Working with recruitment consultants — an engineer’s experience
In the past, whenever I wanted to change jobs, I used to go to LinkedIn, search for a job title and then tinker with the filters until I got reasonably relevant results to what I was looking for. Then I would go through each vacancy, read the description and check if it’s a good fit for me or not. Then I would apply. This is the traditional method of searching for a job, It worked for me multiple times and I’m sure it’s being used by the big majority of people out there, but I feel that it’s no longer easy and effective to do this. I had the opportunity to find my last job with the support of a recruitment consultant and I decided to do some research on how agencies operate in the technology sector. I’m now convinced that the best way to get a job as a senior software engineer is with the help of a professional.
The struggle
When I apply for a job, I have to go through tens, maybe hundreds of listings to find the companies that I like. It takes hours and hours of scrolling and evaluating. I usually open 100 tabs, each with a job description and I cycle through all the tabs, closing the ones that are not relevant. After this, I end up with less than 10 options. Out of these 10 applications, only 2–3 get back to me, some use email, some call me during working hours and usually, the recruiter needs 15…
