— March 20, 2011 —
By Tobin Harris
We recently posted up some lessons learned in our attempts to hire some iPhone developers without using recruitment agencies. It describes the dirty tactics we’ve seen recruitment agencies taking: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned: Part 1
Our original post caused an interesting discussion on news.ycombinator.com - we got to position 20 in the ycombinator rankings!
I’m logging the key take-aways from the thread for my own benefit, hopefully you’ll find them useful.
Candidates Suffer Too
A few people noted that agencies are not only cloning job posting to drown out the real-deal, they’re also cloning candidate profiles. That makes it harder for a company to find a candidate directly, they get piped through to recruiters instead. Dirty.
Get the Salary Right
One opinion was that we got the job title, expectations and salary wrong, by as much as £5K - £10K. Basically, some thought we weren’t offering enough salary for the skills we’re asking for (others thought it was reasonable). Perhaps we should have asked for a “Middle Weight” iPhone developer? We really just want someone who’s got some of the best practices nailed, and has pragmatism/experienced approach to their work. I.e. not a “junior”.
The bottom line is, the salary has to match the position to draw the right attention. Right or wrong, we should do our homework when setting salaries and job descriptions.
Recruiters Lie About The Candidate’s Desired Salary
One poster on ycombinator noted that:
Even if you’re willing to pay the recruiter’s fee, you’ll sometimes get to the point of making an offer to a candidate and they’ll essentially be offended by the offer, since it’s lower than the amount listed in the recruiter-overhauled job description that they saw.
We’ve seen this too, where salaries on CV’s are lower than the candidate wanted. They’re widening the net to catch more punters, it’s a numbers game.
Some Recruiters Do Have A Clue
One poster on the thread mentioned that some recruiters can be pretty good, I can believe that. He also noted where you might want to use them.
More companies might be able to ‘go direct’ without needing a recruiter, but many don’t know how to sell their own company to a potential employee. Money helps, certainly, and they’d be able to offer more if they weren’t involving a recruiting agency, but it typically takes a committed involvement from the company to do the initial screening.
I used to think recruiters had no place, and that companies should always go direct. I’ve found that strategically, it makes sense in a few cases if they need a specific skill and don’t want to broadcast to the wider market (their competition) about upcoming plans. However, those instances are pretty rare
So, a few nuggets there, but nothing ground breaking.
CoderStack
Another thing, it was nice to see the guys at coderstack.co.uk being active in the discussion, they’re doing some good stuff :) Would recommend you consider them for publishing your IT job descriptions.
On A Lighter Note…
recruitMENTAL has some shocking and hilarious stories about UK recruitment agency dirt-tactics. Worth a read (and run by a fellow frustrated Yorkshire company).
