Recruiter really are just a bunch of £%&#@

So for some reason I was invited to a group on LinkedIn which I presumed was a group for job seekers etc. Today I stumbled across a discussion which made it clear that the group was actually just a support group for moaning recruiter. The discussion was quite interesting. Basically they all moaned about candidates ruining their day by pulling out because they have accepted a counter offer and all agreed that candidates should be banned in their system.

Now then there was me, jumping in and moaning about the other side. Us candidates having to deal with recruiter who

a. Don't know the technology they are recruiting for. Example: Talked half an hour to a recruiter about VMware just for him to ask me after that if I have experience with virtualization!!!!

b. Never update you when they say they will. Just at the moment I am again in the middle of an application and it seems to repeat itself over and over when they tell you you receive a call then and there. Never happened. That you receive a decision then and there. Never happened. Then you receive an update then and there. Never happened.
In that case he got all confused that I then actually told them to stick their job where the sun won't shine.

Anyway, needles to say they kicked me out of the group. But seriously. Is it just me or getting recruiter a lot worse lately. In fact, a company contacted me directly on LinkedIn and their hiring manager is as bad.

I also notice that recruiter getting a lot younger, which is probably part of the problem.

[/rant]

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Comments

fifrasco

I've always been caution about dealing with recruiters. I don't why but I always felt recruiters were a bad idea. I have recruiters emailing positions where it clearly states that the person needs a CCNP and I barely have a CCENT. Makes me wonder if they actually read people's resumes before even trying to contact them.

kohr-ah

They are hit or miss really but not all recruiters are bad. Some are terrible and so like what you all above said.

But for up here in Chicago there is a lot of companies that will use they so that HR doesn't have to deal with 1000 resumes for an online posting. Just filter out the useless ones

Other places (like the MSP I worked at) had their own internal recruiters.

JoJoCal19

It really is a sad situation right now with the state of the job market. Unfortunately from my recent experience it seems that all jobs go through recruiters. Lots of jobs that I saw and some that I applied for, I ended up going through a recruiter at the same time. I applied for several directly through the company and then also got contacted by a recruiter for it at almost the same time. I went through a lot of the same stuff you did. It really is awful. Right now companies and recruiters can get away with it. My best luck was with actual internal corporate recruiters contacting me for jobs. That is how I obtained my new position.

veritas_libertas

I've had good luck with recruiters. I'm picky though, and if I sense they don't care about me or the company they are hiring for, then I move on. Both my last employer and my present have a good working relationship with their recruiters. This definitely helps.

olaHalo

The recruiters I have dealt with werent much help.
I specifically told one recruiter via an in person interview and via email that I am only interested in routing and switching jobs.
Yet he sends me all kinds of programing jobs, data center tech jobs, systems jobs etc and tells me how they are perfect for me.

Im sure there are some great ones out there though.

Eston21

Recruiters work to fulfill needs for their respective companies, not for you as a potential candidate.

lsud00d

Recruiters shotgun approach just like you should be doing

N2IT

My last job I applied straight to the company and was working within 2 weeks. I am hopefully past the recruiter phase.

Danielm7

The last recruiter I started to work with seemed great. He wanted to meet with me first, seems like a great guy, he sold the job to me up and down, decent pay, short commute, super stable, etc. Said I was the top candidate, said it was like a shoe in if I wanted, etc. Three days later he calls back saying the company can't actually pay what they said they could, so I'm out, meh.

NetworkingStudent

My experience has been that a lot of them don’t listen to you, regarding what position you want, or the skill set you have.

They send you jobs you might not even been interested in at all, just to meet their quota.

This strategy doesn’t make a lot sense to me, but I can understand they want to keep their job.

My favorite thing that recruiters will do is say I have a job for you, but I need you to come to our office.

You show up to the office and they tell you the job is filled.

Then they say still want to talk to you do a quick interview with you and submit you to other employers.

However, you have been to this temp agency a few times in the past and met other recruiters.

Although, this recruiter hasn’t met you yet, so you must travel to the office and interview for a job that may not even exist.

Not all recruiters are bad:

I found my current job through a temp agency. It was just two guys and they were great!!

They used to call me and say thank you for representing us so well.

When I received my checks they would thank me for working for them and representing them so well. Sadly, they went out of business due to economic reasons.

NetworkingStudent

Why do you never see any older recruiters?

You know the veterans?

I always used to run into a lot of recent college grads.

It appears to be that only the senior recruiters stay on at the same company.

Also, why is there such a high turnover, in the recruiting field?

