There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded. - Mark Twain
To All Third Party Recruiters:
As a follow-up to my Open Letter to Developer Candidates, I thought it would be appropriate to tell third party recruiters how best to get you candidates picked when submitting them. I feel a great deal of time is being wasted due to a lack of understanding about what is important to me as a hiring manager when I am hiring a developer. The advice given is not meant to be insulting and hopefully it will not be taken that way.
Send good candidates, not gifts: Third party recruiters and their account managers spend a great deal of effort trying "build a relationship" with me. To be blunt, this will have zero impact on the candidate hired for the job. Once you are on the approved vendor list (just so you know, I have no input as to who goes on the list), the only priority for you should be finding great candidates. I refer all request for my time back to our in-house recruiters because I don't want to waste your time or mine. Hiring managers who take you up on your lunch invitations are using you. I appreciate the effort, but you are better off spending this time schmoozing highly qualified candidates. Those are the important relationships.
Pre-Screen means pre-screen: I cannot tell you how many times I have interviewed so-called pre-screened Senior Developers who could not answer basic programming questions. This is infuriating. You don't even need to know the specifics of the job to do a basic pre-screen. A developer claiming 8 years of Java experience should be able to explain polymorphism regardless of the job description. Your company has relationships with previously placed developers who can quickly screen applicants for you. If you test applicants, do it on site. I can assure you that cheating is rampant. Submitting unqualified candidates does you no favors in the eyes of everyone involved.
Not all candidates are good candidates: Building on my last point, just because someone applies does not mean you should submit them. No amount of coaching or resume cleaning is going to get them past the interview if they are not qualified. You are better off submitting 2 good candidates rather than 8 bad / mediocre ones. If you have a reputation for of bringing superstars, your submissions will move up to the top of the list.
Research the candidates: Do a Google search. Find them on LinkedIn. The good ones will probably have GitHub accounts. Read what they post on Twitter. I am going to do all these, so if you don't want any surprises you should take 5 minutes to research your candidates online profile. You will also begin to see similarities in the profiles of superstar developers. I still get calls from recruiters wanting me to apply for developer positions. It would be clear to anyone who spent 30 seconds looking at my LinkedIn account I have not coded in years.
This letter was meant to be taken as a positive guide to getting your candidates placed. We both want the same thing, a position filled. For this to happen, your candidate must be the most qualified and best fit. From my perspective, third-parties spend too much time on building a relationship with me as opposed to finding superstar candidates. I interview a great deal of unqualified candidates who should have never been submitted. It becomes very clear after the interview that the resume had been professionally scrubbed. All this does is damage your reputation. Bad developers are not going to slip through our screening process and they should not slip through yours.
Thanks and good hunting,
Real Steve Vaughn
well said.
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