Tips To Overcome Ageism In Hiring As a Software Professional

As a recruiter who is about to celebrate (as if recruiters celebrate such a thing) mark fifteen years in the technology industry, I am starting to see that many of the contacts I made back in the late 90’s are now having some concerns about ageism during a job search.  Any failed interview for older software professionals may cause a raised gray eyebrow and a thought that age and not their skill was a factor in the decision.  Companies that freely apply catchall terms such as “overqualified“ or “not a cultural fit” in a rejection only serve to cloud the engineer’s mind and cause him/her to wonder if these are just the politically correct or legal code words to signify “You’re too old for us”.

Much has been written about older professionals being dogged by myths surrounding work effort, production, energy, and whether employees with families are more likely to work less.  Start-ups are often portrayed as testosterone-and/or-alcohol-fueled code marathons only welcome to young males, which hurts the many start-ups that are not. But even hiring managers who have read studies and evidence that debunks these myths may still be guilty of judging candidates based on perception, so another blog post about why all companies (start-up or mature) should consider hiring older workers may not be helpful.  The goal of this post is to help these more experienced candidates maximize their chances of being considered for jobs, and to make sure they are evaluated based on their skills alone during interviews.

Just as you would find at a nightclub, ageism starts with the person at the door.  During a job search, the doorman is the person screening resumes.  Therefore, the resume is the first item of consideration when trying to combat the problem.  Let’s look at some common resume mistakes that expose candidates to ageism.

Resume Tips

Mistake #1 – Your resume does not need to include every position you have had in your life, and it doesn’t even need to list every position you have held in your field.  This is by far the most common way that candidates expose themselves to possible ageism.  If you have been in the industry for over twenty years, the work you did at the beginning of your career is hopefully quite different than what you are doing now.  Trim down your resume to a manageable size by eliminating jobs that are the most dated and least relevant.  Although there is nothing wrong with removing outdated experience, add the phrase ‘Additional experience provided upon request‘ if you feel it necessary.

Mistake #2 – The ‘Education’ section of a resume does not need to include graduation dates.  The graduation date is arguably the easiest and most accurate way to put an age number on a candidate, using the formula

Age = (current year - graduation year) + 22

By including the date of graduation you are simply making it easier for them to discriminate.  When hiring managers or recruiters see dates that seem like the distant past, they will do the math in their head subconsciously and label you with a number.  “This guy graduated in ’81?  That makes him, what…54?”  Don’t put the date on the resume if you feel that your age could be used against you.  This isn’t dishonesty (putting an incorrect year would be dishonest).  There are several details about you that are not listed on your resume, and graduation date should not be required.

Without a graduation date, the formula for quickly approximating age generally becomes

Age = (current year - year of hire at earliest job listed) + 22

If you consider the point listed in Mistake #1 and you decide not to list early and irrelevant job(s) right out of school, and you also do not list your graduation date, you can potentially take years off of your perceived age.

Mistake #3 – Your resume does not need to include every technology that you have ever used.  A resume of a very senior engineer could potentially contain an impressive and lengthy list of technologies in the skills section if he/she were to offer a comprehensive inventory of the various hardware, tools, languages, operating systems, databases, protocols, etc. that have been used during the span of their career.

Keep in mind that certain technologies or buzzwords are likely to trigger a visceral reaction based either on the age of the technology itself or how that technology is generally viewed by the industry.  Languages that are out of favor in today’s programming culture are probably the most common issue.  To have experience over a long period of time and with several tools is undoubtedly valuable, but unless a technology has significant relevance to the jobs being sought the risk of including these details may outweigh the benefits.

Interviews

If you followed the advice above regarding your resume, the next step will be interviews.  In interviews, you want to make sure not to play into any of the myths or the fears that are commonly associated with the hiring of older workers.  Below is a list containing many of the most stereotypical generalizations or assumptions common to ageism and how to best avoid them.

Older hires will not be able to put in hours.  The availability issue is more closely associated with start-ups that may require more office time, and this perception is amplified when a start-up is staffed primarily with young, childless, and single employees.  Being honest about your desire for work/life balance is best for all parties involved, but don’t let the interviewers assume that because of your age or family situation that you are only able to work 40 hours if you are indeed open to more.  Clarify the amount of time you are willing to commit to working in or out of the office to prevent false assumptions.