SweenMachine

I mean, you all have valid points but ya know, ranting about recruiters is just like ranting about every other aspect of life. Crappy people exist everywhere. Unresponsive people exist everywhere. IT recruiters have a pretty hard job, I dabbled in it and I know several. You are essentially expecting someone who does not work in IT to understand all elements of IT. That is unrealistic and not fair. The OP complained about the recruiters complaining about IT canidates pulling out of a verbal because they got a better offer, and I would be honest, having been responsible for hiring in my last role, that sure did tick me off as well, and yes, I would not offer them a job in the future. What is wrong with that opinion?

I would venture to say there are just as many crappy people who are techs as there are crappy people who are recruiters. And to talk about the high turnover in recruiting is pretty ironic considering the historically high turnover in IT when people continually further their own agendas (and we ALL have the right to do that, clearly)

Every single job, from tech to recruiter to concrete layer to fast food manager all have their challenges.

jibbajabba

That really is a problem - most job do go through recruiters.

What I actually found out shocked me a bit. Some guys, including my latest "fun" - looked like he is coming from the company himself. Company email address, company signature and the lot. HOWEVER, it turned out he was just main recruiter for this company AS WELL. They gave him a company "identity" when dealing with clients which are being recruited for that particular company. That guy had multiple "identities" - depending who he is recruiting for and who he is talking to.

6502

jibbajabba wrote: »

That really is a problem - most job do go through recruiters.

Unfortunately that's the case.

I'm finding that recruiters will bin your resume pretty quickly if it doesn't fit perfectly. Last night I had a recruiter reject me because I didn't have experience with a specific model of Catalyst switch. It didn't matter that I have lots of Catalyst and networking experience. On the flip side I had a good direct interview with a manager. He was more interested in my fitting in with his team. We did talk tech and it was much more natural because he knew the technologies and wasn't demanding I fit a specific profile.

Location is part of it too, I'm sure. I'm in S. Florida. I think my options would be better where I used to live.

Tremie24

Recruiters are waste, for awhile I wondered what they even do. They don't know much about the jobs or IT in general. I don't think they even read resumes that are sent to them. I had one recruiter try to get me a job doing admin stuff, filing papers and that junk, he wanted to get me on a 6 month contract and hopefully I would get promoted in the IT department. Uh no. I've dealt with two that were actually decent, and got me on some short contracts. I don't how many I talked to and then never heard from them again. They always told me if I didn't hear from them, that I should get in contact with them, I'm like shouldn't it be the other way around.

unfbilly11

I don't blame the individual recruiters as much as I do the company that the recruiters work for. They know nothing about technology and yet, they are expected to fill job listings for higher level technical positions. I can explain to them what I'm looking for all I want, but it goes in one ear and out the other because it sounds completely foreign to them. They don't know the difference between a job that's resetting passwords in Active Directory and one that has you building a complex network infrastructure. Heck, most of them don't know that Active Directory even exists!

jibbajabba

6502 wrote: »

Unfortunately that's the case.

I'm finding that recruiters will bin your resume pretty quickly if it doesn't fit perfectly. Last night I had a recruiter reject me because I didn't have experience with a specific model of Catalyst switch..

Is that a US thing ? Here it is the opposite .. I am getting recruiter calling me where my resume is clearly a really really bad fit for that position.

I can't count how often I got a call from recruiter saying how perfect my VMware heavy resume / CV fits for some senior .NET development position they are recruiting for ...

markulous

I've had good luck with both of the agencies that I've dealt with: Pomeroy and Insight Global. Both got me into good jobs and answered all of my questions. Neither one seemed to pretend they know more than they did about IT.

N2IT

I've met with over 20 different agencies within 15 years and most are junk from my perspective. I refuse to make a blanket statement for all, that's not accurate either. However IMO and experience most of the time it's been uneventful or bad. Sometimes you get the rare recruiter who understands CRM. Most however are into the shotgun approach and could give a rats ass about you and or if you live or die.\\

Ive always receive a better vibe when working directly with the hiring companies HR department. Those folks are usually professional.

Danielm7

I don't expect them to know everything about IT, but if you list yourself as the Senior Director of IT Recruiting you should know that Linux is an OS, networking isn't the same as programming, etc.

Tremie24

unfbilly11 wrote: »

I don't blame the individual recruiters as much as I do the company that the recruiters work for. They know nothing about technology and yet, they are expected to fill job listings for higher level technical positions. I can explain to them what I'm looking for all I want, but it goes in one ear and out the other because it sounds completely foreign to them. They don't know the difference between a job that's resetting passwords in Active Directory and one that has you building a complex network infrastructure. Heck, most of them don't know that Active Directory even exists!

That's the problem though. In order to be a recruiter, you should at least have some IT background, 6 months+ experience or be trained. I've had some recruiters not know about an A+ certificate.

jibbajabba

Tremie24 wrote: »

That's the problem though. In order to be a recruiter, you should at least have some IT background, 6 months+ experience or be trained. I've had some recruiters not know about an A+ certificate.

