One of the challenges recruiters have is that few people understand what we do. I think it's only recently, in fact, that even in tech circles people have started to truly understand the role of a tech recruiter, maybe in the last 5-7 years as the job market has fully rebounded, and even there we still aren't quite understood.
"So Ben, what do you do?"
"I am a technical recruiter"
"Oh, so what is that like a headhunter?"
"Yeah I guess, although I find that term weirdly offensive actually. It makes us sound like wild savages I think."
"Huh."
Usually it's more like:
"I am a technical recruiter."
"Oh." (blank stare)
"Yeah, I basically hire software engineers, cause they're super in demand these days."
"Hmm. And Kim what do you do?"
"I'm an anesthesiologist"
"Wow! How about you Derek?"
"I'm actually an attorney"
Me: (God dammit)
We're like auto-mechanics, if auto-mechanics were constantly jamming up your inbox with messages. Like, 90% of the time you'd be thinking "leave me the hell alone, auto-mechanic." But when you need one, damn it's good to have one or two you can trust, right? But you really don't want to need one. But you inevitably will one day. Muhahah.
Onto the Misconceptions:
- Corporate Tech Recruiters are paper pushers. A lot of people, even inside recruiting, see corporate tech recruiters as glorified admins. They seem to think our job is to simply take candidates who apply to req's, coordinate the interviews, send out the benefits and initiate the background checks. Maybe that used to be the case but generally it is a myth. The truth is, most corporate recruiters I know are highly intelligent and have complex work to do, not the least of which in many cases is to find non-active job seekers from scratch. It's actually pretty competitive too, when it comes to finding good software engineers. And it also doesn't pay like an admin job.
- Recruiters are pushy and annoying. Maybe the unsuccessful ones are. I don't know anyone who has made it very far in this business, though, being Vin Diesel from boiler room. Those wild Hollywood sales stunts rarely work in the real world and the fact is, nobody likes the hard sell. The hard sell died in the 80's along with suspenders, which I think is what Wall Street types used to wear a lot.
- Most technical recruiters don't know the first thing about the job they're recruiting for. Unfair and untrue. At least 50% of us know what we are doing.
- Do all technical recruiters have STEM backgrounds? Actually you'd be surprised. While most of us do come from Math, Science or Technology backgrounds in undergrad, there are a few recruiters who may be wayward liberal arts majors. You could almost say those few recruiters stumbled into the profession after wasting their degrees on majors like Sociology, Psych, Anthropology or History.
If you think of any others, definitely chime in with your thoughts.
