*

August 16th/ Recruitment fail

Over the past few years, I’ve been contacted by a good number of recruiters, and even been part of the recruitment process a few times. I’ve come to realize why recruiters are such failures in life. Here’s a lesson in fail, and hopefully some of you recruiters will learn.

I don’t care

Generally speaking, if I am not interested in your letter. If I’m unhappy with my job situation I am looking elsewhere. I’m not sitting around waiting for a recruiter to hit me up. So know this. Realize I’m probably not lured by generic empty promises. If you want me to care about something I don’t — make it sound interesting! Also make it short and to the point. Three paragraphs of bullshit will just make me click delete that much faster.

Competitive salaries

Everyone has competitive salaries. Just ask them. Give me a range or don’t say anything at all.

Such an awesome company I can’t tell you

About 90% of recruitment letters fail to mention the company. They do mention how amazing the company is, what kind of innovative work they do, etc. But never any names! What gives guys? It’s going to be one of the first questions if I ever talk to you, so why not just tell me? Not like you’ll be able to hide it until the interview.

Also note that start-up stock is worthless. “Actively looking to be acquired” doesn’t mean anything. All start-ups are looking to be acquired. Employees have to judge a pre-IPO’s stock for themselves. You can’t tell them how valuable it is.

Fail and win

Here’s a failed letter:

I am working with an up and coming company, backed by top tier VC’s looking to add talented actionscript and javascript programmers to their team. They are the leader in their space and in a prime position to be bought or acquired, making their pre-IPO stock very valuable. Their engineering team is immensely talented and they offer a great working environment with full benefits and future growth opportunities.

Why don’t I like it?

  • The letter reeks of bullshit. Top-tier VCs. Leaders in space. Prime position. Growth opportunies. Bullshit.
  • What company? Such a leader they can’t tell me?
  • Full benefits is such a lie in this modern world. Health? Dental? Vision? Life Insurance? 401k matching? Maternity leave? Paternity Leave? What benefits?
  • I don’t even know if this company is in my state, let alone what city.

And here’s a winning letter:

Hi Kyle,

Would you know of any one with advanced javascript skills particulary object oriented javascript who might consider a contract position with Yahoo in the bay area, CA?

Why do I like it?

  • They tell me what they’re looking for
  • They tell me where they want
  • They don’t actually ask me (since I have a job), but rather ask if I know anyone. (Great tactic to keep uninterested people interested)

Recruiting people is hard

The lesson I’ve learned is that recruiting people is hard. But most recruiters seem to think it’s as easy as casting a few lines of bait into the water and wait for the fish to bite. The most successful recruitment tactics I’ve seen have been from people who slowly massage the subjects. Don’t jump right in, try some foreplay. Show them some cool stuff your company has been working on. Get to know them. See how their current employment situation is and see what you can do to improve upon it.

Remember that the best recruitment subjects are happy at their current jobs. The ones that are desperate enough to reply to your form letter are probably lacking in some form. Smart recruitment gets you smart employees. Dumb recruitment gets you dumb employees.

A word from the sponsors. Advertise with Warpspire

14 Comments

comments feed

  1. Gravatar
    Clint ecker

    August 16th | #

    I’ve always believed that recruiters are unwilling to tell us the name of the employer because it would enable you or me to contact that company directly for the position. The recruiter would essentially be giving you or your friends a line on a good job opening and therecruiter would lose their cut of the finder’s fee and poof they are out of a job.

    The incentive for you to end round the recruiter would be that you would theoretically be able to negotiate a higher salary or benefits by removing the middleman’s cut.

  2. Gravatar
    chris rhee

    August 16th | #

    I’m still available for 7-figure starting salaries and quarterly bonuses, in case you want to pass some of those recruiters my way.

  3. Gravatar

    I agree, recruiters are sneaky and right now I think they are a bit overwhelmed with the amount of unemployeed. The salary issue I can’t stand. Comapnies should just post a range. You can’t hide that 28k per/yr salary for too long.

