Strong disagree. I've made it my policy to never work with a recruiter that isn't affiliated with the company they're hiring for. Recruiting farms like Cyber Recruiters (yuck) will do everything in their power to waste your time out of sheer incompetence and disinterest.
I've "doubled" my salary plenty of times through this policy.
But the real secret sauce is referrals. Companies always prioritize a strong referral, ignoring mediocre interview performance, and will even skip the reference checks so I don't have to bug my network.
Bad career advice I received early in my career: Don't talk compensation until late in the interviewing process after you've already convinced them to hire you.
Compensation is the first thing I bring up now. "I currently make X salary, Y annual bonus, and Z equity. This position will need to exceed all 3 by at least 20% before I even consider it. Does that sound doable? If not, let's not waste any more of each other's time."
Way too many lowballers out there.
Most of the recruiter traffic comes from LinkedIn, which is not particularly surprising. The very first line of my profile there reads:
Please do not contact me about cryptocurrency, blockchain, NFTs, or associated technologies.
Taking this post to publicly shame a recruiting technique I was victim to:
I entertained a reference check call by a recruiting firm (not standard but he was a good coworker and it was a serious position with a serious company). The interview was normal and standard fare except the last question which I found off-putting and dishonest: "Are you looking to fill any positions?"
Although I was, it's not the kind of professionalism I expect from any company representing mine so I politely declined and ended it there. My friend got the job and all's well that ends well.
Fast forward 3 months and I get cold called by the same company asking me if I would consider a position at XYZ inc (new company, unrelated to the first).
I was blown away that a company would think this is acceptable, and that information given for reference checks by employees are somehow automatically made into leads owned by the recruiting company. I escalated to legal at serious company and explained in no unclear manner how serious of a matter this was, to which they terminated the hiring agreement over.
So just a reminder please vet your recruiting companies before you mandate them to represent your company.
I like the template but I bristle at the notion that being a software engineer is a "privilege." I have spent countless hours training and re-training myself on technologies that change every few years: don't confuse my work ethic and interest in software engineering with some sort of passive privilege that fell into my lap. There are people far smarter than me who either cannot or don't have the perseverance to stay in this industry because it means having a never-ending commitment to learning and starting over (as opposed to having the privilege of getting hired as a manager at a company because of your blood line).
Sounds like this was written by someone who has very atypical experience with recruiters. Perhaps they haven't had their resumes copied into the database that gets bought and sold by every recruiting firm in existence.
I could make a full time job out of replying to recruiters, because I get probably 100 "opportunities" a day. Most of them have never actually read my resume, or they are working off of a 10 year old copy that was bought from a data broker. And probably 10k other people get that same exact email, so even if I did respond, the odds are bad.
If a founder of a company reaches out with a thoughtful message, there's a 100% chance I'll respond, even to decline. If an in-house recruiter for a copy reaches out, and shows that they understand why I'd be a good fit, there's a 100% chance I'll look, and a 50% chance I'll respond.
I did get my current role by doing roughly what the article states. A recruiter for a startup reached out to me, explaining what the role was and why I might be a good fit. I interviewed with an intent to only leave for a 50%+ salary bump, and they offered 80%+ and equity, so I left. That being said, I ignored 99.9% of the other recruiters who reached out.
What is sad, is what has happened to the industry, over time.
When I was younger, recruiters would woo you, and would act as your advocate. They would sing your praises (sometimes, with a bit of “embellishment”) to the prospective employer.
They also made quite a bit of money.
I suspect that outfits like monster.com devastated the “concierge” type of recruiter.
Also, there were contractor specialists. They acted almost exactly like talent agents, getting a commission, whenever they successfully found a contract for their clients. I dealt with a number of them (as an employer) over the years.
I think the “agents” are a thing of the past. Not exactly sure what killed them.
These days, everybody, in every profession, is obsessed with scale. Lots of small numbers, as opposed to a few big ones.
I assume that “self-service” sites have accelerated that transition.
If anyone ever saw the movie Jerry Maguire, it sort of laments the same kind of metamorphosis, in the sports agent field.
I have been rather shocked at the uncouth behavior that has been directed my way, by recruiters. I’ve been told that it’s because I’m older. They haven’t done or said anything to dissuade me from that point of view.
Dealing with today’s recruiters was one of a number of reasons that I threw in the towel on looking for work, and just accepted that I’m in early retirement.
In any case, I am sad to see the change, but folks seem OK with the state of the industry, so I guess that it’s really just sour grapes, on my part.
Ignore recruiter if they:
* are a part of a large firm
* use multiple fonts, sizes, or any color in their emails
* send an email _and_ an InMail
* text or call you
* jokingly or seriously refer to themselves as a stalker
* automatically substitute in your skills or past company name
* ask for your resume when they can obviously download the LinkedIn pdf
* don’t disclose comp
* don’t disclose the company name
* use tracking pixels or redirect links
* send an automated sequence of follow-up emails (4 follow-ups = bot)
Write them back if they seem like a human! “Not interested at this time, but let’s keep in touch. Thanks for your time” should do.
I get a lot of recruiters that are trying to fill positions at defense contractors. So right away I know two things:
- I'm not interested - They aren't at liberty to talk about the technical details
So I always respond with something like:
> Oh yeah, I'm pretty decent at {language}. But I want to keep growing, so I'm really not interested in writing {very old version of language}. Can you tell me what version they're using?
I figure it's a good balance between "screw off" and bothering with a phone call that won't be fruitful for either of us. It keeps me in their rolodex (in my experience, recruiters have a very high turnover rate--so who knows who they'll be recruiting for tomorrow). Also, I like to imagine that some poor engineer is trying to convince the machine to let him upgrade, and maybe I can help them out, whoever they are, by making the old version seem like a recruiting hazard.
A simpler approach: just be nice to recruiters.
Even the cold-calling, working-for-an-agency, just-wants-10%-of-your-salary recruiters. Most of them are simply nice people who are trying to make a living in a difficult and incredibly competitive business. Some are assholes, no doubt, but just being polite until they prove that they are cost you very little.
