I've seen sites like Hired or Triplebyte that are supposed to put you in touch with potential employers, but they seem more geared towards people with a lot of experience. I'm a new developer, mostly focusing on the front-end and I'm trying to get a feeling for where my skill level is at with respect to the rest of the field. I have a little less than two years experience. I've been struggling getting responses or meaningful feedback from the places I have applied to, but I believe a recruiter would be able to give me some insight as to what I need to be a more enticing candidate. What is the best way to find or get in touch with a recruiter?<p>Thank you!
> I've been struggling getting responses or meaningful feedback ...<p>Recruiters are NOT in the feedback business.<p>They lack brains, time, and professionalism. Plus, they're often afraid they might say the wrong thing, better to say nothing at all.<p>What to do?<p>Jump on Linkedin's advanced search feature. Zero-in on interesting profiles in your market of senior managers/executives you can possibly help. Ping them, tell them you're seeking career advice. Ask for a 10-15 minute phone call. You may be may surprised how responsive people are to your request. BTW, stay in touch with those folks with updates. Start building your network.
Get an introduction.<p>Go out and meet as many people as you can. (Meetups, Random drinking nights, etc) Connect to everyone you meet on LinkedIn. Have someone introduce you to the recruiter. Not everyone will do it, but enough people out there will be helpful. The recruiter has many more resumes than jobs. A referral will almost always cut the line. If you can the introduction to the hiring manager, even better.<p>By recruiter I mean corporate recruiter, not headhunter. No need to get an introduction to a headhunter. If you're a 100% match to a job, they're helpful. Otherwise they're not.<p>Good luck!
Rather than waste your time with a recruiter, do the following:<p>1) Figure out exciting companies/teams/individuals
2) Research what they are doing
3) Reach out with a humble email almost like what you wrote, but make it about their company and what you like about them.
4) Rinse, repeat
Well, to answer your question: Post your resume on a job board (dice, ziprecruiter, monster, whatever), make sure the text is machine readable, and your contact info is included. If you do that, the recruiters will come.<p>But as everyone else has mentioned, you probably don't wanna do that. The best feedback comes directly from hiring managers themselves, not recruiters. Recruiters aren't necessarily incentivized to paint you an accurate picture.
Recruiters aren't going to give you a good idea of where you are. They largely know clusters of keywords (Rails, Ruby, RSpec) from what I gathered. When I last used recruiters I had ~1.5yrs experience and one said "I think you're at a Senior Engineer level..." And I thought "You have no idea what you just said".<p>Talk to a more senior engineer you know, or go get to know one to get this feed back. They are more qualified.
If you want a bunch of recruiters to contact you. Put your resume on job boards like monster.com, indeed, careerbuilder, etc. It might not be the best way to get a job (as others have mentioned), but I guarantee recruiters will contact you.
Contact the recruiters directly. This is one: <a href="http://arrowsolutionsgroup.com/" rel="nofollow">http://arrowsolutionsgroup.com/</a> that I have found pleasant to work with.
If it were me I'd do stock fighter.io. patio11 & tptacek are the only recruiters I'd bother with & the game is going to be Nx more interesting than any other recruiter pipeline.
(I work at Hackerrank)<p>You could give hackerrank.com/jobs a try -- if you qualify, recruiters are required to respond within a few business days.