Slashdot Mirror
Your Experiences with Recruiters?
companyAdvocate asks "I work in a small, high end IT consultancy. We are currently on a large recruitment drive and our targets are very ambitious. We are looking into alternative, original and cost-effective ways of hiring talented people. Google's billboard ad comes to mind. As we are a consultancy, we need good communicators as well as techies and raising the company profile may be an added bonus. What is the Slashdot community's experience with alternative recruitment methods? Were you hired in an exciting or interesting way? How do you make even rejected candidates leave with a positive impression?"
In general they are real jerks, but can afford to be.
If it works for nvidia, why not your company? =)
Fighting over religion is like seeing whose imaginary friend is best.
Post an Ask Slashdot, and recruit people based on their answers.
You have the right idea tapping into this site as a resource pool, but perhaps you should look for talent here as well? Give everyone a job who scores 5/5 on this Slashdot thread. Start with me, and work your way down the list. I will provide a resume and credentials upon request.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
works with me
hiring someone with a low slashdot uid does not raise a company's profile.
How do you make even rejected candidates leave with a positive impression?
Two weeks pay would be nice.
"I read your resume in detail, and your skills are exactly what we're looking for."
"Can you please forward me a copy of your resume in Word format?"
The very top of my resume has a link, which reads: "My resume in Word format". Guess they didn't read it that close, eh? Anyone with reading comprehension that low hasn't cleared the bar. <delete>
Well, I saw a posting on Craigslist, so I replied. Monday I went in for an interview and personally I thought I was waaaaay too wooden and not likely to get the job. They had me take a skills test in PHP (but couldn't decide if PHP Programming or PHP Scripting was the correct test). Either way, my test results were good, and they said that they'd try to get me an interview with the client on Friday. Friday comes, and I get a call from them. Turns out they just wanted me to start on Monday. I still work there to this day.
And that, is my experience with recruiters.
You could try identifying good people in on-line discussion forums, Usenet groups, etc. There you can immediately gauge not only a person's technical knowledge, but their ability to convey it in writing.
How you then approach them is a different question, of course. For example, I do post to various technical Usenet groups, and I've always assumed that's where the headhunters found me one day. Personally, I was mildly flattered, and I did sent them a polite reply declining their offer (since I had no interest in moving to where the job was based). However, I can imagine that others might not be so charitable about unsolicited e-mails these days.
You could always try leaking the name of your company later in this story. You're not short of geeks who know their stuff around here, so all you have to do is get rid of the 95% who can't right too safe they're lifes, and your problem's solved. :o)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
If that's alternative, so be it. Get in front of actual people. Go to social events. Attend symposia. Lift a glass or two. Get to know individuals as human beings. Watch them when they are interacting with others - not just you. Don't talk to people you might want to hire with a desk in between you.
Let people get to know you. Be accessible.
Get out there, for catssakes! What's keeping you? What the hell are you asking us for? Go! If you don't have a network already, you're behind. If you have one but it's not actively working for you, you're behind.
Just a guess here, but I think you're behind.
Host a job fair at a university that is close to your company's main location. Not only would you provide experience to a host of university nearly-grads, but you'll be able to scope out the creme of a specific university's crop. Finally, you can also provide benefits and generally increase the educational level of that university through other means, which will net you higher quality employees already localized to the area.
--- Ãther SPOON!
Throw a party with an IMAX version of the Matrix. Offer free beer and food in exchange for a resume. Advertise on Slashdot and Dr Dobbs.
That should do it.
In a company where I was recruited, they had an IQ test and a programming test (SQL + general algorithms).
The project manager (who was a senior programmer) was the one who interviewed me.
This was very personalized, and the whole recruitment process made me feel appreciated and worthy. This isn't something many companies give.
In all honestly, an "ask slashdot" is one way for 'unusual recruiting'. I'm sure I'm not the only the only one who thought at some point "ooh, where do you work, cos now I /know/ you're hiring, and at least one person there reads /. ..." So exactly do you guys do? 'High level IT consulting' sounds like a lot more fun than, say, help-desking, or the reformat-reinstall grind that I hear goes on. So reply with an email/website and prepare to get inundated w/ cv's. And ask yourself if this follows: 'if he's checking /. on a saturday night, and most people check /. while at work...'
But seriously, you're asking quite a few things. My real question for you is do you know who you're looking for? Do you know what you want? What're the ambitions of said hiring drive? If you're trying to have rejected candidates leave with a good impression, sorry, but thats just how it is (Some people even hate Google). But bring recruiters/promoters in-house to the PR dept, and use them together to raise the company's profile.
How do you make even rejected candidates leave with a positive impression?
Are you fucking retarded?
Of all the recruiters I've dealt with (at least 20), not one has even gotten me an interview.
Being a web developer who actually knows (X)HTML, I was once hung up on by a recruiter when I told her I don't use Dreamweaver. A year later, I start seeing job postings where DW experience is a disadvantage.
But, a recruiter is sometimes only as useful as the requirements they get. 10 years of .NET experience? 15 years of J2EE? The list of absurd requirements goes on and on.
As for one alternative, post on Cragslist in your area. Monster and Dice are becoming less and less useful as time goes on.
Problem is, the "word of mouth" pool is finite. You only really get a superior candidate pool with at most two degrees of separation - you either hire someone you know, or someone recommended by someone you know. Go further apart and the social mechanisms that makes the method work (personal trust and obligations) fall apart, and you're no better off than advertising in a trade publication.
And you only know so many people in the business - and they only know so many - that the pool of competent and available candidates isn't large. You can fill one or two positions at a time by word of mouth, but if you're looking for a dozen people it's no longer any better than other ways.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
They always bother me, set down a book and say "This is what we offer in the Marines/Army/Navy." NO
If you're looking to hire good Computer Science people, make all your emails plaintext. For more fancy formatting, use HTML forms and PDF. Many companies do not realize that UNIX sysadmin applications should not be Word attachments.