I had a recruiter reach out this morning to tell me about great opportunities in <city> with <company>. I don't want to work for that company, ever, for serious ethical reasons. I don't want to move to that city (though it's not a terrible place).
I simply said "Hi <name>, thanks so much for reaching out. I'm not really interested in any new opportunities right now. I'm also planning a fully remote career from now on, so moving to <city> doesn't really work for me. Thanks for reaching out though".
It took 30 seconds. It burned no bridges. It made no presumptions about them and didn't try to harm them back for wasting my time.
If they persist, I'll ask them to please take me off their list and not contact me again- as politely as I can manage.
So far this strategy has proven 100% effective at handling recruiters, but it also makes me feel better because there's no negative emotions involved.
Funny Story:
A recruiter sent me a detail post about a job. I wrote back and said I was interested. He never responded so I applied to the job online and got it.
4 months later he messages me and says sorry but it looks like the position has been removed.
I didn't write back.
Alternate approach: build a relationship with the 99th percentile super-recruiter that basically all the startups that know what they are doing in your area use to hire, and go to him for a job.
In NYC, this is that dude: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnkeenan/
I send all my friends to him when looking for jobs. He also doesn't lie to you and since he has a technical background, will rarely place anyone in a bad fit. He's literally sent 2nd tier candidates to other recruiters.
It's a rich get richer game and the super-connectors have way more candidates and companies to match, effectively creating their own market. I believe John makes mid 7 digits a year from placements, plus companies love him and candidates keep going back to him for their next job.
Once you have that reputation, it looks like art next to the other 99% of hustling recruiters that are trying to place poor fit candidates into the 3 roles they are "working on".
A lot of recruiters won't list the company that they are recruiting for. I assume this is because you could just apply to the company directly and they wouldn't get their fee.
One time I asked the company who they were recruiting for. They told me the company name and I replied with "I already work there."
This was on LinkedIn where my current employer is on my page and anyone can see it.
I’m not replying to the guy who wants me to move to Tampa for “up to $60K” as a PHP developer. (Nothing against Tampa or PHP. I’m just not moving there for that.)
But occasionally I’ll get an email like:
“Hi! I saw from your LinkedIn that you used to do X, but now you’re doing Y. That’s an interesting progression! I’m working with a company who needs people with experience in X who’d rather be doing Y, because they’d like to be on Y. I also see that you’re interested in Z, and you’d be reporting to our CTO who wrote a book about Z. Want to hear more?”
I’m not looking, but I send them a nice reply and remember their names. If I were looking, that’s the kind of recruiter I’d want to talk to.
Horrible email response: long-winded, cringe-inducing, poorly structured.
Just state clearly what kind of information you need in order to continue the conversation (or not). Even a simple "what's the pay like" would be more effective.
Every time I read something about recruiters, I am reminded of this fantastic post [1] (sadly the original has been taken down, and this is the only copy I know of).
Anyone who has ever experienced third party recruiters in the UK will be nodding their head along after just the first few paragraphs...
[1]: https://gist.github.com/CumpsD/696599d1bd4cd472a056586967293...
My current approach:
I don't have time ... the volume of messages is too high, and the amount of 'legitimate' inquiries are too low. And the odds of getting ghosted by the recruiter too high.
If they're a recruiter from a company that I know and they WORK FOR that company, I'll respond.
Having said that I think that is a good article and I really like that email.
I went into this thinking I was going to disagree because honestly I hate recruiters and the time-wasting involved but I actually agree.
Here's why: by having a template that he just copy-pastes. This is extremely low effort and will filter out a lot of recruiters. I also agree with working with company recruiters over third-party recruiters.
The first thing many recruiters will want to do is "hop on a call". Resist this urge. In fact, don't even give them your phone number. Force them to use email to contact you. A phone call is a good way of wasting your time. If you actually need to call them on the phone, call them.
There are lots of techniques recruiters will use to waste your time. One common one is if pressed on compensation range you'll get the answer that it's "competitive".
Use a template like this to simply filter out time-wasters. If they want to get on a call, resist giving concrete details or otherwise just give you bad vibes, just stop responding. They can't call you. They don't have your number. Move on.
There are few people in my life that wasted as much of my time as recruiters.
I also strongly disagree. All the jobs I've taken at the advice of a recruiter were the worst jobs I've ever had. Even if the job matched everything on my checklist and I was able to visit the company and talk to the employees before signing on, it was still a terrible place to work. Why? Because it was in everyone's best interest to hide how miserable the job actually was. And yes, the salary was higer, but the jobs didn't last. The longest I was able to tolerate these jobs was about 2 years each. Which didn't look very good on my resume. Switching jobs every 2 years is probably ok for some, but I wouldn't hire anyone that has a consistent record of that. My advice is to find places that you would want to work and apply there on your own.
I have one rule about life: I do not work with spammers. This includes my career.
Recently, I've been solicited for jobs where it was clear that the recruiter never looked at my resume. (I'm a software engineer, and the roles had nothing to do with software engineering.) I flagged these as SPAM.
Reading resumes is work. Reading job openings is work. When a recruiter spams a job opening without screening the recipients, they're just trying to push their work onto strangers.
I have a dirty trick to ignore "bots" recruiters in Linkedin:
I just put a greek character on my name or add an emoticon, so I got a lot of messages starting with:
"Dear name ..
So, it's safe to ignore the message. Even when probably I'm not interested I used to reply with a template message, but I won't waste 30 seconds with a bot.
I always just respond with a "whats the salary range?" response, merely for data collection purposes
That's a pretty big wall of text when most recruiters reach out with a single sentence or few sentences.
I've been doing a variation of this myself over the years, it's gotten me good jobs. Sometimes, I'd simply say I want X salary that is ~20% more than I currently would have thought I was worth. Then sometimes the recruiter would come back and say that is actually possible.
This advice is too generic to be useful.
