[lazyant]

Doesn't look scalable for a startup but I'd give my pinky (OK, maybe just a month's salary) for having a decent tech recruiter work for me (developer open to new opportunities), as in sparing me of the 90% of BS that I usually go through when dealing with recruiters/companies.

[leeny]

I'm a recruiter. Before that, I was an engineer for 5 years. What you're describing sounds really good, but it's likely not going to happen. For the record, I agree with you completely and try to work in the manner you describe, but there are a number of economic incentives working against you before scale is even an issue.

Generally, recruiters work for specific client companies and try to fill seats at those companies. Because the companies are paying them, their interests are fundamentally aligned with them and not with you. The kind of recruiter you describe is more of a talent agent, but until there's a shortage of engineering jobs, this probably won't happen for full-time roles because the financial incentive for engineers to pay an agent simply isn't there.

Agents make sense when it's hard to find a job or when the opportunity cost to looking for work is high enough to justify paying someone else. Recruiters make sense when it's hard to find workers or the opportunity cost of looking for workers is high enough to pay someone else. In some sense, it's almost like recruiters are talent agents for the companies they're representing.

Freelance engineers do have talent agents (e.g. http://www.10xmanagement.com/). When you're a freelancer, your time is split between doing actual work (coding) and drumming up business, so the less time you spend on drumming up business, the more time you can spend doing work that pays. In this model, paying someone to find work for you makes perfect sense because the opportunity cost of not working is high enough to justify the payment.

Full-time engineers are a different story from freelancers, however. I found this out myself when I first started my own recruiting firm. At the time, I really wanted to explore the talent agent model. This model was really interesting to me because I was convinced that having engineers pay for an agent's services would swiftly rectify many of the problems that run rampant in technical recruiting today (e.g. wanton spamming of engineers, misrepresentation of positions, recruiters having a very shallow understanding of the space/companies they're recruiting for).

I dedicated a good chunk of the first few months of running my business to talking to engineers and trying to figure out if a talent agent model would work. Engineers were super excited about this. Until I mentioned that part where they'd have to pay me, that is.

These days, I try to work in this weird hybrid way where I start with finding smart people, figure out what they want, and then no matter what it is, try to give it to them, while still getting paid by the company. This works for me because I maintain relationships with a lot of companies at once. And it also works for me because, as a former engineer, I can grok what people want at hopefully a deeper level than non-technical technical recruiters and also be able to filter talent somewhat effectively.

This still isn't ideal because my incentives are still kind of misaligned and because companies don't always love this approach -- it's great for candidates, but from their perspective, flow is unpredictable and haphazard. And I think this model works for me primarily because I used to code.

So, tl;dr, while what you want sounds awesome, and I want it too, I don't think it's going to happen in any real way anytime soon. At least not until a product comes along.

[lazyant]

I agree with you and I understand that a recruiter works for the companies and not for me. Regarding "Engineers were super excited about this. Until I mentioned that part where they'd have to pay me, that is", what specific services were you thinking of providing and what rates would make it work?

[leeny]

I was throwing out the idea that I would handle someone's job search. Basically, you would tell me what you wanted in broad strokes, and I would keep looking until I found the right job for you. I'd also take on the grunt work that normally comes with mounting a job search (e.g. interview scheduling, travel logistics, timing things so they come together at the same time, etc), and I'd either help with or act as a proxy in offer negotiations, depending on which you were comfortable with.

I threw out a few price points when I was chatting with folks, and across the board, everyone was pretty surprised that I'd be charging them. In order for this to be worth my time, I'd need at least $5000 or so per head, and that seemed like an insurmountable figure for people. The best I could get was something along the lines of, "If you can guarantee that I will make $20K more per year, then I can give you a cut," but I didn't really like that either because it still creates the wrong incentives, essentially making it not in my interest to ever refer anyone into a cash-poor, equity-heavy situation, or really into any company that couldn't throw out a lot of cash.

The closest thing I've seen to what I described is offerletter.io (also mentioned on this thread), but I think that has a good chance of working out because of the focus on just the negotiation aspect.

[lazyant]

thanks, I was thinking 5k or even 10k (about a month's salary) makes sense, esp. if you are able somehow to tap into jobs that are not easily searchable.

