Shoot he should respond to this "I created the Ruby on Rails framework. My base salary is $5,000,000 a year. Looking forward to relocating to SF"

Why are technical recruiters so clueless?

because technical recruiters, contrary to popular belief, are not hired to get the best candidates.

Technical recruiters (and agencies) are hired to give the middle manager denyability if a hiring mistake is made. I mean, if you hire your brother's friend and he turns out to be some kind of crack fiend who ebays your spare parts bin for more drugs, well, you've got a fairly good chance of getting fired in the fallout. Now, if a recruiter recommends the same guy and the same thing happens, well, now you can push some of the blame off on the recruiter. there's no question about nepotism, etc.. the professional recruiter recommended the guy.

"Technical" recruiters don't understand technology. The ones I've met are only capable of handling bingo sheets of buzzwords.

My take on the whole recruiter industry is that the parasitic field of recruiters exists because of 2 factors:

1. Mismanagers don't know how to hire people. Is someone skilled? They don't know. Will someone make a good fit? They don't know. It is like Supreme Court Justice Potter's remark "I'll know it when I see it."

2. Companies don't like how references have devolved to "X worked here from Y to Z and is/is not eligible for rehire." This makes paying the 20-40% of the first year's salary for a new hire a cheap way to evade lawyers, courts and previous employer's HR departments. In short, recruiters get hired by HR departments to get around other HR departments (perhaps one should consider getting rid of one's HR dept?).

I was actually hired in my current role by a competent technical recruiter. He's not a technical person but he sure knows how to find good technical people. His trick is to get good people to come to him by setting up events, conferences and pub meetups around interesting topics (e.g. the latest JVM language or Agile development practices). Of course, 90% of the people who go there aren't looking for jobs but I expect he does pretty well out of the 10% that are.

I think this is actually the right way to go about recruitment. Don't spam 100s of people on the off chance they're currently unhappy and looking to move. Just set up an environment which attracts the best people in the industry but also allows them to consider new opportunities. Not only that but as a recruiter you are immersed in the world you are recruiting for and cannot help learn and understand more about it (e.g. this morning I got an email on the list mentioning a possible talk about Jaskell - a language I hadn't even heard of but apparently, my recruiter has :)).

Funny timing on this story: I was contacted yesterday at work by a recruiter. He called my cell phone and my typical response is to not answer calls that are not pre-defined contacts at work. The guy then went to my LinkedIn profile, found my company, went to the company website, and then called my office. I gave him an earful about how unprofessional I thought it was for him to be contacting me at my job to recruit for another position and then hung up on him when he tried to backpedal saying he was just looking for referrals. In my experience, recruiters are not only clueless but also rude and shady.

I have personally known a wonderful recruiter and despite my respect for her, I have very little respect for the average recruiter. The profession itself does provide value as it is truly difficult to find good people, but the low signal to noise among recruiters themselves can just as easily make it more difficult to find the right person.

I'm not entirely sure why DHH assumes that this email was not, in fact, sent via "some shady Russians"...

If they’re just going to spam people from emails they find on tech sites, why not just pay some shady Russians to do it?

Based on some of the emails I've gotten, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what some of them do.

It's easier and much cheaper in the short run to just spam everyone with a job opportunity and sort through responses versus actually doing the legwork to find qualified candidates.

Of course, in the long run it's going to make me skeptical of any future opportunities they send my way, and it certainly isn't going to make me want to hire them if I ever find myself on the other side of the table.

I never understood why they stop communicating if an opportunity doesn't pan out? Why wouldn't they be interested in cultivating a long term relationship?

That's what I think I would do if I were a recruiter. I'd keep in touch with say 200 people I know are really good and keep placing them as they switched jobs. I'm guessing at least 10 or 20 of those people would be switching jobs every year.

My guess is that DHH is primarily annoyed that the spammy email started by addressing him as "Dave".

That's why me and my friends launched http://recruiter-review.com

(I hope you don't consider this spam)

TL;DR: DHH is annoyed that there are people in the tech industry who have never heard of him.

The barrier to entry in the recruiting industry is low, i.e. a cellphone, an internet connection and some available time.

It beats trying to sell real-estate for those "in transition" because you can do it in your pajamas or pretend to be a career coach.

They're so clueless because most recruiters just search the web for jobs you could have found yourself, and then try to work their way into getting a cut. Therefore a typical recruiter reduces a person's chance for a job.

There are some good one's out there. But they're few and far between. Because they have done their research prior to contacting you, their emails will be short, to the point, and designed to screen for deal breakers, "Would you be interested in a job in St. Louis?"

Top recruiters work in the highest paying industries, which rarely includes technology (except in the upper echelons). Most of these recruiters are from large firms, filling contract or lower level hires that net the firm maybe $10-20k and gets them personally a few hundred extra bones in their pockets. Its the McDonalds end of recruiting.

On the other hand, there is a small (as mentioned above) 1-2% of recruiters who work in really high paying sectors that really know their industries. They're like the Outback Steakhouse of their profession. They still need to work with a lot of candidates, but it pays for them to go to conferences, read industry material and even (gasp) learn programming themselves (Thanks Zed!).

I guess technical recruiters will never be any good until you find ex software developers to be technical recruiters - and I can't think you'd find many software developers willing to do that.

I am convinced there are still many ways for recruiting to be fixed by disruptive startups

Why are technical recruiters so clueless?

Because they are a little less clueless than most HR departments.

Are there any recruiters working in technology who get it?

Yes. The top 1 or 2%. The bell curve of competency for recruiters is a lot steeper at the high end, so finding one who "gets it" is difficult. So when you do, keep them. Whether you're hiring or looking, they can change your life.