You've asked a bunch of questions here... good ones... Alternative means of hiring: Monster still has some effectiveness, although it is no longer an alternative means. You get lots of bulk that way, but there are many gems in that particular stream. Perhaps you could team with folks like Monster to come up with some neat ideas.
A good alternative would be to hold a contest of some sort. Let potential job applicants put together solutions, write software to solve a simple, fixed problem. Give the most successful applicants some incentives (other than just a job): perhaps some small cash prizes; something interesting like a nice gadget; perhaps some interesting prestige like a listing in some neat place on a web page or a brochure.
How might you leave rejected candidates leave with a positive impression: First and foremost, make decisions in a fairly quick period of time. Don't leave folks hanging out there for long periods. Also, tell the rejected applicants what it was that was good about the applicant. Perhaps let the person know on what they could work to make themselves more attractive to the type of position for which they applied (in other words, help them in their future employment quests).
Hiring communicative technical people is a special challenge: It is generally better to hire someone who has experience, and a great attitude and excellent human communications - even if they don't have all the super-duper "on-paper" skills for which you might be looking. Exciting ways to be interviewed and recruited: Throw a celebration focused on your company, bring your most fun and interesting people to the party, then invite lots of possible applicants. Mix it up with the folks, have some free poker games (not money gambling, just plain chips with door prizes, etc.), no booze, just great snacks, good music, and lots of chairs and tables where people can sit down and pitch the company or pitch themselves as applicants. Make it fun, advertise it in key places in the country. Don't be afraid to fly extremely interesting candidates out to your party...
Every nickel you spend on getting face-time with applicants is well spent... make lots of fun and interesting ways to attract applicants to your meetings...
A Passionate Independent Musician
So talk to them and you will get suggestions, if you find really talented people, don't try to embarass yourself with tests and interviews. Talk to people they worked with, talk to them casually and talk to their references, you get much better picture and comming with offer because you know this is the right person, without resorting to tests and tricky questions on interviews, leaves a lot of positive impression.
If my employer had the smarts to come up to me and ask, I could name easily ten people who could each replace 2-3 average employees I meet with at my company. Of course, most of them already have a job and would need some incentive to come on board or relocate, but its alwasy worth it to employ one exceptional worker rather than five average. And they often get the same amount work done. Often its cheaper even if you'd pay them double salary, which you probably won't.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Horror! Her recruiter failed her chaste expectations, I bet she felt real unclean having spoken to someone who enjoyed sex. I bet your girlfreinds a great lay, and by that I mean I bet she'll lie there stiff as a board grinding her teeth just as soon as you marry her.
If you want to really freak her out, let her know a bunch of people on Slashdot know she has a vagina.
I've seen multi stage contests (which are a form of extended interview). If the input and output for the programs is well defined then testing could be partly automated. At the very least it'd generate a contact list of some unemployed candidates. The one I saw was advertised at UoW, so you could do it on the cheap if you just hit nearby campuses.
Other less successful methods included;
one company gave out slices of pie for a resume (UoW C&D)
another, in the middle of the night, dropped a bunch of rubber ducks in the stairwells of the MC building @ UoW. That was somehow linked to getting their profile raised.
I've always struck out at job fairs, but holding one at a restaurant is a recent variation I've seen.
I was at an interview with the now defunct Excite@Home in Australia, after being sent by a recruiter, and they wanted personality. I didn't know what to say. I just changed the subject back to technical stuff and asked if they wanted someone who could do the stuff. Apparently they didn't. They wanted a converted warehouse full of wankers. If you want to hire the best, you have to quit the bullshit. Our bullshit radars can bleep from half-way across the planet, so be prepared to be honest and drop the marketing.
;) (Dang. I should have collected a fifty dollar note from them all first. ;)
At another recruiter, they pulled me into an office, hushly, hushly, and asked how they could get around the firewall blocking hotmail. Within 10 secs I had hotmail up on their monitors. Wow, they said. I was a hacker! I had long hair and a beard, so I must have been one of them, right?
Another recruiter a year earlier: me, 19 years old and offered $90,000 a year? Shit, yeah! So off I go. No pay for 7 weeks, while working 12 hours a day and 6 days a week. They left me in a youth hostel scrounging for food. I left some child porn on their system as a last "fuck you" before casually walking out. I hope the leaving of the IT manager, who was campaigning and chest-beating about kiddie pr0n at the time, "left" because of that.
What else. Oh yeah. If you want to hire the best, here's a few tips: big salaries, fewer working hours, quiet work spaces (or telecommute if possible), no PHBs breathing down one's neck, and no office politics. Leave them alone.
I half to admit that they always got me an interview, and always got me a job, but the few times I've had a chance to see the info they presented to my prospective employer - I wouldn't have even recoginized that it was talking about me. What was even funnier is that I would get the job thinking that I am doomed when they find out about all the bullshit that was spoonfed to them, but instead they're impressed - cause I guess they were expecting bullshit, but then actually got some substance instead. Go figure?
Ask people, people who may be happy with their jobs currently, who they think the best people are. Agressively recruit these people yourselves. Considering how much of a cut a recruiter usually takes, you can get talented people yourself for what you were going to pay. Plus you get people that you know can work with others.
Never hire based soley upon qualifications. Always get people recommended by good people. You have a much better chance of getting someone great. Worst case, you get someone competent that everyone likes to work with.
The ______ Agenda
When talking about the CV, it is important to note how this term is used and in reference to what geographic area.
* In the United States, a Curriculum Vitae ("CV" or "vitae") is "a comprehensive, biographical statement emphasizing your professional qualifications and activities." It is not our standard resume but a variation provided only when specifically requested, usually in pursuit of an academic or research position. (Check the information from the Colorado College Career Center, below, for more guidelines on when to use a CV rather than a traditional Resume in the U.S.)
* In other countries, the CV is the standard resume, although the format and some of the information may differ from customary practice in the U.S.