Older hires will retire soon.  Answering the “Where do you see yourself in five years?” with “Retired in Florida” is probably not the best answer, but honesty about your expectations is always best.  Don’t let the employer assume that you are planning to retire soon if that is not the case.  If you can not afford to retire in the near future, it may be helpful to let a hiring manager know that fact in order to allay this potential fear.  The amount of time technology professionals of any age spend at any one company is lower than it used to be, so having an older employee on board for three to five years could have value to the company that is not much different than the average tenure of a young hire.

Older hires have low energy or are less productive.  Older candidates should be more aware of their perceived energy level and body language during interviews.  It’s good advice to job seekers of all ages to try to schedule interviews during the hours of the day that you feel you perform best and are most alert.  Be sure you are well rested, fed, and look alive.

Older hires have dated or irrelevant experience.  Eliminating some of the older experience on the resume helps showcase current skills while avoiding the appearance of stagnation.  When giving anecdotal answers, try to focus your material first on what is most relevant and most recent.  Referring to projects that ended thirty years ago is not advised unless the lesson learned was incredibly valuable.

Older engineers only want to manage.  If you have been in leadership roles but are looking for something more hands-on, you must make that very clear during interviews and in initial correspondence when applying for a job.  The assumption will always be that employees expect more responsibility as their career progresses, but many software engineers simply want to stay in the code and are not interested in managing.  Don’t let your interviewer assume that you want to manage if you do not.  A willingness to mentor employees while also being hands-on will add to your potential value.

Older engineers are less teachable and may have strongly reinforced bad habits.  This line of thinking is amplified if the candidate has been in the same professional environment for many years, and the suspicion is that engineers become overly accustomed to a single way of working and won’t easily adapt to new ways.  If you have had the same employer for a long time, try to emphasize any major changes that took place during your tenure and how you were forced to learn new things or leave your comfort zone.  If you were an agent for change, be sure to bring that fact up during conversation.

Older hires will not be a culture fit.  Culture fit is something older engineers probably didn’t hear much about in the beginning of their career, and ‘not a fit’ can be used as a blanket term for rejecting candidates without having to give a specific reason (which potentially exposes a company to discrimination lawsuits).  Try to learn about company culture before the interview so you can at least be aware of their values and the image they want to convey, even if that image is not really who they are.

Career advice

Stay relevant.  Keep up to speed on what technologies are popular with the cool kids, even if you do not use them on the job.  If you have time to spend a few hours and tinker, that experience may pay off in your next job search.  Knowing what others in the industry are doing is as simple as reading articles every few weeks.

Never stagnate.  Older engineers that overstay their welcome at a company will have an incredibly difficult time finding work if a job search becomes necessary.  When senior engineers are the victim of layoffs after being employed for 15 or more years, a long and difficult job search is often the result.  Being stuck in the same role with the same technologies at the same company for a long stretch could become comfortable, but it will not be an asset when changing employers.  Your first loyalty should be to yourself and your career, and not to your company.  In my experience, older professionals that have not stayed at any job for a long stretch (>10 years) have the most prospects.

Keep a positive attitude.  Many engineers are quick to actually dismiss themselves as candidates due to age, and they don’t even bother applying to companies they feel will reject them based on ageism.  Other candidates have self-defeating attitudes about their plight or their perceived inability to improve their situation.  Do not fear rejection, and learn from mistakes made during job searches.

Share your knowledge.  Engineers that have a reputation as teachers, advisers, and mentors will always have an easier time finding work.  Whether you write technical blog posts, present to user groups, or do informal talks during lunch, you will develop a reputation as someone who uses your experience to make your teammates better.  Think of your experience as a positive asset for a new employer, and be known as someone who is always willing to guide younger technologists.

Be open to non-traditional employment options.  Job trends and careers have changed drastically over the past 30 years, and the traditional ‘graduate college → get job → retire with pension‘ progression isn’t realistic today.  If you haven’t already, give consideration to contract/consulting work, contract-to-hire or alternative employment options.  Older professionals may find that ageism is less common in temporary hire situations.

A Quick Thanks to DZone

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Bodhi the dog and his owner show off DZone swag

I just wanted to say a quick thanks here to DZone for being so generous in sending a swag package to me and many of their other authors for contributions over the past year.  The bag included a DZone mug, a flash drive courtesy of Tizen, a data nerd drink cozy from New Relic, two of DZone’s famous Refcardz, fancy black t-shirt, sticky notepad, sticker, a set of “Inter-Cubicle Ballistic Missiles” (think mini foam darts for shooting at friends, enemies, QA testers and project managers) and a substantial Manning Early Access Program discount code!

It feels good to be appreciated.

What If We ______ Like We Hire Programmers – What Questions Are Appropriate?

