[antonwinter]

This is a big question that i face daily. here at our recruitment company, we are actual programmers that do recruitment. first, let me tell you, it does make a big difference in who we choose. When a coder starts talking about how they are using elastic search, AWS or even good old C#, we can talk to them about how the ins and outs and work out how much they actually know.

The challenge that we are facing is with the employers. Many of them that use a HR department rely on a "tick the boxes" approach that cuts out many many good coders. Others rely on "rockstar <insert brandname>" company to choose who gets in. maybe 70%+ of good coders dont make it through because of the above 2 hurdles.

Most of our clients spend 6+months trying to get people, until finally they work out that its the internal process that stops them employing, not the perceived ( and IMHO non existent ) skills shortage.

[ihadaquestion]

What is your typical customer, if you don't mind me asking? Can smaller startups afford your services?

Also, do you consider culture fit at all? I read somewhere that because recruiters make their money on volume, their interest in small companies is rather limited. Basically, it doesn't make business sense for them to spend hours to get to know a small company's culture inside-out and then send them one-two candidates. You could be funneling dozens of developers to very large clients with very generic culture requirements in that time frame.