I interviewed with a company called HopOne located in Seattle the day after Thanksgiving last year. I thought the interview went really well and I was both excited about the position and confident I had nailed the interview. I was told they would let me know their decision by the following Friday. To this day I have yet to hear a single word from them reagrding the position despite several follow up e-mails and phone calls. They have totally ignored me and couldn't even muster the common decency to let me know anything one way or the other regarding the position. That should be an excellent example of what not do do if you wish to leave a psoitive impression. My impression of HopOne has been severaly tainted and I can't say I recommend them in any sort of a positive way. I also hope that in some way instant karma pays back all of the principles involved.
I also interviewed with a recruiter once who told me, "I love your credentials, and if none the 3 candidates I've currently got interviewing for this position today pan out, I'll be happy to submit your resume." (This was after insisting that I drive 50 miles each way that very day to rush to interview with him as soon as posible. It turned out it was just so he'd be ready to send someone else right away if needed.)
My point with both of the above examples is that I am fine with not being the one selected for a job I have interviewed for. Simply let me know that you've gone with someone else and show me a little respect during the process.
Showing just a little common decency and respect doesn't seem to be asking for very much...
Using PDF is a sort of half measure. If you have rendered your document into PDF using a real PDF distiller (like the one from Acrobat), then the actual text will still be present in the document and it is quite possible for someone to do whatever they like with it in Acrobat or upload it into a recruiter search system where it can easily be indexed and used for further contacts with clients (which you may not want at all at that point).
:)
However, if you create your PDF file using a tool like PDF995 which acts as a printer driver and therefore distills the printer directives into PDF as an image (and not as text), the actual text of your resume will be inaccessible except visually. This gives you complete control over where and how your resume gets distributed because everything out there today requires being able store and index your resume at a text level and (so far) does not include automatic OCR as well (which would actually be quite effective in a case like this - but shhh! don't tell the recruiter geeks!
I've actually detected unauthorized use of my resume in this way when I get a call from an agency claiming that "they really need my resume in Word format because they don't have Acrobat and can't read the file *sob*". I don't do further business with those firms.
Have fun...
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Know any good developer pickup lines?
Get to know individuals as human beings.
That's real good advice, especially when not 3 sentences later you're telling him to use them as if they were some crass job-hunting mechanism. Get to know them, pretend to be friends, so you can use them. Haha.
So, your girlfriend dismisses the thousands of people in an entire profession, because one of them talked about having a wank on a radio show?
That's a bit of broad brush there, isn't it?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
** In Plain-Text for Portability **
....
If there is a further request for DOC format, I'm out. Period.
PT can be dumped into a DB, churned quickly into XML, passed about, included in-line, printed without any BS, read without bollocks, just Plain-Text.
I'm not one to be an ass, but if the person hiring me can't get along reading plain text, that person can find another candidate for whatever position they are offering.
I used to go through the trouble of printing non-interactive PDF apps, scanning them and *painfully* aligning all my entries in Photoshop (huuuugeass files from the scans), printing them on high quality stock and making sure the stamps were perfect distances from the envelope corners
Now, fuck 'em. Read the text or don't call me.
Personally when I apply for a job I want to know whether my CV was received (this can be done with automatic email confirmation), and how many days I will have to wait until I have an answer. Then, after this period has elapsed, I want to know whether my application was accepted or rejected, and, if possible, the reason. For example: "Your application was accepted because you meet all requirements and you know good XML, please come for an interview and get ready to answer some programming questions about PHP and XML" or "your application was rejected because you do not have the necessary prior experience at another company" or even "your application was rejected because your CV was too long" (so, in that case, I can send a shorter CV). Before I apply I also want to know the exact geographical location where I will work and, if possible, the salary. Additionally, I want to know the privacy policy of the company and how long my CV will be archived, as well as whether and how I can update my CV in the company's database (if it has one). I believe that the best way to recruit talented people is not to ask for specific degrees or professional experience, but to put a programming problem of medium difficulty on the vacancy ad and request all CVs to include a solution to the problem. Remember: The best way to keep people happy is to treat them as human beings, not like machines. By the way, here is my professional webpage.
The thing that always worked for my fellow IT friends is the tangible offer of mad loot and crazy benefits.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Know any good developer pickup lines?
Is your resume padded, or are you just happy to see me?
ok, here's a list based on my experience with them during interviews and career fairs - and feedback from people i know.
;)
:)
Intel - they give noctoriously hard questions, with 3 rounds of interviews. but there were simple interviews where they only asked about course projects and not too much textbook material in too much depth. in the latter case, there was only 1 interview round before the candidate was hired.
Xilinx - phone screen - basic textbook material. onsite: presentation. multiple full day interviews based on in depth textbook material. the onsite was probably 20 times more difficult. Interviews were disorganized. They had a list of questions that they go through and some of them were repeated from one interviewer to the next. This was in the valley and some of the people seemed to have attitude and ego problems, and didn't like to listen to your answer when are multiple solutions to the interview question. The group looked like zombies, probably from all the overtime shifts.
Analog Devices - the campus onsite interviews are a complete waste of time. they're basically for PR purposes whether they're planning on hiring or not for the year. Questions they ask are generally simple, but I hear onsite interviews are always challenging. Recruiters at the career fairs are always excellent and informative. Company slide presentations are always disorganized - but we were engineering students - who really cares anyway
Teradyne - Campus onsite interviews are usually given by aluminus of the university. I have a theory that their company is sending these folks for interviewing is because these are the ones that have nothing else better to do at work - i.e., they can afford to send the non productive ones for these events... At the career fair, almost all of the recruiters think you don't know anything about the field and go through the whole process explaning everything. Perhaps it's their strategy - holding up a queue at their booth so it looks like they're generating a lot of popularity and interest! Some of them don't even know what they're talking about after working there for a couple of years.