Programmers often experience a high degree of frustration during the interview process, and one primary source of annoyance is how the programmer perceives the line of questioning or exercises.  In a buyer’s market where supply exceeds demand, hiring managers will often be a bit more selective in evaluating candidates, and talent evaluators may request or require more specific skill-sets than they would if the talent pool were deeper.  These tactics are short-sighted but deemed necessary in a crunch.

I recently stumbled on two articles with an identical theme.  “If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers” was written in 2004, and “What If Cars Were Rented Like We Hire Programmers” was posted very recently.  The tl;dr of these posts is essentially that programmers being interviewed are asked incredibly esoteric questions or are grilled about experience with irrelevant topics (wood color for carpenters, car wiring for car renters).  The comments sections on Reddit and Hacker News are a mix of agreement, criticism, and various anecdotes about interviews that reflected the articles’ theme.  No analogy is perfect.

There are surely companies that are ‘doing it wrong’ and asking questions that will reveal little about a candidate’s potential as an employee, but I’m getting the sense that many candidates are starting to claim that even appropriate lines of questioning and requests are now somehow inappropriate.  More importantly, it appears that candidates may not understand or appreciate the true value of certain questions or tasks.

To continue the carpenter analogy, let’s look at the types of questions or tasks that would be both useful and appropriate in evaluating either a carpenter or a programmer (or anyone that builds things) for potential employment.

  • Overall experience and training – No one will should argue these.
  • Experience specifically relevant to the project at hand – This is where we may first see some candidates crying foul, particularly if the relevancy of the experience is judged predominantly by the level of experience with very specific tools.  Learning a new programming language is probably not equivalent to learning how to use a different brand of saw, but engineers can sometimes be overconfident about the amount of time required to become productive with a new technology.  The relevancy of experience factors into a hiring decision most when project delivery is valued over long-term employee development.
  • Answer some questions about your craft – When hiring managers ask questions, candidates should keep in mind that there can be a few reasons why a question is asked.  Obviously, one objective may be to truly find out if you know the answer.  However, sometimes the interviewer asks a difficult question simply to see how you may react to pressure.  Another possibility is that the interviewer wants to reveal if you are the type of person who may confidently give a wrong answer to try and fool the interviewer, if you are more likely to admit what you do not know, and to evaluate your resourcefulness by how you would research a problem with an unknown answer.  A genuinely, laugh-out-loud stupid question may be asked to see how well you may deal with frustration with a co-worker or an unruly customer.  Lastly, the interviewer may simply want to see your method of approaching a tough question and breaking it down.  Candidates that are quick to complain about being asked seemingly minute or irrelevant details often overlook the true purpose behind these exercises.
  • Design something – I’m always amazed when candidates call me in a state of shock after being asked to do a whiteboard exercise in an interview, as if these types of requests were either unfair, insulting, or a ‘gotcha’ technique.  Anyone who builds things should be somewhat comfortable (or at least willing) to either visually depict a past design or attempt to design a quick solution to a problem on the spot.
  • Show us how you work alone – Assigning a short task for someone to complete either in an interview setting or at home before/after an interview is absolutely an appropriate request, which candidates can choose to accept or deny.  It is both only an opportunity to demonstrate skills and to further express your interest in the position by being willing to invest time.  Providing a bit more than the minimum requested solution is a valuable method to differentiate yourself from other candidates.
  • Let’s see how you work with a team – As candidates are often hired to build things collaboratively, a short pairing exercise or a group problem-solving activity could be the best way to efficiently evaluate how well one plays with others.
  • Show us some samples – Professionals who build things have the unique interviewing advantage of actually showing something physical that they have built.  A carpenter bringing a piece of furniture to an interview should be no different than an engineer offering a past code sample.  Companies are increasingly using past code as an evaluation tool.
  • References – At some point in the process of evaluating talent, asking for references is a given.  Being unwilling or unable to provide references can make someone unemployable, even if all other tasks are met.

If you go back and reread the articles about the carpenter and rental car interviews, you may have a new perspective on the reasons some questions may be asked.  Think back on some interviews that you have had, and consider whether it’s possible that the interviewer had ulterior motives.  It’s not always about simply knowing an answer.

If you found this article useful, you might find my ebook Job Tips For GEEKS: The Job Search very helpful.  You can also follow Job Tips For Geeks on Google+, Facebook, and Twitter.

