Monday, February 26, 2018

There's gotta be a better way

I know I hark about recruiters over and over but this is the soup in which I sit.

It's really amazing how incompetent tech recruiters are. But job sites are complicit in the incompetence that tech recruiters have. Face it, job sites such as DICE, Monster, Indeed are made for clients, not candidates. Candidates do not pay to use those sites. Recruiters do (I think) as well as end clients. However there is a number of practices which just seem counterintuitive towards the process of finding the right candidate for the correct client.

I've already complains mightily about recruiters incompetence when it comes to screen the candidates before approaching them and even after approaching them. But what about the job sites (as well as how recruiters seem to use and/or abuse such sites)?

The most efficient way to find candidates that might possibly be a match is to advertise to them via job sites by describing what positions you have available to them. Job sites have search engines that allow candidates to search for and apply to such jobs and allow you to save searches or have search agents that can optionally email you new jobs. I never subscribe to such things. Clutter in my inbox does not make me more efficient.

Yet when I go to job sites and search for a job using a saved search or search agent I see pretty much the same old jobs day in and day out. Why? In the name of efficiency, shouldn't I just see the new jobs that match the search agent?

Many sites will show you jobs that you've applied for before. Now tell me, of what use is it to me to see the same job that I applied for over and over again? I have no need to see jobs I've applied for or at the very least there should be a method for easily saying "do not show me jobs that I've already applied for". I see absolutely no value it having them listed as jobs for me. I mean what can I do or say other than "Oh yeah, I already applied for that". They just waste space. Similarly I'd like a filter to filter out jobs requiring security clearances.

But recruiters have in their minds that people are looking for new listings whenever they come to at job site and we are. And I guess they don't want to disappoint showing us a blank page saying "Well there are no new listings today - it's the same old shit you saw yesterday". Hey recruiters! While I don't like knowing there's nothing new, I would much rather be told that then the fake false hope that there is something new by disguising old postings as new and also listing jobs I've already applied for.

Here's what some recruiters do - they change the posting date to today. This allows them to float up an old job that you might not see unless you page down enough to the top of the list assuming your sorting by date. However, think about this... If I saw the job yesterday or last week and wasn't intrigued enough to apply for it, do you really believe that pretending it's new will suddenly make me say "Gee, I gotta apply to this!". No, it won't.

And to add insult to injury, I've tracked this on DICE a little bit and have come to find out that when recruiters "re-post" a job to make it appear new they get a new DICE ID. Now I don't know if they get charged for that - I can only hope. But what I do know is that the same job re-appears as if it was recently posted (DICE uses "Date Posted" but that's a lie. They should call it "Date the recruiter last changed it to to appear fresh" or something like that) but it has a new DICE ID, often sequential to it's previous DICE ID.

OK boys and girls, now think a little bit. If I see a new job with a DICE ID of say Devops-1 and I apply, then 1 week later the recruiter re-posts the position to make it appear fresh getting a new DICE ID of Devops-2, what happens if I then apply again? I would think nothing more than the last time I applied. It would just be extra work for me, extra work for the recruiter and/or the end client. IOW how does this help anybody?!?

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