There are two types of recruiters. Relationship based recruiters and “numbers game” recruiters.
As a recruiter that works primarily with programmers I can usually tell within moments of meeting another recruiter which type they are.
Relationship based recruiters can be a huge asset to your career.
Here are a couple tips
1. A relationship based recruiter is almost never a general recruiter, they specialize in a specific industry. 2. The best type of recruiter is one that has intimate knowledge of your field. So ask probing questions. If they know the jargon and that’s it, pass.
I dunno. I've been a SWE for almost 20 years now, and I just got a recruitment email for "Senior Manager of Partner Relations". I'm honestly not sure what that even is, but it's definitely not code monkey. Email included all kindsa reassurances, which, even if I were in the field of "Partner Relations", would make me pretty nervous:
We do not conduct fake interviews
We will not ask you for references unless you are being considered for a job
We will give you feedback the moment we get it from our customer
etc.
Do I really have to "not ignore" this recruiter?
There is no one better than yourself to get what you're looking for, so instead of relying in a third party to give you the edge, make sure you're already on the top of the wave.
I never work with external recruiters (staffing agencies)I have made the exception three times, and all of them ended with a poor experience, basically repeating the same information over and over again between them and the people from the actual company.
In my view (your experience may differ): almost always ignore a recruiter, unless getting out of your current job situation is so urgent that you're willing to waste a ton of time, or the recruiter presents a very specific proposal that makes clear that they've done their homework meaning that you are a great fit for a unique opportunity.
In some cases going through a recruiter is a guarantee that you won't get a position, because a third-party recruiter tries to sell you to a company that has its own recruiters and is unwilling to pay the third-party recruiter's fee.
I don't know if it needs to be this elaborate. I like the idea though.
However...
> Can you send along the company name, a job description and, total compensation details for the role you’re reaching out in reference to?
Should be table stakes. I've started having to walk away from any recruiter that insists on a 15 minute call without providing these details up front. I wish there was some collective awareness around the fact that if someone took a 15 min call with every recruiter ping they got, they'd be on the phone 5-8 hours a day.
No, I definitely ignore recruiters. Internal recruiters I may respond, but if you're some consultancy firm or recruiting firm I'll never work with you.
My skills are in demand. When I want a new job I'll reach out for it. It'll be there.
I don’t know how I feel, all the recruiters that reach out to me are hilariously out of touch and it’s patently obvious that they are purely reaching out to me as a stat and nothing else. The worst of the bunch is Amazon, I keep getting messages referencing my work experience 15 yrs ago! They probably have a resume of mine from back then. My career has changed significantly since then and they don’t bother checking.
Sorry but I do not care enough about my career to put in this much effort. Recruiters are a dime a dozen these days and it's so much easier to just wait until you need one. Even if it's a bit less optimal.
Here is my version:
Thanks for reaching out. I'm okay to travel to spend a week to work together every now and then but I'm working remote only and permanently from X1-Country and I'd only be interested in opportunities with compensations around X2 plus benefits and if I like their tech stack. Let me know when you have something that sounds like a match for that. Thanks again.
I Dissent.
I've seen so many shady tricks pulled by recruiters. I'm sure it goes both ways, but never forget the recruiter isn't in the business of helping you, they're in the business of helping the people who pay them.
Seen recruiters low-ball staff, or tell the person that they weren't as good as other candidates... "but if you lower your day rate to be more aligned with your junior-level skills..." So when the person shows up, they feel deflated since they think we thought they were junior... but in fact, we loved them and just didn't have enough budget to hire them at the right rate -- and the recruiter helped us get their rates down because at the end of the day the recruiter only cared about putting seats in chairs for us.
Seen recruiters spam over candidates without so much as doing a basic screening interview. "Oh yeah, he's great... he knows JavaScript and English..." and they're literally just looking at the poor guy's LinkedIn and they haven't ever spoken with him past a few copy-paste emails. It's a numbers game to them. They don't want you, as the person paying them, to ever feel like their shelves are empty.
Seen recruiters promise people visas along with the offer letter... then for whatever reason, if the job shifts, the recruiters just cancel the contract and the person would get deported. Saw this in Sydney A LOT. The recruiters and staffing agencies don't care at all what happens to the person, as long as they get a commission. They lie and over-promise, and sell-sell-sell... and even if they only have a 3-month contract they'll promise someone a year, then just switch it last minute or have a cancellation clause.
As someone who worked for a Digital Agency where we hired a lot of people through recruiters... the number of times some poor bloke would come up to me and be like, "So... 3 months probation then I'm full time? That's what the recruiter said... now you can get me a visa and I'll be able to bring my wife over here too?" and I'd have to be like, "Yeah sorry, Johnny... this was just a 3-month gig." Had one guy, "But I gave up my family's visa for this... the recruiter promised me higher pay and that you'd take over my visa..." Felt awful. And the poor guy almost certainly had to leave Sydney when the job was done.
Worse... my GM wouldn't let me fire that recruiter. "They give us the best rates..." Was all so shady. Left me with the solid impression that these people were all just bottom feeders. Willing to do anything to make a buck that day.
Possibly, but they left out the possible outcomes of "simply refuse to talk salary, or to talk salary in email" and "just lie about the salary and/or the job".
I’ve got a specific LinkedIn hack - my name on it is Firstname “Nickname” Lastname. If I get a message addressed to Firstname or to Nickname, I know someone actually read it before sending and I’ll respond. If it’s to Firstname “Nickname”, then I know it’s an automated shotgun blast and I generally ignore it.
I think we have this post every few months on this site, so let me explain how recruiting works.
There's 3 types/market for recruiters and they almost never overlap. The first are "body shop style" recruiters. It's basically a numbers game where they try to cold-call as much people with githubs/linkedin or blogs that reference programming. They don't know programming (not even what's the difference between languages or front-end/back-end) and are looking for a list of buzzwords. They'll send copy-pasted messages (you can tell because it references tech you never used or never even claimed to have used). If you respond (and really you shouldn't) you won't be able to get any relevant information about the position because... they don't have it. These recruiters are often contracted by external firms in "best value countries" and are given canned response to message you. That's probably what the author encountered.