How to Hire Geeks, Brand Your Shop, and Beat the “Talent Shortage”

As a recruiter of software engineers, I hear every day how difficult it is for software companies to find technical talent.  If hiring engineers was easy, I wouldn’t be in business.  Using a recruiter is one way to have qualified potential employees neatly packaged and delivered, but there are several other strategies that forward-thinking firms can implement to differentiate themselves from their competitors who are just posting ads to the same old places and hitting up the friends and family networks.  Your company probably spends significant amounts of money to advertise your product and brand, but very little attention is paid to promoting the company’s identity as a good employer for engineers.  These strategies can take a bit of time and effort, but the rewards are stronger talent at a lesser expense.

Here are a handful of ways to make your company more attractive to new engineering hires.

Creative ads, inviting job descriptions, unique process

I have both reviewed and written more job descriptions for software engineering jobs than I care to mention, and it seems that well over 90% of the ads out there consist of the same trite words and phrases mashed up in different ways.  More importantly, it is incredibly rare to see ads that ask the reader to apply.  You will see ads that specify who should not apply (“must have x years of experience with ______“), but how often do you see an ad actually encouraging an applicant to “check us out”?  Request your reader to act and apply, particularly if your ad is placed in a location where qualified candidates are more likely to be.

Making the application process itself more interesting is another way to set yourself apart.  I don’t know anything about Parse, but I know they allow engineers to apply via API.  Asking an engineer to fill out an online application that takes ten minutes is an annoying barrier to applying, while adding a small element to the hiring process that engineers view as a minor challenge is a potential draw.  If you are going to argue that the application process is a test of an applicant’s commitment and interest, I will counter that a better measure of interest is to have engineers solve a small technical problem to apply (see API example above).

Engineering blogs

Geeks like reading about cool stuff that other geeks are doing.  How often do you see links publicized from the Twitter engineering blog, Facebook’s engineering page, or Netflix’s blog.  Are you sick of seeing the phrase “____ is a GitHubber!“?  Maybe your company isn’t solving the types of problems that these firms are, but that doesn’t mean the problems you are solving won’t be interesting to a specific audience.  Smaller shops that post even once or twice a month about a technical challenge, decisions being made, or new additions will draw some readers and potential hires.  Comments on your engineering blog are a signal of potential employment interest.

Open source projects and GitHub/Bitbucket public repos

If your company has developed something internally that could have some utility to other developers, making it open source can score your firm some credibility and visibility with the community.  Exposing well-written code shows off your team’s expertise and making it freely available to others builds goodwill.  Those interactions with developers that contribute to your project or use the code are a good way to start a recruiting dialogue.

Community involvement/outreach

Sponsoring and/or presenting at meetups, conferences, and users’ groups is probably the most targeted advertising you can do to promote your company as an attractive employer of engineers.  In theory, money spent on sponsorships could be much more effective than job ads on general employment sites.   Unfortunately, many companies spend the money but end up making a negative impression by trying to turn a meeting into their own career fair.  As someone who has run a users’ group for almost 13 years, it appears that the most effective way to attract potential hires in these forums is to have a couple of your best engineers present and demonstrate how they solved a challenging technical problem.  If you can get the audience to leave the session thinking “I’d love to work with them“, you will get some new applicants.

“Courting” during the hiring process

What is your typical hiring process?  If you are like most of the companies I’ve worked with over the past 15 years, the process consists of a phone screen and one or two face-to-face interviews (and sometimes a test).  When your process is exactly the same as that of your competitors, what does it say about your company?  Nothing.  Mix it up a little by initiating contact with an offsite coffee or lunch, especially if the candidate appears to be very strong and in demand.

Always be interviewing

If your company’s five best engineers resigned tomorrow, who would you try to hire?  I expect that most simply don’t know.  They say timing is everything in hiring (and everything else).  However, the main reason timing is such a factor is that most companies are only willing to interview candidates when they have a well-defined open position.  Timing is indeed everything when the hiring window is only fully open during short instances and cycles.

I am constantly trying to encourage my clients to always keep an open ear to new hires, and to be willing to interview candidates even when there is not a budgeted position currently open.  It is probably important to tell candidates when there is not a current opening, but many will still want to take an informational or informal interview.  This gives a firm the opportunity to develop a wish list of hires for when a vacancy arises.  During times where an open job is not immediately available a company may raise the bar as to who is invited in, but interviewing exceptional candidates as they appear is one way to defeat much of what is attributed to ‘bad timing’.

