[fecak]

First, thanks. The focus of the article is obviously on ways to identify and evaluate recruiters from an engineer's perspective. The part about some recruiters being pretty was something I felt worth noting that was on my mind (a few mentions to me recently), but not worthy of an entire post.

The pretty part is just an abbreviated rant on the way the industry is headed, where substance and knowledge are being replaced by trying to get a candidate's attention with shiny things. It's not new, just annoying.

[chunsaker]

I agree with the direction of the industry, and your abbreviated rant, except I think they are trying to get attention with... anything at their disposal.

For me what is interesting is how magnetically opposed developers can be to a perceived outsider. And how that works against the recruiter, etc. in question. E.g. We're really lucky with our outside recruiter and she has a lot of credibility, but when she hung out at our booth at OSCON with her lovely female assistant, they clearly stood out and attendees cut a wide swath. Same thing at a different con with one of our investors: extremely technical guy, but you can spot his BD/VC uniform from across the room. I shuffle their conversations away from my booth.

Conversely, I had an interesting conversation in a booth at a different con, where after 20 minutes of talking to me (messy ponytail, company tshirt, jeans, tigers) about our stack, a guy said to me, "Wait a sec, you smell like marketing." By which he meant that I was coming across as non-technical as we got deeper into the technical details (totally fair - I am not a professional developer). I think he felt bamboozled by my lack of shininess.

The shiny girl probably like being shiny, and don't care for the tshirt/jeans/ponytail uniform. There's actually a lot of cool ways technical women subvert the uniform without freaking anyone out (I have hot pink lipstick). I would venture they feel uncomfortable about standing out more than they are plotting to lure you.

[fecak]

Half the recruiter's battle is getting inside that force field that technologists put up regarding recruiters. In another HN thread, I offered to have a discussion about career to a fairly well-known tech community member, and was immediately accused of trying to recruit the guy (although I do no work in his geography, which I even alluded to in the post). People assume recruiters are always recruiting, so it's impossible to have a conversation. I've run a Java Users Group for 13 years and they are comfortable because they know me, but if I go to meet a client company onsite, they seem to think I'm casing the place to start poaching.

It's a strange business with lots of dynamics, and the issue I mention isn't discussed much in my experience. I've seen BD/sales types at my UG meetings, both male and female, that scared people away due to their look, or even by a harmless "Hi" from them (people at UGs hate sales pitches).