Skip to content

Comment on Dear Recruiters: (a canned response to recruiting emails)

Comments

The whole process sucks. We are trying to hire for our small startup and we have a few different recruiters. They seem to just send us random bodies off LinkedIn - nobody particularly stellar, much less demanding of the 25% annual salary as commission. It's unreal.

Someone needs to reinvent this market.

That's what these YC-funded guys are trying to do: http://www.hackruiter.com/ They advertise to engineers, have them code FizzBuzz on the signup page, etc. I recently found a job through them, so naturally I recommend them.

Yep. We met with them and gave them a ton of feedback. Looking forward to their next revision.

I'm surprised you have to go via recruiters? I would have thought you have enough of a name that you would get applications (if you made enough noise about hiring). Maybe having a tweet or blog post in the last 6 months saying you're hiring might be cheaper than 25% :)

What really gets me is the fact that nobody (well, almost nobody) will hire remotely, I guess because they feel like they need a collaborative environment. I get that, but for the cost of living difference between SF and KC, you could easily afford to fly me out every other week or so for a couple of days and we could get our collaboration on! I don't mind coming out to beautiful Silicon Valley regularly, but I can't move my family out there (right away, anyway.)

Why did you agree to 25%? Standard contingency fee is 20%. For multiple openings you can negotiate less.

I was approximating. Maybe it is 20%...

I tweet about it all the time. Haven't seen a huge influx of resumes, unfortunately.

Look for local user group(s) on http://meetup.com

Bay Area Android & iOS groups have 50-300 attendees each month.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.