Focus more on overall talent, less on buzzwords

If your company has explicit and rigid rules on only considering candidates that have a certain number of years of experience, whether overall or in a certain technology, you are doing it wrong.  In a buyer’s market it is common for firms to create very specific requirements for experience, but in times like now when demand is high and supply is low we see the requirements open up significantly.  Companies that hire the best available engineering talent instead of an engineer with a specific skill should end up with better teams in the long run.  Turning away a savvy engineer because his/her experience is with a different language is a tough choice.  Of course some hires are made with short term goals, particularly in the start-up world, but focusing too much on a narrow skill set contributes greatly to the perceived skills shortage.

Conclusion
In my own experience, the companies that are using some of these strategies are much easier clients to ‘sell’ to candidates.  Being stealthy is intriguing but by design it won’t get you noticed.  Making your engineering organization visible to your target audience (great engineers) and promoting the company’s image as “engineer-friendly” should result in a larger and more qualified candidate pool.

Interview Prep For Geeks

Failing an interview due to a lack of qualifications is forgivable, but it is tragic when highly qualified candidates do not get an offer due to being unprepared. With the amount of information freely available today, the time and effort required to prepare for an interview is extremely low and a relatively small investment to make in your career.

Typically a candidate will have at least two or three days advance notice to do some research and prepare for any interview. Here is a checklist of things for technologists to investigate to be sure you are ready for what will come your way.

  • Company intel – Learn as much as you can about the company, and try to have at least one minute of material memorized to answer the “What do you know about us?” question. Be prepared to present on the company history, the products or services the company provides, details on the business model, and the industry itself (competitors, health of the market, etc.). For technologists, the ability to give an eloquent response to the “Describe what the company does” question is a huge asset that should not be overlooked and could be a significant factor in your success. Gathering substantial information on a young company’s funding status or finances might be difficult, but there will generally be at least some info in press releases from venture partners.
  • Tech environment – Get specific details about the technical environment by doing some basic web research, reviewing any available job descriptions or LinkedIn employee profiles, and talking to your recruiter or any appropriate company contacts you may have. What frameworks, languages, databases, operating systems, and hardware are they using? Even if the details aren’t all entirely relevant to your interview, it will show that you are taking this process seriously. Look up any buzzwords or acronyms you don’t recognize so you can at least discover if you may have experience with a related item (“I haven’t worked with ______, but I’m familiar with ________ which appears to be a similar tool/language”).
  • Tech moves – Knowing the company’s current tech details is valuable, but knowing about some of the company’s technical history will show great initiative while also providing potential insight into how the company views technology and makes tech decisions. Has the company made significant changes to their stack, and if so, why? Are they heavily invested in open source? Do they seem closely linked to a specific vendor? Does the company have an engineering blog or a company GitHub account for you to explore that might contain this information?
  • Interviewer intel – Insight into the technical background and past employers of the individual(s) you will meet is a great advantage, as you may have some similar history. Personal GitHub or Twitter accounts? Technical blog posts? A LinkedIn or web search of the interviewer(s) might turn up some helpful details to use during the interview, as long as you use the info wisely. Showing that you did some research displays initiative, as long as you respect personal space.
  • Confirm the basics – Where are you going and who should you ask for when you get there? Who are you meeting with and what is his/her/their role in the company? What is the preferred dress code? (NOTE: Some companies actually ask that candidates dress more casual, so be sure to ask)
  • Prepare questions and anecdotes – Most interviews will provide you with at least a brief opportunity to ask questions. Although you ideally want to have these memorized, it is generally a good idea to have some questions listed so you don’t forget them under possible duress. There are also some fairly standard questions in the “tell me about a time when…” family which are commonly answered with anecdotes. Give some thought to past challenges, failures, and successes, and especially what lessons you learned from each project.
  • Documents – Some companies may ask you to fill out an application and other relevant documents before the interview. Find out if this is the case and if so get those completed before interview day. Make sure to print out at least three copies of your resume and one copy of your list of questions. Think about who you will list as references if asked on the application, and have their info (name, email) available.

Keep in mind that making a solid impression in an interview is something that can make a huge impact down the road, whether or not you get the job. Interviewers remember candidates who impressed, and they absolutely will remember those who crashed and burned as well. Do your homework and take interviews seriously, not just for the sake of getting this job but for opportunities later in your career.

Things Great Engineers (almost) Never Say

My job as a recruiter of software engineers and my 12 years as a user group leader have provided me the opportunity to speak with many talented technologists since entering the business in 1998, and through my interactions I’ve been able to notice several behavioral patterns shared by those that are considered to be the most skilled.  To develop a profile of a candidate I ask many questions that can lead to a variety of answers, and I pay close attention to responses.  Beyond behaviors, there are things that you hear in conversations with less skilled engineers that you don’t hear in talks with the best.  Here is a list of quotes I sometimes will hear, but that I almost never hear from the engineers that are most coveted.

