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Yes, to confirm a recruiter's fee is typically anywhere from 15-25% of employee's first year annual salary. So that 150K engineer in NYC earns an independent recruiter (working for herself/himself) anywhere from 22-37K.

Now it's easy to see why some recruiters sometimes act the way they act. People are unlikely to lie just to earn a small fee, but when the numbers get big, the incentive changes.

No lead gen services at all. Most clients via referral or Reddit and HN. I could list the services on my main page, that's not a bad idea.

Former indy recruiter here, and this is good advice. The line between "agent" and "recruiter" is blurry in cases of skilled and highly-ethical recruiters, and I'd toyed with changing my model to an agent approach. The issue is that job seekers don't want to pay someone anywhere near what a hiring company pays as a recruiting fee.

Thanks! I used to enjoy doing social media ads for my recruiting business (my 3yo daughter will likely kill me when she's older as she was featured in most of the memes), and I'm still figuring out social for my resume business.

People are more likely to follow a recruiting biz on social (might have a job for me?), but a resume biz is very time specific. Thanks for keeping an eye on me!

Thanks for the kind words! Biz has been great. I was in a 'test mode' for a bit, as I wasn't sure if I'd be able to do this full-time and earn enough to maintain my lifestyle (wife, 2 kids, relatively expensive place to live), but it's been very successful and incredibly fulfilling on a personal level as well.

For the past 20 years I've been a recruiter, and a few years back I started a resume writing and career consulting business called Resume Raiders (http://resumeraiders.com). It's a literal mom & pop operation and I do 99% of the projects myself.

I started the business because I've always loved writing, am good at navigating tricky job search and career situations (I've seen it all after 20 yrs in recruiting), and I enjoy it more than recruiting. I also noticed most resume writers didn't really have a background in hiring, but rather were just trained writers that probably had a hard time making it in journalism or other areas.

I'd been writing resumes for my recruiting candidates for many years, and many of those candidates would rely on me for career advice as well. It was odd to provide career advice as a third-party recruiter, as there were times when I might have some financial interest in what a person does. As an example, if someone approached me and said "Should I leave my job?", a recruiter might say "yes" with the thought that if this person leaves I might get a placement fee if I help them find work.

Resume Raiders is now my primary focus and has been quite profitable since it started. There is very little overhead. I live in a pretty expensive area, but my clients come from all over the world. I also offer a discount to HN'ers (see my profile page).

I'm glad they are teaching students about resume writing, and hopefully the professors are versed in hiring outside academia. I write hundreds of resumes a year for my clients, and a high percentage of young clients are using really poor resumes when they engage my services.

It seems many new grads are being drawn to highly-visualized resumes with fancy templates, often featuring a bar graph for skills ranking (some ranking themselves as "8 out of 10 in JavaScript", which comes across as laughable and out of touch).

My feelings on memorizing data structures aside, the resume lessons may at least help some grads get interviews that they wouldn't have otherwise, and that's a good thing.

I live only a few miles from the site and drive past it regularly. It's been interesting to watch the progress from an abandoned and overgrown property entirely unrecognizable as the site of anything of interest morphing into a recognition of Tesla. It's not there yet, but it's a work n progress and definitely easy to see the progress.

As a couple other commenters alluded to, when it comes to making money you should consider open source as the "long game". There are thousands of developers who improved their ability to get jobs and higher salaries by demonstrating their ability via open source projects and commitment.

The more prominent names in open source are an obvious example, but there are countless others who are more marketable, perhaps more visible, and likely had more negotiating leverage upon hire due to open source work.

Your work today might pay off in far higher figures down the road.

Resume writer here that also writes cover letters for clients, converted to writing after 20 years in tech recruiting. Almost any time that a client asks for a cover letter, my response is "Here it is, and I hope you never have to use it".

If you're using a cover letter to apply for a job, it means you have no human inside the company that is advocating on your behalf. Your friend wouldn't ask you for a cover letter (in most cases) if he/she was going to refer you internally. So when you are required to use a cover letter, it usually means you're applying to a job 100% 'cold' as an outsider.

Unfortunately that may be the case sometimes. If a cover letter is required, there are a few key elements

1 - prove to the reader that you actually paid a bit of attention to the job requirement. I spent 20 years in recruiting, and generic cover letters that clearly weren't written for me ("Dear Esteemed Employer") never got my attention. I want to know what interested you in this opportunity, or briefly what you know about the company (could be lots of things).

2 - Talk a bit about what you're interested in from a work perspective. What kind of work do you want to be doing (and hopefully that is the work we're offering).

3 - Maybe check off a few boxes from the job spec. If they require a degree and n years with Python, a few sentences to check off those boxes will make it easy for the reader (often a recruiter or admin with little experience and limited knowledge of the domain) to say yes to you as a candidate.

Semi-formal tone. You can link to GitHub, but usually I link GitHub and LinkedIn on a resume.

