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Comment by jgrahamc | Hacker News Reader

You could also consider using a recruiter. I realize it's painful to pay a large chunk of salary and you really want to conserve cash in a start-up.

But you also have to trade off the speed of finding someone against the recruitment cost. I'm using both recruiters and social techniques (including giving a bonus to any engineer on my team who brings in a candidate that we actually hire).

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If hiring is hard, finding a decent recruiter is even harder. My experience, with recuriters, has been signing a contract to cough up 15% of annual salary to a recruiter who does nothing more than list the ad on job sites and pass along resumes. I know there are some recruiters that actually do recruit, and add value, but they are very hard to find.

I do agree that it's hard to get a good recruiter and you do have to work with them to make sure they understand your requirements, but it is possible.

I've worked with a few over the years who do a really good job of screening candidates and if you give them a test that they can pass on to candidates as well then you waste less of your time.

15% seems like a low fee. Perhaps the recruiters willing to work at that rate are not the best? The mid-sized company I used to work for would pay more like 33%. That company was able to build quite an impressive staff for a larger mid-sized company. (Also, they paid staff noticeably higher than industry average which was probably the real key.)

> I know there are some recruiters that actually do recruit, and add value, but they are very hard to find.

Indeed so. I've been on the other side of the fence -- i.e. as an employee -- and the vast majority of the recruitment agencies I dealt with were idiots. 99% of them have no ability to sort of competent from incompetent candidates.

And some recruiters are so bad that they steer candidates away from a position.

I know I've walked away from a potential job because the recruiter was so hard to deal with.

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