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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 (in general, I have known a couple of good ones) are in my opinion the absolute scum of the earth, complete parasites. They rarely have a clue what they are talking about in terms of tech skills, and will try and shoehorn you into any job as long as they get their commission. Just a useless middleman.
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.
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
Since we have DICE in this discussion, why don't you fix it? If DICE is our friend and helping us to get a job, you could very easily change the rules to make this more worker friendly. There are only really 2 job sites, Monster and DICE. Why doesn't DICE get together with Monster and agree on some changes.
#1. require salary info in the job posting. It's insulting and dishonest to allow employers to not even bother telling us what they're willing to pay until after the interview process.
#2. require employers to assert that they don't use blacklists and no poaching agreements or risk losing access to your services.
Alternatively, maybe we the workers should setup our own employment site that does protect us and then refuse to use sites like DICE and Monster. We have the power, it's our laziness that allows them to continue abusing us.
There are 2 types of recruiters, those with "skin in the game" (like in house recruiters) and those only trying to make their quota so they can keep eating.
There are 2 types of candidates, those who need a job bad enough to work with any recruiter, and those that can get a job easily because they have "in demand" skills, they don't need (or want to deal with) the second type of recruiter.
Luckily, I'm the second type of candidate and I will never again deal with the second type of recruiter. I love captive recruiters, even if I don't particularly care to work for their company, and I will happily give them referrals if I can. But the independent recruiters are all scum, and I choose that characterization carefully, I've never met one that was not, though interestingly they all swear they are different than the others. I'm working on a form letter to send to the scum recruiters, but I'm too nice to actually send it, so I'll just continue to ignore them. Like telemarketers and spammers, I realize they need to make a living, they just aren't going to get any help from me.
Since 1979, I have been employed, able to move between jobs, in high demand and able to ignore recruiters. It wasn't until 2011 when I experienced my first layoff that I had to give recruiters serious consideration as the entire employment landscape had changed.
I have had to figure out how to work with recruiters - understand how they work and separate the chaff from the wheat.
Recruiters come in many different flavors. The younger tech worker will. more likely than not, deal with younger and less experienced recruiters. More experienced prospectives get handed off to the more established recruiters. And, since they get a commission based on things like the salary of the hire, to the victors go the spoils, right? The less experienced have to deal with more perspectives in order to earn enough for a bite to eat. It makes them hungry. And, it can make them rude.
One thing you should never do is piss them off. Yes, you can be blacklisted very quickly. Given how many corporations use recruiters and how frequently they change firms, that blacklist can follow you around and persist based on whether they record your transgression in their systems or not.
You need to stay on top of the recruiter (sounds promising given how many good looking ladies work in the field...good luck with that) and watch how they modify YOUR resume. They WILL rewrite your resume in their style and draw from what you submit to them. You HAVE the RIGHT to see what it is that they are submitted to their client on your behalf. Ask for it. Also, ask for a limited right to represent. More reputable firms will only hold you to a given position - not lock you out or blindly send your resume. But, get it in writing before you sign on so you can work with other recruiters for different positions and companies.
Make yourself accessible but not overly accessible. I use Google Voice to take recruiter calls. It lets me weed out those who I have an established relationship with (and, who I have given my cell number) and those cold calling me. The call transcripts the GV produces can be rather humourous as a by product - good for a laugh. I thought about publishing some of the funnier transcripts (Hi .my name is , I think I am a recruiter).
I ignore most emails from recruiters from those that exhibit too much familiarity, poor grammar, provide limited details, ask for too much information (no, I AM NOT going to give you my salary history for the past 30+ years, my SSN, or my first born) or don't respect simple things like my geographic location or skillset. Additionally, while I might not respond to every email, I do look at the more promising ones to see if two or more emails appear to represent the same position. In one situation, I had three recruiters from three different offshore firms trying to represent me for the same position with the State for a mobile architect. One would say the position was at $55/hr and 6 month duration and another would say it's $70/hr for 12 month CTH while another was saying it offered $85/hr for 12 months (no, CTH). Yes, the were for the EXACT same position (they cut and paste from the same feed). And, when I spoke with a firm in the State and asked if they knew about this position, I found out that the State was actually paying $110hr, it was 6 months (6 months left in the fiscal year), but expected the contract to be renewed for another year. So, it makes sense to shop around.
When you find a recruiter that seems like a good match, work with them. And, keep them on file. I still get calls from many of them hoping I am willing to leave my current employer - I will listen and consider even if it really isn't in the cards. They have gotten to know me. They are keepers. If they change firms, find out where they have gone. I have a short list of those I will seek out if my situation changes again.
As for job sites such as DICE and MONSTER. I have found DICE to be pretty good at sending job descriptions that better match what I might
The best signs I've seen that a recruiter is quality are:
They don't call during the workday
They don't spam you with every gig they have available that you match a keyword search for
They don't push back on when high salary requirements are communicated
Those would seem to be three pretty simple signs, but it's amazing how many recruiters fail those tests, ESPECIALLY the third sign, which is arguably the most important.
See, with open floor plans abound, calling me during the workday assures that I'm not going to get to talk to you (and everyone suspects the person stepping away from his desk all the time to take calls of looking for a new gig). The spray-and-pray recruiting method tells me that you don't give a crap about actually mapping people to jobs, you just want as many "sales" as possible.
Finally, any recruiter that pushes back on pay requirements is afraid of losing their entire commission by having what seems to be a good match go up in flames over the candidate going for top dollar -- after all, they don't have an incentive to get you the best possible salary they can (even though they'l all say that), but they have the incentive to get you to accept an offer as fast as possible to bring in a constant stream of commissions. Negotiations falling apart over, say, asking for $160,000/yr rather than settling for $150,000/yr means that if they're seeing a 5 percent commission on first year's salary, means they're risking $7,500 to push for your extra ten grand, which only gets them another $500 if successful.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-- Arthur C. Clarke