[LRUG] Recruiter disruption rant (was: Re: Expat thinking of coming home)

[Louis Goff-Beardsley]

While I can happily say I'm not an agency recruiter, hiding developers
participation in barbaric rituals and poems about killing penguins is an
important aspect of my service.

-----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 15:04
To: London Ruby Users Group
Subject: [LRUG] Recruiter disruption rant (was: Re: Expat thinking of coming
home)

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
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