Why Recruiters Exist (and what to do about it)

I feel the need to chip in here, as I've been a lurker for a year or so. I'm a recruitment consultant. I recruit for front end web developers. In my spare time I've been teaching myself Javascript and (with the help of my flatmate, who is a software developer) C#. I do this because I enjoy it, and consider it a valuable skill to have as technology becomes more and more integral to my life. But I also do it because it makes me better at my job. If I can understand a company's requirements better than 90% of other recruiters ringing them up, then that benefits them, the candidate whose CV I'm representing, and me.<p>Now, I know that a lot of developers have had bad experiences with recruiters. I've had bad experiences with recruiters, when I was looking for a job out of university. You see, in the UK at least, a lot of recruitment consultants are graduates like me who couldn't find a relevant job in their field of interest, or one that bore any relationship to their degree. So instead we got caught up in the recruitment industry, which offers a salary, office experience, and the potential to (allegedly)earn some money. The majority of us are as confused as you are as to why we're here, but those of us who are still doing it after 3 months are probably doing it because there's something in it they enjoy, or they've been lucky enough to keep it.<p>I get that there's bastards in the industry. There's bastards in every industry. And the tech industry isn't the only one beset by recruiters. I used to work in social housing recruitment, where we were actually liked by those people we were trying to find jobs for. To go from that, to an industry where we are seen as 'the scum of the earth' (which I saw on this site), 'evil bottom feeders' and 'fucking idiots' came as a shock to me.<p>I'm not asking you to all suddenly start getting lovey dovey with us. This won't change many peoples mind. But be aware that on the other end of the phone is probably a young graduate, terrified out of his mind, who has been thrust into an industry he doesn't know anything about, and expected to hit some ridiculous targets in order to keep his job. A lot of the time, his only mistake has been accepting a job when he didn't have one. Recruitment preys on the desperate, lost demographic of graduates.<p>So yes, every industry has its shits. But for the most part a lot of recruiters have nothing but respect for developers and designers in the tech industry. Hell, we're scared of you most of the time. You guys possess talent that we can only dream of having, and pretty much make the world go round. All we're doing is helping you find a job.<p>tl;dr Recruiters are people too. Not all of us are the 'scum of the earth'. Some of us are just trying to get by until we either get better at this job or find another one. We're not all out to screw you over.

My takeaways:<p>(disclaimer: I work two floors up from these guys)<p>- Employees gravitate toward the best jobs available to them. Be honest with yourself about your employees' prospects and desires. While you may temporarily benefit from an information asymmetry such as an underpaid employee whose skills exceed her resume or a work environment that is worse than it appears at first glance, things will sort themselves out in the end.<p>- Corollary to the above: Employees and jobs grow at different rates, so things will inevitably drift from an initial good match to a mismatch. If your employee manages to outgrow her job, it actually reflects well on your environment. Ideally you'll be able to move her into a position matching her improved capabilities, but it's okay if she winds up looking elsewhere for her next step.<p>- Networking is an all-the-time thing, not just an on-demand thing. Anyone leading a successful group probably already understands this instinctively but it helps to be reminded.

<i>Recruiting and hiring isn’t considered a core activity</i><p>Previously maybe. The trend towards acquiring internal recruitment teams is growing dramatically. Despite not actively looking for work, I've had four job offers for internal recruitment roles in the last 6-8 months.<p><i>Remember that oftentimes by the time an employee comes to tell you he’s leaving it’s too late to retain him.</i><p>I have to disagree. It's difficult to convince an employee to stay when they inform you they want to leave and quite often it's not worthwhile as their motivation to leave will resurface again in a few months but it can and has been done successfully if you know how to go about it and actually listen and understand your employees needs.

Recruiter here, worked for a bunch of the "bigger" tech companies and now I focus on startups. The biggest problem I see, over and over again is this:<p>People assume recruiting isn't important, they focus on building a great product, etc. It is only once they get to the point a light seems to turn on that they will need to hire more people to execute the idea they're working on that they actually do anything about recruiting, and by then it is usually a bit too late. The last company I worked for had a recruiter for awhile, let them go and had someone who wasn't really qualified to be recruiting handling things. They hadn't really hired anyone in 8 months. When I came in they had this idea that we would be hiring people from day 1, but that's really not how it works. The process takes some time, so not addressing a need that takes time until the exact second you need it seems to be the biggest problem to me.<p>Oh and all those contract recruiters, fuck those guys.

One part in the article really caught my attention:<p><pre><code> Recruiting and hiring isn’t considered a core activity </code></pre> I think that once your company grows beyond a certain size, it must become so. We hired a full time in-house recruiter around 100 people and it has had enormous benefit.

To anyone who gets harassed by clueless recruiters with doubtful job fillings, I have a much better idea than answering with angry or rude responses.<p>Simply send them a stock email that tells them that you have had bad experiences with other recruiters and that to filter out the serious job offers from the shots in the dark, ask for 500$ before continuing any conversation.<p>Do not remove yourself from the market, simply price yourself too highly for them to bother. And asking for money up front sure shuts them up fast. You still maintain "good relations", stay polite, and, in the worst case, you get 500$ to send them your C.V.