Are IT Recruiters Worthless (Part 1)
This is a very timely topic for me for a couple reasons. First, since I changed jobs this year, I dealt with recruiters a lot, and second, there was a comment posted today that responded to another comment where the guy said recruiters were worthless. In truth, they both have a point… HAH. On one hand recruiters perform more or less a necessary function. I say more or less because you could really do without the
Follow @infoworldThis is a very timely topic for me for a couple reasons. First, since I changed jobs this year, I dealt with recruiters a lot, and second, there was a comment posted today that responded to another comment where the guy said recruiters were worthless. In truth, they both have a point… HAH.
On one hand recruiters perform more or less a necessary function. I say more or less because you could really do without them quite easily, but they can make things easier under our current system. I’ve dealt with recruiters from both sides of the desk many many times, and I will admit that if you get a good one, they can take a lot of work off your hands. The problem is that the really good ones are about 1 out of every 500 or so. Most of them simply don’t have any IT background and they do nothing but get in the way. It’s not like there’s any kind of licensing procedure, or recruiting class they have to go through. Pretty much any Tom, Dick, or Moron can be a recruiter. So when you’ve got a good one, you’ll know it, and you can rely on them to really simplify your search.
Again though, the trouble is that most of them are pretty worthless. I’ve been in IT for over 10yrs, which means I’ve had several jobs throughout the years. That also means that I’ve interviewed more times than I can count… from both sides of the desk. And in my experiences, I’ve met 2 recruiters that I can think of who were worth their salt. So what does an excellent recruiter do? Well, there are really 2 main functions of a good recruiter.
The first is to really dig into the company’s needs and know enough about the topic to pull in the most qualified people. The perfect technical recruiter in my field would be an ex database professional who just decided to play for the other team… you know, someone who really knows DBs and can ferret out the good SQL guys from the bad ones.
The second, and this is probably more important the first… is to shut up and get out of the way when he knows absolutely nothing about IT or DBs. His job at this point is to be the keeper of the company’s phone number and pass it along to you and setup the interview… then get out of the way. Don’t try to pretend you know what you’re doing, and don’t try to teach me anything. So basically, know your limitations. If you know you don’t know anything about it, then just pass on the number and let the pros take this one.
