Have You Personally Used an Honest Head Hunter?

Haacked asks: "As a software manager, I've tried using recruiters and head hunters to find qualified employees. My experience is that used car salesman feel like paragons of integrity, in comparison. It seems their interests never lie with the job applicant, nor the company. However, I once read that some recruiters do act with integrity and actually care about the people they are trying to place. The book suggested finding a head hunter who is interested in a long term relationship with you (not for the commitment-phobic) and will serve more as a career counselor, attempting to find a position that meets your goals. Seems to me that establishing a long-term relationship with fewer as opposed to screwing people over in volume would make good business sense to garner repeat business. Have any of you ever worked with any firms you felt represented your interests well?"

Comments

My choice

[JLSigman]

A guy at the Ettain Group did his best for me, and wasn't upset when I chose a full-time job over the contract he offered me. But not knowing where you are, they may not be available to you.

Retainer vs. commission-based headhunters

[jdauerbach]

Some headhunters work on retainer -- generally filling higher-level positions. They tend to put their client's interests first, because their compensation is already earned and because they work on a long-term basis. Others work on commission, filling a position for, say, 30% of the first-year salary. Many of these are, I understand, a bit less ethical.

When you speak with a headhunter trying to fill a position, just ask, "Are you on commission for this, or is it a retainer job?" You can learn a lot from that.

Trusted head-hunters?

[pcraven]

I've worked with a dozen or so head hunters. I've only me one I totally trusted. Good signs for a head-hunter:

1.) Works with you to establish your hourly rate, and the hourly rate he'll bill you at. (Doesn't hide rates.)
2.) No IP agreements.
3.) Reasonable non-competes
4.) How well they treat H1-B people. Do they threaten to deport them if they leave the company?
5.) Have you seen them lie? Do research with other people in the company. Ask pointed questions and see if employee answers match head-hunter answers.
6.) Attitude towards overtime.
7.) No patronizing attitude
8.) Open with what is going on with office politics
9.) Shows you the contract between head-hunter and company you'll go to.
10.) Asks where you want to go with your career

Bottom line, you've got to do your research. Google for people that have worked at the same company and ask them questions.

Re:I've dealt with many agencies.

[gentoo_moo]

Try finding a private Recruiter. One that consults on his/her own and is not associated with a larger corporation. These tend to be concerned with filling your positions with qualified candidates and building a good relationship because its their bread and butter not their company's. I have a friend thats a recruiter for the Hospitals but he is privately contracted. He said it works out much better because he's not under pressure to squeeze the client for every penny. A private recruiter can even offer a more indepth and personal evaluation of potential employees where a larger firm has goofy standardized testing. One look at public schools should tell you standardized tests are BS. This is only really good for hiring specific positions, not for high volume staffing in most cases.

Found one good one in the SF area

[H310iSe]

When I was a hiring manager I liked psinapse because, while I got very few resumes from them, every one was a good candidate for the job opening (they sent almost no crud) - Since I've been freelance I've done a job for them as well, they were easy to work with and very supportive. Small company, but nice.

Re:Pay One

[bladernr]

it's not clear from context what role you're in

I'm a professional consultant, so I pay for services to help find me work. (actually, this is a bit past-tense now, as I have work, but I would pay in the future).

I favor an outcome-oriented approach, personally.

I understand your position. However, I am comfortable with paying for time. My current clients pays for my time, not my results. Now, if I don't produce results for the time they've paid me for, they stop paying. Nothing stops me, I guess, from failure to complete assignments in attempt to get my contract extended, but that is not a long-term successful approach.

You should definatly check the agent's referenes before paying them anything. You are basically hiring them as your part-time contracted employee, so do the same things as you would if you were hiring any other employee.

Yes, I am taking some risk in paying for time without guaranteed results. However, I am asking him to find a client to take a risk in paying for my time, without guaranteeing results.

This is a pretty standard model in the consulting/contracting industry. You are asking for more of a "fixed-price" system, or pay for results. I am sure that exists, and maybe it works. I personally have no experience with that model, so maybe someone who does could comment?

The problem with headhunters ...

[Admiral1973]

Most of the time it's a temporary relationship, whether you're a hiring manager or just a candidate looking for work. Unless you work strictly as a contractor or manage the HR operations for a company with lots of constant turnover, you're only going to work with a headhunter when you need to change jobs or fill a vacancy. Hopefully, with this economy, you're not doing that too often. It's hard to build the kind of trust that a good relationship demands if you only work with a recruiter or agency every few years.