NVidia - this one's the worst. They used to show up at the career fair and flat out refused people's CV right at the spot if their GPA is below 3.5. They would ask up front and basically tell you to buzz off if you "don't have what it takes". I know of someone who worked there as an intern and he basically had to go through their insane work hours. Oh, what happens to the ones that get past that absurd GPA screening? They sit you down at the back of the booth, and basically ask you technical problems which would take up to over an hour.
Synopsys - Very reasonable interviews. They ask really good questions and are not there to find out what you don't know, but what you do, and to really see what you're capable of. They're interested in seeing your thought process and would give you slight nudges in the right direction to see whether you catch on.
Anyway, my current job was found through monster. I had my interview, signed the offer and began work just within 9 day of submitting my application online. I'll not name the company here, but interview process was very reasonable, (see Synopsys - very similar). Very humane people and you had a sense of the great people you would be working with if hired. After graduating, it took me 3 months of job search before I found the job.
Amazing work environment - but that'll be for another time and a different story
my blog
Actually, no - the worst thing is not to hear anything. I find it rude when I spend a lot of time putting together an application (tailoring CV/resume) and I don't even get a rejection email.
Beware agencies. In addition to an article on recruiters that shows some of their less salubrious side, I've personally never been impressed with them. For example, in my current work (HCI/usability), I have a PhD and private consultancy experience), I cannot even get a reply from them; this applies even to specialist agencies. I'm not sure why but my guess is that their customers want MSc's and the agency is damned if they'll accept anything more. They seem to promise a lot but deliver with little. Some job adverts have unrealistic requirements - these often have little real knowledge of the job and know only buzz-words. Avoid them.
But if you can identify your needs, there is no reason that you cannot search for people yourself. Yeah, it's a long process but you know your requirements better than anyone else does. People working on FOSS have their work on public display. Find projects (and thus workers) that you admire and get in touch. Even if nobody wants the job, the offer is tremendously flattering and they may be able to recommend someone else with the skills.
I guess my point is that if you want people to do a specific job, make sure you talk to people who will understand what you needs are. Talk to techies, not to recruitment folks.
bang goes my karma... again...
Word of mouth? Mumumumaybe.
...
My current job started as a contract and has morphed into a Real Job (TM), ie, holidays, sick days, superannuation. The first time I applied for it I still had my date of birth (1950) in my resume, and didn't even talk to the pimp. The second time it was advertised, I sent in a resume which didn't tell them how old I am, and I got an interview. I got there about 30 minutes late (caught in traffic - in Adelaide for fucksake! We don't have traffic problems here as a rule) and immediately said to the two interviewers, "You'll have to excuse me if I'm a bit dopey, I've just spent the last 12 hours driving a taxi." The interview went OK, but I wasn't hugely confident. Later that day (or maybe early the next day) I'd had a sleep and was back in the taxi in town, and I saw a few people waving goodbye to each other. One of them kept waving, so I thought "Beauty! A job." This bloke opens the door, and says, "Gidday, Dave." One of the blokes who'd interviewed me that morning
It's one of the best places I've ever worked.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
Let's face it, most of us have interfered with ourselves, although most of us would also not care to discuss it in front of a large audience ... D'oh!
What a long, strange trip it's been.
And no, this isn't a troll post, ReAd BeTwEen ThE lInEs iF yOu MiSsEd WhErE i SaId ThAt.
Other than that, a carefully crafted mix of something google billboard like with a local college might work out well, especially if you at least hint to what you do and where you are located.
And for my final thought, with all things, you get what you pay for, so put in the time or plan to put up the bucks. And no going to a recruiter isn't an alternative, original or cost-effective way to find good people, IMHO.
Scott Swezey
(I'm not trolling, she really did hear her recruiter admit to that in front of a whole Northern Virginia radio audience)
Umm.. wow. I guess I'll never be visiting northern Virginia if someone admiting vibrator use is so shocking that you might consider it a "troll". Try to get out more buddy, there's more to life than extreme religious beliefs.
AccountKiller
I recently started contracting, and I was looking for a setup that doesn't just shop meat but actually tries to find something that suits me + prospective client. Maybe I got lucky, but I ran into a startup that is currently now represented in London, UK, India (not quite sure where) and has a presence in Switzerland they're not yet ready to use yet (takes a bit longer if you want to do it right, apparently).
;-). Moreover, I took the trouble to see what their future plans look like (because I don't want to change every job) and I think this club is here to stay..
;-). They allow me to focus on doing interesting work instead of fighting paperwork ;-).
What I like about them is that they actually really listen to what you want. Maybe that will change over the years as volume increases, but it's nice to find someone who doesn't subsequently waste your (and employers') time with giving you unsuitable positions and presenting unsuitable CVs to prospective clients - it's IMHO a win-win because these guys get listened to. And they also manage payroll so I just have to turn up at work, do the job and hand in timesheets - no more paper hassle (yes!
So, I'm happy to plug them, but their website is presently embarrasing - when I complained (because I have referred some friends to them already) I was told that's being improved in the next few weeks because they're changing designer (rightly so, any designer who puts an 'under construction' sign anywhere on a site ought to be hit with a clue bat - repeatedly).
They're called Carter Jones (there's an 'Associates' in the name as well somewhere, but that appears to have been dropped), at www.carter-jones.biz.
Large fat disclaimer: this worked for *me*. No guarantee it works for you, if you prefer someone who just shops you in volume these guys might not be right for you. I appreciate that for some jobs volume shopping is more effective, but I'm in a more mature market which requires experienced specialists and I'm happy with them
Insert
I've found recruiters to be nearly worthless, from both sides. They keep trying to cram square pegs in round holes, trying to make a match.
.Net job for over $70k. This is a VB6 job for $48k and it's 200 miles away. It'd be one thing if they just wanted to clear up your requirements, but it was a constant barrage of openings that shouldn't make sense to a human. It was like they were just automated keyword matchers.
