Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This
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I think we've all experienced recruiters who get into IT without having enough IT knowledge to really understand their candidates, this happens probably most of the time. This itself is a major disconnect, how can someone effectively recruit if they don't know the position that they are trying to fill or the candidates that they are trying to place? It makes no sense.
Now obviously, recruiters are not IT people, so it is not a full skill overlap, but it seems like recruiters that don't know the domain just add to the quagmire of IT hiring rather than resolving anything. They tend to filter out excellent candidates that are a near-perfect fit, and promote terrible candidates that are often useless. I have talked to many, and many simply see IT as beneath them and come across as thinking that all IT is interchangeable, and that IT is easy and that they shouldn't need to know anything or be aware of the domain since it is all so simplistic.
I've invited many recruiters to this and other forums, and none ever show up or decide to participate, even though the arena is absolutely perfect for them. What better way to find, engage, and validate potential candidates; and how better could you achieve visibility for a job posting?
Recruiters seem to actively despise transparency, vetting, or even good placement. Why?
And why does no recruiting system arise to take advantage of this obvious gap?
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In my recent experience, headhunters don't give a rats ***about anything other than getting a butt in a chair. The only luck I had was direct hire.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:
I've invited many recruiters to this and other forums, and none ever show up or decide to participate, even though the arena is absolutely perfect for them. What better way to find, engage, and validate potential candidates; and how better could you achieve visibility for a job posting?
Why? As far as I can tell, ML has about 20 regular posters, half of whom run their own business, and most live in Texas. The probability of an average recruiter justifying time spent on here seems negligible.
Recruiters seem to actively despise transparency, vetting, or even good placement. Why?
SAM logic: I think X. Therefore anyone who doesn't agree therefore must be somehow corrupt, stupid, incompetent or evil. :winking_face:
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@Carnival-Boy said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:
@scottalanmiller said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:
I've invited many recruiters to this and other forums, and none ever show up or decide to participate, even though the arena is absolutely perfect for them. What better way to find, engage, and validate potential candidates; and how better could you achieve visibility for a job posting?
Why? As far as I can tell, ML has about 20 regular posters, half of whom run their own business, and most live in Texas. The probability of an average recruiter justifying time spent on here seems negligible.
I know I'm near the top 20 around here, and had publicly announced that I was looking for a full time position somewhere for almost 2 years. A lot of others have changed jobs in the same time frame. Lots of opportunity around here.
Recruiters seem to actively despise transparency, vetting, or even good placement. Why?
Because that's not the goal. The goal is butt in chair so the recruiting company makes money.
SAM logic: I think X. Therefore anyone who doesn't agree therefore must be somehow corrupt, stupid, incompetent or evil. :winking_face:
At least @scottalanmiller uses logic! :winking_face:
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@Carnival-Boy said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:
@scottalanmiller said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:
I've invited many recruiters to this and other forums, and none ever show up or decide to participate, even though the arena is absolutely perfect for them. What better way to find, engage, and validate potential candidates; and how better could you achieve visibility for a job posting?
Why? As far as I can tell, ML has about 20 regular posters, half of whom run their own business, and most live in Texas. The probability of an average recruiter justifying time spent on here seems negligible.
Seems, because that's your perception. You think that 80,000 unique users per month is negligible to a recruiter?
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@Carnival-Boy said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:
SAM logic: I think X. Therefore anyone who doesn't agree therefore must be somehow corrupt, stupid, incompetent or evil. :winking_face:
Aren't you describing exactly what you just did in this post? Bit of the pot calling the kettle black.
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem
That you are using a personal attack, rather than logic, is the best way to admit you agree, but are upset that it didn't support the point that you wanted.
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@scottalanmiller Those are all good points. If I was a recruiter and cared about my job then I would want actual IT experience myself and follow a forum like this. Seeing what people contribute and their solutions would just be "gold" I would think when looking for someone.
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@Carnival-Boy I understand your point of view. However I will say that myself and probably others would change jobs if the pay and other conditions were right.
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@Carnival-Boy said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:
As far as I can tell, ML has about 20 regular posters, half of whom run their own business, and most live in Texas.
Of the top twenty busiest posters, not one that I know of owns their own business completely, and the only one that kind of does, regularly deals with recruiters for work.
Of the top 20, only one calls Texas home in any way, and isn't there the majority of the time. The first full time Texan in the list is the 25th busiest poster.
So this doesn't support your impression of things very well.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:
how can someone effectively recruit if they don't know the position that they are trying to fill or the candidates that they are trying to place?
Couple reasons...
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If the learned enough technology they would stop being a recruiter and get paid more doing Technology (I know one recruiter who did this).
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There are a LOT of industries where you don't have to know how to BUILD xxx to identify people who are good at it.
- Real Estate agents and Building Inspectors don't know every facet of building a building.
- Venture Capital (Don't know how to run every facet of a company but they know how to assemble a team).
A lot of being in a meta position like this is knowing what DOESN"T work out, as much as what does. I would expect recruiters to target online communities who have the following capabilities if they do...
Niche forums are better...
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If I'm hiring for a VMware expert I'm going to look at the VMware community forums first. If I'm hiring for REDIS I"m going to hire in forums that focus on REDIS.
