16
34 Comments

Is dev recruiting broken?

I think so.. How many LinkedIn messages have you received where the recruiter was totally off base, didn’t know the tech, or pegged you for a job you had no interest in whatsoever?

This is why I’m considering building an app that allows developers to specify the culture, tech, industry, salary, team size, industry, location, goals, and problem spaces they want job offers for and only allow recruiters contact requests and offers to enter your inbox if they match to the extent you allow or specify.

What do you think? Could this help align recruiter and developer interests?

  1. 2

    I just lost SOOOO much time in the last few months to gather data on how I align with companies' expectations.

    Much of these interviews and tests were from LOTS of invitations from recruiters on LinkedIn than my own findings.

    But it was an overwhelming quantity that I thought at first that the fact on quantity was helping me find a spot, at least on my local market, it DIDN'T.

    So lots of hours to get more detailed data by just doing interviews and challenges. It does not scale for the candidate also.

    In the end when I finally got in contact with the manager for that position we could agree that it was not aligned. But for that takes many hours for each position you are invited to.

    1. 2

      Exactly! The process to get to "is this a fit" is just painful and inefficient at best. I'd hope to address this with this idea. The interview process is, unfortunately, where a lot of this comes to the surface but it's after so much time spent and wasted for both the hiring party and the candidate.

      I've heard from my recruiter friends that sharing too much detail in advance could be disqualifying (salary isn't right, tech. isn't perfect, etc.) so they're optimizing to cast a wider net but what they don't realize is that we (developers, well the good ones) are so jaded the vague descriptions and asks for phone chats are just not worth it. Like you said, we've been burnt before. So they think they'll catch more of us by being vague but they actually only limit themselves to the folks that are extremely motivated to make a change or worse, they are the types that can't hold down a job for long.

      Ultimately, I hope that asking for more detail on my app while not exposing it for all to see solves both ends of this problem. On their end they can share more detail and it will only end up in the inboxes of those it matches with and our end we don't have to go through the arduous dance of phone intros, screens, and even interviews to find out what the salary will be, where the actual job is located, who I'll be working with on the team, and what kinds of problems I'll be solving.

      Thanks for the share!

      1. 1

        Nice, I don't mind sharing, because I refuse to believe the current system is right.

        I'm an active candidate right now, and yet having issues to find a really good spot, where I can use my "unique" approach for software development, that is not only coding but really inspiring the architecture, the product decisions, and correlating the product choices to the technical challenges ahead, moving to the MVP, and getting the system in place for all the developers to scale.

        It is being a rough path because I'm not a unicorn that will ace every step. But some are reading that from my profile right now, and expecting me to ace every step of their processes.

        A passioned generalist != unicorn. So keyword matching hits me pretty hard. I removed a lot to just get out of sight.

        So a hiring advisor product where I can correlate expectations "tags", not only hard skills will be gold.

    2. 1

      In most cases it is still a coin toss. There are some good tools out there now that read online profiles and produce assessments like DISC and the Big-5. This stuff is pretty cool and ultimately should help hiring managers to make decisions. So often when they are on the fence they just opt for the safe "rejection", when all they needed was a tiny bit of info that went beyond coding skill.

  2. 2

    I'd need a platform for career changers. I come from the music business (A&R = project managment), landed after a 4 year sabbatical in the online advertising industry and got certified as web developer this year (march). I tried the typical way, meaning applying as junior developer, what I'm obviously.

    But I just can't afford the low wage anymore. I'm 40 now and bring way more than just a regular junior that just left education and is happy to get a foot on the ground. And in most cases, doesn't care about living standard, is happy to have a beer on fridays and finds it awesome to have table soccer in the office.

    It seems to be a vicious circle. Tech firms don't hire me because I don't have the right skills yet and don't bring 2-3 years of experience. How could I being a fresher? And I feel too old to start as junior with the said low wage.

    We are constantly told to keep learning, gain more skills, try new industries. I did it and keep doing it. I just don't get it how get a foot on this new ground now. I bet I'm not alone with this problem. That's why I answer to your post.

    1. 2

      I feel you. I like working with data, it aligns with what I believe it's my "mission" on technology.

      So I took a risk changing to data engineering. My former company accepted and I built a data team and data processes from scratch.

      I made a mistake to not show that on LinkedIn or getting certifications as every corporate employee does. I lack some people-networking capacity also.