At work, I think we've used 2 different recruiters to bring people in. We'd get a stack of 5 resumes at a time and could immediately throw out at least 4 of them because they didn't match what we asked for. Then we'd get callbacks from the recruiter asking why we weren't interviewing these people and what we were looking for. I mean, we'd ask for a C++ unix person with 3 to 10 years experience and we'd get someone that's done Java for the past 5 years but had a C++ class in college. Or we got a guy in that had 30+ years of experience, mostly COBOL on mainframes, but he'd been doing C++ on Windows for the past 6 months. Worthless. Well, almost worthless. We probably went through 40 resumes and interviewed 7 people. We contracted three for six months and eventually hired just one of the three. The funny thing about the one is that we just knew within 5 minutes of talking to him that he'd work out. He was the only one we all felt strongly about hiring. No amount of tech checking or testing made a difference.
From the looking for a job side, I watched my office-mate use a recruiter for more than 6 months. Constant calls and emails like "would this be a good fit?". Um no, I'm looking for a local
I still vote for what's worked best for us (and me). Networking. Everyone you know should know that you're looking for people. Not just the techies either. I can practically talk to anyone I know about needing a developer and they can name someone. They might not personally know anything about development, but they can tell me "Pete's brother is a developer and he's looking". Hey, I know Pete's brother, but I didn't know he was a developer. Etc. The same with looking for a job. "Oh you're looking for a job? I think Bob Loblaw needs a IT manager."
Here are my recommendations:
Be honest. If you aren't, it will show in everything you say and and you will get applications from dishonest people, who will make your life miserable.
Be trustworthy. If you say or imply you will do something, do it. People who are analytical enough to do well in a technically demanding job are analytical enough to be aware if you are mentioning one thing but doing another.
Of course, being trustworthy is one aspect of being honest. However, so many companies have difficulty with creating trust that it deserves to be mentioned separately.
Look for people who communicate well. Every job requires interaction with other people. If you find someone who isn't good at communicating, you have found someone who fundamentally doesn't like working with other people. Such a person drives up costs in ways that are difficult to measure.
Advertise on Slashdot. Many very smart people read Slashdot. When someone replies to your ad, ask for their Slashdot ID. That and a Slashdot subscription will give you access to all their comments. A good way to judge the maturity of a candidate is to see how he or she communicates in casual circumstances like a Slashdot discussion.
Seek a reputation for being warm and friendly, and deserve it. If you have a good reputation, eventually your ad budget can be cut to one-tenth of what it was when you were beginning, because people will hear about you from friends.
Be charitable. Try to give every applicant something valuable in return for applying. Useful feedback is a excellent gift. Even a well-written discussion of the job market on your web site is a gift.
Remember, many of the candidates who didn't quite have what you needed this year will have had growthful experiences and will be excellent candidates in future years.
Don't waste anyone's time. Make sure your business processes are efficient.
I have dealt with recruiters many times. The part I hate most is that they don't seem to listen and aren't usually that technical. For example, you tell them you don't want any contract that involves much travel, yet they will still call you about contracts that require 50% travel. I've also had recruiters ask if I know Visual Basic Scripting. When I reply that I am pretty good with VBScript, I had one guy say, "Sorry, they are really looking for Visual Basic Scripting."
The final straw was my last dealings with a recruiter. It was a 6 month contract-to-hire job with Apex Systems. They told me a $10K salary range for when I went full time. However, when my 6 months was up, I found out through the real company that Apex Systems had overstated the salary range by $10K. Luckily for me, I had a job offer from a different company that same week for the original salary I was looking for. Now I will never deal with Apex Systems again.
To be honest though, I have had a couple of good meetings with recruiters. The difference was that they were usually small time recruitment firms and they didn't lie. They also had a real interest in placing me in the RIGHT job. I said I didn't want a travel job, so they didn't call me about travel jobs.
First, how do you define cost effective? Is it just minimizing waste costs, or trying to recruit on a small budget? There are smart ways of recruiting and there are cheap ways, and it's fine to spend money if the recruiting is done in a smart way.
The most powerful thing to do is to make your company attractive to prospective employees. This is, unfortunately, something difficult for a recruiter to control. You can make the company look bad, but it's hard to make it look better than it is. Because you are on a recruiting drive, the business can't be all that bad, so that's +1 already for the company.
If you're looking for good communicators and techies, the internet is probably a good place to start. If they post on a blog, you can already get an idea about their ability to communicate by writing. They'll also list their interests and possibly a resume, which makes things easy for you. Google's Blog search might be a good place to start--I can't say I've ever been contacted by this means, but if I were, it would indicate immediately that Company X is personally interested in me (regardless of whether or not I get a job offer).
Another thing to try is use events where your hiring base might exist. I recall distinctly when I was on a solar car race, and a solar cell manager from a national lab walked around visiting with teams, handing out his business card with the express invitation "feel free to contact me when you start looking for a place to work". He knew that the best and brightest would work on their stuff even if they weren't paid to--and I have yet to meet anyone on a university solar car team that was paid to do their job. Indeed, often such work resulted in a slight detriment to their grades in unrelated courses. Regardless, I kept that card in my wallet for two years until I began looking for a job, and when it came time, I pulled out my card and contacted him. I knew he really wanted good employees, and he knew that I cared enough to keep his business card (and remembered to actually use it).
Another possible method: contact university professors. This is especially useful if you want to hire graduate students. Find a professor who teaches a relevant subject, and see if there's any way you canc work with them. If there are enough graduate students around, give a presentation about who you are and what you do. Maybe even fund some research at the university. When the graduate students finally graduate, they'll probably know whether or not they want to continue working for you, and you'll know if you want them to work for you.
It's the man, not the region. We're good people here in the DC metro area. Don't let one non-representative repressed freak ruin it for you.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Yeah, most of the time leaving a positive impression just means spending a little bit more time on the rejected applicants instead of immediately dropping them once you've decided you aren't going to hire them. Very short sighted but almost everyone does just that. Getting feedback and personalized attention after the no hire decision can't help but leave people with the impression that you are interested in them and wish them well.
