[melbourne-pug] Question re job ads from recruiters

[Brian May]

Brian May <brian at microcomaustralia.com.au> writes:

> 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.

Resending this now that hopefully I have configured the mailing list to
accept emails from this address.

> 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>
-- 
Brian May <brian at microcomaustralia.com.au>