      Now I'm struggling to find positions, even being confident about what I can deliver, I can't say I have 3 years of Apache Spark experience, even solving a lot of problems with data by just using managed tools from AWS.

      Some companies denied a "not senior" position because I'm too senior on leadership or with another tech stack.

      Now I'm here (after a year listening to the podcast) learning on how I can show that. Maybe a product, maybe building a portfolio, just wasted time believing in the "excess demand of the market".

      1. 1

        Btw, just had a first get-to-know-interview yesterday with a corporate recruiter. She contacted me first via LinkedId, looking for a php-developer. My new strategy is that I lay my cards on the table from the beginning.

        I told her that I'm a fresher with extensive experience in online advertising. And I told her already my minimum wage, based on the mixture/other experiences I bring.

        She offered another job, not a developer anymore, more some kind of project manager, ad operator, as person between the it department and advert department. It sounded very interesting when finishing the call and I had a good feeling.

        Today morning I felt a bit different. There are 3 downgrades:

        • the new way to the office doubles, so I will need way more time (1+ hour one direction)

        • it's an all-in-contract which is a no-go if you're not in higher position which I wouldn't; and I wouldn't have people responsibility; to me it's just a way to lower the wage. I don't have an all-in-contract in my current job. This plague is more and more coming to Europe. Again, management / higher-position, all good with all-in as this usually comes with higher salary. But not in this "normal"-low-level-position. I just don't see any reason/justification for all-in.

        • I asked for the salary range, and my current wage is already on the end of their range; and I'm sure they won't give me more. She already told me that my salary expection could hardly be met.

        Any thoughts on this take, anybody? Would be very appreciated. My gut says I won't apply.

  3. 2

    I think LinkedIn Targeting is just way off. Most recruiters just sit around all day cold emailing hundreds of people, most of the time they don't even bother to check the profile.

    1. 1

      Do you mean that Recruiters targeting in LinkedIn is off or that my focus on LinkedIn as a problem target is off?

      Thanks for your thoughts btw!

      1. 1

        I mean Recruiters targeting on LinkedIn, they usually just bulk email a bunch of people who have "development" in their skillset.

        1. 1

          Oh - I see. Thanks. Yes, that is probably a big reason why we see weird outreach that really doesn't align to our skills or goals.

  4. 2

    Eurgh I hate recruiters with a passion! LinkedIn has seeming been taken over with them.
    My bio has in the very first line "recruiters will be ignored" yet I still get several mass sent messages / job ads each week.

    The only ones I would ever consider are approaches from actual CEOs/Company bosses or internal recruiter, but even then they don't always know the tech and such.

    At the end of the day they are sales people and their only incentive is commissions, and it's essentially a numbers game. Get as many people in their connections and send out mass messages to land someone into this role, get their commission, next.

    What percentage of them do you think is actually all that concerned about the employee and what it is they want and if it would be a good match with the company, and vice-versa.

    Sorry this doesn't help in any way, just turned into a rant against an entire sector!

    1. 2

      I feel the same way. The angst is real. The solutions seem to be absent.

  5. 2

    I think this is one of the most common observation that has the most attempts at solving..
    What I think people don't get is they are trying to sell and improved quality for a race to the bottom problem which doesn't align directly with quality.
    HR and recruitment are kinda treated as a thick sieve to reduce noise for hiring managers.
    Your more judged about hard false positives than being flexible.

    I have more on the topic in another post
    https://www.indiehackers.com/post/process-efficiency-improvement-solutions-ventures-e0a151f2b5

    1. 2

      Fair point. Recruiting is very transactional and to be fair, they are asked to find Unicorns. I don’t think this app would replace what they do there but instead act as another channel.

      I think my hope is that the effectiveness of this app in terms of making that quick, painless alignment on what they are offering to what we are seeking would result in the app becoming an obvious, alternative channel for them to use.

      I don’t think it will usurp everything else but it would, hopefully, be priced in a way that it’s a no brainer for them to share the details of the opportunities they are recruiting for in the app for the chance to get a conversation with somebody that is likely a fit right out of the gate.

      I’d love it if I was 70-80% sure that a recruiter’s proposal fit my criteria before I jump on call. Today, they throw over the baseless “I think you’d be a great fit” which turns me off to getting on the phone because it will be a huge waste of time. Because I feel this way, they can never get conversations with me. This is the problem I think the app can address. Provide qualified recruiter proposals = raising likelihood that conversations will happen.