Granted most HR people will complain they just don't have the time to do that sort of thing, but being better than the rest rarely is a time saver. If you hire very few people then maybe not worth it, but for companies that will hire fair numbers the benfits will be worth the extra time, in positive word of mouth and also in applicants who may return later on.
Fair enough. I thought perhaps the bible belt extended into northern Virginia. Good to hear that I'm wrong.
AccountKiller
Hiring communicative technical people is a special challenge: It is generally better to hire someone who has experience, and a great attitude and excellent human communications-
in other words, dont hire this guy- http://www.theregister.co.uk/odds/bofh/
>> Were you hired in an exciting or interesting way?
Casting couch and a jar of Nutella.
If you're looking for IT people though, you might swap the Nutella for Octane Energy Gel. from ThinkGeek, which "penetrates deep into the skin allowing increased circulation". Whatever that means.
That is, I think, the best place to find people and find a job. Dice has been around since the old BBS days and has a solid reputation among professionals. I've gotten more jobs via Dice than any other two methods combined. I've also hired more people via Dice when in a hiring manager position.
Fancy alternative hiring methods? WHY? This is a business, not a game show. Yes it's true that word of mouth, and employee references are an even better way to bring people in, but you can't count on it when you need someone for a specific position.
If your company goes and starts doing all these 'strange and innovative' job recruitment methods you're only telling me one thing: I don't want to work there, because you're either going to piss away your budget and go out of business, or you're all a bunch of stuck up asswades and working there is going to really suck.
Yes I've worked at fun and exciting places. Or fun and exciting until they hired some Harvard grad who didn't understand business or our business model and in his attempts to 'make a bigger profit' turned the place into hell on earth and ran us out of business. In all those cases it wasn't until someone decided to try and get 'innovative' with business practices that we went down the tubes. Innovation is for designs, not how you run a business. Innovatively run offices always suck for the people who have to work there.
Before I graduated, I used to hate those F you form letters ("we'll keep your resume in the database for 6 months..."). Then I interviewed with some companies that didn't even bother with that - I never heard from them again. Even after I sent thank-you letters to the six interviewers. So a followup letter is the *minimum* you should strive for. A personalized letter would be even better.
Also, the less you treat employees like cattle the better. That might work on campuses where there are thousands of potentials, but it doesn't impress interviewees when the company is churning through candidates like an assembly line.
Joel on Software has two great entries that relate to this topic: The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing, and Hiring the top 1% (hint: just because you're rejecting 99% of applicants, doesn't mean you're hiring the top 1%, because the top 1% already have great jobs!)
I think that many companies have learned the secret of that last point. The best people have jobs already, for the most part. If you really want exceptional people, don't wait for them to show up at your door with a resume, find out who they are and who they work for, and then hire them away. Offering them more money will not convince them (though obviously you should offer a bit more than they're making now), but the opportunity to have more creative control over their job might.
But when they're bad, they're really really bad, so bad, that I don't want to even think about it, as today is a day of rest, and not anger. :)
Anyways, I will refer everyone to a web page of a software developer who very adeptly describes his experiences with recruiters, and why he all but refuses to work with them.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
My general feeling toward recruitment is that the model is pretty thoroughly broken, and designed to fail far more than it succeeds. My sister was a tech recruiter, and hasn't the foggiest about anything technical. I get calls from recruiters about jobs that have nothing to do with my skill set on a fairly regular basis. This is a waste of time for recruiters, and annoying to job seekers.
The problem with recruiting is the same as it is for tech support: you need a crapload of recruiters, and they generally don't get paid a whole heckuva lot of money. This pretty much guarantees that the only people becoming tech recruiters are people who can't get a technical job, because they probably have no technical background. So now you have a situation in which all you can really do is compare a req. with a resume, and pair jobs with applicants that way. Unfortunately, that's not an effective way to judge whether an applicant is right for a job (or vise versa).
What would be great is if you could hire people with a technical background, perhaps on a freelance basis, to review the pairings you come up with before you contact an applicant about a job. For example, you could use your current pairing system as a first filter, then send me the job description and resume, and I could tell you, for the low price of $25 per review, whether or not it's really a match. Set up a website where I could have a "freelance reviewer" account, and I'll go there, list my skillset, and you can dump pairings there for me to review online. At the end of the month, send me a check for my work, and everyone is happy.
Visit my blog http://www.protocolostomy.com
It's certainly true that many comments on Slashdot stories are immature and disrespectful and angry and illogical. Yours is one of the ones that is disrespectful.
However, there are also many very knowledgeable people posting useful comments.
Whether Slashdot comments would be a useful evaluation system does not depend on the quality of any Slashdot discussion, or on the moderation system. It depends only on the maturity and ability to communicate of the person who posts the comments. Each person has 100% control over that.
If a recruiter looks at your Slashdot comments, what will he see? He will see a comment that begins "You're stupid" and gets worse after that. He will see other amazingly angry comments, too.
In fact, in your case, your Slashdot ID is proving to be very valuable. Someone who habitually uses a forum for public discussion to act out anger should be eliminated from consideration for hiring.
I'm not a slashdot link traffic whore, I promise. I've written about my experience with job recruiters on my blog.
I've generally had bad experiences with recruiters. I also would like to mention I'm new to the whole notion of recruiters, as they weren't nearly as prominent out west, where I'm from, as they are in more populated areas, like Michigan (where I'm at now).
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
Years back, those fools would call me every couple of months trying to place me in a FoxPro programming job. I don't know how they got my name, nor the idea that I had FoxPro experience. The extent of my FoxPro skills then as now was handing the box to customers who wanted to read the back (at the time I worked in the campus computer store for an Ivy League university, I have long since moved on). I told the recruiter so every time I got a phone call from them, but they never corrected their database.
