[melbourne-pug] Question re job ads from recruiters

[Brian May]

Note: My normal email provider let their SSL certificate expire, so I
can't send via them at the moment. It is possible Andrew Stuart might
get this email and not the list because I have to use another account
that the list might reject.


Andrew Stuart <andrew.stuart at supercoders.com.au> writes:

> Why does it matter that we need to keep the company name off the job
> ad? Everyone knows that’s just one of the limitations we recruiters
> need to deal with.

This is kind of an ambiguous statement. I think Mike Dewhirst
interpreted as a complaint you cannot post to this list without dropping
the company name. Which isn't the case.

I think you are saying that your own company policy prevents you from
posting the company name on the ad. Which is similar policy I think for
most recruiters.

I understand you are will not be a position to change this, however I
just wanted to say that this gives recruiters a bad name with potential
candidates. It means the candidate cannot research the company before
applying. The position could in fact be the position the candidate wants
to leave. Given the company name, the candidate might know that this is
a really good or bad place to work.

It also means that candidates end up applying for the same position
multiple times via different recruiters, which wastes everybodies
time. I have lost track of the number of my applications that get no
where for this reason. I suggested to one recruiter recently that maybe
I had already applied for this position, and he still refused to tell me
the company name. It wasn't until later he concluded it was the same
position that I had already applied to directly.

Sure - I assume the candidate will eventually be told the company name -
but often not until after the candidate has spent the time to place a
formal application to the recruiter, had a formal onsite interview with
the recruiter, etc.

Unfortunately, I suspect many recruiters are bad at prepresenting
candidates to prospect employers.

I had a interview recently with a company (setup by a high price
recruiter) that started asking very specific and details questions about
work I haven't touched since June last year. I suspect the recruiter may
have oversold my skills, I wasn't prepared for this very specific line
of questioning, and the interviewer wasn't going to accept my response
that the details were a bit fuzzy after not looking at this code for
more then 6 months.

In many cases I think the recruiters simply do not understand the
technology. I had one job description from a recruiter recently that was
so broad it could apply to any job in any field of work in any
industry. I asked for clarification, and got no response.

As a result, it is much better for candidates to apply direct to the
company. This means that the recruiters try to hide the company name so
the candidates are forced to use them. I find I never have had any
success using applying through recruiters, I have much better luck
applying to the company directly. All my jobs I have had are due to
direct contacts.

If recruiters actually offered some sort of value to the candidates,
then maybe candidates would actually want to use them even though the
know they could apply directly to the company.
-- 
Brian May <brian at microcomaustralia.com.au>