      Thanks for your input! Really appreciate it.

      1. 2

        I'm saying for them it's a numbers game over quality
        Let's say they have 30 open positions, for each they should submit 3 applicants.
        They need 90 applicants this week.
        Among these btw it's fine that 30-40 are trash, won't fit, but look kinda ok.

        These trash 3rds are a good reason for them to spam less relevant people, they just need 1 to say ok for whatever reason

        Also these people control close to 0 budget and get 0 reward for more quality work.

        1. 2

          I only agree with you if we're talking about agency recruiters, not corporate recruiters. I'm a Senior Director of a 6 dev. teams and the last thing my tech. leads, managers, or I want from our corporate recruiters or any others (agencies included) are an influx of resumes that "kind of" fit or I should say, don't at least meet our minimum requirements which we're pretty reasonable about. Now I agree, that agencies, specifically those working on contingency fees may resort to throwing darts at times to see what sticks, but it is not a good experience on the receiving end and I can personally say that I do not want this in any way, shape, or form.

          Less is more. If my corporate recruiter is doing the "filtering" step well they aren't doing their job properly. Fortunately, we have a great corporate recruiter so our open roles result in a manageable number of "suitable" fits. Problem is they all come from job boards which means we're talking about "actives" not "passives". If I could get them to present great "passive" candidates I'd get way more than "suitable" because "passive" candidates are typically the ones that don't need to look for a job because they're awesome and have options.

          I hear ya though, there is a "numbers game" aspect to this. I don't think my app idea is in a zero sum space though. Why can't a recruiter keep doing that crazy hustle while also submitting the ops to this supposed "app"? What have they got to lose other than showing their cards enough to see if any "passive" candidates pop up as potential fits to what they're looking for almost no additional effort. They still get to do the status quo while potentially benefiting from something that flips the script here.

          1. 1

            The original post thesis sounded like your trying to solve getting low match unsolicited offers which is what I was responding to..

            So what's new about the idea here?
            Most platforms allow me to be active or passive on job searches...
            Most platforms allow me to custom search and/or tech filter...
            What makes the app idea different?

            1. 2

              Good, challenging question. I appreciate it.

              The key difference is that job boards will never allow you to match on more criteria than their search func. allows which is a fraction of what I want to know about the job opps before deciding to engage. Every job post is written in a different format and the best you can glean is city level location, keywords and if you’re lucky, a salary range.

              Why? Because job posters (mostly recruiters) do not want to share the detail I want to know before I decide to engage, yet apply. Why? Because they feel it will dissuade applicants from applying because it’s not a perfect fit. So what happens, everything is opaque, at least regarding the things I want to know before I waste my time going down the road of phone calls, pre screens, and interviews.

              Let’s look at LinkedIn too. If I set myself to available I get 2-3 fields to help recruiters understand my goals, prefs and criteria? They don’t cover half the things any job seeker would want to know and they’ll never get to the level of things devs want to know when they toggle to “available”. Why, because they charge for number of messages recruiters send. They are not compelled to get recruiters to matches more efficiently with less messages because they make less money if they do so.

              What’s missing that my app would absolutely require them to share to get access to the devs that don’t want to waste their time wading through the ambiguity of job boards and recruiter outreach messages that I call the status quo today?

              • salary
              • tech stack
              • methodologies (Agile/SCRUM/Kanban, etc.)
              • location (where I’m sitting day to day)
              • remote/onsite/partial-remote
              • culture
              • benefits
              • industry
              • technical problem spaces that I may be interested in pursuing
              • team size/makeup
              • training availability/budget

              You will never get this level of info from initial recruiter outreach and never in a job post. Problem is great passive candidates don’t have to waste their time going down the rabbit hole to find this stuff out. They will resort to their networks and find jobs that way. I know I do.

              If recruiters want us, they have to pay a transparency price up front. Otherwise great passive talent will never be as readily accessible to them as they really want.

              So, how would my app be different? It’d require more information than job boards or recruiter outreach contains today while offering them the privacy such that they don’t have to show their cards to everybody as a default like they do on a job board.

              I honestly think it’s a win win. They get the attention of the cohort of recruits (passives) they don’t have great access today and we (the passives) get the transparency in job ops that we really want up front.

              Without this don’t waste my or the hiring party’s time. I feel this way and I know many other great passive devs that do as well.

