How to Deal with the Opaque Market of Technical Recruiting
I have been mostly a contract computer programmer for the last 10 years, meaning that every few months I get to deal with a horde of slavering technical recruiters calling and emailing me.
The problems with this system are several:
(1) The market is opaque: you usually aren’t told the “bill rate” (what the ultimate client is paying), just what the recruiting firm is offering you. Is it fair? You have no way of really knowing (though clues abound; keep reading.)
(2) Like most jobs, quite a few recruiters are incompetent and/or working at a technical disadvantage to more heavily capitalized / technically sophisticated firms. I presume there are by now data scientists scanning resumes to correlate job success by resume contents … if you have this technology and it works, it puts your competitors who don’t have it at a distinct disadvantage.
(3) A vast sea of recruiters get the same jobs, and you have to read the technical description to ask “this looks exactly like the technical description of the job I applied for last week … is it X corp?” And yes, it is …
(4) Many recruiters working the American market don’t speak English well enough to be able to do the job. I have gotten interviews through Indian recruiters and when job hunting I leave no stone unturned. But if I have trouble understanding the recruiter on the phone, how does he or she talk to the (American) client?
Here’s one key to dealing with recruiters: make the recruiter name a number first. I finally learned this and occasionally get a bonus; if I’m looking for $60 per hour and the recruiter’s first offer is $80 per hour, wahoo! I’ll take it.
Some recruiters pretend that the opacity of the situation isn’t really there: “We’re offering $16 per hour for this job” and that’s it … if the bill rate is $32 they will have room to negotiate, but it doesn’t come up. That’s OK; I can deal with this kind and have successful relationships with some who operate this way.
The real issue is when I am looking for $60 and I have 5 minutes of conversation with the recruiter who finally says “we can offer $32 for this job” and I say “thanks anyway too low” and hang up.
Sometimes they will call me back immediately and eventually say $60 is OK, meaning
(1) They are trying to extract way too much money from the deal
or
(2) The recruiter doesn’t really even know what the bill rate is and his or her boss is trying to extract too much. If the bill rate is enough that $60 is OK and you started with $32, I think I’d rather deal with somebody who’s a little less greedy or a little more in touch with what’s going on.
Looking for a tech job? See my
Best of luck!
