November 21, 2013 at 18:42Should I go for an interview with a recruiter?
I work as a recruiter in the agency relatively recently. The team is purely female, psychological and humanitarian, therefore, with my technical education and kuei courses, I deal with all technical vacancies. I want to share a look from the “other side” at some points.
Many IT professionals do not want to go to HR interviews, because they believe that assessing their technical skills is enough to make a decision. For some companies this is true. It is enough to go through those interviews or perform a test task, and then look into the eyes of the team and the thing is in the hat. But not everyone works like that. Most companies have recruiters and they sit there for a reason. And the recruiter’s job is not only in “assessing the appearance”.
Let's look at a specific example. There is company X. The team is small, the turnover is small. Keeping a full-time recruiter unprofitable. Company X hires agency Y. A technical interview takes place after an HR interview, in which candidates communicate with a series of leads and a manager. This takes about an hour and a half and distracts all of the above from work. Accordingly, company X wants agency Y to perform the following functions:
Imagine that this point has not been fulfilled. Reason: the candidate did not want to come for an HR interview and the recruiter, at his own risk, recommended him without a meeting. What then? You saved 40 minutes on unobtrusive communication with a recruiter and came to those interviews. We talked with three specialists, answered difficult questions, then met with the manager and everything is fine, but! It turns out that the manager makes sure that his team is a friendly, close-knit team. And you, being a good specialist and a great person, may simply not fit into this team. Bottom line: you spent more time and effort, and the manager is fierce because key roles in the team were distracted in vain.
In any case, a good recruiter should dig in this direction. If he does not know something, then he must at least try to figure it out and have some idea. And believe me, you can and should understand the level of compliance approximately. Elementaryly, some people write in a resume something that they did not actually do and do not know, or that they had met indirectly long ago, but in reality they cannot work with it. Example: QA Team Lead came to me the other day. We need a good manager who is also good in the technical part. In particular, SQL. The man says that everything is tied to the database and they deal with SQL every day; knowledge is very good. Moreover, in the team he has 3 June and 1 Middle. So he is involved in technical matters every day and in many ways. I give a simple DB and ask to write a simple query. Well I think even ashamed to ask such simple things such a cool specialist to do. It issues a request:
Select * where price <500 and 'model' or 'cd' or 'hd'
This is despite the fact that the task was written “Output model, cd, hd” from only one more table! What would happen if I sent it only one resume?
This also saves the manager’s time, because based on the preferences of the candidate, one can say whether the project and the company will be of interest to him or not. This item can be fully implemented in a telephone conversation.
So, all of the above is what the recruiter receives money for and this is the time of his employees that the manager in the company wants to save. The largest picture is given by a personal meeting, less by Skype and very little by telephone conversation.
PS Recently I was at my PM interview and said that he had never fired people because of technical knowledge. But due to inadequacy or conflict situations with the team quite often.
Question about +1 interview. After all, not everyone uses recruiting and you can save one interview - go through technical and voila! Yes, you can do that. But we never know in advance where the best option is. Maybe he is exactly where the recruiter wants to steal your time? After spending an extra hour you can get more sn, an interesting project, a better social package and a more professional team for the next 2 years! Who knows? Everyone makes their choice.
And why not immediately admit how much I get now and how much I want? The question is essentially the same. The employer wants to save money and give an end-to-end salary so that the person works and is satisfied even when he can give more, and the candidate wants to snatch the largest possible piece. + An employer rarely wants to disclose his budgets. The candidate knows how much he wants for his work, and the employer knows how much he can offer. Both that and that does not want to go all-in preflop. It remains only to agree.
I heard the opinion that if a person agreed to come for an interview with HR-y, then he is not a cool specialist and most likely will pull on the middle at best. Here briefly, this is a myth. For interviews come from the bottom to the tops. In addition, an example: Senior .NET Developer did not disdain to come to me for an interview, later he did not like the company from the inside and rejected the offer. Later, my company began working with a German company, which had a lot of vacancies and rates on average from 30 to 80K EUR. And then I remembered that very cool guy and sent his resume to Germany. Personal contacts are never superfluous. Today, talking with a recruiter, you can get a great offer tomorrow!
Yes, the shortage of IT specialists gives the right to choose which interviews to attend and which invitations to refuse, but one should not forget about simple human relations and business ethics.
