Ask HN: Why do LinkedIn recruiters give so little details about their offers? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why do LinkedIn recruiters give so little details about their offers?

4 pointsthrowawaynay10 comments

It seems that +80% of linkedin recruiters want a phone call before giving you the most basic details: sector, salary range, remote...

Isn't it an extremely inefficient way of hiring people?

Are they attracting anyone besides crappy/desperate developers?

I really don't see how it makes any sense business wise, how do they stay in business acting that way?

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I've dealt with many recruiters. You don't have to play by their rules. Insist on getting the details you want in text before a phone call. If they refuse, say ok that's fine and walk away. They will come back to you.

Right now, especially, it's a sellers' (developers) market. You have far more negotiating power than you realise.

This is just pure speculation, but maybe it's because of same reason the Nigerian scammer emails have fishy wording and poor spelling. [1] It works as some kind of a filter, the scammers don't want to waste time on anyone but the most credulous targets.

Similarly, maybe some shady LinkedIn recruiters are looking for people who don't ask many questions. Or maybe they want to filter for people who aren't so "shameless" to expect the salary to be openly discussed for a job. /s

[1]: https://archive.ph/20200531034340/https://www.businessinside...

It seems to be the pattern recently. I have an in-complete linkedin profile(I have a family owned business,where I can be as passive as I want), I have not listed most of my skills(just html/css/js). For last 9 years, It was rarely one or two recruiter connecting me. But now in last 6 months, somehow a new request pops up every week with vogue requirements and unreasonable expectations with salary expectation of the McDonald's employee.

Most of the times, recruiter does not know what he actually require. They are not clear about salary, exact responsibility, work culture, company working and on boarding. I just ignore most of them.

Very often they don't have a specific position in mind, they have a list of roles. The idea is that the phone call helps them understand more about what you're looking for and then they can share specific roles that match your skills and requirements. At least that's the generous interpretation of how things should work. Personally I try to avoid the open "let's schedule a call" requests if they don't have an attached job description because they don't go anywhere in my experience.

Anecdotally, I have heard of recruiters being measured on the number of calls they have as proof they are working hard.

Plenty of them are employees, so whether it makes business sense could be irrelevant.

Recruiters are sales people paid on commission. A good chunk of their day represents them trying to get people on the phone and close them.

Sales is much easier over the phone than via LinkedIn.

If I'm not looking but the role looks interesting, I'll normally just ping them and ask. Most of the time they will give you a name, location and pay range online. Of course the more desperate you are the less leverage you have.

If you're actively seeking though, it is beneficial for you to talk to one or more good agents, but finding a good one can be hard.

In my country they just send me a connection request and never even send a message. I guess their agencies just have a "new connection quota" that they need to meet each month.

I guess that it depends what brings the food to the table: quality or the quantity of the leads that they generate.

they just want to sell the job to you so you don’t pay attention to what matters, like compensation.

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