  • “I’ve used _____ but I have no idea how it works” – Great engineers gained their skills through probing and curiosity.  They go ‘under the hood’ of the products they use just to understand how things work, even if that information will never be very useful to them.  It is unclear whether this need to dig deeper is a choice or a compulsion, but it seems that it is a trait of the best talent.
  • “______ works, I just don’t know how to explain it” – Not only do the greats know how things work, but most of them derive genuine pleasure in telling others why and how things work.  This is often true even if the other person doesn’t care to know.  Over the course of my career I’ve listened to engineers talk for thousands of hours, and in almost all cases my conversations with the most talented go much longer.  I actually made a point of scheduling an extra fifteen to twenty minutes on my calendar when I will be speaking to someone who appears to be great on paper, as I know that the person will go deep into some technical details and nuances that will come up in conversation.
  • “I will need ______ (tool/condition) to complete this task” – The masters of development will have the ability to improvise and adjust on the fly to arrive at a solution in non-ideal conditions.  When you hear of engineers being compared to MacGyver they are speaking of this very rare skill.  Greats will figure out a way based on minimal resources and will be aware of alternatives to their first choice of tool.
  • “I’ve learned all I want/will ever need to know about ________ “ – Continuous learning and improvement is probably the most obvious differentiation between the good and the great.  They don’t just get to a high level and then rest.  The best engineers understand that industry progress causes them to never stop learning, and if they are not gaining enough new knowledge in their day jobs they will invest the time to learn during off hours.
  • “There is no solution” – The greats will continue looking at a problem different ways to come up with an answer instead of conceding.  This characteristic can be both a blessing and a curse.
  • “I hate programming” – At times a great engineer will hate their job or employer, but their love of solving problems with code is what brought them to this skill level.
  • “I’m an expert in _____” (when it’s not true, and even sometimes when it is true) – The strongest engineers have no need or desire to lie or exaggerate the depth of their skills.  Much of the great talent will be reluctant to say they are an expert in anything, as they are aware others could know more.
  • “I don’t understand the business” – The stronger engineers will always want to know how their code impacts the employer and is able to describe their contribution and value to the organization.
  • “I don’t pay particular attention to industry trends” – Being both great and relevant (in demand) is only possible if you keep an eye on where the industry is headed.  When speaking to talented engineers, the topic of which new technologies are actually viable and which are a passing phase will often come up.

If you find yourself using any of these lines on a regular basis, give some thought to why.  Quoting one of these lines in a job interview could be a serious mistake.

Disrupt Tech Recruiting II – So You Want Ari Gold?

After publishing How to Disrupt Technical Recruiting – Hire an Agent and reading the subsequent feedback from readers at Hacker News and elsewhere, it is clear that at least some subset of engineers believe two things:

  1. The technical recruiting industry is at times remarkably flawed, and the financial incentives inherent to the system will not always lead a recruiter to represent the job seeker’s best interests.
  2. There is some demand for a talent/agent model for tech professionals, and it is a service several would be willing to pay for.

And it is also worth noting that the only agent that engineers have knowledge of is Ari Gold (or at least that is the agent they want).  Not even ONE Jerry Maguire reference?  It seems engineers want to hug it out and care less about being shown the money.

During my dissection of the industry, I somehow overlooked perhaps the biggest flaw that is at the absolute core of the issues with the recruiting industry. I’m a bit embarrassed that I missed it, and it wasn’t mentioned in the threads, so here goes:

Secrecy and privacy of information is THE cornerstone to traditional recruiting.

Why is that? Well think about it. If hiring companies knew every local candidate that possessed the skills they were seeking, many would not use an agency recruiter to handle the process and would simply have HR/managers contact them directly. Likewise, there would be many candidates that distrust recruiters applying directly to jobs if every available job were listed in one single place to search. There would certainly be some companies and candidates that recognize the value the recruiter brings beyond the initial introduction, but if all information were available to both sides we would find much less demand in the industry.

Why do you think recruiters don’t generally list their clients’ names publicly? Why are there so many complaints about recruiters being unwilling to share a deep amount of detail about projects or their open jobs? There are two main reasons.

  1. To prevent other recruiters from learning about who they represent (NOTE:  this is a big one, particularly for recruiters that work exclusively with start-ups that fly under the radar).
  2. To prevent candidates from applying directly to those companies, thus cutting out the chance for the recruiter’s fee.

