It isn’t that they go, but the frothiness does. I built teams through the 2008+ downturn and plenty of teams froze hiring, but many were still hiring through it. What this poster doesn’t get at is the fact that it changes what types of opportunities rise to the top—you get more scratch and dent or problematic roles vs. straight up the middle quality roles.
Every now and then I post a resume on the big job boards to see what kind of crap the people I recruit have to put up with so I know why they have generally lost that loving feeling toward recruiters. Last night I posted one.
The responses make me question whether or not I am in the right industry.
I can't help but ask myself how the hell I chose to work in a profession where my customers and the people I interact with are going to be judged by the behavior of my peers. This reminds me of why so many developers get angry at recruiters.
If nothing else, it reminds me why I have not paid for a job board account since 2007.
Here is a link to my blog post with some selected emails from recruiters who responded on Dice, Monster and CareerBuilder:
Thanks for the feedback! I will take some time and make some formatting enhancements as well as add some visuals. I plan to really dig into the "cost" as soon as I have some time to get back to writing. I decided to focus on the cost of building an MVP for this series rather than a product. For this first post in the series the focus is on defining an MVP. Since there are so many similar, yet distinct ideas about what an MVP actually is I want to get this right before I tackle actual costs. A lot of founders get lost chasing a huge product rather than an MVP, but they think they are going after an MVP. This is especially true for first time founders. This is ultimately an experiment/research effort in search of a scalable business not a product (i.e. photo sharing service, SaaS product, mobile messaging app). The business may reject the initial hypothetical business or product and re-focus or even change focus.
The best job offers come when someone knows who you are. To get there you need to have some sort of presence on the radar of the right recruiters. I have jumped in and out of recruiting and development so I'm not guessing on this. The product is the chemistry and courtship assistance, not the person. A good recruiter can help, a bad one can waste time. The same is true with a good vs. bad developer.
That is not good advice. Ruby on Rails is widely used. Java would be a good option, but it would probably not be something that could be picked up as easily or as quickly as something with RoR, Python, PHP or JavaScript. C# would narrow your options much more because it would lock you into the proprietary MS world. Something with iOS or Android would be preferable. Note: I'm not saying C# is bad, I have used it and will again. I'm just pointing in the direction of what could be picked up and then turned into a career move skillset in self study timeframe.
Have you considered doing some mobile stuff, maybe iOS? That might translate better for you.
Are you near a major city? If so, which one? The job market there will shape the opportunities available to you there.
Just getting something built that you can show people is about as important as the language or framework that you choose to do it in. That said, the mainstream is Java, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Python (usually with Django), and mobile stuff. You could do something with JavaScript paired with another scripting language and that would be good. If you don't have time to do any of that, maybe pick up a book on HTML5 Game development and build something with it. There is a lot you can do there.
There are people who volunteer to work on things like Presidential campaigns and for startups because of who they are working with rather than because of what they are being paid.
The only people who seem to use it here on the East Coast in the USA are government contractors and people who leave government contractors to go to work in the private sector.
There are some great places to find internships and individuals should not assume that just because someone calls something a common application that it is a gateway into all, most or even more than a few startups.
If you are an intern looking for an internship in the Washington, DC startup or tech community area you should join one of many startup discussions in the area and tell people you are looking.
If you are a programmer this means you should be announcing yourself in the programmer user groups - think DCRUG (Ruby on Rails) or BMore On Rails (Ruby on Rails) or NoVARUG (Ruby on Rails), DC Python (Python), etc. Most of these are on Meetup.org. There are also some great general discussion areas like DC Tech and Baltimore Tech on Facebook. Another great group to check out is Refresh DC - this is more web agency and web development and design oriented. Refresh Baltimore is similar.
In addition, there are a ton of great places to find out what is happening in the Washington area as well as to find out about startup and tech jobs and internships in the area. Craigslist has some great stuff. SocialMatchbox.com has some great stuff. DCTechEvents.com has some great stuff. BaltimoreTechEvents.com has some great stuff. There is also a Hacker News Meetup in DC - a great bunch of people are involved in it. Baltimore has a similar group that meets up called the Hacker Stroll, they go to a lot of different events together and have a monthly happy hour.
There are tons of great tech and startup companies in the Washington, DC area. The community is growing and very diverse. There are a ton of things going on and so many different people trying to come up with ways to organize all of it that it is hard to keep track of it all. No one website has all the answers or all the people so don't miss out on that.
