But seriously, where are all the good recruiters hiding?
As founders, we spend a good portion of our days selling our product and our company not to prospective clients, but to prospective employees. The good employees usually don’t come to you; you have to go to them. As a solo founder, I was overwhelmed with spending so much time recruiting, tediously looking on LinkedIn for people that seemed like a good fit on paper. At some point, I thought maybe I should outsource recruiting to a recruiter. I had gotten several InMails from random recruiters so I decided to finally take a look.
Here’s an example of one I got:
“Hi Eva, I see you are looking for a React Native developer in Los Angeles. I have some candidates you may like. Let me know if you want me to send them to you.” -Kyle Smith (name changed)
I wondered how he could possibly send me candidates when he knew nothing about my business — my mission, our culture etc. Also what were his fees? Didn’t we need to sign a contract? Despite the lack of details, I decided to respond to his message. “Okay, please send to [email address].”
A few hours later, I received an email from “Kyle Smith” with 3 resumes of developers. He told me to take a look and if I wanted to speak with any of them he said he could set an interview up. I looked at the resumes. First of all, there was no mention of React Native. I understand that developers can learn new languages but if he had read the job description I was specifically looking for someone with 1–2 years of React Native experience. Secondly, none of them were located in Los Angeles. The resumes also clearly listed the names of the potential candidates. I had incorrectly assumed that he would have blurred out the names for confidentiality purposes.
I answered a few other InMails and the responses were all somewhat the same. The candidates they sent me were not good fits.
I decided to ask a few founder friends and startup employees I knew if they had used a recruiter they liked. Many said that they had had bad experiences for various reasons, many of which are laid out in this subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/. But many also said that they knew of a few recruiters they really liked. Unfortunately, none of the referrals specialized in the roles I was hiring for, but it gave me hope that I would find a recruiter!
I turned to Google and searched for a recruiter review site. Nothing. How could this be? The only place I found a list of recruiters was LinkedIn but I had no idea whether they were good or not. I wanted to look at a recruiter’s profile and see candidate reviews, founder reviews and other information such as their fees, which companies they have placed at etc.
Given I couldn’t find what I needed, I created a Google Form to send around. Once I get a good amount of responses, I am going to publish all the recruiter names and reviews I receive from the community. That way, the next time I or some other founder is in need of some help recruiting, they have somewhere to go.
You can help out by providing reviews of recruiters you have interacted with.
If you are a candidate: Please fill this form out.
If you are a hiring manager/in house recruiter/founder: Please fill this form out.
If you are an outside recruiter yourself, we also want to hear from you! Please fill this form out and tell us about yourself!
Include your email address so I can send you the final list of all recruiters and their reviews.
Thank you all!
Eva
PS If you have any feedback, feel free to reach out to me at ehibnick@gmail.com