Second type are professional recruiters. Their salary is by commissions will often be a percentage of your salary. They are knowledgeable about programming and tech (often former engineers who wanted a break from coding!). They typically are looking to match specific profiles to specific jobs at client companies. This goes all the way to recruiters specialized in C-Suite executives (and you can picture the commission finding a CEO will bring in). Their messages will be personalized and you shouldn't hesitate to reply back even if you aren't looking for a job. They know that most great software engineers are almost never openly looking for a job so their goal is to be on good terms with a large number of talented developers so that the minute they start looking for a job they can match them with positions. You'll know when you encounter one.
Third type is basically referrals. A players attract A players, smart companies know it. Make sure your referral bonus is a percentage of total comp. It's probably the most effective way of recruiting (it has an insane signal to noise ratio). But you only get access to that type of network by... bringing value and being part of it in the first place!
I'm happy to invest in a relationship with recruiters who will be around for a while. But I get the impression that most recruiters have only short stints in that work.
P.S. I would like to give credit to one recruiter though: Markus Edmunds. He'd been recruiting for a particular technical specialty a year or two ago. He really got to know my preferences and strengths, and never ghosted me when individual companies passed on my resume. I know that's indistinguishable from him acting in enlightened self-interest, but it was still a productive relationship.
Just today I responded to a recruiter who directly emailed me "because my LinkedIn bio looked promising", asking: 1) How he got my email address, since it is not affiliated with my LinkedIn profile (uses my work email and only contains information about my current position) 2) That I wasn't interested, thanking him for his time
He responded, seemingly offended, that I "have a Gmail account, a very public account" that his "team of Search Engineers" found.
My idea for recruiters was special website with referral link where they could fill out all information I was interested in (the fields was required in order to submit the form) and big red information that stated: "If your offer will be interesting I will contact back on linkedin".
In addition I made small control question, for example: "Whats the first letter on my LinkedIn description?".
That way I know I don't talk with a bot and they really read my profile.
No thanks. Most cold callers these days don't even work for the company. They always seem to say "I'm recruiting for an esteemed/up and coming/potential unicorn (lol)/hot/aggressively funded/blah blah blah company". I've bitten a few times and asked for details about said company and they say they want a call first.
No thanks. Tell me about the position first. Then I'll tell you if I'm interested.
I like forcing recruiters to voicemail. It's the same for email. This doesn't mean I am ignoring them but it does give me a way to filter who I even reply to. If they send me a badly written, very generic email for something like Helpdesk Level 1, something I'm not even doing or isn't on my resume, or CEO of Company X for $10/hr, I don't even reply. The voicemail works the same way - if they can't seem to render a sentence, be topical, or sound conversant in the local language, I just delete it.
If it sounds remotely interesting, I might send them an email back. The exception is AWS/Azure/Google which is heavily recruiting for TAMs and they're having a heck of a time filling the seats and keeping them filled. If they're $MAJOR_CLOUD_PROVIDER I always ask them if its for a TAM or similar role up front.
I have a small blacklist of companies too - folks I know who are going to go through the entire interview process and it doesn't matter whats said because they're going to lowball the crap out of people. I don't want to work for bottom-feeders.
The "good offers" I get typically come from someone who has seen an open source contribution from me, or someone I know from consulting. If you find yourself jammed up in your career and you can't find that next lillypad, try consulting to build up your connections. It's a good way to get the inside story at companies, and also if you find a company you really like, it's very possible to arrange something so that they hire you on some split between your consulting rate and your pay rate so you and them win. Check your employment contract first, local laws, etc. Check my profile for an email to send your resume to if you want to chat.
There are so many comments from people who report being inundated on LinkedIn by recruiters. I don't have a LinkedIn account, and I _never_ hear from recruiters. My name is out there; I'm on other developer-centric social networks and generally have no compunction about giving out my email address and phone number, and I literally don't have this problem. I have over a decade of experience in many different software engineering roles, so I assume I would be a plum prize for unscrupulous recruiters. (I used to receive messages like these, but they dropped off around 2013. I assume this is roughly the point that recruiters realized that they could focus on LinkedIn to maximize their conversion.)
So, serious question: why do you have a LinkedIn account? I know there is theoretical benefit in maintaining connections to professional acquaintances, but in sticking to email and a few alumni Slack channels, I have never felt limited in that department. What is the benefit of your LinkedIn account and why do you keep it?
This may be familiar by now but developers are very lucky.
I left computers to move to investments, make 500k+/year but I envy the stability and choices that developers have. If I lost my job tomorrow it is not clear I could find another similar job. You have lots of options.
It looks like the situation will remain this way during our lifetimes (you never know), but you should at least appreciate it.
A recruiter got me my first job a decade ago when I was fresh out of college and my internship place didn't hire me and I was panicking to find something as I didn't have a backup plan. He helped me interview at multiple places until he found one for me (the pay sucked but it was a job). So yeah, they're annoying, but I do understand their place.
Recruiters and estate agents seem to be the smarmiest individuals I've ever come across. I'm not sure why that is, but the pattern is obvious.
I really don't understand why we're expected to trust the largest transactions in our lives (house/job) to individuals with no real qualifications to execute those transactions. It feels kinda dumb.
A great tip I heard was to put something at the top of your LinkedIn profile like "If you're messaging me about a job opening, please tell me your favorite song at the top of your message".
That way you can throw away any message that doesn't start with the answer because you know it was a bulk mail and they didn't actually read your profile.
I like this a lot - it is first example I have seen of a job candidate thinking about the 'recruiter experience', with the idea that if you can create a positive experience for a recruiter at low effort, you may gain high reward at some stage later in your career.
it may surprise some of the folks on HN - which as a tech / engineering audience, are usually those candidates - that a lot of recruiters actually care a great deal about 'candidate experience', as they have a similar calculus - low effort to create a positive experience, bank it as possible gain later down the line.
