[LRUG] Chat Digest, Vol 80, Issue 27

Connor Beattie connor.beattie at senitor.com
Mon Sep 17 07:37:55 PDT 2012 

Hi folks,

This is my first post to the list, although I'm a long-term subscriber. I just had to get involved.
I am a recruiter. Shock, horror! I am on this list because I am interested in technology and, of course, making connections within the industry. I understand the perception of our industry, I'd say everyone has experienced the fly-by-night, fast buck recruiters or the 'too big to care' companies. I understand why Developers/CTO's/CEO's may feel the need to rant about our industry, I expect and welcome it.

The most galling part of all this is a one-foot-in recruitment, 'I am learning to develop Ruby in my spare time', one man operation trying to cast himself in the role of the only good recruiter. I work for an agency and make no apologies for it! I have the resources and connections to place ANY technical requirement. This is my career, I am good at it, my company have been around for 15 years and we are going nowhere.

Rant over,
Hope this doesn't take up too much of your Monday afternoon time.
Connor Beattie
Agency Recruiter




Connor Beattie
Permanent Division

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-----Original Message-----
From: chat-bounces at lists.lrug.org [mailto:chat-bounces at lists.lrug.org] On Behalf Of chat-request at lists.lrug.org
Sent: 17 September 2012 15:07
To: chat at lists.lrug.org
Subject: Chat Digest, Vol 80, Issue 27

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Expat thinking of coming home (David Stephens)
   2. Recruiter disruption rant (was: Re: Expat thinking of coming
      home) (Paul Robinson)
   3. Re: Expat thinking of coming home (Ben Woodward)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2012 14:38:20 +0100
From: David Stephens <dave at force9.org>
To: London Ruby Users Group <chat at lists.lrug.org>
Subject: Re: [LRUG] Expat thinking of coming home
Message-ID:
        <CADFXt21XDmjKaE+aEmNrNdh1sU+kfAC=7Jbuv+8EaXfzdOZA3A at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"

I guess another question to ask is what actually is the "problem"? Is it
that you don't like recruiters sending to the Ruby chat list, or that we've
had a number of accidental reply-to-alls recently?

One quick fix would be to adjust the Mailman options so that the default is
to reply to the sender, and to reply to all actually requires one to push
"reply to all".

I personally don't mind seeing job specs come through the mailing list, but
it would be good if we had a way of separating them from general chat,
perhaps with a "[jobs]" prefix as some people have done before.

Like it or not, recruiters are always going to be around. Whilst we all may
think that we have amazing networks and can find a bunch of good CVs at the
drop of a hat, few of us actually have the time to do so whilst also
keeping our day jobs ticking over.

It's unrealistic to expect a jobs market to exist without them, as galling
as it is that they take a massive cut of salary/contract rate. Because
Tesco buy in products and sell them to us with a markup, are we all
suddenly going to stop using them and go straight to the source of the
products? Of course not.
On 17 Sep 2012 14:13, "Rosario Rascuna" <r.rascuna at gmail.com> wrote:

> I thought about this problem some time ago and created
> http://roundabout.io.
>
> However I wonder now if it's yet another website that we need. There
> are others like: http://workinstartups.com/ and
> http://www.coderstack.co.uk/, and none seems to be ridding us of this
> problem. What should a job listing implement to work for us?
>
> .r
>
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 1:41 PM, Louis Goff-Beardsley
> <louisror at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The vast majority of CVs they get don?t result in placments as their
> > business model is based on volume and speed. Agency recs have got very
> > strict KPIs such as 2.5 hours on the phone + 70 dial outs /day + x
> number of
> > CVs sent to decision makers. If they spend time faffing around with CVs
> they
> > will get it in the neck from their directors who came up during the first
> > dotcom bubble when IT recrutiment was a megaprofitable free-for-all.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: chat-bounces at lists.lrug.org [mailto:chat-bounces at lists.lrug.org]
> On
> > Behalf Of Paul Robinson
> > Sent: 17 September 2012 12:10
> > To: London Ruby Users Group
> > Subject: Re: [LRUG] Expat thinking of coming home
> >
> > On 17 Sep 2012, at 10:11, Chris Mear <chrismear at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> From my conversations with recruiters, the reason Word format is asked
> for
> > is because it's editable (as opposed to something less easily editable,
> such
> > as PDF). This is so they can remove your contact details and add their
> own
> > header, thus making sure any communication goes through them.
> >
> >
> > This is bang-on the reason why they want it in Word format - which raises
> > the question what value are they actually adding to a process where they
> > must enforce a man-in-the-middle attack to negotiations?
> >
> >
> >> So I'm sure plain text would be fine.
> >
> >
> >
> > Not quite. Some recruiters will consider such a format to be
> > "unprofessional" in its presentation to employers.
> >
> > So, rather than add value themselves by spending 5 minutes
> copying/pasting
> > it into Word, making it look nice and then submitting it, they require
> the
> > candidate does this first. Word Doc is the best format for them.
> >
> > They won't do it themselves, because they might handle many dozens of
> CVs a
> > day, and don't want to have to do this with all of them.
> >
> > Remember, they are commission-based, and there's only so much work they
> are
> > prepared to do to secure the right candidate and take 10%-20% of the
> first
> > year's salary on a ?50k-?70k job. I mean, would you reformat a CV for
> > ?14,000? I know that's too much work to ask me to do for that kind of
> money!
> > I'm sure there's other areas where the recruiter is really adding far
> more
> > value and where their time is best spent... </sarcasm>
> >
> > Paul
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Chat mailing list
> > Chat at lists.lrug.org
> > http://lists.lrug.org/listinfo.cgi/chat-lrug.org
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Chat mailing list
> > Chat at lists.lrug.org
> > http://lists.lrug.org/listinfo.cgi/chat-lrug.org
> _______________________________________________
> Chat mailing list
> Chat at lists.lrug.org
> http://lists.lrug.org/listinfo.cgi/chat-lrug.org
>
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Message: 2
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2012 15:03:31 +0100
From: Paul Robinson <paul at 32moves.com>
To: London Ruby Users Group <chat at lists.lrug.org>
Subject: [LRUG] Recruiter disruption rant (was: Re: Expat thinking of
        coming  home)
Message-ID: <681FBE9B-A78E-403D-B237-9673D17EF72F at 32moves.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252

On 17 Sep 2012, at 12:41, "Louis Goff-Beardsley" <louisror at gmail.com> wrote:

> The vast majority of CVs they get don?t result in placments as their
> business model is based on volume and speed. Agency recs have got very
> strict KPIs such as 2.5 hours on the phone + 70 dial outs /day + x number of
> CVs sent to decision makers. If they spend time faffing around with CVs they
> will get it in the neck from their directors who came up during the first
> dotcom bubble when IT recrutiment was a megaprofitable free-for-all.



And that of course is the flaw in the model, and why the recruitment industry is ripe for massive disruption. Particularly in software where we pride ourselves on doing a good job, believe in quality, set huge store by integrity and look at what IT recruiters do and start pissing ourselves laughing. Or in my case, just get really angry.

I'm a CTO, and have run other businesses prior to being involved in my current org. I've worked with and for over a dozen outfits. I've been on both sides of the recruitment flow, and it is *deeply* frustrating when agency recruiters get involved.

I don't want volume. I don't even want particularly high speed. I certainly don't want cold-calls or cold emails, *ever*.

I want quality. I want really deep understanding. I want curation. I want them to provide me with a web interface of the candidates they have lined up for me that I can review in my own time - I don't want Word docs (I don't have Word installed, and neither does any startup CTO I've met). I want to see the candidate's twitter feeds, Facebook pages, LinkedIn profiles, activity on mailing lists and github, etc. and the recruiter has to be happy I'm not going to screw them over with that info.

Twitter and Facebook pages full of photos from barbaric rituals and poems about killing penguins? I'd rather know about that *now* than 20 minutes before/after the interview, so recruiters are doing me a disservice by hiding it from me.