This all started when the last employer I worked for went bankrupt. A co-worker of mine managed to get hired on permanently with one of the clients he and I supported. Since I didn't have that type of luck, I had to go the traditional route of blasting out resumes to recruiters and employers advertising positions. I did manage to score a few small setup and support gigs in between, but the craziness started while I was working on setting up a domain and a Exchange 2000 server for a small law office. One evening, I got a call from a staffing agency asking me about a position near where I live doing desktop support. Naturally, I agreed to the position. I had a series of phone interviews with the recruiter and with the company (Company A) I'll be contracted to. One of the things they had me do was to take an evaluation on my knowledge of WinXP. They contacted me stating they sent me an e-mail with the link to the evaluation. Since I was in the middle of the job of setting up the Exchange server, I couldn't do it right away. They contacted me again asking if I had a chance to complete it. I then asked the client I was setting up the server for if I could use the server as a means of getting to the evaluation. They agreed to it and I completed the evaluation. I contacted the recruiter and they said that I scored a perfect score on it and they wanted me to interview again with Company A offering the position. I completed that interview, and by that time, my cell phone was about to die, and I needed to access my e-mail again. By this time, I had left the law office to go to a temporary job doing retail sales for a wireless company. I couldn't use their phone or their computer, so I had to use the library across the street. Went over there and found out that I couldn't use a computer since all of them were in use by other people and there was one ahead of me who just signed in. Only other option was to charge up my phone and call the recruiter stating that I would have to wait until later that evening to get to the information that he e-mailed me that afternoon. I returned home after completing my temp job shift and completed whatever it was that got sent out to me. I also made sure that my cell phone got charged up as well. The next day, I got a call from the recruiter while I was finishing up a configuration on a computer to have it talk to the Exchange server at the law office stating that they want to bring me on. I told them they could, and I had myself a temp-to-perm position starting after Memorial Day 2005. My wife and I were going out of town that weekend and I got a call on the day we left from the recruiter asking if I could start that Friday. I had to explain to him that my wife and I were on the road going to Michigan and I wouldn't be back until that following Tuesday. All of this was just the beginning of what was to come.
About a month into my new job, I get notified via e-mail that Company A I was contracted with would be withdrawing job offers due to it's decision to not further pursue the business that it would have earned through a contract win. This left a lot of people raising questions about their future working for the company on the contract they were to be assigned to. Only thing we could do was to continue working under the direction of our managers while a solution was worked out. In the meantime, Company B, the organization that previously held the support contract with the business I was doing work for renegotiated a new contract to last until 2009. Although that was good news for Company B employees, Company A people were still left in the dark about their future. Thankfully, my manager for Company A stated that his job was that everyone that was working with him today has a job going forward. For me that meant one of two things. Either Company B acquires the rights to my talent through a contract buyout or direct hire through contract expiration, or I am retained by Company A and reassigned to another contract. It was decided around November that I was to be
I was sort-of hired by a recruiter for a large defense contractor. I won't name names, but they're HQ'd in Houston, often associated with the VP, and you can probably figure it out from there.
Anyway, my field is pretty small, so it's a worker's market. As such, I felt comfortable with a verbal contract, despite the fact that I'd be, essentially, selling everything I owned and moving halfway around the world, twice: First to go to "inprocessing" in Houston for a few weeks, then on to my final destination. I discussed timelines with the recruiter, and we settled on five weeks before I started work. He discussed it with the hiring manager, and they agreed to wait. That gave me time to sell my car, sell/give away my posessions, and find a suitable home for my dogs. Five weeks is a long time, but it was over the holiday season, which is a terrible time to try to get anything done.
Fast forward three weeks; two weeks till departure. I've posted ads in most of the local newspapers for my car & moving sale, arranged less-beneficial deals with a dealership if I can't sell my car in time, and bought tickets to have my pets shipped. I've also submitted my two week notice to my current employer. That night, I got a call from the recruiter who was "sorry to tell me" that the position was no longer available due to changes in manning requirements.
I'm not sure whether they found someone else who was available sooner, or if their requirements actually changed, but that's not really important. He assured me that he had looked for alternate positions that I might be qualified for, but that nothing was available. While I consider myself adept enough that I could perform well in a wide variety of fields, I didn't press the issue because I'd lost any desire to work with a company like that, regardless of possible compensation.
That wasn't my first experience with a recruiter though. I also did a stint in the US Navy, and while I sought them out initially, and of my own volition, I still had to deal with a recruiter for the first part of the process. In my experience (albeit limited to one of each; civilian and military), recruiters are nothing more than salesmen. Just like a typical car salesman can tell you little beyond what's on the sticker of a vehicle, these guys are almost always completely ignorant of the details of a job, from the requirements to the hours to the workload, etc. And their ignorance is compounded by their lack of authority to make (or, usually, make alterations to) any contracts or legally binding agreements. While I blame myself for accepting a position with nothing in writing other than guarantees on my part, in the future I will not deal with a recruiter, at least not beyond the initial meet & greet phase. If a company doesn't respect its workers, or care about the quality of the people it's hiring, enough to have a potential hiree meet with an actual boss/supervisor/manager, then I in turn have little respect for that company. Recruiters generally have old or incorrect information, and often make promises they're in no position to keep. While that's the typical "oversell, underdeliver" premise of marketing in general, it can only win in the short term, since most well-qualified workers will just cut and run once they find out what things are "really" like. In my opinion, if the goal is to find and keep quality employees for the long haul (or vice versa, find and keep a quality job), recruiters are the last resort.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
We are currently on a large recruitment drive and our targets are very ambitious. You have jobs for all these people, right? Or will you be keeping the bulk "on file"? This has been my experience, and it sucks.
I was an out of work IT contractor and was referd to this website....www.jobvertical.com.....i was so impressed with this service that i want to propogate their services....and spread the word...these guys are even listening to new ideas...have any please contribute... www.jobvertical.com
I'm about to graduate with a CS degree from a top university, and I've had seven on-site interviews in the past few months. The company that I'm about to sign with has won me over not only because I think it's a great fit, but also because they have been good to me throughout the process. They were my first on-site, at the beginning of November, and I didn't have my last until the end of last month. They gave me my offer over three months ago, and I told them up front that I would need a lot of time to finish interviewing and have a final decision. They were totally fine with it. They seemed a little antsy when it was getting close to three months, but they never really applied pressure for me to respond quickly.