So in order to preserve their chances of being paid a fee, recruiters need to keep candidates and companies from knowing about each other until a precise moment where they make the introduction to both sides, and then hope that the company doesn’t respond with some evidence of prior contact and that the candidate doesn’t say that he/she applied to that job yesterday. If either of those two scenarios happen, the recruiter has some incentive for that deal to NOT work out, even though it is his/her client! Let’s assume that company has one vacancy, and my candidate applied to it a day before I discussed it with him/her. My incentive instantly goes from wanting my candidate to get the job (so I can get a fee) to a financial incentive that the candidate isn’t successful (so the job will still be available for another candidate I can find). That is a very dark and unfortunate set of incentives inherent to the system.

It’s very easy to see how the incentives are built in this model. Recruiters have the incentive to help out their client companies to fill jobs, but only if the hire comes from my agency. The recruiter has the incentive to help a candidate find a job, but only if he/she takes a job at one of our clients. This is the unfortunate symptom of contingency work, and thankfully in my current business model (which isn’t contingency) I don’t have these same incentives to the same degree. Who are contingency recruiters really providing a service to anyway?

Why do you think recruiters see LinkedIn as both a blessing and a curse? We use it to find new candidates and keep in touch with past candidates and clients, yet we realize that everyone else now has access to the same information and companies can much more easily find candidates. As a recruiter, you are probably likely to list your contacts as ‘private’ for this reason.

The agent model would not have this privacy incentive built into the system. I could see an argument made where an agent might not want other agents to know who he/she is representing, but I think that is a much smaller problem than what we have today. When one of an agent’s talents is seeking work, there would be a campaign of open information to try and get the talent noticed. Having a business model based on privacy and secrecy is much less attractive than an agent model with openness.

Enough about what’s broken, let’s talk about solutions.

Based on the discussions, here are the services that the talent knows they want:

  1. Negotiation in job changes – Engineers seem to agree that an agent would probably be better at negotiating compensation packages. Another added benefit to having an agent in act as a proxy in negotiations is the preserved comfort factor after you potentially start the job. Picture a very trying or heated negotiation between an engineer and a start-up CEO that comes to an eventual agreement, and then the two must work in adjacent cubicles the following Monday. A buffer would have helped prevent any potential awkwardness.
  2. Job identification and coordination – Many in the community made it pretty clear that they are not interested or skilled in cold calling and introducing their services to potential clients. Having an agent do the legwork to identify potential employers and then to contact them and schedule meetings on the talent’s behalf will save lots of time to do other things. For consultants paid hourly, remember that every hour spent on job search is an hour you can’t bill to a client.
  3. Competitive salary/rate information – There seems to be a general distrust for websites that provide market information, and engineers may be somewhat insulated when it comes to what others with similar skills are earning. An agent would have some solid evidence regarding street value of any talent and would do the research necessary.
  4. Marketing/PR/Selling – It has become clear to me over the years that there is a sizable percentage of talented engineers that are uncomfortable talking up their own skills, and that was mentioned a couple times as another asset of an agent. Marketing and PR would probably mean different things for different career levels, but it could include work to increase the talent’s blog traffic, booking a presenter’s invite to a users group/meetup, or strategy on how to build the talent’s brand.

There were some services and advantages that were somewhat surprisingly not mentioned:

  1. Handling incoming job solicitations – All of the complaints about recruiter spam and cold calls are gone for the agent’s talent. Forward calls, emails and LinkedIn spam to your agent, and he/she will investigate. Put your agent’s name on your website and LinkedIn profile. If the opportunity is legitimate and meets the criteria the talent sets for sharing, your will get the details. If not, you never have to waste your time hearing about it.
  2. Interview coaching – Not just your standard fare interview coaching you can find on web sites, but also any inside tips on the specific interview. This could include past experiences others have had with the company, some research on the background of the people you are meeting, and anything else that will be helpful to the talent. Remember that the agent is representing you at this point and not the company. As one reader noted, a good agent would not want to do companies a disservice by providing specific interview questions (as that would harm the agent model, the hiring company, and the agent himself/herself), but it is fair to offer the talent some guidance on what format to expect and who they will be meeting.
  3. Internal company information – As your representative, the agent should be providing talent with details on both their current employer and any that you may be considering for future employment. The information learned from discussions with others in the business will be helpful to the agent’s entire stable of talent. Consider it the type of info you may find on Glassdoor, but from verified sources.
  4. Career advice in non-search situations – Are you thinking about moving from code into management, or considering taking a leadership position on a project doomed for failure? Considering a jump into contracting, or thinking about abandoning your current independent consulting project to join a start-up? Want to talk about it? The value of this advice could be quite large yet difficult to quantify.
  5. Negotiation of promotions or raises – Changing jobs is not the only scenario where negotiation may take place. An agent could help you get the best deal from your current employer, either through direct negotiation or by coaching you on how to maximize your chances of getting a good number.
  6. Resume creation/curating – This one isn’t a huge service but it’s a few hours out of your work year.
  7. Transparency! – The agent model is completely transparent to everyone involved. The agent represents the talent, and the talent pays for that representation. There is no question about the agent’s loyalty as there is in contingency recruiting models (is the recruiter representing me or the company?).