For a developer, we're talking about ?2k minimum and potentially up to ?20k in fees. Is what I'm asking for *really* too much to ask for that kind of money? Many people don't pay that in agency fees when selling a house! (Particularly where I'm from, oop north in deepest, darkest Manchester).

If they don't trust me to not screw them over, then they clearly don't have a relationship with me, and have assumed I'm a horrible, devious bastard who gets ahead in business by cheating. That does not make me feel warm and gooey about my relationship with them. In fact, it makes me think *they* are the horrible, devious bastards. It makes me question if *they* are in fact the ones cheating me.

And why the mistrust? Even if 80% of hiring bosses "cheated" (hint: they won't if they believe the recruiter is doing a good job and they have an ounce of moral substance), the losses will be more than covered by the huge monies involved on the remaining 20%. They will gain more new business through building a relationship than they will ever retain by spending their days removing contact details from CVs and cold-calling .

When I get a CV cold-emailed to me with contact details removed, I go find the person involved and email them. I say "Recruiter X is using your CV to cold-email me and try and turn me into a warm sales lead for their candidate database. Are they actually representing you?". 75% of the time, the answer has been "No, I've never heard of them". At that point, I have no problem with screwing over that recruiter:

1. They are pretending to represent somebody they have no relationship with
2. They are starting a relationship with me by not trusting me with the contact details and hoping I'm stupid enough to not know how to use Google (hint to recruiters reading this: I know how to use the Internet better than you. I am one of the people who helped/is helping to build the thing. No really, actually, in data centres and with cables and everything. I know how to use search engines and data sources in ways you haven't ever thought of. Send me an obfuscated CV that's still useful, I'll find the person involved in 30 seconds flat, every time)
3. They have cold-emailed me, which despite having a tiny bit of knowledge about who I work for is not that different to just outright spamming me

Therefore, I don't mind taking the lead if it's a good one, and running with it myself. Some will consider this dishonest. I do not. I'm helping some poor bloke (why do recruiters do such a bad job representing women, BTW?), who is being misrepresented, perhaps get a job they might be suited for.

If a recruiter I have a relationship with touches in once in a while and said "Hey, Paul, you guys look like you're growing, I noticed you were talking on ... list the other day about scaling and performance, I have this engineer's details lined up if you're interested - he did a great job over in Berlin at ... and now wants to be back in the UK, his salary expectations are ..." and gave me his/her contact details so I could find out a bit more about them? I'd happily give them 15% of first year on a hire. Happily.

If I wasn't hiring right then, I'd remember them the next time I was. I'd tell others about this great recruiter I've found. I'd take their phone calls whilst I was on holiday (what's one of those?). I'd tell them as much about our strategy as I could so they could keep us in mind when they knew a candidate would be free in 2-3 months. If I spoke to the person they sent me, they weren't ready for us right then and I hired them anyway a year later, I'd give the recruiter their pound of flesh any way - it's the respectful, professional and morally correct thing to do for somebody who actually gave a fuck.

I can go onto LinkedIn myself and harvest profiles (as agency recs have to). I can "touch base" with 100+ developers myself if I need to. If that's all the agency recs are doing, they're not adding value. I will keep the cash they want in fees, do the leg work myself, and spend the money on things that add value (increased salaries, infrastructure, give it over to marketing, whatever).

</rant>.

Paul

------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2012 15:06:28 +0100
From: Ben Woodward <b at benw.me>
To: London Ruby Users Group <chat at lists.lrug.org>
Subject: Re: [LRUG] Expat thinking of coming home
Message-ID: <4EE6CA9B-F09A-4F59-A33C-E92633855E76 at benw.me>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

> Because Tesco buy in products and sell them to us with a markup, are we all suddenly going to stop using them and go straight to the source of the products? Of course not.

