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Hi! I believe you are one of the top 5 developers in...
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I already got a few messages in which I was contacted with "Dear Mr. ..."
Even though my last name may be confusing, none of them looked at my profile. My profile picture alone should make it clear that I am not a man.
What about not judging by looks gender this and that rights. I would start with dear whateveryoucallyourself just to be sure. Joking aside mr and mrs could be replaced by developer/engineer and such 😁
oh... that's is so bad.. have you ever spent a few seconds to point it out to them?
Some of them I actually answered. One answer was that the message was definitely designed to fit my profile, and that there was only a mistake with my name… I don’t know if I should believe that :D
Normally I think that I don’t want to invest more time into it, they lost me by making that mistaken anyway.
exactly. I also try to not waste more of my time on that. but sometimes the temptation of pointing out their unprofessionality is stronger :-)
You can believe if the recruiter is Polish as they have different versions for male and female surnames. For them your surname is "male" while the "female" version is be Gawlinska.
I'm aware of that - but you could still prevent it if you take a closer look at the profile. :)
Definitely. But your case is "local". Imagine a guy named Ashley or Lindsay 😁
I am a recruiter, can I share my 5 cents?
Your article's comments are valid, and gladly posts like this help me to do my job better. Thank you.
One positive thing to remember is this. If recruiters reach out to you, your skill is in demand. Majority of workers are not developers, their skill in not in such demand. Emails from recruiters are your market barometer. Take it to your advantage!
I recently switched from agency recruiting (basically new call centers) into internal recruitment. The quality of my work went up. Still, technical recruiters are not developers. Although I know that React is a library but Angular is a framework, there is still so much I can understand while recruiting for 30-40 non-overlapping jobs simultaneously.
“...One positive thing to remember is this. If recruiters reach out to you, your skill is in demand...”
That is if the main skill of the role is within the candidate’s scope of skills. I have counted more times than not where a recruiter has approached me asking about my interest in a role which is completely wrong for me. They search for “developer” and believe that you’re perfect for a role that requires Springboard, Java and Magento... while you have no experience in either of these...
At least two-thirds of recruiters I’ve come across over the last two years have no understanding of the industry they’re recruiting in... how can any candidate have confidence in the ability of a recruiter to help them score a role if they can’t even understand what a client wants or what a candidate has to offer?
Your commentary is extremely valid, and indeed it is difficult for each recruiter to nail it right. Data Analyst vs. Data Scientist? QA Developer - Python or Java? Sysadmin vs. IT support? I was in those shoes as well, I did my mistakes.
Nobody is perfect. You too have most likely taken a few iterations before you wrote the perfect code, and bless the testers to have corrected what you have overlooked or could not see. It is true for other industries and professions as well.
The real question is - are you going to wait for the perfect recruiter to reach out to you? Or are you going to educate a recruiter and nurture and ongoing relationship with them? Both are valid and are up to you.
thanks for your comment.
but no, sorry I am not going to educate a recruiter to do his job properly. Testers are part of the same company and they can point out my mistakes, but don't / can't / are not able to tell me how to do my job ( and if the bug makes it to the end-user, believe me the end user can get pretty pissed too), so you example doesn't fit.
And honestly, for what they are paid ( out of MY salary, out of the number I eventually negotiated) I expect them to be more professional.
Ok to be honest if you negotiate a salary and have to share - that's a steal! I work as an in-house recruiter, so cannot say anything about salary sharing.
Agency recruiters seem to be a temporary patch, really. There is a much bigger problem behind it... A whole different flaw in the system.
most of this post is referring to external recruiters, recruiters agencies.
it's not a share that we devs have to give them. it's the fee the company that will hire me has to pay them. and it's a percentage of the salary I will get during the first year of employment.
and afaik it is normally around 20/25% which is huge - for doing basically nothing besides spamming a bunch of devs you found on the internet and making a couple of phone calls to arrange an interview.
that´s for sure. and that´ the annoying part. but more generally it means at least that our job is still in demand. it might not be your specific skill (react or java) but you could always, in need switch tech stack, and learn what the market asks. It´s not so easy in other fields. :-)
sure you can! glad to hear recruiters opinions.
of course i always keep in mind that if I get emails from recruiters it means that somehow my job is still in demand. but for the reason I mentioned it has become less meaningfull.
In the past I felt gratitude for each email I was receiving. I felt obliged to reply. Ehi, I am lucky. I work in a market where there is a lot of demand, and among many devs they contacted me!
Do you understand that after 100 emails where you clearly understand they did not even read your profile, this loses value?
