Slashdot Mirror
Tech Recruiters Defend 'Blacklists,' Lack of Feedback, Screening Techniques
Nerval's Lobster (2598977) writes Remember when executives at Apple, Google, and other firms "fixed" the market for highly skilled tech workers by agreeing not to steal each other's employees? That little incident made a lot of people think about the true modus operandi of corporate and third-party tech recruiters. Dice sat down with some of those recruiters, who talked about everything from "no poaching" tactics to the "blacklist" that exists for candidates who make boneheaded mistakes in interviews. The bottom line? Recruiters seem to pass the blame for some of the industry's most egregious errors on "junior recruiters and agencies," while insisting that their goal in life is to get you a job. How does that align with your experience?
From my experience, the boneheads were almost exclusively in the HR agencies. And that's a light term for fucking-unbelievable-idiots. I have tons of incompetence-filled horror stories. Techies (anything from coders to any branch of engineering), IMHO, should only be recruited by their peers. Period.
Recruiters, right after realtors and used car salespeople, are my least favorite people in the world. They rarely help you, instead they frequently impede and often profit off your risks and successes.
Fortunately, technology now allows you to bypass these people. LinkedIn allows you to directly apply to companies, without having to go through recruiters. Even small companies that normally wouldn't have online application process.
Since practically every tech company, including the big 5, hire recruiters its difficult to imagine their in-house recruiting who are likely composed of staff that once held other recruiting jobs dont practice the 'blacklist' and 'poach' policies as well. This isnt about independent recruiting companies but the fallout from apple, google, and others is apparently enough to warrant some defensive posturing from Dice. Throwing unnamed 'amateur' recruiting companies under the bus is a service Dice appears to readily offer for good reason: large staffing and recruiting companies are dice's bread and butter. If the product, namely people applying through Dice, gets wind that recruiters secretly blacklist and use underhanded techniques, it might impact their bottom line. ending the "article" with an apathetic platitude "You May Never Know Why You Were Rejected" further serves to keep the cattle in their cars.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I run a recruiting company. And, I am genuinely sorry to hear such criticisms. On the other hand, most people looking at career transitions lament the lack of response they get from technology-centric recruiting platforms like Monster, DICE, and Linkedin (there are a great many). Several years ago, the process of almost any online application realized a 90%+ non-response rate and job seekers were more frustrated by that silence more than anything else. From what I'm hearing from candidates its not getting much better - and, this includes hot hiring areas that include IT development, Accounting, and even Actuaries. In my organization we certainly like to make money. However, we typically earn it by understanding our clients and caring about candidates finding a terrific cultural fit. In fact, we guarantee our placements for a year. That requires solid work and great results. That benefits all three elements - the company, the candidate, and the recruiter. - Cork
Their job is not to screw up. That means they have to take the SAFE choices.
Companies dislike training. They would rather hire someone who already has all the named skills to do the job. So they go looking for that.
The problem is that those named skills? The reason they are named is that they have classes to teach you them.
What corporations usually really want and need are those qualities and un-named nebulous skill that can not be taught. They are not named because their are no classes, because they can't be taught in anything less than years. Or they are innate qualities - like intelligence and creativity - that people are born with.
As a direct result, recruiters go looking for the one thing they should NOT look for - the people that have the sills that can be taught. All the time ignoring the qualities and skills that can not be taught.
As for messing up an interview - that is just plain bad luck. You get sick, you have a bad day, etc.
Recruiters are a necessary part of a very flawed system. But they did not create the system, they merely try to make money satisfying the system.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Today's recruiters are the new method of shielding companies from their sexist/racist hiring policies. In the old days HR used to affix an A+ on the resume before passed off to the hiring manager. This A+ mark indicated that the candidate was a white male. All other resumes were discarded. Now with computer screening, the same filtering can be acomplished using keywords and Google stat data. Using third party recruiters, companies are now shielded from taking the blame for mantaining historic discrinatory hiring practices. My advice for female and minority applicants is to bypass 3rd party recruiters entirely and speak directly with company managers to get hired.
Your sound like the rare exception to the rule. I was recently on a job hunt and put my resume up on dice and monster. I immediately started getting phone calls from people who could barely speak english and wanted me to accept senoir level offers in the SF Bay area for $40/hour with no relocation package. After doing a bit of research, I quickly realized that $40/hour in SF Bay is absolute chump change. I have a wife and 2 kids and that basically leaves me a poverty level unless I want a 2 hour commute wach way. I'd get them up to something reasonable like $85.00/hour and they would mysteriously stop callinf me back. I'm assuming it's because they found a better chump..