What are the essential duties for a technical recruiter?

July 10, 2017 9:39 AM

I think it's odd that most recruiters do not seem to know what they essential duties are. Just looking at it quickly one would think that a recruiter's job is to find qualified candidates. In the field of computers this often means looking at buzzwords and matching them up. But it's more than buzzword matching (Jobscan can do that for you). It's really knowing the technologies behind the buzzwords to know that, for example, Jenkins is essentially the same as Electric Commander whereas MySQL is not really at all like MongoDB though they do share the characteristic of both being databases, one uses SQL and the other is No SQL.

I get way too many "offers" by recruiters - typically Indian recruiters - for positions that I would have thought I was not qualified for. For example, the client will say that 3+ years experience with AWS is required and I do not have any AWS experience yet (I've played around with it at home and have taken some online courses but it's clear the client wants 3+ years of actual experience not classroom experience). But the recruiter will contact me nonetheless. Or a recruiter will approach me for a Salesforce developer job. The word Salesforce appeared on my resume once. I helped the Salesforce team integrate into JIRA via a plugin. I configured the plugin and verified that Salesforce was talking to JIRA. I did absolutely nothing in Salesforce itself. I would think that a Salesforce developer would know Salesforce in depth. This is a waste of my time and their time and really a waste of the client's time.

I realize that the recruiter may be thinking "Hey, I'm not sure that this particular guy is totally qualified but I do see Salesforce on his resume. I'll reach out to him and ask questions". Then I would think his email, rather than being just a form email, would be something like this:

Hi, my name is <name>. I saw your resume says you've had some Salesforce exposure but it's not clear to me how much experience you actually have. I have a Salesforce developer position described below. Can you tell me if you have enough experience and if you are comfortable with the job requirements?...

But they don't do that.

I have toyed with the idea of faking experience so as to compel the recruiter to get me an interview and then go in there and simply say "I don't know any of that stuff and I don't know why Mr. Recruiter said I did" just to discredit the recruiter to show their clients that this particular recruiter is not properly screening (or screening at all for that matter). Something needs to be done, IMHO!

Case in point: Working with one Arvind Kumar of Araucaria Technologies, he approached me for an AWS Cloud Engineer position that has the following:

Qualifications:

• 5+ years of progressive experience with large, complex information systems
• 3+ years of experience provisioning, operating, and managing AWS 3+ environments
• Vast experience with transitioning physical plant to AWS environments
• Must have strong LAMP & Tomcat Java experience.
• Experience in automation and testing via scripting/programming.
• Strong experience with Ansible. Experience with SVN and Github (preferred)
• B.S. in Computer Science or equivalent (preferred)

Yet nowhere on my resume would you find 3+ years of AWS experience, nor transitioning physical plant to AWS environment. Have no experience with Ansible, nor SVN or Github. This is not to say I couldn't excel at these technologies as I pick up things quickly. And I do have experience with things like Clearcase, Perforce and git (just not Github or SVN). And I have taken some AWS courses but I would not claim to have 3+ years of experience or even 1 year of experience because my experience is at home, not at a client's site in a production situation.

As a result, why would anybody trust Arvind's word at all? Why would anybody work with Arvind or other recruiters at Araucaria Technologies knowing that their quality control is very sub par?

Recently I found this Tech Recruiter job on DICE. Some of the essential duties include:

• Identify the client's business and cultural nuances, as well as define the position, its functions, challenges selling points, and viability. Uncover the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities of the ideal candidate.
• Coordinate with Program Managers and Account Managers to ensure quality delivery to client's requisitions. Work with sales team on account development and account management.
• Actively market qualified candidates to new and existing clients. Utilize sales techniques to expand business through research and prospecting and turning client inquiries into job requisitions.
• Assist with the design of a sourcing strategy to uncover both passive and active candidates through existing and new sources in order to maintain an effective pool of candidates. Utilize electronic process in recruiting and placement to maximize efficiency and time saving.
• Target the most qualified candidates and screen resumes to identify potential matches.
• Present opportunity to candidate and conduct in-depth interview to determine suitability and interest of candidate. Identify, evaluate, and summarize relevant technical experience, knowledge, hard and soft skills, and abilities in relation to job requirements.
• Submit qualified candidates and respond to client concerns.

So as you can see recruiters should be qualifying people before emailing candidate who incompetent recruiters such as Arvind obviously have not qualified.