or before they are posted on job sites, sometimes even before they're announced. They'll know, and want, to let you know about the jobs too, and you'll do the same for them.
This strategy has worked very well for me, and I've built a network of amazing friendly people in the process.
The trick to this strategy is to always be connecting (nod to Glengarry Glen Ross there), before you ever are in need of a job. If you are in need of one and haven't done that, then I'd advise like others have here and try to leverage what network you have.
There are a lot of platforms nowadays that help to remove the "middleman" of external recruiters. Underdog.io, Hired, Vettery, InterviewJet, and others. These platforms typically are working to connect companies and candidates together directly by removing the "find and apply to each company individually" type approach. Instead they accept candidate applications, put them through their own internal approval process, and then, if selected, present them to companies to then make the decision if they want to talk to the candidates directly. In my opinion is approach is a much nicer and less stressful process for candidates.
> Instead they accept candidate applications, put them
> through their own internal approval process, and
> then, if selected, present them to companies to then
> make the decision if they want to talk to the
> candidates directly
EDIT: Looking at their website, it's a recruitment agency with some small amount of candidate selection automation built in.
I think what is most important for candidates is that finding a new job is really hard and takes a lot of work, and utilizing as many options as you can to find the right job.
This also goes for companies as well, finding the right candidate for a job is hard and they should utilize as many options as possible.
You will be falsely rejected from some companies.
You will be falsely accepted from some companies.
I got my current job by applying on their jobs page.
I use LinkedIn as a self-advertising tool explicitly listing I am a consultant corp-to-corp which definitely reduces the amount of bullshit.
With 2 of the founders being developers we can relate to the level of recruiter spam in this space and so we created Workshape.io to cut through the noise and make meaningful intorductions between developer and company based on shared requirements.
We have about 200 postings on the site right now spread across the globe, but mainly concentrated in Europe. That said though, we do cater for people seeking remote work + relocation so if you fall under that remit then you may find us even more useful.
Would love for you to check us out and would welcome any feedback.
1) Find a conference that videos presentations in a domain that you are interested in. Apply to companies that represent speakers for topics that you are interested in. (also gives you material to talk about in interview)
2) As you find interesting companies, select the ones that you have never heard of, and find them on sites like linkedin. Use tool to find similar companies (this is useless for large and well known companies).
3) Of the 'match maker' sites I've used, Craigslist is surprisingly good (this may be location specific). Some of my most interesting interviews were from random craigslist jobs.
I would be interested in knowing companies' strategies for handling the flood of applicatants to "HN: Who's Hiring"
Then uses sites like indeed.com, venturefizz.com, or apply directly to the company. Use hired.com if you got a nice fancy resume for them to show off, but avoid it if you are strictly entry level.
The troublesome part is that only recruiting companies can get you in to startups that are still in stealth mode or too small to hire someone just for recruiting and hr.
It might help you in finding some favorable leads.
What's wrong with this? Well, from my perspective it's now basically impossible to land a job without either knowing the people hiring (i.e. networking, something we nerds are bad at) or lining the pockets of some talentless parasite who's found a way to insert himself into a high-value transaction.
The "only work with the ones you like" argument people often respond with completely misses the point. I believe it's based upon a misapprehension of the dynamic - nerds see "agent" in their job title and assume something like a literary agent, someone with incentives aligned with their own who'll pimp them around a variety of potential employers. The truth, however, is that agents aggressively pursue companies for leads (I've been on the hiring side too and had dozens of calls a day) and some actively threaten companies ("use us or we'll poach all your staff") into using their services. The social engineering they use to navigate the corporate phone system to reach decision makers can be quite ingenious. Companies with the backbone to say no are sadly rare, so from the the applicant's side if you see a job advertised and if you want it, you have no choice but to to kiss the agent's ass for an introduction to the employer.
This rent-seeking behaviour generally nets the agent a sum equivalent to the first few months of the applicant's salary or 10-20% of their contract rate for as long as they stay there. The only real service the agent offers in return for this is spamming nerds who they'd like to apply (as happened to the OP) and weeding out obviously bad applicants to save the employer's time.
Since writing that essay I've flat-out refused to have anything to do with recruitment agencies. Internal recruiters are fine (hey, if you're hiring a lot that's totally a specialised job) but I take the use of a recruitment agency as a sign that an employer either 1) gave in to an agency's aggressive sales tactics or 2) has a reputation so poor that putting their name on job ad actively discourages the best candidates.
In short - most recruitment agencies (at least on the London scene) are dishonest, greedy, target-driven parasites. They aren't your friend and the more you feed these people the worse the market gets.
Just say no.
Be very wary of those practice. Recruiters are not your friend.
At the very least there should be a way to filter out good recruiters from the bad ones. I hate to say but more like a review system where you can rate your interaction with a recruiter.
Many years ago a recruiter contacted me about a job for a well known Investment Bank, we had the usual bullshit conversation and never got back to me. I applied directly and got a job.
Why not give us a try at http://www.thinksquare.io :)
We use A.I to match you with jobs, your profile is hidden from companies until you accept a match.
Once you accept and the company accepts as well, you'll be connected with the hiring manager.
FYI we're mostly live in Canada, a few positions in the US and Europe. However, we're moving into the remote space very soon if that potentially interests you.
I know it's a bit misaligned with the ask in the thread but thought it could be a good resources for job seekers. Personally got sick of creating pseudo regex's on job search sites.
I havent gotten a job through them, I'm still 100% through friends/excoworkers, but the process was nice and I did get offers (and a friend did land a job through them).
But as it was mentioned couple of times here: Indeed, Glassdoor, Adzuna are good places to visit as well.
Same as always, networking :). Go to meet ups, go to conferences, talk at conferences. Do this for a while and your network will grow fast, and you'll be skipping technical interviews even. It's not quite practical for a lot of people but that's the breaks.
The job posting sites often seem to mix it up and purposely anonymize these job descriptions, but they're pretty lazy. You can google little unique sounding bits of the description and find the actual company.