Unfortunately those recruiters are let down by significant minority of noisy bad actors who are outside their control. Anyone can 'become' a recruiter - you can do it right away, right now - and therefore there is no QA on who gets to do that job or how that job gets done.
Love reading reviews about recruiters! I'm a recruiter and the CEO of HireScale. Many of the pain points described in this forum are ones I set-out to solve at HireScale.
Let me just start with agency vs. in-house recruiter types. In-house isn't always practical for employers so agency has traditionally been the fall back when flexibly is needed. Not anymore!
Freelance recruiters are the solution because they have authorization to represent the employers' brand and are being paid for the service they provide.
Agency recruiters are not authorized to represent brand (except retained) and only get paid if they make the placement so they don't disclose the brand until they've got their "fish on a hook".
My theory is the gig-economy can fix this while providing more value to the employer, recruiter and the candidate (transparency goes a long way). For any hiring managers reading out there, when a flexible option is needed, freelance recruiters offer a much better option.
I agree that it's a good practice to build relationships with recruiters. I also think it's important to do business with the companies where you agree with their practices, methods and principles.
Why support a bad practice so go ahead and ghost agencies.....Cyber and many others like them were built for hiring practices in the 70's or 80's (think kelly secretaries/ temporaries). Today's talent market is much more sophisticated.
Check-out the HireScale Recruiter Marketplace. Follow our community to interact with in-house and freelance recruiters only(branded to the employer 100% of the time)
Website: https://www.hirescale.io/ LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hirescaletalent
Gannyn
Strange article, if I didn't ignore 99% of recruiters that reach out to me, I wouldn't make any progress.
The typical recruiting-house recruiter has a script that was given to them by someone else, has no particular job in mind for you, and does not know the difference between Java and JavaScript. They are, in short, one small step above spammers. Unless you are currently thinking about changing jobs, you should definitely ignore them.
None of that applies to an in-house recruiter. Someone who works in HR for the hiring company, directly, may have years of experience, good training, and have a good idea of what the hiring manager is looking for. You shouldn't ignore them, although if you're entirely happy you should have a short message prepared -- "Thanks for thinking of me. I'm happy with my current position, but you never know what the future holds. Feel free to check in with me again in six months or so."
TL;DR: reputation counts.
Love the idea of automating my linkedin email funnels... I might throw a GPT3 into the mix to spice things up...
After reading the responses, all I can say is that the US recruiting industry must be a lot different from the UK one. Or maybe it's different because I'm not in a popular niche like Python dev or something.
I'm in the UK and I just looked at my latest linkedin recruiter message. They told me the company type, the role, the skills they were looking for. An accurate enough description to make me think it was a real role. They didn't include the rate, but that would have been my next question if I had been interested.
If I'm not interested in the role, I normally reply with "Thank you for thinking of me but it's not right for me because [reason]. Good luck in your search." I might even refer them on to a friend if I know one that fits the requirement and may be looking.
Maybe once you're a respected programmer with some solid companies on your resumeé recruiters maybe nice to you. Fresh out of college, like I was a few years back, recruiters really don't care about you. They spam you likedin inbox and you email with generic messages to see if anyone bites. Back in my day they went as far as sending me whatsapp messages - the funny thing is - they don't even bother to properly answer you.
I was coming back from the south of the country to my city, a long drive, and I received a whatsapp message from a recruiter telling me about an opportunity, since I was fresh out of college looking for a job, I stopped the car to talk to them, only to find out they won't respond you right away. I only got a answer from this person like 3 days later.
I'm always nice to recruiters if they make the bare minimum effort. If the job isn't a fit, I offer to stay in touch. It has led to great opportunities for me simply by taking advantage of the network effects offered by a recruiter link. Things turn up if you talk around enough.
This post doesn't go far enough. One of the best things a programmer can do to better their career is to talk to no technical people. Talk to recruiters. Just pick up the phone. Then, learn to politely decline. Then, learn to ask questions. Then, expand your horizons. Maybe you can have a conversation with the QA department people for more than 20 seconds about a non-technical topic. Maybe you can talk to the CTO and ask them questions.
Most programmers find talking to nontechnical people like recruiters beneath them. They just want to crush the coding challenge, and be hired on the spot. The idea that there could be more to a job than writing lines of code is hard to fathom. Once you open up that world though, it's very interesting, and pays dividends.
Just on this story alone I would imagine this happened exactly once, given the comp increase expectations. Is it really worth building a system around?
Separately, if you're not reading their canned email, what makes you think they're going to read your canned response?
I give an extremely simple answer, where I state that in the present, for $real_reason, I'm not looking for other opportunities, but in the future, I may. It worked!
I actually spend a little bit of effort to filter out (block) incompetent recruiters, but that's all.
I've been doing this and fully agree. On my side my reply is not as nice as this, I'll steal this and improve it. I also agree with the 50% rule. Currently I'm interviewing with 3 nice opportunities in parallel, but now getting to the 6h-8h interview step is hard, I have to basically take 3 days off and this costs a lot of money and energy. I wasn't much smart at first, so this is why I got into this situation, but each time I do it I improve on the next. I may be getting close to 20 first step interviews, 10 second step interviews and finally now 3 last step. And this in about 2 months, excluding all others that failed my requeriments since first contact.
Obviously this is geared towards software development, and my personal experience with recruiters for software jobs is similar to most here.
However, I sometimes help out my client's HR departments and the recruitment experience for other jobs is vastly different. Like searching for expert welders or other specific skillsets, not unlike the ones that exists in software development (+10 years java, +15 years embedded C, etc.). They almost always use external recruiters for the first filtering, and they deliver quality candidates. Expensive fees, but worth it.
Why is this such a problem with recruitment for software development? Are there recruitment shops that DO understand the differences in software development?
I run a small agency in addition to my full-time gig. Every time a recruiter sends me a message I respond with a script that includes criteria for work that I'll do, work that I won't do, and interview limitations. I also include an agency hourly rate which makes most of them run for the hills. Every great once in a while I'll get a short-term contract out of it.