They also kept in touch with me throughout the whole decision process, even making the nice small talk about school, my fiancée (I got engaged while they were waiting), etc. They also sent me a care package with some company-branded toys and candy during my finals week. Another thing that I really liked (even though I didn't take advantage of it) was that they put me in touch with important people. Their VP of engineering and chief software architect called me to answer any questions I might have about the company.
The last thing that won me over was the onsite interview itself. I established a rapport with the interviewers, and they made it seem like a collaborative rather than an adversarial environment. There was one interview in particular that was just a single fun and open-ended design problem that followed the natural progression of the discussion; instead of having a specific line of questions in mind, the interviewer just asked for more detail about specific parts of the system. One thing you should absolutely not do to a competent computer scientist is drill him or her on specific technologies. A good CS program will give students the background knowledge required for building software, but it won't necessarily teach them specific technologies. Wanting up-to-date knowledge of specific technologies shows that you are more interested in what the person can contribute immediately than in the person's long-term potential.
The final tip I would give recruiters is to offer nice accomodations. It's not only flattering but leaves really good memories when you treat a candidate to high-quality meals and hotels, especially for the college crowd that hasn't that kind of experience before.
As many have reiterated here. The biggest thing you can do to alienate an applicant is to not respond. Always respond. Period. You might not want to say "sorry, Charlie," but you must. Don't chicken out.
.DOC" link is inferior to an email attachment. Ugh.
Second, when someone goes to the trouble of making your life easier (say, by writing a resume weblication that spits out a resume in any form you want), take the time to use it. I can't believe that a "Click here to download as a
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
I could see hiring the ones who read the manuals, but do you really want someone who's willing to mess with possibly mission-critical equipment on which they don't have training, and out of boredom?
Ours, we've shown them the full range of operations in the labs and then given them a few practical hardware and software problems. You know, simple things like factors that might be causing a bad signal in a piece of equipment, or reversing a string in a programming language of their choice.
*wry grin* And our lead engineer always starts off the interviews by asking their opinion on their programming skills. He expected to have to swim through a torrent of bullshit after asking that question, but bizarrely enough, a lot of CS majors have given the answer as "not great." I don't know whether it's honesty or false modesty in those cases.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
If you are deleting the resumes unread, then how do you know whether or not they are plain text with .doc extension?
I think the biggest problem with recruiters today is that the vast majority of them are not at all technical and yet, they are trying to recruit people who are very, very skilled in their professions. I find it extraordinarily difficult just to have an initial phone conversation with them.
The primary requirement for a technical recruiter is that they are at least aware of the technology that they are trying to recruit for. That means knowing the various acronyms (that Sequel and SQL are the same thing for example); that programming experience can be somewhat interchangeable; and that some technology is new and there will never be a candidate with 15+ years experience in .Net
The other problem I run into frequently are recruiters who cannot discern the difference between tech-only jobs (aka programming) versus non-technical (but still tech-savy) business or management positions.
I am not a programmer anymore, nor do I wish to be, but I am a technical project manager. I still keep current on new technologies and my previous experience as a programmer and DBA make me qualified to manage even though I have not "officially" programmed for several years.
It would be nice if recruiters could understand the difference and not automatically exclude me from certain positions just because I do not have direct and recent programming experience in "X"-language. Or, conversely, send me job reqs that are programming-only positions.
. . . is an Army recruiter.
Signed,
A Former Air Force Recruiter.
What?
The most important thing is to treat the candidate with respect and to realize that hiring quality talent is a 2-way process. When it comes to good candidates, you are not interviewing them; they are interviewing you. I've walked into interviews where the interviewer thought that their job was worth me bending over backwards to kiss his/her ass. In those cases I didn't put up with the bullshit and let them say no to me. Also, make sure that your interviewers reflect the expertise of your organization. I decline jobs where I am significantly smarter then the people interviewing me, and I left a job because they fired one of my interviewers during my first week.
No, I will not work for your startup
As most word processors include an RTF parser as standard you have a couple of choices. You can either send an RTF file or you can send an RTF file renamed with a dot doc extension. This doesn't seem to work with HTML which is interesting.
rgds,
Richard Rothwell
"All that is required for evil to triumph is that the good keep silent"
I had a very similar situation with a prospective employer in Chicago. Interviewed once, did well. Waited two weeks, got called back for #2. Interviewed again, did very well, was sure they were going to make an offer.
Then I waited a week and followed up. Nothing. Then I waited another week and followed up. Nothing. I ended up interviewing for and accepting another position.
After three months had gone by with the first job (which I was really interested in at the time), I get a call: "Our first choice for the position didn't work out, so we'd like to make you an offer."
Had the company I applied with kept me a little more informed - even to the point of telling me that they'd accepted another applicant - I may have jumped ship to work for them when they finally called me back. As it was, it was clear they couldn't get their crap together enough to hire someone, so what kind of hassle would it be to work there? I turned that job down.
Now that I remember it, I got a job installing DSL back in the day in a similar fashion. Interviewed, got turned down. Two weeks later, called back and hired. Best job I ever had.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
Could not have stated it any better than that. Nice Work
recruitment agencies deal with thousands of applicants. they're gradually getting with the times and storing these incoming CVs in electronic format.
if you send them a PDF, sure, they can store it on the network, but they can't (as an example) readily search through them all for certain skills, or copy and paste the contents readily into another application.
certainly where i work, agencies attempting to supply contractors will be doing it all electronically - and if someone just supplies a paper CV or a one in a different format, it makes life just that little bit more difficult. anything that causes HR/recruitment a bit of a problem tends to slip down the pile. like it or not, word is a defacto standard now - i'm sure they wouldn't care if you wrote it using Open Office though.
you have to ask yourself, do i want the job? how can i make it easier for them to pick me?