How useful are IT headhunters/recruiters when looking for a new job?

Question

Since they exist for several fields with varying degrees of usefulness, I'm curious as to the reputation of headhunters/recruiters that focus solely on IT professionals (e.g. programmers, software engineers, CIOs, etc) when it comes to finding a new job. Are they actually useful, or is it fairly hit or miss? Does the old adage of only working with a limited number apply or can you safely give you resume/CV to several of them?

Answer 1

I think they can be helpful, but you have to be aware that their job isn't to find a good place for you, it's to sell you on a place that hired them to find people.

I haven't dealt with many recruiters in my career (yet?) but the ones I did come across were fairly non-technical and were just parroting vague job description details to me and making promises about the high salary potential. So I'd say it's pretty hit or miss. I wouldn't ignore recruiters and headhunters entirely -- you never know when a good opportunity might present itself -- but I would definitely be careful to not fall for the optimistic job descriptions.

Answer 2

My experience from the last 23 years around San Francisco and Silicon Valley has been:

• Very few recruiters have any idea about technology, or how to make a really good fit between you and an employer. They mostly look for buzzword matches between job listings and resumes.
• Despite that, they're a great way to get in the door lots of places that would pay no attention if you sent your resume directly.
• Most tech job openings are not advertised - maybe 80%. You can only find out about them through recruiters.
• It's normal to give your resume to many headhunters around here. In fact, if you post it to sites like DICE or Monster, they'll get it anyway.
• Companies often give the same opening to several headhunters. You need to insist they tell you who the company is before presenting your resume, because it can look bad if multiple recruiters submit you for the same opening.
• The very best recruiters usually wind up getting hired away from the job shops to work in-house for places like Google or Apple.

I've found posting my resume to DICE, and a synopsis to LinkedIn, to be great ways to get recruiters to contact me with interesting opportunities. If you use DICE and you're actively looking, you want to make a little change to your resume every few weeks to get recruiters looking at it again. Some job shops will download your resume and retain it in their databases; I've gotten phone calls up to three years after deactivating my resume on DICE.

This world changes frequently, and old wisdom rapidly becomes out of date. About three years ago, a friend of mine wound up back in the job market after many years, and tried to do the 1990-style approach of sending his resume to one recruiter who would take a personal interest in getting him employed. After about six months of nothing, he finally took my suggestion to post his resume on DICE. He started a new job within two weeks and was having to fend off recruiters who kept calling him for other positions.

Answer 3

Some agents are brilliant, others not so

As a contractor in the UK, I deal with many agents (headhunters) on a regular basis. Almost invariably they do not have strong technical skills and it doesn't really matter. Their business is to get their candidate to be accepted by their client. If they are good at their business then they will have carefully matched their clients requirements with your CV and come to the conclusion that you are worth a call. If not, then you just get a vague (automated) email inviting you to call them.

What good are they?

A really good agent will build a solid lasting business relationship with you. It is usually in their interest to keep hold of good candidates that can be recycled into other positions later on (particularly true of contractors/freelancers/temp coders). And, if you continue improving your skills, that makes you much more of an asset to them because they can charge their client much more for you, and their client gets value for money. Win-win-win, really.

As to whether they are useful or not, in my case they are definitely useful. They provide me with a constant stream of potential offers for my next contract and I don't have to spend any time sending CVs out to random companies or cold calling. In return, they take a percentage of the value of contract (I don't see this percentage I only know my rate).

Unfortunately, most of my dealings with agents are non-personal, routine chats with person X from agency Y. The exceptions (and you know who you are if you're reading this ;-) ) don't hide their office number and have taken the time to build up history, repeat contracts and face to face contact. They add considerable value, and I thank them for their efforts.

Answer 4

I got one job through a recruiter 12 years ago. Since then, nothing. I find them to be annoying at best. On monster.com I've noted that I prefer email, but they call. They are looking for a Python programmer, but the job turns out to be mostly C++ with a bit of Python, maybe. It's for a permanent position in London, I don't live in London and ain't gonna move, which is noted on my profile, etc, etc.

Most recruiters seem to work with a scattergun approach. They contact as many as possible, they build up a list of CV's which they want to list everything I've even done no matter how irrelevant it is for what I know. I'm a Python guru, but they want to hire me to do Java jobs.

Obviously there are good recruiters. They are just very far between.

Answer 5

I'd say it is hit and miss. Some recruiters have been good but just as many if not more have been lousy for me. Course this was just in Seattle and Calgary, but in each case a limited supply is better as some agencies will be applying on the same position and getting applied twice or more will get you disqualified generally. Thus, I'd be careful about having too many and not being aware of where your resume is going as sometimes recruiters may just try to apply you everywhere under the sun to get their commission, but this problem exists in every field where there are the a-holes that ruin it for everyone else.

Answer 6

They sound like real-estate agents most of the time : "An exciting position...", "A great role for a motivated xyz", "A chance to enter industry K", etc.

All while they seem not able to note my details properly, which results in being sent job offers totally NOT matching anything in my CV.

Sincerely, they've been quite useless to me as I picked up zero jobs advertised to me by headhunters, but I suppose other people had a different experience there.

Answer 7

I was placed by a recruiter in my current position. He is a specialist in programming jobs, and seems like he worked as a programmer himself. His business seems to be providing high quality candidates.

He called me up and did a whole prescreening process, asking a whole lot of programming questions from the most basic to the very technical. Then once he was convinced I actually knew what I said I did, then he forwarded my details for an appropriate position.

If you can get a recruiter like that, then yes they are very useful.

Answer 8

I think I agree most of the posted answers so far. My experience is that recruiters are all, of course, looking for the easy money. But they vary greatly in quality and attention to details. Some of the better ones make an effort to match you to a good fit opportunity, but the ones that come out of a cracker jack box just don't care (as someone said before, they're just matching up keywords).

However, some may work for agencies that have relationships with companies and can get you opportunities you could never get from the classifieds, online sites, etc. In these cases, if they know you, they can be the human conduit that gets you in the door. They have spent time building contacts with managers and HR departments and can capitalize on that.

So use them. They're most certainly going to use you.