The lone full-time contract I took on came about from recruiter contact, but he wasn't one of those keyword carpet bombing mooks. I've only ever landed one full-time job without a referral in 20 years in the industry. Referrals and niche market sites (e.g. AngelList) are the way to go.
> … and one in a hundred can double your salary.
The time required to work with the 99 who can’t double your salary isn’t nothing, that’s a part time or even full time job spent courting people who are just spamming everybody on linkedin with a pulse
Two years ago I quit my job, then covid kicked off and I was out of work for 6 months.
During that time I was relying on recruiters to hunt down leads for me.
Nothing was coming up! They kept trying to feed me full-stack and front-end roles, and I kept saying no thank you.
Then, I just started sending out my own resumes. And I instantly got more callbacks in the MONTHS I spent with recruiters.
I have a few suspicions:
1. The recruiters present themselves as having a "relationship" with companies, but they actually don't, they are just bullshitting you.
2. The jobs people actually want end up getting filled, so if you end up with a recruiter, you are going to be ending up with bottom-tier opportunities.
Great advice, in my opinion.
The incentives for recruiters are clear; to get you hired. They cannot however force a hire and there's a threshold for submitting duds -- their clients will stop working with them.
I look at recruiters as a helping hand in the hiring process. That said I've had a couple that have wasted my time, so there's that.
Typically, unless you're getting flooded, it takes almost nothing to engage with them temporarily. I like the approach the author recommends. Recruiters are folks that are trying to make a living too, there's no need to be nasty.
Good advice on salary negotiation, awful about "answer all the calls".
Truth is, many first contacts are just to add you to their database. In some cases, there aren't any immediate openings either.
I ignore recruiters all the time lol.
I haven't had issues with finding good paying work - history, references, and a good bit of research in the places where I apply has served me well /shrug
I think there is a better middle ground.
> you don’t want to be a jerk to the one in 100 who have taken the time to carefully craft a high quality message to you alone.
I agree with this. If I get the sense the recruiter put effort into the email, then I will usually respond. I'm sure I still fall for automated messages with this. But some recruiters really do their homework, really research you, have interesting and fitting opportunities, and can be valuable.
The 99.99% of recruiters who are just spamming? Totally ignore them.
Like most things in life, 90% of everything is crap. That goes double for recruiters. I've worked with only two competent recruiters in my very long career, who have, at most, gotten me a low double-digit raise at best. I've had one recruiter royally screw up an offer to the point the company rescinded, and I've had another recruiter use coercion on me to not work at SONY for 20% more than the other company was offering. But as only a single data point, I can quite emphatically say no recruiter has ever doubled my money for me.
I will also say that most recruiter outreach, even in this hot market, is absolutely lousy, and the compensation on offer is below what I am currently earning at a company I am exceptionally happy with doing work I love, and I don't consider myself to be overly compensated.
Most recruiters that do any outreach immediately ghost me when I ask about compensation range, and if compensation range is mentioned, it has yet to be more than what I currently make. Once or twice in the past three months I've had an "upto $X for the right candidate" where $X is only 10% more than what I am currently making, so it is highly unlikely I will get that upper bound.
If I responded to every recruiter that reached out to me via email and LinkedIn I'd spend many more hours per day wasting my time than I would care to think about. And most recruiters that reach out to me these days are of the exceptionally low quality churn'n'burn variety.
I currently have three recruiter messages open on LinkedIn, one for an animator with 2+ years of experience, another for someone wanting a mid-level front-end web developer for an AR application, and another for a "senior" Java programmer. I don't do any of those things, didn't even look at my profile or C.V. Just a scattershot approach, which you would think on LinkedIn, with its targetted InMails, it wouldn't be the case. But here we are.
Of the one recruiter out of the three who didn't immediately ghost when asked about compensation (always my first question), the upper bound is $80K below what I currently make, and again, I don't consider myself well compensated.
My recommendation is never waste your time with any recruiter, but if you must, expend it on those that actually work for the company they are hiring for.
I just want to say I feel blessed to work in a field where companies bombard you with opportunities. I may not reply to recruiter emails but don't consider them spam.
I ignore all recruiters for a few reasons:
1. It's not like they give up. I've been receiving the same emails from the same firms for years and years.
2. You can't just respond. The few times I've responded years ago meant that they follow up at an even more frequent pace, even when I made it clear I wasn't interested. Sometimes calling me after I said no!
3. It's clear very few of them actually read my profile.
4. Very few are upfront with compensation.
120% Disagree. All I can see is responding to a recruiter is helping to improve the recruiter's message, so they can span ppl more efficiently next time?
Personally, I rearly had good experience with recruiters, one they had difference goal compare you or the company you want join. Most efficient way to get into a company is by referral, e.g next time when you do some shitty work think twice, as it got long term impact.
I don't ignore them, I give their email or voice mail a quick perusal. Maybe 1 in 4 pass that I'll reach back out to them. Things I look for
1. did they name someone/some company that I know
2. Does it look like a form letter
3. Do they have a "give me all these details" section of the email on the 1st email. Instant trash can on that one.
4. Does it fall under the regime of things I do.
5. What email address alias/phone number did they have access to.
Disagree strongly. Recruiters are like real estate agents - the barrier to entry is low and there are a lot of folks who do a crap job.
I work with a couple recruiters who: 1) actually respond to emails, 2) actually look at my CV to see if a role is a good match, 3) have some long term commitment to clients.
When I get an email about a role that matches well from a job I had a decade ago, straight to spam folder.
Interestingly, I have employed a similar sentiment so far, without knowing that it might be actually a good thing. I am trying to give at least one short and comprehensive answer that: I am not looking for new challenges, thanks though. Exceptions might apply to especially annoying recruiters who just don't care and ignore my wishes and send me useless messages regardless.