Or worse my example, talking about vmware for ages just to ask if I have experience in virtualization ... Another guy called me for a Senior Linux Engineer role .. Told him that my CV / Resume only mentions basic Linux. His response :"But there is a lot of VMware, VMware is Linux right" ...

N2IT

@ Tremie most are English majors or have some weird one off degree that is junk. I have never seen a recruiter with a computer IS degree. I have seen some that had certifications and oddly enough

they were pretty good. Most have no clue. They are literally reading off of a script. Ummmmm do you have SQL skills? It says I have 3+ years of SSMS experience. Huh? O well never mind it's okay if you don't HUH. It say you have SAP experience do you know ABAP? No...... Do you mind answering me a question. Sure..... What is ABAP? Sigh...... Well what they really need is someone with programming experience. Any language will work but they need to know you can work within in their environment. I know VBA for scripting in Excel. Okay that will work thanks!!! We will call you if you are selected for an interview. -Crickets

100k

N2IT wrote: »

@ Tremie most are English majors or have some weird one off degree that is junk. I have never seen a recruiter with a computer IS degree. I have seen some that had certifications and oddly enough they were pretty good. Most have no clue. They are literally reading off of a script. Ummmmm do you have SQL skills? It says I have 3+ years of SSMS experience. Huh? O well never mind it's okay if you don't HUH. It say you have SAP experience do you know ABAP? No...... Do you mind answering me a question. Sure..... What is ABAP? Sigh...... Well what they really need is someone with programming experience. Any language will work but they need to know you can work within in their environment. I know VBA for scripting in Excel. Okay that will work thanks!!! We will call you if you are selected for an interview. -Crickets

^^^

on the money

bryguy

I honestly think this is a symptom of what the IT industry has become... at least in the public sector with large contracts at stake. More often than not, you have a government contract that needs to be awarded to a small, disadvantaged company. The small company doesn't have the IT resources in place, and subs out its work to a large IT company. The large company has the IT infrastructure, and know how, but doesn't want to staff it because benefits like 401k's, pensions, unemployment insurance, health insurance, etc. cost money for a contract the only lasts 3 years or so, so they sub it out to smaller recruiting companies. The recruting company gets their cut, the sub gets their cut, and the prime gets their cut. Before you know it, you're getting paid $12/hr with no benefits for a position that the government is paying $60/hr for.

azjag

I have a few problems with recruiters.

1. Wanting to call my references before you have an offer. If I gave my references out to every recruiter I run the risk of bothering my references too much. Especially since a few of them are "C" level executives.

2. Wanting to meet me before submitting my name for a position. I have to take time off work to meet you during the work day. If you are constantly drawing less than favorable applicants for position you need to work on your screening process. You are wasting my time doing an in person screening at Denny's or Starbucks just to make sure I dress nicely and act appropriately. I have one recruiter, who is now a friend of mine, that I relented on and let him contact my references and met in person at a Denny's for a position at a University that I really wanted just to prove a point. Nothing came of the position and it is now a running joke between us. It is just a company trying to offer yet another service to the paying customer to prove that they have the better candidates.

3. Not speaking fluent English. Read this off a CCIE blog, where the guy would not work with a recruiter if they didn't speak English fluently. Something about details being lost in translation.

4. How long you have been a recruiter and how many jobs have you had in the last 3 years. I know the recruiters that have made this a career and have been with the same company for years, or own their own company. If you have been with 2-3 agencies in the last 1-2 years, I don't want to work with you.

Most of the time I can wait and choose a different recruiter if any of these items are present or apply for the company directly.

Tremie24

N2IT wrote: »

@ Tremie most are English majors or have some weird one off degree that is junk. I have never seen a recruiter with a computer IS degree. I have seen some that had certifications and oddly enough they were pretty good. Most have no clue. They are literally reading off of a script. Ummmmm do you have SQL skills? It says I have 3+ years of SSMS experience. Huh? O well never mind it's okay if you don't HUH. It say you have SAP experience do you know ABAP? No...... Do you mind answering me a question. Sure..... What is ABAP? Sigh...... Well what they really need is someone with programming experience. Any language will work but they need to know you can work within in their environment. I know VBA for scripting in Excel. Okay that will work thanks!!! We will call you if you are selected for an interview. -Crickets

So true.

I remember talking to recruiters and they would ask if I had experience with ticketing systems, and I didn't because I was still trying to land my first IT job, and I would tell them no but I'm familiar with why they are used. Right away they would be well we need someone that has that experience, I'll call if you if something else comes up. One ask one time, do you have experience with call queue, I was like call queue? I thought this was a help desk position. I could go on.

ITcognito

Recruiters do their job for the commission. In essence, they are sales people.

Read: When The Headhunter Calls, Do This - Forbes