Ask HN: Fixing the recruiter industry

Funny thing about recruiters, is going through a recruiter I've generally wound up with higher pay than doing things the other way around. They'll be their typical aggressive recruiter selves, sell me, bid me up and insist that I can't possibly work for less than X without making me seem like the prima donna.. I still get to be the mild mannered guy who's primarily motivated by the quality of work. They've also gotten me into places faster.. last couple of times I was looking for work, the companies with a recruiter had me into final interview stage before other companies (some of whom I was actually interested enough in to seek out and contact) even got back to me from my first "here's my resume" email.<p>So.. they actually do work. You'd think that if the company wasn't forking over 25% of my salary to a recruiter, they'd be more enthusiastic to speak to me and would be willing to pay me more, but it hasn't worked out that way in practice. YMMV.

Folks at Hacker Dojo have been discussing holding a reverse job fair, where hackers who are in the job market come in with their craft (live demo, code samples and whatnot) and interact with other engineers or hiring managers who can recognize their mad skills and refer internally, decide who to bring in for further interview or hire someone on the spot!<p>It's not scalable, but as I see more and more co-working spaces sprout up in many places, this could be ONE way of solving the hiring/recruiting problem for hackers.

Bidding system? Hmm...<p>Like if I put my resume on a site, someone has to bid to contact me? Perhaps as an applicant, you can set a base price and a frequency of contact. Maybe you only allow one recruiter to contact you per week or day. If you want to be that recruiter, it'll cost you minimum $1. If more than one recruiter wants to contact you, they bid up the price.<p>Applicants could regulate the minimum price based on their current status. If they are employed happily, the price is $1000. If they are unemployed, perhaps it's zero with unlimited contacts until they get flooded and then the price goes up.<p>The economics of such an idea is interesting. It assumes a shift in power from the employer to the applicant. The best of the best will rise to the top and a natural ranking of applicants will evolve based on the bid. Great applicants could sustain themselves on employer interest for a while until recruiters give up trying to gain their interest.<p>Could something like this work? I suppose it depends on supply and demand of both applicants and jobs.

I think that programmers often encounter a culture clash with recruiters. A recruiter has a client (and it's not you) and has to fill a large number of positions. I have had some awful experiences. Once, the recruiter sent a modified version of my CV to a company and exaggerated my experience in certain areas. I guess she thought she was doing me a favour, but I ended up looking like an idiot in the interview.

Guys &#38; Dolls,<p>Recruitment is sales. 95% of your time is wasted calling clients and candidates for the one time you get a match. This is unless you manage a number of clients where you are fed requirements, and then it's just the candidate part.<p>There is no way to escape it; the best thing to do is to shield yourself from the continuous onslaught.<p>• Insist all communication is sent to a "jobs" email and have GMail filter it or poll it • Delete your phone number off CV's when sending them in or posting on the web. • Make your most recent employer anonymous • You can also use an initial instead of your first name incase they have your details already, it may fool them ;-) • Make sure your CV is well written and updated • Insist on seeing a job spec before giving them your number, if you’re the perfect match they will take the time. • Do tell them your current status and salary<p>DO NOT tell them info on current company, manager until you trust them.<p>Remember they want to close candidates, clients, deals – it’s a sales job<p>Every call is a sales call; they will try to strip you for information, about colleagues, workplace, inside info, references for managers’ names<p>We would often misplace the truth or withhold information to close deals; this is common practice in the UK/Europe. The most common one telling people we had sent their CV to an employer when we hadn’t just to ensure they wouldn’t let other recruiters send it to the client and increasing the likeliness that our current candidates had a better chance.<p>I think Recruiters have a place in society, some are upstanding and honest, other aren’t. As I mentioned, it’s about distancing yourself from them until they have the ideal job for you.<p>P.S. Sorry for the ramblings, trying to watch TV and take care of my 4 day old daughter.<p>I’m a mature student studying CS but worked as an IT recruiter before deciding I wanted to turn to the other side.

I think a service product is a much better option. What is recruiting after all? It's a) contacts and b) a filter.<p>Programmers deal with recruiters because they have the "exclusives" and companies deal with recruiters because they can filter out the first interview stage.<p>So create a service, that will let companies find out the quality of the programmer, without shelling out $20,000.<p>I imagine it as a "testing company" you create a few thousand tests, programmers take them, get their rank, then they add it to their resumes.<p>Employers see the ranking link, go to your site, find out about your testing methods, see aha, 90% percentile on this tough test, good guy to interview.<p>Eventually offer programmers the ability to list their rates + languages, and let employers contact them for a small fee. i.e. Search for all programmers under $50/hr in California with Java rank of 90th percentile.<p>Make one of the questionnaires the usual questions asked in the first interview, you know the script all recruiters follow to weed out people.

I used to have a canned email that I used to reply to recruiters.<p>It basically explained (in better words) that I needed the name, website and physical address of the company, because I was very picky about culture and location, and it would save us both a ton of time.<p>It also said I had no incentive to screw them and go directly to the company, if I was indeed interested.<p>Worked 50% of the time. Some people wanted me to call them first before telling me the info (I wonder why), and others plain told me "that's not how this works, I've been burned before", but even when it did work, it seems like it caused said recruiter to not send any more leads my way.<p>So I went back to playing their game. Which I hate as much as you do.

Dude, that's a pretty sweet problem to have. "Shoot!! all these people keep calling me about how awesome I am and how many job offers they can get me. The nerve..."<p>Not the kind of problem to be upset about IMHO. If I were you I'd send them all Christmas cards and be glad that you're so sought after.<p>:-) cheers!

Recruiters exists because of two problems:<p>1) Programmers can't find all the jobs that are available 2) Companies aren't generally able to evaluate programmers<p>But #1 is less and less true, and the recruitment industry doesn't do a good job of addressing #2.

Hey fellas/ladies - one of my developer cronies sent this post my way and I'd LOVE to chat with some of y'all. I AM a recruiter and have been for the last 12+ years..in addition I share the exact sentiment that you have written on the pages below. Any of you wanna chat off line? If so, I'd welcome it and would enjoy your contribution on my blog TheAntiPimp.com. Might also help to check out this post I did about the things I hate about recruiters...rock on.<p><a href="http://theantipimp.com/?p=1082" rel="nofollow">http://theantipimp.com/?p=1082</a><p>Scott scott@theantipimp.com

Be original. If you want something unconventional, you'll have to make it happen. Here is some inspiration: <a href="http://www.socialmediajobs.com.au/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/dnd-resume-23.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.socialmediajobs.com.au/blog/wp-content/uploads/20...</a>

I had a women ask me once if I was interested in a position writing C Pound.

don't have much to add here except: yeah, who <i>hasn't</i> had bad recruiter experiences? i wish i was l33t enough that i could ignore them altogether, but i'm not.<p>i have had a few good experiences, but even then, i've never met even one who had a good grasp of the technical skills that they are trying to sell to potential employers. that's always struck me as kind of odd.