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Recruiters are going to target communities where higher pay individuals hang out. A forum that focuses on SMB IT is going to get less focus on one that favors enterprise IT or developer positions. Remember these guys get paid a % of the salary for the job. SMB recruiters filling a $40K role need to find 5 people to get as much as 1 x 200K role. In fact, that 200K role is better by definition as fixed overhead part of the conversation is the same for both, and commisions % actually GO UP to the more niche the role. Toss in the candidate pool is smaller making elimination of candidates actually easier, SMB recruitment is just a crap job.
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Recruiting by virtue of not paying well until you get to the higher end headhunting, is going to suffer the fate of other low barriers to entry, no education requirement, low skill relationship jobs. GOOD talented, capable people are going to shun it (or move up quickly) while the talent, for the most part, will be.... well what we see.
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Another general trend is for larger technical focused companies (who have the better jobs) to refuse to work with outside recruiters. This is a secular threat to the business model. My employer REFUSES to work with outside recruiters.
In short, the dumpster fire that is recruiting in SMB is by design, and there isn't strong enough financial incentive to fix it unless all boats rise and pay goes up a lot.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:
Of the top 20, only one calls Texas home in any way, and isn't there the majority of the time. The first full time Texan in the list is the 25th busiest poster.
I live in Texas the minimum number of days to claim it for tax reasons (although I'm not sure I make the top 25). He says from Portugal at the end of 6 weeks on the road
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@jmoore said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:
@scottalanmiller Those are all good points. If I was a recruiter and cared about my job then I would want actual IT experience myself and follow a forum like this. Seeing what people contribute and their solutions would just be "gold" I would think when looking for someone.
Your viewpoint is based on outside recruiters actually caring that a person stays 1 day longer than 90 days (what it takes to get them paid), or that the people who use outside recruiters know how to judge talent and interview them properly (they don't, or why wouldn't they have in-house staff deal with this?) or that the people who use outside recruiters know how to broadly communicate their skills and network (to be blunt, they likely wouldn't be using an outside recruiter if they had a strong network).
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@StorageNinja Ahh I see your points and I admit they make sense. I guess the whole nature of recruiting and how they get paid is why they don't care.
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@StorageNinja said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:
- If the learned enough technology they would stop being a recruiter and get paid more doing Technology (I know one recruiter who did this).
That's why they don't learn the tech, but learning enough tech to be able to do the job seems like a logical level.
Plus I know recruiters who make way more than normal IT. But those know the tech, too.
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@StorageNinja said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:
- There are a LOT of industries where you don't have to know how to BUILD xxx to identify people who are good at it.
- Real Estate agents and Building Inspectors don't know every facet of building a building.
- Venture Capital (Don't know how to run every facet of a company but they know how to assemble a team).
Yes, BUT...
- IT isn't one of those, at all. It's about as opposite of that as you can get.
- Real Estate agents need tons of knowledge, training, and certification around those things before doing their jobs.
- VCs know about their business. That's not like recruiting.
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@StorageNinja said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:
Niche forums are better...
- If I'm hiring for a VMware expert I'm going to look at the VMware community forums first. If I'm hiring for REDIS I"m going to hire in forums that focus on REDIS.
This is true if you only want niche workers.
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@StorageNinja said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:
- Recruiters are going to target communities where higher pay individuals hang out.
That doesn't really make sense. Most recruiters strive for lower paid people, because they can move them faster and more often. Cheaper people make more money for recruiters, that's why recruiters often don't fight too hard for higher salaries and almost always try to talk IT folks into lower pay... because they are competing against other recruiters and need to be cheap.
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@StorageNinja said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:
@scottalanmiller said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:
Of the top 20, only one calls Texas home in any way, and isn't there the majority of the time. The first full time Texan in the list is the 25th busiest poster.
I live in Texas the minimum number of days to claim it for tax reasons (although I'm not sure I make the top 25). He says from Portugal at the end of 6 weeks on the road
You are #60
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@StorageNinja said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:
- Another general trend is for larger technical focused companies (who have the better jobs) to refuse to work with outside recruiters. This is a secular threat to the business model. My employer REFUSES to work with outside recruiters.
Same here, our inside recruiters use... this forum for example
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@scottalanmiller said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:
@StorageNinja said in Why Do Recruiters Never Get Involved in Forums Like This:
- There are a LOT of industries where you don't have to know how to BUILD xxx to identify people who are good at it.
- Real Estate agents and Building Inspectors don't know every facet of building a building.
- Venture Capital (Don't know how to run every facet of a company but they know how to assemble a team).
Yes, BUT...
- IT isn't one of those, at all. It's about as opposite of that as you can get.
- Real Estate agents need tons of knowledge, training, and certification around those things before doing their jobs.
- VCs know about their business. That's not like recruiting.
- Agree to disagree...
- I could become a real estate agent in a week. Let's not pretend the test is hard.
- VC and Angel investors best value isn't the cash they bring to the founders, it's the people they bring to fill in the gaps. The relationships and talent. Do you need a head of sales or HR or marketing for the next billion dollars unicorn? As a founder, I"m going to talk to my VC. At the carnival level of this, you see this on SharkTank where you see someone pick Cuban on what is on paper a worse offer because they think he has the right connections to get them where they need to go.
