What Do You Really Know About the Technical Recruiter in Your Inbox?
Tags: career, startup, jobsearch, recruiters
Published: 2019-12-09 17:55:50

My first experience with a technical recruiter started off great and ended in disaster all in less than one month.  Maybe you can relate.  I got my first job as a developer and I could not have been more excited. I was told I would have a yearlong contract and would likely be hired at the end of the year. The type of contract was a “Contract to Hire” meaning that I would work on-site for a company and if after a year they liked my work, they would hire me. The technical recruiting firm would make money from processing the payroll for me and the consulting company I was working for. Read on if this looks familiar to you.

 The job lasted just one week before the consulting company told me they were out of money and would not be able to continue to pay me past that week. Asked if I would be willing to work for them full time without working through a recruiting company when they had the money, I said yes because they were great people. Management made it clear it was not a talent issue but a money issue; my direct manager had tears in his eyes as they told me they were out of money. They asked me how much I was being paid by the recruiter to see if they could afford me. It turned out that of the hourly rate the third-party recruiting firm was charging for me was only getting half.  The recruiting firm was making a 100% profit. The consulting company and I were both quite surprised and felt ripped off. 

My next experience working with a technical recruiter was also a contract-to-hire. I tried to avoid working with a third-party technical recruiter again but the LinkedIn messages would not stop coming. I got a job that I truly would have never been able to get on my own and for that I am grateful. The company did not post jobs on their own at the time or accept applications from developers. They hired developers exclusively through one specific recruiting company. I interviewed and received an offer the same day. The offer more than doubled my prior rate of pay.  
The two very different experiences made me think; how could I possibly have known the difference between the two different third-party technical recruiting companies? How can you know which recruiting companies are to be trusted and which are not?  How could I have been more informed? I searched for reviews of technical recruiters or technical recruiting companies from other developers online but could not find the kind of website I wanted. 

 So …  I developed and launched a review site for developers to review third-party technical recruiting companies with whom they have worked.  At some time or other, we are all in the game of looking for that next great job or interested to see what is out there. I figure that together we can pool our information, share experiences and thereby allow all of us to make more informed decisions about whom we allow to represent us and whom we choose to work with long term. There truly are a lot of great third-party technical recruiting firms out there!

I would love to hear from you and welcome you to sign up and leave your first review (which will take 5 minutes max). Contribute to this free ( https://www.techrecruiterratings.com/ ) site to help us all work only with the best third-party recruiters. We all deserve to make fully informed decisions about someone who wants to represent us to a prospective employer.