1. "I do not want to be evaluated in appearance"
Many IT professionals do not want to go to HR interviews, because they believe that assessing their technical skills is enough to make a decision. For some companies this is true. It is enough to go through those interviews or perform a test task, and then look into the eyes of the team and the thing is in the hat. But not everyone works like that. Most companies have recruiters and they sit there for a reason. And the recruiter’s job is not only in “assessing the appearance”.
Let's look at a specific example. There is company X. The team is small, the turnover is small. Keeping a full-time recruiter unprofitable. Company X hires agency Y. A technical interview takes place after an HR interview, in which candidates communicate with a series of leads and a manager. This takes about an hour and a half and distracts all of the above from work. Accordingly, company X wants agency Y to perform the following functions:
1. Search for candidates
2. Personal assessment
Imagine that this point has not been fulfilled. Reason: the candidate did not want to come for an HR interview and the recruiter, at his own risk, recommended him without a meeting. What then? You saved 40 minutes on unobtrusive communication with a recruiter and came to those interviews. We talked with three specialists, answered difficult questions, then met with the manager and everything is fine, but! It turns out that the manager makes sure that his team is a friendly, close-knit team. And you, being a good specialist and a great person, may simply not fit into this team. Bottom line: you spent more time and effort, and the manager is fierce because key roles in the team were distracted in vain.
3. Testing technical knowledge
In any case, a good recruiter should dig in this direction. If he does not know something, then he must at least try to figure it out and have some idea. And believe me, you can and should understand the level of compliance approximately. Elementaryly, some people write in a resume something that they did not actually do and do not know, or that they had met indirectly long ago, but in reality they cannot work with it. Example: QA Team Lead came to me the other day. We need a good manager who is also good in the technical part. In particular, SQL. The man says that everything is tied to the database and they deal with SQL every day; knowledge is very good. Moreover, in the team he has 3 June and 1 Middle. So he is involved in technical matters every day and in many ways. I give a simple DB and ask to write a simple query. Well I think even ashamed to ask such simple things such a cool specialist to do. It issues a request:
Select * where price <500 and 'model' or 'cd' or 'hd'
This is despite the fact that the task was written “Output model, cd, hd” from only one more table! What would happen if I sent it only one resume?
4. Identification of the interests of the candidate
This also saves the manager’s time, because based on the preferences of the candidate, one can say whether the project and the company will be of interest to him or not. This item can be fully implemented in a telephone conversation.
So, all of the above is what the recruiter receives money for and this is the time of his employees that the manager in the company wants to save. The largest picture is given by a personal meeting, less by Skype and very little by telephone conversation.
PS Recently I was at my PM interview and said that he had never fired people because of technical knowledge. But due to inadequacy or conflict situations with the team quite often.
2. To go or not to go? That's the question!
Question about +1 interview. After all, not everyone uses recruiting and you can save one interview - go through technical and voila! Yes, you can do that. But we never know in advance where the best option is. Maybe he is exactly where the recruiter wants to steal your time? After spending an extra hour you can get more sn, an interesting project, a better social package and a more professional team for the next 2 years! Who knows? Everyone makes their choice.
3. Why not immediately admit what the maximum amount they can give me?
And why not immediately admit how much I get now and how much I want? The question is essentially the same. The employer wants to save money and give an end-to-end salary so that the person works and is satisfied even when he can give more, and the candidate wants to snatch the largest possible piece. + An employer rarely wants to disclose his budgets. The candidate knows how much he wants for his work, and the employer knows how much he can offer. Both that and that does not want to go all-in preflop. It remains only to agree.
4. Will a classy specialist who knows his worth agree to come to HR-y?
I heard the opinion that if a person agreed to come for an interview with HR-y, then he is not a cool specialist and most likely will pull on the middle at best. Here briefly, this is a myth. For interviews come from the bottom to the tops. In addition, an example: Senior .NET Developer did not disdain to come to me for an interview, later he did not like the company from the inside and rejected the offer. Later, my company began working with a German company, which had a lot of vacancies and rates on average from 30 to 80K EUR. And then I remembered that very cool guy and sent his resume to Germany. Personal contacts are never superfluous. Today, talking with a recruiter, you can get a great offer tomorrow!
Yes, the shortage of IT specialists gives the right to choose which interviews to attend and which invitations to refuse, but one should not forget about simple human relations and business ethics.