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Comment by Puts | Hacker News Reader

I would say any one using external recruiters are setting themself up to employing liars. Searching for jobs it's incredibly frustrating talking to a person who for once can't answer any technical questions of what the job is about, but also just crossing of a bucket list to see if you are qualified to talk to another recruiter with a bucket list. Instead of competing with liars I've just stopped applying for jobs going through external recruiters.

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One thing you have to watch out for is that sometimes it's not the candidate's fault.

Sometimes the recruiter will "tune up" a candidate's resume without them knowing it.

Yes, it's crazy.

That's why recruiters insist on receiving CVs in Word format.

Recruiters are sales people. Selling your services is what you are doing when you look for a job. So many people try to sell themselves to an employer that it’s a skill set to know how to navigate the process.

Some recruiters ignore the hard work and do a spray and pray approach to finding people jobs. Those are bad recruiters but usually untrained.

Good technical recruiters might even have an engineering background but like dealing with people more than machines.

Good recruiters have no floor and no ceiling to earning. They work agency recruiting and often make it to the top 1% of earners in America.

Recruiting is a big business.

I have never had this problem either being hired by external recruiters or working for places that utilized them. I know that the recruiter is a recruiter, and don’t expect them to be an engineer.

I have never been hired by a recruiter, they were just the first step. A company that requires engineers to filter applicants on the first pass probably isn’t very fun.

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