I've had good results working with one particular headhunter, who found me my current job and negotiated a good starting deal for me, but I haven't talked to him or anyone else from his company for at least two years (I've been employed here 3+ years). So I'm not sure I'd trust him or the agency to represent me another time, just because of the lack of familiarity. Although I hadn't met him before my previous job search, and he got me my kick-ass job. I suppose I'd give him a call, just to let him know I was available again. Before this job, a headhunter found me my previous job, but it turned out that he and my former boss were old buddies. Since I conducted my last job search on the sly, I couldn't trust that recruiter not to tell my boss what I was doing. These are the kinds of risks inherent in dealing with headhunters when you're looking for work.

Guess I've been lucky...

[iSwitched]

I've worked with three companies since about '96 -- both as employer and employee, and found them to be extremely diligent. Most recently I landed an extremely good full time position at an excellent salary doing work on an interesting project. The recruiter who placed me still checks in occasionally with me and others she's placed at this company.

I am certain their are incompetent, and sometimes even deceitful recruiters out there, just as there are bad people in any field, luckily I haven't been hooked by one.

In the boom times of the late nineties, recruiters were everyone's buddies, often landing job-switchers with plum assignments at higher salaries. In the bust, even the good ones have got a bad rap - not returning emails and calls, failing to respond to resumes and correspondence, etc.

But look, IT recruiting is affected as much by the current economic cycle as developers, sysadmins, projects managers, and the rest.

At least one of the good ones I've worked with has switched careers, as business dried up. Others still have to sift through hundreds of resumes, emails, calls, and match those to a dwindling number of opportunities. It's only marginally easier to get a recruiters attention than a prospective employers these days, so how about this:

Practice selling yourself like the valuable resource you are. Here are some things that worked for me:

• Really think about your resume, don't just slap it together, and don't forget that formatting counts. Get some help from someone more experienced if you need to.
• Don't just fire off blind emails - whether to employers or recruiters, tailor your email to the person/position of interest. Where possible, follow up with a snail-mail letter and hard-copy of your resume.
• If a phone number is provided, wait a while for your email to get in, then follow up with a call - if you can a message system, leave your full name, the position of interest, and your phone number. Take time to express some genuine interest, even if just on the recording.
• If you have experience, compile a portfolio, include a brief description of the projects you've worked on, what technologies were employed, and some personal touches like why they were of interest to you, or what provided motivation for particular design-choices. If you have screen-shots, even better, put 'em with the write-ups.
• Place your portfolio, resume, and a skills summary on the web in an attractive format and include the URL in all your correspondence.

One more thing: Have trouble in social situations, expressing yourself to non-tech people, public-speaking? No matter, so do a lot of people, you're not alone. You can either change or expect that IT people with those skills may beat you out of opportunities. Take a public-speaking or debate course at a community college and practice. If you find yourself calling end-users 'lusers', think GUIs are for wimps, or get impatient with your grandma 'cause she can't ssh into your linux box, you need to pay close attention to what I've just said.

None of this will gurantee you'll always find honest, helpful recruiters, but at least you'll get their attention, if they're out there.

Re:Out there, but rare...

[studerby]

If I remember correctly...

You remember wrong on details, although you're right on the relevant principle. The "Berne" changes were generally more minor technical issues...

In 1976, effective Jan. 1, 1978, U.S. copyright law was substantially overhauled. Some of the major changes were to coordinate with international treaty, which required that you couldn't lose copyright over technicalities (e.g. failure to register).

Under current U.S. law:

• A copyrightable work is copyrighted as soon as it is created.
• You don't have to register a copyright, normally.
• You DO have to register a copyright before you can sue someone for copyright infringement.
• If you register your published work before someone infringes it (or within 3 months of publication), you can sue for attornies fees and "statutory damages" (an amount between $200 and $150,000, "as the court considers just").
• If you haven't registered in time, you can only sue for "actual damages and profits". "Actual damages" is usually considered to be the lost business stolen by the infringer; it would be curious to see someone argue for a lost salary if the infringing headhunter cost someone a job.
• A copyright owner can also request an injunction to prohibit infringment, and can ask the court to order impoundment of infringing copies or anything used to make infringing copies.