I'm sure we all agree that the organic produce straight from the farm leads to happier farmers and healthier vegetable eaters. :)

--Ben

On 17 Sep 2012, at 14:38, David Stephens <dave at force9.org> wrote:

> I guess another question to ask is what actually is the "problem"? Is it that you don't like recruiters sending to the Ruby chat list, or that we've had a number of accidental reply-to-alls recently?
>
> One quick fix would be to adjust the Mailman options so that the default is to reply to the sender, and to reply to all actually requires one to push "reply to all".
>
> I personally don't mind seeing job specs come through the mailing list, but it would be good if we had a way of separating them from general chat, perhaps with a "[jobs]" prefix as some people have done before.
>
> Like it or not, recruiters are always going to be around. Whilst we all may think that we have amazing networks and can find a bunch of good CVs at the drop of a hat, few of us actually have the time to do so whilst also keeping our day jobs ticking over.
>
> It's unrealistic to expect a jobs market to exist without them, as galling as it is that they take a massive cut of salary/contract rate. Because Tesco buy in products and sell them to us with a markup, are we all suddenly going to stop using them and go straight to the source of the products? Of course not.
>
> On 17 Sep 2012 14:13, "Rosario Rascuna" <r.rascuna at gmail.com> wrote:
> I thought about this problem some time ago and created http://roundabout.io.
>
> However I wonder now if it's yet another website that we need. There
> are others like: http://workinstartups.com/ and
> http://www.coderstack.co.uk/, and none seems to be ridding us of this
> problem. What should a job listing implement to work for us?
>
> .r
>
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 1:41 PM, Louis Goff-Beardsley
> <louisror at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The vast majority of CVs they get don?t result in placments as their
> > business model is based on volume and speed. Agency recs have got very
> > strict KPIs such as 2.5 hours on the phone + 70 dial outs /day + x number of
> > CVs sent to decision makers. If they spend time faffing around with CVs they
> > will get it in the neck from their directors who came up during the first
> > dotcom bubble when IT recrutiment was a megaprofitable free-for-all.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: chat-bounces at lists.lrug.org [mailto:chat-bounces at lists.lrug.org] On
> > Behalf Of Paul Robinson
> > Sent: 17 September 2012 12:10
> > To: London Ruby Users Group
> > Subject: Re: [LRUG] Expat thinking of coming home
> >
> > On 17 Sep 2012, at 10:11, Chris Mear <chrismear at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> From my conversations with recruiters, the reason Word format is asked for
> > is because it's editable (as opposed to something less easily editable, such
> > as PDF). This is so they can remove your contact details and add their own
> > header, thus making sure any communication goes through them.
> >
> >
> > This is bang-on the reason why they want it in Word format - which raises
> > the question what value are they actually adding to a process where they
> > must enforce a man-in-the-middle attack to negotiations?
> >
> >
> >> So I'm sure plain text would be fine.
> >
> >
> >
> > Not quite. Some recruiters will consider such a format to be
> > "unprofessional" in its presentation to employers.
> >
> > So, rather than add value themselves by spending 5 minutes copying/pasting
> > it into Word, making it look nice and then submitting it, they require the
> > candidate does this first. Word Doc is the best format for them.
> >
> > They won't do it themselves, because they might handle many dozens of CVs a
> > day, and don't want to have to do this with all of them.
> >
> > Remember, they are commission-based, and there's only so much work they are
> > prepared to do to secure the right candidate and take 10%-20% of the first
> > year's salary on a ?50k-?70k job. I mean, would you reformat a CV for
> > ?14,000? I know that's too much work to ask me to do for that kind of money!
> > I'm sure there's other areas where the recruiter is really adding far more
> > value and where their time is best spent... </sarcasm>
> >
> > Paul
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Chat mailing list
> > Chat at lists.lrug.org
> > http://lists.lrug.org/listinfo.cgi/chat-lrug.org
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Chat mailing list
> > Chat at lists.lrug.org
> > http://lists.lrug.org/listinfo.cgi/chat-lrug.org
> _______________________________________________
> Chat mailing list
> Chat at lists.lrug.org
> http://lists.lrug.org/listinfo.cgi/chat-lrug.org
> _______________________________________________
> Chat mailing list
> Chat at lists.lrug.org
> http://lists.lrug.org/listinfo.cgi/chat-lrug.org
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