Some potential issues were identified in the comments

  1. Would there be any conflict of interest when representing multiple candidates? Doubtful. I guess there could be a rare situation where two talents vie for the same position, and in that scenario the agent would simply represent both fairly and let the best person for the job win. The agent would probably have no financial incentive favoring either candidate. Transparency would be important (revealing the situation to both talents).
  2. Would there be backlash by hiring entities against candidates who use an agent?  It’s hard to tell, but it’s conceivable that there would be some organizations that might react hesitantly at first. However, the key here is that an agent would be providing a service to a company for free (or if not completely free, definitely much less expensive than recruiters). It would be hard to think that firms would not be very pleased with a cold call from an agent stating that there is a qualified candidate interested in your company, and you will get all the normal recruiter services for the process with no recruiter fee at the back-end.
  3. How much would the agent need to know about technology?  This one comes up quite a bit in criticisms of technical recruiters and then in the discussion of an agent. The agent needs to know enough about tech that he/she won’t misrepresent the talent, and will not waste time marketing talent to positions that are not a technical fit.  An agent should also have some sense of tech trends, what skills are in demand, and the overall market for different types of talent. The biggest complaint seems to be wasting time with discussions of jobs that are not a fit or being sent on interviews that are not appropriate. An agent would not have the same incentive to send you everywhere imaginable, as that incentive is not built into the agent model.
  4. Would the service be just for contractors?  No, not the way I see it. The pricing model for contractors is very easy to consider, as paying a percentage of hourly rate to the agent is already a common practice for staffing firms (what is called ‘margin’). The value of an agent’s service to engineers with salaried positions seems very obvious in helping to manage the overall career as well as the career moves.

How do we compensate the agent?

This is a bit tricky and I believe that the pricing model might be different for contractors and talent in direct salaried positions. For contractors, the existing model (a ‘per hour’ cut) is well-known and accepted. I think the main difference is an agent would have some fixed transparent rate ($x/hr or y%/hr. Many recruiting firms do not reveal the full bill rate to the contractor, which tends to cause distrust when the contractor finds out the actual rate. Having a fixed percentage or dollar per hour figure would make the relationship much more comfortable for both sides.

For talent in permanent salaried positions, there needs to be more discussion. My vision would be some flat annual representation fee for service with an additional charge/bonus for times of active job search (where the level of services and time invested would increase). The job search fee could have several models built in – perhaps an hourly rate, flat fee per week/month, flat fee per job search, or some percentage of salary. The problem with the percentage of salary model is that it gives some incentive for the agent to suggest you take the highest paying job even if that is not best for your career. Another model would be a negotiation bonus above some level set and agreed upon by the agent and talent. “For anything I get you over 120K, I get a one-time bonus of 50% of the difference.” That leads to some incentive to take the highest paying job, but it also gives more motivation to negotiate.

The reason I include an annual representation fee into the discussion is it helps to eliminate an agent’s incentive for candidates to change jobs, and it allows the agent to justify investing time with the talent to discuss career-related issues that come up. In the traditional recruiting model, the recruiter hopes everyone is looking for a job at all times. An agent would have much less of a financial incentive for you to change employers, so the agent wouldn’t be as likely to suggest you leave a job that is right for you.

CONCLUSION/tl;dr

Traditional contingency recruiting incentives are:

  1. Privacy and secrecy of client company and candidate information.
  2. Only help client company when it results in a fee. Only help candidates when they take jobs at my clients.
  3. A desire for people to leave jobs as often as possible.

Agent model incentives:

  1. Keep the talent happy so they remain your talent.
  2. ???

Let’s keep the dialogue going on this. Based on lots of direct feedback, it seems the community could be on to something.  Agree, disagree, suggest?