Who are you talking to and where are you finding them? They must be coming from offshore because no self-respecting recruiter in the US would go that low or be allowed to go that low if they were working for an agency.
On second thought, what a brilliant way to reward bad recruiters - by by taxing them for helping you waste your own time and simultaneously testing good will of people in your network. Save yourself the time and use your spam filter on bad recruiters. Not good enough? Change your email address, stop posting your resume on job boards, and stop talking to bad staffing agencies. Better yet, save yourself the time and get to know a handful of good recruiters and then forget about all the bad ones. Only let good ones through.
Of course they don't. If the recruiter doesn't ask you for a reference then the hiring manager you are interviewing with will.
You are right about the face-to-face meetings though. A lot of staffing agencies require that their people do this. It is a core metric for many of them. If you are frustrated by this then find a good recruiter and don't bother with the others. You should want a good recruiter to know you are out there - they are going to be thinking about ways to help you. The flip side is that they only call you when you showed up in their search.
Recruiters are more like Doctors than used car salesmen. They are a necessary evil for some companies who have a problem that they can't solve on their own. People don't like going to the doctor and they don't like going to a recruiter, but sometimes you just have to do it to get on with things. You can self-medicate before going to the doctor and you can go to the online classifieds, but that isn't the answer for you every time. Just remember that recruiters are not all STAFFING AGENCY PEOPLE.
Have you EVER encountered a bad software engineer? Maybe one who managed to over-write something you contributed to a project more than once? Better yet, someone who just annoys the hell out of you? There are probably some who you would never work with for a variety of reasons. Zed Shaw swore off the whole of the Ruby on Rails community. Now imagine that there were bad recruiters too. There are good and bad people in every category and for you to flame everyone in a community because you had a bad experience with one, several or even all of the recruiters you have ever encountered is flat out missing the problem. You should be looking for recruiters who get it just like any savvy person who is willing to hire you for whatever it is that you do right has to look for you. More importantly, you should direct your frustration at the company that hired the recruiter you are frustrated by. When I hire a programmer I do a paired programming session with them and take the time to get to know them and the other way around. Maybe you should spend some time recruiting some recruiters who are with-it by your standards.
Last, but not least, you have to realize that there are some companies that choose to use bad recruiters as a standard business practice. The prefer this. If they do then your recruiter pal isn't the problem.
You should know by now that if a job pays too well then there is a reason. If you are willing to take on jobs that others are most likely passing on then you might want to think about this.
A good recruiter, on the other hand, can create some really good conversations and teams that lead to some really successful companies. A good recruiter is not going to bother asking for references unless there is a reason to, unless they work for a big huge staffing agency and that company requires them to in much the same way that some programming jobs require CMMI. Contrary to britman's comments, recruiters ask for hiring managers because they do serve a role that is SUPERVISORY and that part of their job is to see the team as a big picture. They are often more reliable as a source than a peer. However, peers can be highly reliable too. Think of it as best of 3 - you might not get the truth on the first or even the second try.
Recruiters are a lot like detectives - they have to figure out of you are telling the truth or not, whether you can assess your own capabilities or not, and whether or not you can work well with others. In your case it sounds like the latter might be an issue. A good recruiter might find this post and not ask for a reference from you at all.
To leftnode's point, the "I make more, you make more" line is only true when there is no contract to hire or temp to hire in play. This ONLY applies when someone is doing a fee for placement that is straight up. NOT EVERY RECRUITER WORKS ANY OF THESE WAYS. Some work for the company, some freelance, etc. ASK!!! You are probably not going to get the particulars of how they are getting paid (e.g. the % if it is a fee for placement), but you should reasonably expect that they will tell you that they are getting a % of your hourly or a % of your first year's compensation, or if they are being paid for their time. If they don't want to give this to you then tell them to have a nice day.
If you, or anyone else here, want to talk about this in more detail feel free to email me - [email protected]
Follow @CoworkCharles on Twitter - there is a group that coworks at least once a week. We meet up at Bohemian Coffee House, Koffee Therapy, Caribou Coffee, and last night on the way back from a Baltimore startup happy hour we were talking about City Cafe as we passed by it so probably there next. We had two python guys, several Ruby on Rails guys and a PHP guy there the last time.