Recruiting is kinda like dating. You appreciate compliments, when are sincere, if you realize that the person you are dating is saying the same compliment to every single breathing being they meet, well, isn-t that a bit insulting?
btw. of course I am talking mostly about recruiting agencies, not recruiters or HR people working for the same company that is hiring.
:-)
Yes, I agree. The article like yours showcases a symptom of a bigger problem, which is recruitment agencies business model. Sigh.
I found a little trick on LinkedIn which you may find helpful. The more you reply to InMails, the higher in the search list you will appear for other recruiters searching for your skill.
Another tip. If you are dedicated, keep your LinkedIn connections as clean and genuine as possible. Agency recruiters find you through your 2nd or 3rd degree connections. Find the infected link and remove it.
Finally, make your profile as minimalist as possible. Remove searchable skills and buzzwords. Industry players would see your employer name and know which ecosystem of tools you work with.
Although, something tells me you do all these already... :D
"....while recruiting for 30-40 non-overlapping jobs simultaneously."
Thats a crazy load of jobs to effectively search deeply for each role!
True, the reality of bulk recruitement. Each candidate who isn't a fit is a lesson for me to improve my search.
It's bots and template emails. I have to constantly remind myself recruiters may be casting the biggest, broadest net as fast as they can.
What's sad though is poor experiences with recruiters become a reflection on the company. So whether you are looking or not, that can impact your decision to apply to that company in the future.
My very favorite interaction with a recruiter was when they contacted me asking me if I was interested in the exact position I already held at the company I already worked for. We were hiring a peer whom I would be interviewing myself. "Yes, yes I would be interested in keeping my job, thanks for asking."
ah ah ah! something similar happened to a collegue of mine. He quit and we were looking for someone to replace him. Some dumb external recruiter contacted him offering the position he left the week before... :facepalm ...
I have been contacted:
I've also had a recruiter micro-manage me through interview preparation ("DO prepare, DO wear a nice shirt on the call, DO NOT talk about salary, or deviate from the number we gave them"), while he obviously couldn't be bothered to run a spell checker on his email.
So yeah...Not that I mind the attention, but it is tad unprofessional at times.
Fun update: today while looking at the list of people who viewed my profile on LinkedIn, I found this gem of a recruiter: his profile pic is him, waist up, shirtless, ripped and flexing :D
oh.. those tips are really ridicoulos, do they think they are dealing with kindergarden kids or IT professionals?
btw.. don't deviate from the number they game them!? unbelievable..
Was it Robert Half? Either way, I have had the same issue with a number of different firms. Very annoying I feel your pain.
This is the sad truth. For the last 6 years, I've been recruiting engineers. It's been a life-changing experience but I don't so much enjoy the job anymore and for many of the reasons you call out. To be the smartest person in a room full of recruiters is the equivalent of being the "most pragmatic" person at a flat earther meet up. The bottom line, things have changed in recent years as you allude to, and now apparently anyone can recruit engineering professionals. Just throw a bib on them and it'll manage the drivel. It's literally a disgrace. I've always had a strong distaste for recruiters..despite being one. My philosophy has been and remains: if you're going to meddle in people's careers, do it well.
glad to hear the voice of one recruiter. sad to hear that of course, you are aware of the damage most of your unprofessional colleagues are doing to the market.. :-(
thanx for your comment
Yep. I found your post in SourceCons FB group. Someone obviously felt compelled to share. There's 10k members in the group. Maybe some get the message and change for the better, but that's optismistic. IMO the best way to precipitate change on the part of developers, is to call out utter nonsense when you encounter it. Tactics that emit shame and embarrassment, while not admirable, could be used as tools for good.
oh.. should I expect a shitstorm now? ヽ(ﾟДﾟ)ﾉ
I guess my name and profile are now blacklisted on every recruiters database... and I don't know how to feel about it? is it a bad thing or good thing? ;-Þ
LOL hey now.. don't shoot the messenger.
Recruiters have really left a bad taste in my mouth lately. I still entertain them every once and a while if they have something that might be particularly intriguing, but they have really become increasingly unprofessional.
Story #1: About a year and a half ago, I was contacted by a recruiter for a position at a larger startup locally of whom he was representing. After some phone interviews and a technical interview, I really liked the product I'd be working on and the team. I received an offer and accepted.
My boss was on vacation that week, so I asked to start in 3 weeks, so I could give a proper notice. I spoke with my boss toward the end of the week and she asked if I'd be open to a counter-offer. I took the weekend to think over my options and it was that weekend that my wife and I found out she was pregnant with our second child. Monday, my boss came back with a counter offer that was not only stronger, but it gave me a promotion to a higher position with the promise of building out a team of developers under me.
