TRUTH About Tech Recruiters

What Recruiters Won't Tell You. How recruiting works in the tech industry. Should you work with job recruiters or will it hurt your chances of getting the job? Can you trust job recruiters? Will recruiters actually help you get a better job? Here is my perspective on working with recruiters as a software engineer. I'll share the pros and cons of tech recruiters along with a funny personal experience I had with one of my recruiters.

Affiliate Links

[CleverNameTBD]

A lot of the same for me. Countless recruiters emailing me about positions I was either nowhere near qualified for or not even in the same field of work. Some good and even advocated for me when I said an interviewer called me (what he thought was an innocent) slur. Some ghosted me after asking what I was looking for or not finding matches. Some tried to sell me on a position to only tell me weeks later after they dropped said hiring manager that that company was terrible to work for and had high turnover. Like yeah. Many recruiters care more about commissions than they do filling the position properly, which gives them more respect with clients and hiring managers. And that just hurts the image of the good recruiters, too, to some degree.

Sorry for the long-winded comment lmao. These situations just come up so much. I often have much better luck applying directly to a company than with recruiters more often than not

[kntbll]

There is a type of recruiter agreement that devs need to be aware of where the recruiter can submit you as applicant for any job they want to, without notifying you. In this case, if the recruiter submitted you to a job opening without your knowledge, and you, yourself, also applied to the same job opening directly to the company, then the job's company will automatically disqualify and eliminate you as a candidate on both submissions. You will be entirely blocked from that job opening in that situation. PS: I love the content in all of your videos, including this one. Please continue with the honest, unvarnished, real life informational videos. And thank you devsmak for your excellent videos and content.

[JonathanBigbarkBarclay]

Never had a job that worked with recruiters. The companies usually do that themselves especially here in Pittsburgh.

[nick_jacob]

I just don't want to work with a recruiter honestly. They have zero understanding of what we do. I'm also tired of job applications asking for my home address and the last 4 of my social security number. Anytime I see that, I avoid.

[sam-hrj]

I've never had a good experience with recruiters. In my experience they'll say anything to make their sales even if that means 'bending' the truth. By the way, I only know basic css html and JS what advice can you give on turning any little projects I have into SaaS? Just in terms of services I'd need to use and learn in order to get it functional online.

[gem]

I was interviewed and the interviewer asked for references the first round and asked me if I would send it directly to her or if I will be going thru my recruiter. I thought I was respecting recruiter by going through him. Should I have chosen to send it directly to her instead of going through the recruiter?

Also, I didn't know it was a third party recruiter. Should I have checked if they were a third party recruiter to begin with?

[joannevans]

Yeah, I knew the job was a scam because they talked about technical writing of certain types of documents that would never be written by a marketing department.

[Buckdodgers]

Man, I had some real "Winners". One of the most egregious ones was when I was working for an Insurance Company in my hometown. I was told I would be hired for 6 Months. However, a woman who was stuck in India and they weren't sure when she would be able to return. Did the recruiter tell me that, OF COURSE NOT!!! So, out of the blue, I got crap-canned. The woman at the company told me that the recruiter should have informed me, and the recruiter acted like they had "No" idea about the woman in India. I ended eventually getting a Great Job in Charlotte, NC some time later, I promptly gave them a negative google review. I basically spent a from Jan 5th, 2017 and Jan 5th 2019 dealing with mostly Trash Recruiters and getting the run around on crap Temporary Positions. Left a bad taste in my mouth. One of those recruiters keeps calling me to asking about my current position and to gauge in my interest in their current trash positions. I will NEVER call her back. Oh, and that trash recruiting company who screwed me over at that local position I mentioned, they had a guy from India call me to see if I was interested in a new position...BWAHAHAHAHA!!! I basically replied and told him in no uncertain terms to never contact me again. That felt GOOD!!!

[metallmad]

many of the recruiters that I've met actually tried to underestimate my capabilities, especially when they know that I'm unemployed, 99.99% of them are just bastards!

[Alphadec]

why dont recruiters know the diffrence between java and javascript. ?

[SunDevilThor]

I get ghosted more than half the time by them.

[HardKillaz]

When one subscribe button is not enough.