              Hope this clarifies what I think is different. Thanks for your comment!

              1. 2

                It's an interesting proposition
                Would you be able to make money on it even if it's only used lightly? maybe... :thinking:..
                I'm kinda thinking this reminds me of the email protection some people put where you have to reconfirm your a human sending me an email for a reason...

                I think this could be great as an auto reply linkedin bot... paid by the user like a special spam filter...
                I think that might be more interesting than yet another separate job service... it would be easier to market if done right and can infect user users...

                1. 2

                  I think the opportunity to make money is there but it’d have to be priced right. Maybe a low monthly fee for recruiters with a subsequent per “conversation” fee where they pay a little more when they get a hit. They certainly have the budget but i wouldn’t get them to bite if they were paying to end up never getting hits because our criteria are all so tight that nothing ever filters through. More thought is necessary here. Maybe developers could be shown a weekly summary of what outreach/job ops they may have missed on seeing if they only dialed down or loosened a few of the criteria in their profile. This challenge will be the same as what job boards face. They all start out with good intentions and end up being a recruiter spam fest. You’re lucky if half the posts are even from the actual source companies anymore. Why? Because recruiters pay the bills for LinkedIn and Job Boards. I’ll face a slightly different but still similar enough challenge.

                  Yeah, the auto reply bot on LinkedIn is very interesting. I thought down this road a little too but it’d require I figure out a solution to get in the middle of LinkedIn recruiter messaging to do so.

                  In a separate comment here, I mentioned the idea of having a link from my app that devs could share as a reply to all recruiter outreach but that’d be a step devs would have to handle on their own because LinkedIn’s API is no longer publicly available.

                  I could automate this using any number of page automation frameworks but the devs would have to share their username/password combos and I’d have to figure out how to timebox a lease to these using some sort of password sharing service. Even if I figured that out I think LinkedIn would catch on quickly and shut down accounts because of a violation of their terms happening in some fashion, don’t know what but they’d find a way to attack back for sure.

                  Another option is to set it up as a chrome extension that can quickly walk through your recruiter inbox DOM and tee up the replies one by one, add them to a batch, and let you press “Auto Reply” sending them the link to my app thus your profile criteria to warrant you engaging them.

                  The bot idea is brilliant! I wish it were a little easier to pull that off. Let me know if anything comes to mind.

                  Again, appreciate the dialog.

                  1. 2

                    Base the bot off the email notification.
                    Most of these recruiters have a premium account the the full message is delivered by email... I think you can also reply by email.. (not sure if there are small details)

                    Can also consider some kind of simplified recruiter reputation browser extension, where people just mark the spammer vs good ones... It's way simplified but addressed similar core issue, of filtering out the annoyance

                    1. 1

                      These are both great ideas! Noted.

  6. 1

    Good point. I run a recruiting firm and my recruiters sourcing developers are pretty strict about knowing the tech. In short it makes the difference between a successful recruiter and an unsuccessful one if you are dealing with "passive" highly skilled candidates. I hope your project goes well.

  7. 1

    ALL the time, i mean i have JavaScript as a skill and keep being harassed if i can come work as their Java dev -_-'

    It's just getting plain annoying, but also from my perspective, i get super annoyed with companies that think you don't already have a full-time job, live and hobbies.

    They expect you to go on 4/5 interview, complete a questionnaire, complete a test assignments!? And they you never hear back!

    I'm just getting a bit full of this nowadays.

  8. 1

    There are many companies trying to solve this problem but I think the main issue you'd have to get over is: if your job is to recruit, you're incentive is to spread your net as wide as possible. So even if you have a system saying "this person isn't interested in your offer", as a recruiter what is your incentive to not send the message?

    On top of that, a developer may not actually know what they want. They might want a big company with yadda yadda but a small company comes along saying "We'll let you do X here" and they realize X sounds really interesting.

    I get a lot of recruiter messages and 90% of them have nothing to do with what I want but they are low-effort so it mostly helps me to get them.

    I think if you could show that recruiters were more likely to get a match if they used your system, that would be compelling.

    1. 1

      I think Stack Overflow put together a great article on the latent opportunity that exist for recruiters in the form of what most of us are, “Passive Candidates”

      “60% of the developers we surveyed last year told us that they would consider moving jobs if the right opportunity presented itself” - Stack Overflow

      https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/12/20/why-your-recruiting-strategy-should-focus-on-active-and-passive-candidates-alike/

      If think you are right that they are incentivized to cast a wide net and this app would be one of their fishing lines but with one very significant caveat being their offer messages wouldn’t get to us on this app unless they match the criteria you specify to the extent you choose.