Resume writer here. I'll take a look at it for free to see if the resume is an issue. Many resume writers are just writers that learned resume writing was a way to get paid if they couldn't get published, so quality varies. I have 20 years of experience in recruiting for startups, so I understand your audience quite well.

Contact info is in the profile.

Resume writer here. A good one page resume is a strong signal from a candidate IMO and experience. It tells the reader "I don't need to tell you every minute detail of my career to impress you. I want to start a conversation, and I think this one page detail is enough for you to make the decision to start that conversation."

I'll write a one page resume and a longer form resume for many clients. The longer form resume can be useful during the actual interview, as it can provide the interviewer with some fodder to ask about from the applicant's experience.

A one page resume also tells the reader "I don't want to burden you with more information than you need". When an applicant sends a five-page resume to a company, there is some tacit expectation that the applicant wants the recipient to read the whole thing (otherwise, why did he/she include five pages?). That's an unnecessary burden to put on someone.

A single page resume isn't always entirely practical, but there are ways to make it work even for people with 10 or 20 years of experience. Keep in mind that a resume doesn't need to include every single job (the details of the oldest jobs of technologists tend to be almost entirely irrelevant).

The resume also has to be written with the mindset that the reader isn't likely qualified to even determine what the candidate does. You have to assume the reader (when human) is looking for keywords in the same way a machine (applicant tracking system) is, so including a summary that simplifies it for the reader is useful.

When the CTO of a startup tells the temp at the front desk "You're screening our resumes today, only send along Python developers with over five years of experience", a resume summary that begins with "Python Developer with five years of experience..." checks all the reader's boxes right away.

When writing the resume, make it as easy as possible for the reader to figure out who you are and what you do. Don't use inside baseball terms or corporate lingo that doesn't translate. Remove noise to allow hiring signal to come through.

Make sure you have a marketable skillset, even in a down economy. Having been a tech recruiter for both good times and a couple downturns, I noticed that the people who got released first were doing tasks that managers felt could be passed along to others somewhat easily. No real surprise.

Since tech was my field, I first saw project managers who were non-technical (couldn't code or add other value) getting let go. Tech leads were handed PM responsibility. Sysadmins, DBAs, and some QA were also let go when there were devs who could pick up the slack. Companies might not need dedicated resources there, so contractors might be a more efficient solution.

Try to expand your skillset and have the ability to contribute in a few areas. Companies may be more likely to get rid of someone who is only good at one thing.

There was a great detailed article on it many years ago, but since they've changed the site I haven't seen a new one. This is about as good as I've seen, and it's written by them.

https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/4447/linkedin-...

Probably referrals from others inside the company (who you could find on LinkedIn). No real good answer to that.

That is great advice, and to take it a step further I'd say not to focus on getting an interview but rather a conversation.

If people you haven't met are referring you, you are already doing something right.

Sure. Soft close is a vague way of saying "don't go begging for a job". When you make this approach somewhat cold or perhaps slightly warm, your objective is to get a conversation started - that doesn't need to be a formal interview.

Of the examples you provide, I'd think the latter might be more effective (possibly including "or a quick call" to make it even less of a commitment).

Your mileage will vary on LinkedIn depending on the time you put into populating your profile.

I have written hundreds of profiles for clients this year - some clients are more concerned with branding (what does someone feel when they are directed to the profile or find it on their own) while others are much more concerned with just being discovered by recruiters, hiring managers, peers, etc. The approach is quite different, not unlike SEO techniques.

If you're getting good ads, chances are you put some time into your profile and added skills that help their recommendation algorithm.

The problem with job boards is that unless they are rather unknown, everyone is using them. Applying through boards is essentially like getting into the back of a line and hoping you get noticed.

When I coach job seekers on finding new work, I typically encourage them to be careful not to spend too much time on the boards, and instead rely on their networks/meetups or personal research.

Using LinkedIn to search for open jobs is similar to using any other site, but it's greatest value is as a research tool.

Say you're a Python programmer in a suburb somewhere and you're looking for a new gig. If you use LinkedIn to search "Python" and set a geographic preference, your results will likely be other Python programmers in the area. Where do they work? Where did they used to work? Sometimes LinkedIn will offer other profiles in the sidebar ("people also viewed") - click those and see where they worked. Now you've got a list of companies that have employed Python devs, so you can do a bit more research to see if they are the type of place you might want to work - and pay no attention to whether or not they have any jobs listed on their site.

Once you found some companies that interest you, use LinkedIn to figure out the best person to reach out to. Might be their CTO if it's a small shop, could be an internal recruiter or hiring manager for a larger firm. Make the approach, tell them why you're interested in the company, and make a soft close to try and get them to agree to a conversation.

After recruiting for 20 years on the US east coast and now a few years as a resume writer that also coaches hundreds of software engineers on career topics, I don't think your future is nearly as grim as you seem to think.

Ageism is definitely real, but in many cases it's simply relevancy or something else that is misdiagnosed as ageism.

Let's look at an example.