  4. Gravatar
    Will

    August 20 | #

    Must not be a very smart recruiter. Have they SEEN you play COD? Sheesh…

  5. Gravatar
    beth

    August 20 | #

    I agree wholeheartedly with everything except your first sentiment. Recruiters look for people who are gainfully employed, because they assume that if you’re talented you never have to be looking. That said I’ve got my last two jobs from recruitment and it was excellent to have someone doing all the negotiating on your behalf, acting as your advocate. However, it really peeves me when they don’t give you a salary range. I’m not even going to think about looking at a position elsewhere if I don’t know how much it pays.

  6. Gravatar
    Kyle

    August 20 | #

    beth: I guess I was trying to refer to how lackluster they always seem to make their offers. They seem to think that just baiting the idea of a job in front of someone who is gainfully employed is going to make them interested :) I wanna hear how cool the position is going to be! Tell me I’ll be helping the mission to mars or something… but just saying you’re looking for web developers? Blah, delete.

  7. Gravatar
    beth

    August 20 | #

    Oh I can totally get behind that. My most recent job had tried to recruit me several times in the past, but their “enticements” all seemed like generic form letters. It wasn’t until a 3rd party (not in-house) recruiter contacted me about the job with a salary range that I was even interested, and that even required some follow up. In fact, I think it’s kind of rude and disrespectful to send out those generic inquiries, if you want me to work for you why can’t you take the effort to write to me about why your company should be appealing?

  8. Gravatar
    Keith Jolie

    August 27th | #

    I am a recruiter but I also get these calls and emails…it’s really funny. I rarely send out emails at all, but if I do, it’s along the lines of the second one.

    Also, If you’re a recruiter calling me - don’t try to suck up saying..this is a perfect opportunity to grow your career etc. Especially if you don’t know my background. I actually had one call me and try to argue that the job she had for me was perfect for me and why didn’t I want to talk to her. She shut up pretty fast when I told her I was making 4 times what the job paid already.

  9. Gravatar
    TheCreativeJob.com

    September 2nd | #

    Hi guys, if you are interested to work for biggest companies in new-media, games, advertising you can apply direct without any recruiters…

    http://www.thecreativejob.com

  10. Gravatar
    banner ads

    September 15th | #

    I agree, recruiters are abject and adapted now I ahead they are a bit afflicted with the aggregate of unemployeed. The bacon activity I can’t stand. Comapnies should just cavalcade a range. You can’t adumbrate that 28k per/yr bacon for too long.

  11. Gravatar
    Solarise Design

    October 8th | #

    Oh man, I got a call just today from a recruiter and he just assumed I was interested in X because I had Y on my CV, which was Z years old in their records anyway. I get calls from these guys about two years apart, after which time any information I’ve given them is pretty irrelevant anyway

  12. Gravatar
    mlambie

    October 8th | #

    My pet peeve with recruitment is when they get the technology names wrong:

    “Looking for a Pearl programmer with Lunix systems administration experience”

    Or something stupidly similar.

  13. Gravatar
    Alana

    October 30th | #

    At least you [mostly] deal with people instead of machines… recruiting software is the WORST. I once held a position maintaining it, and didn’t meet the job’s BA requirement, meaning I helped manage software that would have kept me from getting my job managing said software.

  14. Gravatar
    suzanne

    November 4th | #

    i used to work for a recruitment agency and its shocking when you work for a relatvely big company how their practices work, i think misleading candidates by advertising positions that do not exist is the wrong way to go about business.

    How can you justify saying to people that the job they want to apply for you will put them forward to, and then find out that job has been filled months ago….hence why i left the industry…

Make a Comment

don’t be afraid, it’s just text

Comments are parsed with Markdown. Basic HTML is also allowed.

Kyle Neath Warpspire is the place that web professional Kyle Neath writes about the web. More →

A word from the sponsors. Advertise with Warpspire

Hot Topics

Feeds / Syndication

Choose your preferred method of syndication. All feeds are full-posts & ad-free. All feeds are protected under copyright and may not be redistributed without permission.