      I think the app would handle this through a combination of algorithmic and hand curated approaches that I’d put in place.

      Your point about those cases you didn’t consider is a good one. It’s the “we don’t know what we don’t know” aspect. I think I’d address this by allowing us devs the ability to control our inbox offer messages as aggressively or loosely as we prefer. I’d also provide the option to receive a digest message at the end of each week to see what percentage of jobs were close to our criteria but didn’t quite make the cut. We could always open these and view some or all of them the same as we do in LinkedIn now only difference being we’d know they aren’t a perfect fit right out of the gate, setting our expectations and hopefully saving us time sifting through what are typically very opaque, mismatched offers from the recruiters on LinkedIn today.

      I think another thing this app would do is force the recruiter to share details about their job offers they normally wouldn’t share publicly. For example they are often hesitant to share salary info because they don’t want to get into the highend salary range right out of the gate but this app could obfuscate this to the masses while eluding it to us individually because it’s only be obvious to us, individually, that the salary meets our expectations because a match was presented by the app on this criteria.

  9. 1

    Good initiative but I think you are missing the crucial problem with recruiters. For the most part, they have the mentality of a third world country street salesman, who will chace you around with a fake Rolex. I remember many years ago when a recruiter was calling me 3 times a day telling me how she has the most amazing position on the planet and it's perfect for me because I knew Java. Which was more or less accurate at the time but I hated it with a passion, the only reason I knew it, was because I had to take a course in university. The words "I hate Java, not touching this with a 10 foot pole" flew completely over her head and kept calling me 4 times a day for weeks on. And it's not an isolated case, in my experience, a large chunk of recruiters are just like that.

    You should have a look at stackoverflow jobs, they've tried to adopt a similar approach. I can't really say if it's working or not however.

    1. 1

      Love Stack Overflow jobs because it is more developer focused but that is still built, for the most part, active seekers. I’m thinking more in the direction of passive candidates that are open to opportunities but only if the circumstances and criteria are a match.

      Recruiters want passive candidates so badly. It’s the holy grail to them. This would provide a way for them to access those of us that are passives, but only in a way that is beneficial to both sides. Less fruitless outreach for them and less spam for us.

      Thanks for the feedback!

  10. 1

    This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

  11. 6

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    1. 3

      Yeah - this is such an important point. I have 3 really great friends, all tech. recruiters, and they are fantastic at their jobs. I hope this idea and the ensuing idea doesn't misconstrue the fact that there are fantastic recruiters. I do still firmly believe that it's hard for most recruiters to get conversations with great, passive development talent and that's due to opaque opportunity descriptions, a misunderstanding of what "fit" means, and developers being immediately defensive to recruiters of any kind - unfortunately even the great ones.

      Here's too great recruiters! They do exist and I hope everyone has the pleasure of working with one at least once in their careers. I have and it's accounted for at least one, very great change in my career trajectory.

    2. 2

      Please continue to do it then!

      After talking to dozens of recruiters and "first-interviewers" (that are not the manager or someone with authority) I have this conclusion that they just matched my tech keywords on my profile.

      I'm just so frustrated that only a few had understood or talked clearly about profile alignment and the position they were trying to fill.

    3. 2

      You should add your Twitter, email, and location to your profile :-)

      1. 2

        This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

        1. 2

          Canadian, what!? I have something for us to work on ;-)

  12. 1

    This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

    1. 1

      I love Key Values but it’s a narrow set of companies that are marketing pretty much cultural aspects of what they offer. What I have in mind is a filter that taps into a tributary that already exists. This app wouldn’t need to create the river of jobs nor would it have to create demand from recruiters. Both already exist so I “think” it’d have to sit in the middle and do a good job of acting as a filter. I suppose us devs could even use a special link from the app in our LinkedIn replies to have a recruiter test there offer against our criteria and if a match is there, probably based on “dials” we control, the offer would be shared with us the candidates.

      I want to do what Key Values does in a different way with a focus on the seekers (candidates) as opposed to the companies doing the seeking.

      Hopefully it’s result in a better recruiting experience for us devs

      1. 1

        This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 47 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 27 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments How I Launched FrontendEase 13 comments