[mallyvai]

Going to hijack Aline's thread here - we do this in a very targeted way at http://offerletter.io. We charge individuals to help them negotiate their offers and really make the best decision possible overall. Is this closer to what you were thinking of?

[leeny]

Ping me if you want to discuss further, either in a purely academically sense or more practically. [e-mail]

[leeny]

Oh, and interview prep as well.

[zvitez]

Why do you think it's not scalable? Think there always has to be a level of attention on an individual level? What BS are you referring to btw? The usual, "This guy knows Java. He'll probably interested in this Javascript position!"?

[lazyant]

Just to keep ranting, this is a typical process that has been happening to me:

  - Get unsolicited email by recruiter. I ignore if it's generic but if it looks like they've read something about me I answer (now I demand company name & salary range upfront to save everybody's time)

  - Recruiter follows up asking for resume or call. I have linkedin complete public profile, blog, twitter, Stackoverflow, Github etc, with all linked to each other, almost never they notice.
  - If somehow I'm still interested and I can't get out of the call ("my favorite call hours is email"), I schedule for a short call. I always write short, clear polite emails.
  - Already here the communication stops sometimes. If there's a call they invariably want to qualify me with the salary question. I've used both the "won't say at this stage" and "inflated salary" strategies.
  - Next if there's a first company phone interview (basic screening/basic tech) I always pass it, tech questions seem too basic, we schedule remote tech interview
  - In the remote tech interview I tend to fulfill the objectives but maybe I'm too slow or I'm not good at communicating or something. They say they'll call me for the next interview.
  - Then they stop communicating.

This cycle has happened to me several times recently, with several of the HN's "Who's hiring" companies. Only company which replied with a result was Facebook (wasn't a perfect match in any case) and a company in Idaho, it seems people in SV can't be bothered.

[lazyant]

The recruiting game makes my blood boil, so I'll just point to some issues but the main thing is that tech recruiters are clueless about tech and don't bother reading about you or the target company before wasting your time, and I'm not even getting at having someone really look out for you actively trying to find a good match.

General issues or "Top 10 Mistakes Technical Recruiters Make":

  - Not selling their company (or the position)  
  - Not looking into the prospect’s web presence  
  - Sending “cold call” vague email  
  - Not understanding basic technology  
  - Not disclosing basic information (an idea of salary, company)  
  - Using buzzwords, offering silly perks  
  - Not asking relevant questions  
  - Radio silence, not being responsive  
  - Not being clear on the process, what to expect  
  - Not understanding what motivates people beyond money

I think a good recruiter is not scalable in principle since it would need someone to get to know you a bit.

[pcbo]

Very nice list of top ten mistakes! You should write about it.

Can you please tell me what motivates you more beyond money? Challenge? Co-workers?

I did a similar list but focused on companies top ten mistakes when hiring tech professionals: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140924112230-224359...

[lazyant]

the most important thing for me is the team, the people I'm surrounded with, also like everybody else, autonomy, mastery, purpose http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdzHgN7_Hs8

[zvitez]

To have someone actively look for a job for you is indeed not scalable, at least not affordably. What about having people that know you, personal and professionaly tell you about jobs you might like? Do you think they would do a better job than the average recruiter? That's a nasty list by the way. The thing is most of those issues can be avoided with just a little bit of effort and care...

[lazyant]

I'm not expecting to have someone doing everything for me handholding, but I still haven't found a recruiter that hasn't lied to me or stopped sending emails or skipping appointments or is not completely clueless technically about the job position or me, and I'm pretty sure this is all across the board, I'm nobody special.

Like you said, with a bit of effort it will be great. The issue imho is that recruiters have no barriers of entry, so it's like realtors or financial advisors, a few good people in a sea of weasels, unfortunately while I found good people in those professions, not in the recruiting area.

[rvivek]

thanks lazyant; there are specific challenges for a startup which we're trying to address in the product. happy to chat more if you'd like to try.

[lazyant]

sorry, I wasn't addressing Hackerrank in particular, which seems a fine way of doing one of the parts of the recruiting process (tech validation), while my complain is on "everything else" and the general hiring process.