Now, somewhat freaking out over the news of a child and the uncertainty of my employment, we both felt much more comfortable with me staying where I was, especially since I'd be getting a pretty large raise, so I declined the other offer. What happened over the next few days is the craziest amount of unprofessionalism I've ever experienced.
The recruiter called me at least 50 times over and over throughout the course of 2-3 days. There were ~15 emails and countless texts of him telling me I was making the wrong decision and he could get me even more money (he told me before the offer they gave me was as high as they'd go when I tried to negotiate, but then started promising me $20-30k more 🙄 - keep in mind, he doesn't work for this company). The company itself actually, very nicely, offered to pay Cobra insurance for me to accommodate the gap in coverage I'd have with their 90 day policy, but in the end, there was no way I was accepting just because of the crazy recruiter.
Story #2: I've chatted with a recruiter before and even gone out to lunch with her and really liked her and loved her approach... She contacts me for a job out of the blue and asks if I'd be interested and I tell her yes, giving her the usual update on my skills, blah blah blah. We talk about the position and I'm getting pretty excited, then she asks me to do a React assessment because I've never held a position working with it at a job.
At first, I thought her question was reasonable, but I have 5+ years of experience and hold a senior level-position. I have vast experience with Vue and have done significant work in Node and PHP and get my hands dirty in .NET if I have to. I use React on several side projects, and have used Angular 1 and it's newer variants on a few projects. If they're only interested in hiring someone who can answer useless React trivia in some outdated multiple-choice assessment, then I'm not your guy. For an entry-level person who has zero work experience at all, at an entry level position, sure, but I felt super insulted, especially coming from someone who I thought I'd cultivated a pretty good and understanding relationship with...
Story #3: I interviewed for and was offered a position at a company and offered a ~$25k raise. Up until this point, everything was great, the company was awesome (some of the smartest devs I've ever met), the recruiter was an ex developer who really knew his stuff, the company was a 5 minute drive from me and the technology they were working with was right up my alley. I distinctly remember the recruiter delivering the offer to me over the phone and saying, "I'm going to send you the offer and the benefits, definitely go over everything and make sure it works good for you and your family. At the end of the day, you have to do what's right for you." I thought this was super cool, FINALLY, a recruiter who actually cared about me.
Wrong. After looking over the benefits package, everything looked great, except the health benefits, which were twice as expensive as what I already had. The offer letter also contained a clause, which I went over with my attorney, that stated that they had sole rights to any work I did outside of the position, regardless of if it was done on company property or not (this is a no-go for me, as I freelance on the side). Moreover, they were unwilling to write a work-at-home day into my contract, which I had specifically told the recruiter was a deal breaker for me if they couldn't deliver on other fronts.
I declined the offer and the recruiter told me he was, "Sure they could make good on all my concerns, but it seemed like I made up my mind, so he wasn't going to wait for me." How they going to change the health benefits they offer everyone for one person...? 🤣
Moral of the Story: My current company is awesome and the grass is definitely not always greener on the other side.
thanx for sharing your "interesting" stories. :-)
I understand they can get pretty upset of seeing all their efforts ( and their share) vanish when you change your mind, but seeing them become annoying or rude is very sad and proof of their unprofessionalism.
I also feel kind of insulting, when in introductory chats or ( even some tech interviews ) after having discussed infrastructure design, cloud architecture, leadeadership and mentorship skills etc, you are handed over a silly coding task..
There are few I know who actually keep a good set of information about me and use that to make me feel as the most important person in the universe. It's a good feeling, I can't deny. They ask how I am, how it was on company X and why I moved to Y. Then talking about how working for Z would suits me because they have what I like (and tell me what I told them months or years ago). Some of them even gave me advice on how to write a good CV by pointing mistakes I had eventually made. They all started in the cold, but were able to build this relationship with me from day one by just treating me as a human being.
But the rule is, unfortunately, what you wrote. Most of them don't have any clue of - guess what - how to treat people like people. They learn about maximize results so... We get what we get.
There is a long way to go. All we can do for now is to refuse to talk to such people.
yes, that's why I said in the past years it was not so bad. there were a few, keeping in touch regularly, normally twice a year for a quick update. it was very human and definetely worth the time spent.
now they became like used-cars dealers. fake politeness and fake interest in you just, as you said, trying to maximize their results.
they might be spamming 100 people a day - which are left with a bad taste in their mouth about every recruiter out there - but they end up with at least a couple of preys :-)
"used-cars dealers" - hahahaha I never thought about that, but I'm gonna use it from now on! 😁
3-4 years? Longer than that, I'm afraid. Basically, since the proliferation of turn-key recruitment tools (like Taleo), things have been straight-garbage (and why so many messages include "I found your info in our database").
