Technical recruiters on list

I realize that the Rails list has historically been open to job
postings,
and I generally think that’s a good idea. Recently, though, there have
been
several posts by third-party recruiters and recruitment firms. My
experience with third-party recruiters has been pretty mediocre, and
none
of the employers I’ve ever had were interested in hiring through them.
There are also plenty of stories on the web describing third-party
recruiters
as liars or worse.

Even without that background, though, I’ve noticed that job notices from
employers themselves make an effort to be informative and to attract
quality candidates, notices from third-party recruiters are usually
nothing
more than anonymized copy and paste from some job website.

I propose that we, as a community, consider this list closed to
third-party
recruiters while continuing to welcome job notices from direct
employers.
Job notices are always noise here, as opposed to the signal of technical
discussion of Rails, but those from third-party recruiters are actively
unpleasant and largely useless noise in a way in which direct employer
notices are not.

–Greg

notices are not.

And you don’t even see the ones I filter out which don’t even mention
rails.

Fred

On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 06:01:06PM +0100, Frederick C. wrote:

I propose that we, as a community, consider this list closed to
third-party recruiters while continuing to welcome job notices from
direct employers. Job notices are always noise here, as opposed to the
signal of technical discussion of Rails, but those from third-party
recruiters are actively unpleasant and largely useless noise in a way
in which direct employer notices are not.

And you don’t even see the ones I filter out which don’t even mention
rails.

I appreciate your efforts. I guess I’m asking you to expand them. Are
you
willing? Do you want some consensus before you do?

–Greg
Fred
–Greg

On Sep 18, 6:30 pm, Gregory S. [email protected]
wrote:

I appreciate your efforts. I guess I’m asking you to expand them. Are you
willing? Do you want some consensus before you do?

It makes very little difference to me either way. Personally I dislike
most of the job postings, but them I’m just 1 of 15000 people in this
google group. Some form of community consensus would be nice.

Fred

On Sep 18, 1:08 pm, Frederick C. [email protected]
wrote:

It makes very little difference to me either way. Personally I dislike
most of the job postings, but them I’m just 1 of 15000 people in this
google group. Some form of community consensus would be nice.

Fred

+1 Direct employers only

Jeff

Gregory S. wrote:

Job notices are always noise here, as opposed to the signal
of technical discussion of Rails,

I guess my reaction to that statement would depend on what you mean by
'technical discussion of Rails. You mean to include the dozens of “will
somebody do my homework?” that we get per week? What about the “my
framework’s bigger than your’s” posts we endure. Or, one of my favorite
recurring discussions — “let’s start a beginner’s list. these
beginners
are soooo not ME.”. I’d much rather figure out a way to eliminate
the
dozens, if not hundreds, of those I see each week than the three or four
job
postings, no matter what their source.

but those from third-party recruiters are actively unpleasant

It’s three or four a week, Greg. What’s got your back up?

and largely useless noise in a way in which direct employer
notices are not.

While I don’t disagree that postings from employers are typically
better,
the impact of screening postings from third-party recruiters would be
nothing but negative WRT the growth of the job market for RoR
developers.
The fact is that large companies rely on 3rd-party recruiters to fill
their
position openings. There are more than a few of us out here working
hard to
get RoR positions opened up in those companies. Ignore the posts if
they
bother you.

Best regards,
Bill

On 18-Sep-08, at 2:23 PM, Jeff wrote:

+1 Direct employers only

Jeff

+1

Jodi

On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 3:32 PM, Bill W.
[email protected]wrote:

Ignore the posts if they bother you.

I’m with Bill.


Tim

On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 02:32:36PM -0500, Bill W. wrote:

dozens, if not hundreds, of those I see each week than the three or four job
postings, no matter what their source.

The beginner’s list discussion is a trap that every technical mailing
list
I’ve ever been on has fallen into. Same with do my homework. Over and
over.
The problem there is filtering. The people who participate in all of
those
discussions are mainly the same people who contribute in valuable ways
to
other threads. (Even the kids with homework sometimes become valuable
contributors.) The same cannot be said for job announcements.

Direct employer job announcements are sometimes posted by folks who
contribute to discussions and just want to help their company fill a
spot.
Other times it’s an actual HR type. As a category, they cannot be said
to
be posted by noncontributing people. They also contribute some value to
the
ever-changing segment of the list membership seeking employment.

In comparison, job announcements from third-party recruiters contribute
less value and are 100% posted by people who contribute in no (other?)
valuable way. More below.

but those from third-party recruiters are actively unpleasant

It’s three or four a week, Greg. What’s got your back up?

A third-party job announcement is spam masquerading as value. It’s
unsolicited and commercial, clearly, but it’s worse than that. Anyone
who
responds to the posting, regardless of whether they get the job or not,
is
permanently in the recruiter’s database and will continue to get spammed
by
the recruiter indefinitely. Third-party recruiters work exactly like
spammers, and for the same reasons: even a very small conversion rate
pays
off, and it’s simple to take a shotgun approach by spamming everyone.

I saw two or three messages just today. I’m worried that the trickle
will
become a flood.

and largely useless noise in a way in which direct employer notices are
not.