We have a developer in his early 40s who graduated college and went to work for an insurance company developing some accounting system in whatever language was popular at the time, and maybe in the 90s they converted that system to Java or .NET. This developer has been mostly maintaining this system and maybe building some other software for the company, but the job hasn't changed much. Also, this developer doesn't pay much attention to trends outside the industry - gets his entire tech 'diet' from work only.

Insurance company lays him off and he needs to find a new job. Nobody will touch him - or at least not the companies he wants to work for - and he thinks it's because he's "old" when in fact it's something else.

Some people judge him because he never left for more 'glamorous' work, or they wonder why he was never poached by another company. Today it's almost a given that devs move around much more frequently than they did 20 years ago. Not one of his former co-workers that left the company could lure him to join their firm?

Some judge him because he never picked up any new languages and knows nothing of the newer trends in development. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but if your tech diet at work isn't marketable it's your responsibility to keep your skills in demand.

Some judge him because he never got bored with his work, or at least never enough to leave. Anyone who was content doing the same thing for that long must not have much interest in learning.

Maybe his tenure at big insurance means he got a lot of raises and earned tons of PTO, and other companies can't match his comp. He's paid above market for his skill set.

Sometimes it is age itself that is probably at play, but I know plenty of 40-60 year old devs that never have a problem finding work. I can say none of them have stayed in one place for too long. That's the main trend I've noticed with successful older devs.

I recruited in tech for 20 years and now I write resumes, mostly for tech professionals. I generally start talking to my resume clients about ageism around 40 as well.

I may ask if we want to keep the oldest jobs on the resume (which tend to be irrelevant anyway) or to list graduation dates that reveal age. I go through a quick exercise with clients to show how old they are "on paper", the basic formula being that we assume you were ~22 when you graduated college (or if no grad date or college education is listed, we may assume you were between 20-22 when you started the first job on the resume). If we remove the oldest job(s) and delete graduation dates, we can often mask age a little bit if that is desired.

Many clients decide not to try masking age, as any company that might discriminate based on age isn't a place they would want to work. I respect that as well.

1. Identify causes that truly interest you.

2. Make yourself look like a strong candidate on paper.

3. Search for companies that are focused on the causes you care about.

4. Reach out directly to the appropriate individuals at those companies. Don't pay any attention as to whether or not they are hiring.

5. In your approach, briefly mention your qualifications but also your interest in the organization's mission. Mention the latter first. Make it clear to the recipient that your message was written exclusively for this organization.

I worked mostly with startups on the east coast if that helps (Philly market, some NYC). 1 - Maybe 20% gave an actual range. 2 - A mix. Most that did give numbers gave a ceiling. If I was dealing with a CTO, it might have been in the context of 'we're not going to pay more than n, because that's about what I make'.

Part of the reason I didn't get ranges was probably because my clients trusted that I knew the market, so if candidates were priced appropriately they were typically open to seeing them. I imagine junior recruiters probably got ranges from companies (and perhaps even the same companies I worked with) more than I did. I could be wrong.

Good luck with your venture, feel free to reach out directly.

From 20 years of recruiting, two reasons.

1 - The high number is the only thing many candidates hear, which can lead to lost deals even when the offer is fair. Tell a candidate the range is 110 - 130K. Even if the candidate is "worth" 110K, an offer at 110 feels like a slight to him/her, as if he's left money on the table.

If there had been no range given in this case, the candidate might not have had the negative emotional response to the offer.

2 - There isn't a range because the company would be willing to accept a range of candidates, and a range of salary would not be useful. If you're willing to consider 2-7 years of experience, it's not all that useful to list 60-120K as a salary range.

Most of my clients never gave me a range.

The sub I mod (r/cscareerquestions) held a popular AMA with a TripleByte co-founder for anyone looking to see some of their responses to questions about their work.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/5y95x6/i...

Understood, but I also would think finding an 'all-or-nothing' deal for a team of any real size would be somewhat unique at that point. If you have a team of 10, and all 10 are required to come along, there is likely some chance of redundancy unless we're talking about pure greenfield projects and buyers with no staff.

And going forward the issue could also become on-the-job performance, where it could potentially come up where one team member underperformed. In a large consulting company environment the solution is easy (remove and replace), but with this kind of model it can be more complex.

Thanks, but I'm not sure I understand your comment. Where does it say anything about the rules of this proposed idea? Isn't this a hypothetical?

I've almost hired full teams for my clients a few times as a recruiter.

There tend to be a couple issues with this model. For one, what if the hiring company interviews the team and wants 7 of the 10? The team has to make a decision to either look for work where they can all be on the team, or abandon members.

The other issue is timing. The team members need to all be available at (or around) the same time, and they typically will have conflicting interests related to other offers or ventures they are considering.

I've had situations where a startup closed and the team wanted to stay together, and they'd ask me to approach companies on their behalf - almost like an acquihire without the company. You would think a company might pay each member a bit more for a team experienced in working together, as in theory they should be more productive more quickly.

From a platform perspective I think it would be pretty difficult to build just based on how to categorize teams and/or individuals. Any given search of the platform seems like it would yield very similar results.