I wonder if it would work to respond with a link to an online form to fill out with the job details. This website would also contain your resume and descriptions/code for your software projects. Kind of a script flip, making potential employers apply to you, rather than the other way around. Obviously this will only work if you are really good, and know it.
I pretty much always respond to recruiters that seem to have understood what I do, even if I'm not looking. They are gold.
I usually ignore the others.
The ones that spam me with positions that are clearly absolutely nothing to do with my career, I sometimes respond to asking why they think I'm suitable. And that's just for the childish pleasure of wasting a bit of their time.
I have to say--none of this advice would be actionable in all my previous experiences with recruiters.
The truest statement is the one the author makes up front: >Recruiters are just cold calling
More accurately, they're contacting a lot of people who's profile contains their search keywords. No recruiter is contacting only you for a req they're trying to fill.
Recruiters need to pass the bozo test to prove that they have read and understood the first sentence of my LinkedIn profile before they rate anything beyond having their email reported as spam.
It's a high bar for them to cross; I've only seen two or three in the past few years, and those I think were sold my data by Triplebyte instead.
Completely disagree. I have found recruiters to be nearly useless. However, my experience is through the lens of someone who created a consulting practice bit by bit and have gained a good reputation in my niche. Recruiters don't help people like me. Those on LinkedIn who don't even read your profile are the worst.
The problem I have is that almost every recruiter that emails me lists the positions they are trying to fill. Almost all of those positions are ones to which I am morally opposed. It's a waste of both of our time to respond positively and interview for positions that I won't accept under any realistic circumstance.
Even if I’m not interested in the role I’ll let them know and often I’ll send them some people in my network that could work out. I think it’s good practice and I’ve had recruiters come back to me with really good opportunities down the road. Yeah the carpet bombing ones I ignore but personal ones I keep on with.
Do a good turn daily.
I'm not a developer and I don't get much of this emails but I always try to keep all doors open and not to burn any bridges.
I've learned a lot from just talking with recruiters, I got a lot of good advice on how to improve my CV, etc.
I landed my current job thanks to a recruiter that was persistent and didn't forget about me :)
>> If you respond, does that mean you’re being disloyal to your current employer?
Is it a thing? Am I Sir Worker of Devs I?
I don’t want to work for a company that needs recruter spam to hire. It must not be a very attractive place.
To be honest, even with a cut and pasted initial reply, this sounds like more effort than it's worth. I don't want to have to respond to the recruiter's response. My mental energy is valuable. I don't need to spend it on job opportunities I'm not interested in.
I think one of the assertions here is wrong. "One in a hundred can double your salary". It's more like "if you are the 1 in a hundred who is tragically underpaid to the point where a double in salary is at all a possibility, then yes, talk to recruiters".
How could anyone come to this contrarian conclusion, even after reading the article it is baffling.
There is a time and place for in-house recruiters and third party recruiters. This article does not identify them and obsessively takes the contrarian view with no supporting rationale for doing so.
Eh, you need to use some heuristics on them. Any with "urgent requirement" should be utterly ignored. A personalized LinkedIn message is worth taking.
The problem is that far too many of those companies are using an external recruiter to fill the job as the job is low paid garbage.
* no 3rd party recruiters * won't respond if compensation isn't posted up front
My simple rules of engagement
To me it's pretty clear that I really shouldn't bother with ones that have position I'm not clearly interested in or isn't line with my own career. These are pretty clearly not desirable positions. So why even follow up with that spam.
I’d certainly say don’t be rude to recruiters. Some people seem to get unnecessarily wound up by recruiters and forget that we are all adults just trying to do our job. It doesn’t hurt to be polite and might just work in your favour in the long run.
Hard agree.
I used to respond to recruiters, "here's how much I make - if you can match that then I'd be happy to listen". Most of the time they didn't respond.
The one guy who did has found me a lot of business since. (I now own a consultancy.)
Always worth talking to ones with opportunities that seem interesting. Those are rare. But if you do and follow up every 6mo/year..you can just ping them whenever you're ready to move on and you'll have an interview.
Honestly that autoresponder reply reads a bit condescending and borderline rude, but it could be just me. 'This means I don't have the time to hop on a call' is not how my mother taught me to talk to people.
Who else has real and direct insight into how much money any given role pays?
Your union?
Q for engineers on this thread: would you be more open to a "recruiter reach-out" if that person _is_ an engineer themselves but independently also helps startups build teams as a recruiter?
You know how everyone hates real estate agents? Imagine if a real estate agent did not need to take courses, become licensed, and face repercussions for unethical and illegal conduct.
That's what a recruiter is.
My problem with responding to recruiters - especially FAANG - is that once you start a conversation it's hard to stop. I find it very hard to leave if I'm in the middle of a big project.
I reply gently saying that I have no interest unless it is my absolute dream job and describe exactly what that is. They are happy to receive a reply even if my demands seem bonkers.
when I consider all the dedication, including the summer jobs, all the hours of I have spent for self study to keep the skills up, I was thinking, “why the hell do I let a headhunter, get rewarded a year salary [1] of mine by just discovering my profile on Linkedin and maybe breaking data privacy laws through off shore?”
Still didn’t contacted or replied any of them. Sometimes, I am asking myself if I am missing any good opportunities because of not replying.
[1] rumor: Munich region
When you are a junior engineer, recruiters ignore you or use you to boost their career. When you are a senior engineer, you ignore recruiters or use them to boost your career.
Yeah sorry I don't think so. I'll respond to recruiters who have something to offer, but it's pretty obvious who that is and who is just wasting your time.
The only value a recruiter brings to me these days is someone to practice light interview skills with when I'm feeling like I need a reminder that I can still do it.
I only reply to recruiters from companies that I'm actually really interested in (but not currently looking to move), or places where my former colleagues work.
I am currently at my 4th full time job. Each and every one of them I got via someone I knew, even the first one.
I spoke to recruiters but they were pretty useless for getting a job.
I don't think the recruiter gets 10% of the salary anymore. I have seen recent recruiter fees for 20% of the first year base salary. People should know that.