While I don’t disagree that postings from employers are typically better,
the impact of screening postings from third-party recruiters would be
nothing but negative WRT the growth of the job market for RoR developers.
The fact is that large companies rely on 3rd-party recruiters to fill
their position openings. There are more than a few of us out here
working hard to get RoR positions opened up in those companies.

More power to you, but third-party recruiters do not aid in your
endeavors.
The best at what they do rarely, if ever, get involved with third-party
recruiters. The candidates third-party recruiters bring in average below
the level of direct hires, and poor candidates for these jobs
you’re trying to open up does nothing to help your cause. If there’s a
job
opening at your company, go ahead and post it here. You’re providing at
least as much value to the list membership and to your employer as any
third-party recruiter could, and you’re saving your employer the
recruiter’s fee.

Ignore the posts if they bother you.

I delete 80-95% of the messages I receive from all the mailing lists I’m
on
by looking at nothing more than their subjects. The problem is that
there
is no good way to distinguish by subject an interesting direct job
announcement from recruiter trash. If the recruiter spam increases, I’ll
stop bothering with job announcements at all and just delete them
outright.
I won’t be the only one. The legitimate, direct announcements will
disappear into the noise and companies will have more trouble filling
RoR positions. There is no win from ignoring the problem.

Best regards,
Bill
–Greg

Gregory S. wrote:

They also contribute some value to the ever-changing
segment of the list membership seeking employment.

Thanks for recognizing the needs of those list members.

I saw two or three messages just today. I’m worried
that the trickle will become a flood.

I’ll come at this from two directions:

  1. Let’s deal with it then. OTOH, I’m all in favor of disaster
    planning.
    So how 'bout you take the lead and start working up some quantiative
    triggers and the actions those would invoke and the resources required
    to
    accomplish those actions (human or machine cycles) and we can work
    together
    to get everything ready for the flood.

  2. Let it rain! One way I look at the postings here is as a measure of
    which way the market for RoR talent is moving. But then, I leave the tv
    downstairs turned on to CNN or MSNBC for pretty much the same reason: I
    stop and take a look at the ticker any time I walk by. It’s not
    generally
    actionable, but I find it interesting.

The best at what they do rarely, if ever, get involved with
third-party recruiters.

This is sounding a bit elistist. Remember the folks you mentioned
above?

Bill

I read almost all the ‘job post’ entries on this mailing list (and
several other ruby related lists). I can’t say I’ve ever been
interested in one posted by a 3rd party.

I’m not sure that outright banning them is necessary, but I certainly
wouldn’t want the postings by 3rd-party recruiters to increase. Either
way, they still have lots of ways to contact the rails community
through sites dedicated to hiring.

I guess the ideal would be that they had to pay to post (and the money
would go to thank our wonderful moderators, of course). But I guess
that isn’t quite how these mailing lists are meant to work!

As much as I hate to receive spam job posts, we shouldn’t forget that
these jobs ( and job posts ) do play a HUGE role in Rails’ overall
success and enable people to work on the stuff we love. So if these
ads are helping even a very small fraction of the 15k userbase,
they’re worth keeping. However, I do vote for us trying to enforce
‘[JOBS]’ subject prefix, so that people can easily filter those emails
if they want to.

On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 6:01 PM, Frederick C.
[email protected] wrote:

actively


Cheers!

Why don’t you guys just create a different forum for these job postings?
Would that benefit the whole RoR community?

Yes! That’s great…
So, why not have the recruiters post their job listing instead of
sending
e-mails directly to the discussion forum? That sounds like a possible
good
solution…

What you mean like http://railswork.com/?

Ryan B.
Freelancer
Skype: radarlistener
MSN & Gtalk: [email protected]

I agree completly. lets built it.

On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 12:02 PM, Emanuele T.
[email protected]wrote:

solution…

MSN & Gtalk: [email protected]

that the trickle will become a flood.
to get everything ready for the flood.

http://mekdigital.com


with love
sreeprasad

the list could be re-implemented as a rails application with socially
moderated member accounts… we are so many in here that it could be the
fastest project ever deployed! ;D

On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 11:19 PM, cherrian harada [email protected]
wrote:


On 19/09/2008, at 12:19 PM, cherrian harada wrote:

triggers and the actions those would invoke and the resources required to


Emanuele T.
+1 (619) 549 3230
4955 Narragansett Ave Apt #9
San Diego Ca 92107-3157

I believe it’s a mistake to apply stereotypes to third-party
recruiters. I’ve worked with enough of them over a twenty year
contracting career to know they’re just people, exactly like the rest
of us. The best are true professionals, very good at what they do and
a real pleasure to work with. The worst can be so bad as to reflect
poorly upon the entire human race. But far and away, most are simply
average, decent folk doing their best to make a living.

That said, I also believe it’s inappropriate for recruiters to troll
technical forums for recruits. I suspect it’s ineffective as well:
I’d never go to a hardware store to shop for groceries, and I’d never
come here to look for a job. Call me old-fashioned, but I believe
jobs belong on a job board.

On Sep 18, 12:19 pm, Gregory S. [email protected]

I say, we use red. It’ll shine brightly in sunlight. And will look
lovely under moonlight

On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 9:01 AM, sreeprasad sp [email protected]
wrote:


Thanks for recognizing the needs of those list members.
to
generally



with love
sreeprasad


Cheers!