DISQUS

Melinda · 7 months ago

I'd never talked with an external recruiter until several months ago, and I have to say that I've been surprised by just how bad they are. The internal recruiters at my previous employer did their job by getting on technical mailing lists and looking for smart people, trolling the US patent application database, scanning technical journals, working the social networking websites, etc. I think that all of the external recruiters I've talked with in the last few months could be replaced with a shell script - a very, very small shell script. It's all keyword matching and not much else.

David · 7 months ago

Although I'm not looking for a change right now, I do have a resume online. I get emails from time to time from recruiters who have obviously done a search for a key word and not read my resume at all. I guess the 15 seconds it might take to actually view my online resume and determine I have skill set A but not skill set B is more valuable than the time it would take to talk to me, ask me questions, ask me to send a resume even though they can see it online, review it and make the decision never to acknowledge my existence again. And then to contact me again in a few months when they've forgotten about this experience. Go figure.

Will · 7 months ago

I've gotten the other side of this - I'm not in hiring mode right now, but I was last year, and the recruiter phone calls were incessant. They were also, almost without exception, incredibly stupid. When someone tells you "go work with the HR department since we only use recruiters that are approved" the appropriate response is not a condescending "well, you realize that we're able to place better candidates than your HR department, right?" Or a refusal to get off the phone entirely. I've dealt with carpet salesman who were less insistent.

So my rule of thumb as a hiring manager is never to use them - there are a lot of great people out there, and finding good technical resumes is not a challenge. If I could find a good technical recruiter - maybe someone who used to be a developer - I'd consider using them because it would actually save me time. That might be a business model - I don't know if it's every actually been tried.

FJ!! · 7 months ago

Of the two external placers that impressed me, one was indeed a former
Software Engineer. He was unable to place me because, well, I am a
difficult to place guy in a world of defined job specs and pliable
personalities. But he knew what I was talking about.

dallemang · 7 months ago

My company founders have a relationship with an external recruiter of several decades experience; they have worked with her in various companies for a few of those decades. I wondered why on earth they had such a long relationship with a member of this scum group. Until I saw her in action.

She doesn't do any of the stupid crap we're talking about here. She asks us in-the-know folks who in our field we'd like to recruit. "Well, there's always XXX, but you'll never get him away from where he is now. He's world-famous and has been there for years, and they aren't letting go of him without a fight!"

Two weeks later we have a press release to make about the hire we scored.

"Matching" is the least of what she does, and in fact plays almost no role at all. She does negotiating, intermediating, planning and organizing. That's where she earns her money.

I have never experienced any recruiter like her anywhere else. I think she is a fossil remnant of what that profession used to be.

FJ!! · 7 months ago

I want to be in her database.

Jered · 6 months ago

Given the level of hinting in back-and-forth with recruiters in the past, I can only assume that this is because they are contractually obligated to not let you know the name of the company but want to do everything but. But, yes, I'm on the other site of this from you and I hate 99% of outside recruiters with a passion. Most of them aren't qualified to work at McDonalds.