The problem with this kind of hackery is that it has breed an outright animosity to recruiters in large parts of the tech world.

When you stop to think about it, this may not be such as bad thing for the top 1 or 2% of recruiters. Once the wheat is separated from the chaff, it becomes more straight forward for a competent recruiter to do their thing and gain your trust.

In this way, recruiters have a lot in common with real estate agents, car salesmen, lawyers, and even programmers. The masses of mediocre ones give the whole profession a bad name, but the best rise to the top and really do make a difference.

I'm disappointed to see someone as smart as David casually leaning on a stereotype like "shady Russians".

I'm confident that he wouldn't have said "sneaky Jews" or "naive Canadians" or "cheap Mexicans".

The email that DHH got is essentially spam since he is obviously not looking for a job.

I've gotten my previous two jobs via "technical recruiters". If you expect them to hack on operating systems in their spare time you'll probably be disappointed, but IMO they are useful as market makers and are highly motivated to match you up w/ an employer that will be happy w/ you (since there is typically a 3-month probation before they're paid, and it can lead to repeat business). I wouldn't bash them for being technically ignorant since it's not as if internal HR recruiters are known for their technical proficiency either.

True story: while managing a decently sized development org at MSFT, I used to regularly get contacted by the technical recruiters for the contracting agencies telling me I was oddly perfectly qualified to do some entry-level work!

Of course, this may be a successful recruiting approach, as the hourly net pay for the entry-level contractors frequently worked out to more than the salary pay for mid-level folks, due to all of the overtime. No benefits, but if you're in a situation with a spouse with a decent comp. package, it could certainly be an alternative.

I have by coincidence been involved with recruitment lately primarily of highly skilled UX, Design and technical people.

Although I am not a developer I do know my Perl from my Ruby, from my Haskel and that there are two types of javabeans. One drinkable one non-drinkable.

The primary challenge is that the people that are good aren't looking for work, in fact they probably never will have to as they transition naturally in a personal growth curve within their own social network.

So if you need to find good people you have to have your ears open and know where to look for them. This is the challenge but also interesting in more than one way.

If you know how to find the right people for the right job, you will gain insight into how to find the right customers for your product.

And that is a very interesting skill to get IMHO.

The best way to tell a good recruiter from a clueless (normal) one is whether they have an exclusive arrangement with the employer. This is as rare as good recruiters are. It is more common in hiring for senior jobs in big companies.

From a recruiter e-mail I received this week:

  The position is based in Bucharest but 
  extensive international travelling is required.

Maybe there's an opportunity here to build a web-based recruiter reputation system. The good recruiters would be happy to stand out from the bad.

Speaking of career moves, this made it through GMail's spam detector this morning:

Hello Raghu,

Based on your resume, we are pleased to offer you the position of Mail Order Shipment Inspector( MOS Inspector) in our company. Your duties will include receipt and registration of packages, submission of detailed reports to our management and shipment of packages to end customers with postal labels we will send you. Depending on the number of packages you process, the monthly pay would be in the range of USD 1,500 - 2,500 Not sure if you are still looking for a job but let us know if so, so that I could get back to you with more details. Also, please add my address into your address book to prevent my messages from filtering into your junk mail folder.

Thank you, Victoria Premo

Recruiters just mass mailshot everyone because they're hoping to get a bite.

I've had recruiters ring me in the past with jobs that have a real tenuous connection with my skillset, yet they still think I'm suitable for the role.

The best one was when one rang me advertising for a £50k Senior Java Developer position. "Great!" someone might think, but at the time I had only just graduated from University and had 1 year of junior development experience under my belt. I told her this and THEN she read my CV/resume and realised.

Recruiters these days are nothing more than CV/resume pushers, chances are for every 100 or so they sent out, 1 or 2 will get an interview, 1 or 2 will get the job and they land themselves a healthy commission from the employer.

It's a lucrative business

This email sounds exactly like one that I got. It seriously is just spam.

Technical recruiters looks for different types than most of the audience on HN. The tech recruiter looks people who can write decent code, but at the end of the day, will be replaceable commodities in an organization.

As a tech recruiter, your job isn't to find the next DHH. It's to arbitrage technical talent to fill positions. I don't think that they're motivated by quality as much as they are by finding just the right quantity.

i was at a conference recently and had my phone on silent the whole day, I have 8 missed calls and 2 emails in the space of 7 hours from a recruiter. Really, if i didnt answer the first 4 times that day what made him think i would answer the last 4. he was recruiting for a php contractor position

</end rant>

Because the average person is clueless, often including myself, and there is no reason or technical recruiters to be any different.

Anyhow, that's a pretty hilarious letter to send to DHH. I don't think it speaks to the general situation with technical recruiters, however.

Technical recruiters may be clueless, but this is hardly evidence. This is spam. I got a similar e-mail today saying they had viewed my "portfolio." Well I'm not sure how they did that since I don't have any work under the e-mail address they sent it to.

The consensus here is that recruitment agencies are clueless. So why hasn't the internet disintermediated them? This would be a good startup idea for someone.

The main problem here is that Kelly should start using some other tools/source of information instead relying only on "grep" for her job.

Because you sit opposite them in an institutional process, and you're at their mercy.

Because if they knew what they were doing, they'd be doing it.

There's like a one-in-tens-of-millions chance of that working. But it takes 5 seconds to send the email, and I imagine "I recruited DHH" is worth millions. So you quickly wind up with math suggesting that sending that email was worthwhile in terms of $/hour.