What's really great is the proliferation of recruiting mailing lists. You start noticing that some rando, low-grade recruiter (or, more frequently, recruiting-firm) keeps sending you recruitment emails. Many, the subjects are so awful that you never actually click on the email to see that there's an "unsubscribe" link somewhere in the email ...or if you do open the email and notice such a link, you find yourself internally-raging, "why the hell should I have to opt out of this shit you're slinging??"
Maybe you guys don't know, but there's something like pay per call. Someone explained it to me... It didn't make sense ... And it still doesn't.
So this is how it works: You sign up, you make calls and you'll be paid for how long you spend per call.
Developers are a nice target because, if given the chance, we'll talk and talk about our skill.
Some of these people that annoying calls aren't recruiters per se. They don't even know what they're talking about. They just did little research so they could get the conversation going.
Trust me, it makes no sense... But they get paid.
I've been having the exact same interactions with recruiters. It's gotten to the point where I just ask them for the employer and salary up front. If they can't give that, they're wasting my time.
I do the same of course with tact and class. I couldn't possibly do the "quick chat on the phone" with all of them every week. I have had a number of recruiters say they appreciate the upfront approach.
that´s been my approach too lately...
I'm not sure things used to be better 3~4 years ago. I remember a classmate getting called at work by a recruiter who called the company's receptionist, specifically asking to be forwarded to him. The recruiter had no info on him beyond knowing he was an employee for that company. Now that's gangsta.
Drugs are bad mkay. - the only valid reply to some recruiters
I was just contacted on Linkedin for a position as Frontend Dev with minimun 1 year of experience (and with very low salary). When I asked if they really checked my profile before sending this perfect match offer, they replied
when I replied that that is called SPAMMING PEOPLE, this is the reply:
Clearly the filter don´t work properly and clearly this says it all about the Recruiter´s Work
It sounds like you are being contacted by 'researchers' rather than the consultant themselves. Look to ask if the person you are speaking to is actually the person managing the search and dealing directly with the client.
thanx for taking the time for writing this comment.
well. in general, at least for me, I´d like more transparency and speed: I don't want to spend time - be it 5 minutes or 45 minutes to tell every recruiter what I do, what is my skill set and what I am looking for ( actually I am not looking for anything at all - you contacted me because you think I fit to a specific position..) I have my LinkedIn and xing profile and they are updated. if something matches well, let's discuss it, and tell me immediately the name of the company.
More in general - sorry for being maybe too blunt - I don't see much value added by the current recruiting system. If the recruiters are just promoting jobs that are already available on multiple sources why to bother - If I am looking for a new position, it´s very likely I googled around and made some research.
Different story if the company itself prefers to go only with the recruiters' channel - then it could make sense, but again, in that case, I would be likely already in touch with just one or two recruiters that would contact me whenever something really matches - and could tickle my curiosity.
thanx for the long reply.
the article is referring - and all the commenters were referring - to recruiting agency and external recruiters or head hunters or whatever we want to call them. I don´t think anyone meant HR people recruiting for their company.
Honestly I have absolutely nothing against that process. And it´s normal having the steps you mentioned - because I am already in contact with the company!
The annoying part is mostly the emails and phone calls from external recruiters, which bring absolutely nothing.
So to answer your questions:
1) For me internal recruiters are just fine. and i am not bothered or annoyed by them at all.
2) hard to say.
And anyway, honestly. I am actively looking for a job, I google all the companies / startups that are in my area. and apply to those that I like. so just having a website and be on google maps it´s enought to be on my radar :-)
This is so true. I even got spammed by recruiters when I was studying. When I told them I still had to finish my bachelor in AI, which takes around 3 years, they would ask if they could call me in 6 months... how??
This is also why I started my own IT-agency. I work for the IT-talents and not the companies. I saw how bad recruiters treated IT-talents all because of money and it made me start this agency, I hope I can make a positive change.
They keep offering me jobs in locations that I never even visited or considered visiting.
Hi there our client in Norway is looking for a developer and we think you might be good fit.
that's not a problem per se - I actually moved to Hamburg from Italy even though I was quite happy there. I received an offer, discussed with my wife and made a life changing choice.
It's not good when you clearly state - as I often do know ( because I have kids in school already ) - that you are not considering any offer that requires relocation.
It is a problem when I clearly communicate in my bio that I am not willing to relocate and only work remotely.
But I see your point.
For the past few years, I am getting an email every 2-3 weeks, calling me
"Dear Victor I know you are getting tons of offers", which ends with "only US citizens can apply" (I live in Greece) :D
I had a series of emails from a head huntress full of emojis and gifs... and their professional website had background pictures of the Raving Rabbids.