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Discussion on: WTF is wrong with recruiters?

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themoviemadman profile image
Eliseo D'Annunzio

“...One positive thing to remember is this. If recruiters reach out to you, your skill is in demand...”

That is if the main skill of the role is within the candidate’s scope of skills. I have counted more times than not where a recruiter has approached me asking about my interest in a role which is completely wrong for me. They search for “developer” and believe that you’re perfect for a role that requires Springboard, Java and Magento... while you have no experience in either of these...

At least two-thirds of recruiters I’ve come across over the last two years have no understanding of the industry they’re recruiting in... how can any candidate have confidence in the ability of a recruiter to help them score a role if they can’t even understand what a client wants or what a candidate has to offer?

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kiro_kleine profile image
Victoria • Edited

Your commentary is extremely valid, and indeed it is difficult for each recruiter to nail it right. Data Analyst vs. Data Scientist? QA Developer - Python or Java? Sysadmin vs. IT support? I was in those shoes as well, I did my mistakes.

Nobody is perfect. You too have most likely taken a few iterations before you wrote the perfect code, and bless the testers to have corrected what you have overlooked or could not see. It is true for other industries and professions as well.

The real question is - are you going to wait for the perfect recruiter to reach out to you? Or are you going to educate a recruiter and nurture and ongoing relationship with them? Both are valid and are up to you.

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dvddpl profile image
Davide de Paolis

thanks for your comment.
but no, sorry I am not going to educate a recruiter to do his job properly. Testers are part of the same company and they can point out my mistakes, but don't / can't / are not able to tell me how to do my job ( and if the bug makes it to the end-user, believe me the end user can get pretty pissed too), so you example doesn't fit.
And honestly, for what they are paid ( out of MY salary, out of the number I eventually negotiated) I expect them to be more professional.

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kiro_kleine profile image
Victoria

Ok to be honest if you negotiate a salary and have to share - that's a steal! I work as an in-house recruiter, so cannot say anything about salary sharing.

Agency recruiters seem to be a temporary patch, really. There is a much bigger problem behind it... A whole different flaw in the system.

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dvddpl profile image
Davide de Paolis

most of this post is referring to external recruiters, recruiters agencies.
it's not a share that we devs have to give them. it's the fee the company that will hire me has to pay them. and it's a percentage of the salary I will get during the first year of employment.
and afaik it is normally around 20/25% which is huge - for doing basically nothing besides spamming a bunch of devs you found on the internet and making a couple of phone calls to arrange an interview.

It is a much different and bigger problem behind these recruiters.

exactly, and this is what I was addressing.

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dvddpl profile image
Davide de Paolis

that´s for sure. and that´ the annoying part. but more generally it means at least that our job is still in demand. it might not be your specific skill (react or java) but you could always, in need switch tech stack, and learn what the market asks. It´s not so easy in other fields. :-)