Your Experiences with Recruiters?

companyAdvocate asks "I work in a small, high end IT consultancy. We are currently on a large recruitment drive and our targets are very ambitious. We are looking into alternative, original and cost-effective ways of hiring talented people. Google's billboard ad comes to mind. As we are a consultancy, we need good communicators as well as techies and raising the company profile may be an added bonus. What is the Slashdot community's experience with alternative recruitment methods? Were you hired in an exciting or interesting way? How do you make even rejected candidates leave with a positive impression?"

IQ test + programming abilities test

[Spy der Mann]

In a company where I was recruited, they had an IQ test and a programming test (SQL + general algorithms).

The project manager (who was a senior programmer) was the one who interviewed me.
This was very personalized, and the whole recruitment process made me feel appreciated and worthy. This isn't something many companies give.

IT Recruiters Are Worthless

[Dracos]

Of all the recruiters I've dealt with (at least 20), not one has even gotten me an interview.

Being a web developer who actually knows (X)HTML, I was once hung up on by a recruiter when I told her I don't use Dreamweaver. A year later, I start seeing job postings where DW experience is a disadvantage.

But, a recruiter is sometimes only as useful as the requirements they get. 10 years of .NET experience? 15 years of J2EE? The list of absurd requirements goes on and on.

As for one alternative, post on Cragslist [craigslist.net] in your area. Monster and Dice are becoming less and less useful as time goes on.

Forget tests or interviews, ...

[aralin]

I would suggest to forget tests or interviews when trying to find a real talent. Just talk to some real talented people you know. My experience is that these who are really good at their job are much better to recognize others who are as good or better. Especially male employees will keep a list of people that are surpasing them in some aspect. Its just the way their brains are wired.

So talk to them and you will get suggestions, if you find really talented people, don't try to embarass yourself with tests and interviews. Talk to people they worked with, talk to them casually and talk to their references, you get much better picture and comming with offer because you know this is the right person, without resorting to tests and tricky questions on interviews, leaves a lot of positive impression.

If my employer had the smarts to come up to me and ask, I could name easily ten people who could each replace 2-3 average employees I meet with at my company. Of course, most of them already have a job and would need some incentive to come on board or relocate, but its alwasy worth it to employ one exceptional worker rather than five average. And they often get the same amount work done. Often its cheaper even if you'd pay them double salary, which you probably won't.

Beware of plain text!

[Da VinMan]

Using PDF is a sort of half measure. If you have rendered your document into PDF using a real PDF distiller (like the one from Acrobat), then the actual text will still be present in the document and it is quite possible for someone to do whatever they like with it in Acrobat or upload it into a recruiter search system where it can easily be indexed and used for further contacts with clients (which you may not want at all at that point).

However, if you create your PDF file using a tool like PDF995 which acts as a printer driver and therefore distills the printer directives into PDF as an image (and not as text), the actual text of your resume will be inaccessible except visually. This gives you complete control over where and how your resume gets distributed because everything out there today requires being able store and index your resume at a text level and (so far) does not include automatic OCR as well (which would actually be quite effective in a case like this - but shhh! don't tell the recruiter geeks! :)

I've actually detected unauthorized use of my resume in this way when I get a call from an agency claiming that "they really need my resume in Word format because they don't have Acrobat and can't read the file *sob*". I don't do further business with those firms.

Have fun...

how to leave a positive impression

[wikinerd]

Personally when I apply for a job I want to know whether my CV was received (this can be done with automatic email confirmation), and how many days I will have to wait until I have an answer. Then, after this period has elapsed, I want to know whether my application was accepted or rejected, and, if possible, the reason. For example: "Your application was accepted because you meet all requirements and you know good XML, please come for an interview and get ready to answer some programming questions about PHP and XML" or "your application was rejected because you do not have the necessary prior experience at another company" or even "your application was rejected because your CV was too long" (so, in that case, I can send a shorter CV). Before I apply I also want to know the exact geographical location where I will work and, if possible, the salary. Additionally, I want to know the privacy policy of the company and how long my CV will be archived, as well as whether and how I can update my CV in the company's database (if it has one). I believe that the best way to recruit talented people is not to ask for specific degrees or professional experience, but to put a programming problem of medium difficulty on the vacancy ad and request all CVs to include a solution to the problem. Remember: The best way to keep people happy is to treat them as human beings, not like machines. By the way, here [karastathis.org] is my professional webpage.

Re:Beware of this

[Bill Dog]

My top 3 experiences with recruiters have been:

3) "Interested in a one millisecond contract job in <some city a thousand miles away>?"

2) "Maybe you know some people who might be interested in new opportunities?"

And the #1 experience:

"Can you please forward me a copy of your resume in Word format?"

A notable experience I've never had with a recruiter? Getting a job via one.

Why do they always want a Word version of your resume? When I was last looking and got contacted, I'd just point them to my online resume. It seemed to drive them crazy. Why? They still could've copied-and-pasted it into a new Word doc, and saved it off. Or was it about me not specifically sending it to them? As if that constituted an implicit contract or something, or my consent that they submit my resume all over town? The problem with that is, they're not going to position just you for the job, they're going to position the person who they think they have the best chance of placing. But if you then want to take a shot at getting an interview for the job yourself, it seems like if the company received your resume from a recruiter, then they cannot deal with you directly. So you're effectively screwed out of that potential job.

The bottom line is, I'm not really clued in to the rules of the game when playing with recruiters, and they sure don't seem to want to reveal anything about it, so I can only assume there's a lot that's not in my best interest.