"It is a wonderful position of privilege to be in and I’m thankful for it."
Insta-delete if I'm doing hiring... ? I've found folks who actually deliver seem to have less of this type of long winded stuff.
Does anyone, recruiter or otherwise, want a screenful of auto-response text? I'd cut it down to 2-3 sentences and make it much more direct.
In my whole life I've never been able to find any job / contract using recruiter. Obviously had to take matters into my onw hands ;)
As others on this thread have pointed out - avoid unaffiliated recruiters, talk to affiliated/salaried recruiters from a company.
I make a habit of responding to each and every recruiter.
The ones who send me jobs I am way overqualified for, or simply don't pay enough, I tell them my current compensation package with the advice to send relevant offers in the future.
Realistically though, every external recruiter I have talked to since I got into my current big tech company has been a waste of time. They can't usually touch my comp package, and only the other big tech companies are likely to be able to (or internal recruiters).
I definitely agree, 15 minutes per recruiter is a waste of time. Especially if they're cold emailing you.
not worth it - they have a very high turn over, making connections there with everyone is a waste of time
Counterpoint: Always ignore recruiters.
The few times I have engaged with recruiters in the past I was immediately ghosted afterwards.
I loved the article. I worked in sales for ~2 years before starting my career as a software engineer +15 years ago, so knowing how downputting rejections are, I try to treat all the salespeople as human beings, so I try to respond to all of them. My strategy is to make them refusing me, by requiring "only" a +30% i increase.
If you want a high salary you're not going to get one by going through recruiters.
Depends on recruiter quality.
There are some 3rd party groups that are solid. Most are a waste of time.
Not sure how this got upvoted
Great article, very thoughtful and definitely a useful template/ concept
Worst jobs I got through recruiters.
Best jobs I got when I picked the company and applied.
No one gave you that advice, because it's not really great advice.
"...let them know you're not currently open to offers less than $current*1.5."
Whoa!! Is this for early career folks (less than 6 years)? In the 15-20 years experience range none of my friends and ex-colleagues who moved jobs got a 50% raise on moving.
As a software engineer, st least in the US, there are two types of jobs.
1. Your bog standard run of the mill corp dev jobs. They all look alike and they all pay around the same. In most major cities that’s around $80K - $150K. This is where most developers work. A local recruiter can usually help you find a job as long as you have some experience and are looking for average wages. Yes I know “average” for software engineers even in this category puts you in the upper middle income.
2. The Big Tech, unicorn, let’s waste VC money tech companies - with compensation levels you see on levels.fyi. External recruiters are useless once you are looking in that range. But again, there are only a few dozen companies that pay in this range, they are always hiring and we all know how to find them if they don’t find us first.
I’ve been doing this for years. It’s good advice.
I reply to InMail so that they get their LinkedIn credit back. They are usually thankful for that. Other offers there's a 50/50 chance I have the energy to reply.
You guys are getting solicited for money?
Does anyone know what the salary range is now though? It seems pretty random. Levels.fyi has a lot of very high numbers. Blind has crazy high numbers. I'm not sure if people are lying or including RSUs that have gone up 10x.
Most experienced people in HCOL areas still earning 150k-200k max. When I talk to a recruited and ask for 300k often they'll say its possible but dont say if you have to be a superstar to get that. Meta seems paying 500k+ often and random big tech cos are all over the place.
Always ignore recruiters.
Nice try recruiter.
I don't ignore recruiters. I tell them to $%^& off.
My experience is exactly opposite: recruiters are like cockroaches, they come up from every hole. Ignoring them is the only way to stay sane. As for well paying job offers those will always be there.
I'm very impressed with your ycombinator skills.
You can get better data points from levels.fyi and teamblind
was this written by a recruiter
TLDR
- everything is signal, even/especially noise in aggregate - engineers are particularly subject to blind spots - know yourself - ymmv
I feel like throwing it in their face that lots of recruiters reach out to you is unnecessary.
I also suspect asking for company name will scare off most recruiters because if you go around them, they dont get paid.
They do say keep interviewing to keep the skill sharp. So perhaps there is something to be said here.
Here's the one I got today, when I try to reply it just says 'you're replying to a mailing list' so really I'm nobody to this one.
>I am reaching out to see if you would be interested in exploring Executive Level opportunities. >I have reviewed your LinkedIn profile and found your skills and experience to be impressive and relevant to the job position.
>If you are interested in learning more about our company and the position, we would love to set up a quick phone call. We would be pleased to answer any questions you may have and give you all the details about the job.
>Please reply to this email with an updated copy of your resume.
There's no way he 'reviewed my linkedin' while also just mailing list form. In fact if I look at it. The mailing form only really has $FIRSTNAME and that's about as much effort as they put in.
Yet they want me to produce an updated resume and join a quick call? Oh man that's asking.
I ignore 99.9999% of recruiters, but anything that interests me I just toss salary numbers that I find are funny.
Makes it easier on all of us
[dead]
undefined
Add NYC to that list as well. There's no reason to move to either of those cities in 2022.
I've gone back and forth on this issue. The bottom line, some recruiters help and can get your resume into the right hands. Aka, not on the shit heap.
Lol Wut?
You should always respond to recruiters at your OWN discretion. Use 3 digital condoms (throwaway numbers, etc.), and don't continue the Convo if they won't disclose details such as salary. Ain't nobody got time for dat.
undefined
[dead]
> No one ever explained to me that recruiters are also one of the best career resources you can find.
For increasing your salary, and potentially finding a role you'd take. I'd not categorize this as "career resources" -- there's so much more important stuff like figuring out what you want out of your career and keeping on track with it.
Why do people focus on money so much when making career changes? Sure, you'll get more in your next job because the current salary is a piece of leverage to use. But if it's only about money, why did you accept your current job?
I also recommend a response to every recruiter, but you don't need to explain your privilege, you don't need to suck up to them, and you don't need to justify your actions.
"Hey ____. Before we move forward, can you provide me with the company name, a job description, and the expected compensation. Regards"