The race to the bottom and why recruiters are useless if you're above average [ Edited ]

[DougR]

As an IT professional who is objectively above average, recruiters offer me no value. I charge more than the average contractor. My asking rate is about double the average. I'm well worth it though and have the track record to prove it.

What I find amazing is that recruiters contact me all day long, yet very rarely submit me to jobs. In fact, they are so rude that they leave me hanging after I send them my resume. I can only guess that they show my resume to their esteemed account manager and that's the end of it. So the end client never knows the level of talent that they could hire.

I believe this scenario plays out across the country thousands of times a day. No wonder IT projects bomb miserably.

Message to recruiters: Grow some balls and start selling top candidates to your clients. You are a direct contributor to the decline of this profession. You can either do something about it, or remain the used car salesman that you've shown yourself to be.

[bg6638]

Employers want more .................. for LESS!!!!!

[0xFFFFFFFF]

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DougR wrote:

As an IT professional who is objectively above average, recruiters offer me no value. I charge more than the average contractor. My asking rate is about double the average. I'm well worth it though and have the track record to prove it.

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Well, you're lucky to find employers who want to pay that.  Are you sure of your numbers? 

Most places I've been in the past decade are perfectly happy with the quality they get via recruiters, and they might pay you the same they pay the recruiter, and you get to keep about 30% to 50% more, but for the most part employers looking to fill staff positions DO NOT WANT BETTER THAN AVERAGE CANDIDATES who they think will get bored, argue with the idiot bosses, and simply not fit in.

That, and they simply HATE the idea of paying techies top wages so much, that they simply don't even care what the results might be, or that it might still be the best bargain on the block.

So, the recruiters are, after all, only doing what they've been asked to do, and it's always a tough business trying to tell the guy who's paying, that he's buying the wrong things.

[DougR]

I'm in a specialty where rates are all over the map. My "high" asking rate is still about half of what the vendor or a big four consulting company charges. The end clients have gotten used to H1B labor rates, which are ridiculously low.

[fred04]

It's a whole new ballgame right now.

It's not 1998-1999.

The Indian H1Bs are eating all of us US IT folk alive.

There are over 1 million of them here on some sort of visa, and they can change their resumes

in a matter of minutes using Microsoft Word. They can put down anything they want because they know

nobody is going to call India to check up on them.

US IT folk aren't even getting phone calls or interviews.

I always ask, when I do get a phone call, 'How many resumes did you get from non-citizens?'. Their response is always

'A lot'.

You have to start thinking in terms of Rupees instead of US dollars.

[I_Wana_Be_IT_KID]

You are not selling yourself properly.   It sounds like the recruiters do not believe you that you are better then average.  

I don't know what you are asking for in terms of a rate, but it's like I told a construction worker who wanted $25/h for doing some work on my garage:

"Alsthough I don't doubt your skills and I am sure you are absolutely worth it, all I need is a garage fixed"  That person was unemployed for over 6 month as it turned out.  No one needed his supper duper master skills to fix their garages.

[DougR]

As I said, I can objectively say I'm worth the money. I won't go into detail because I enjoy my anonymity on here. Also, I know the economics of what I do inside and out. The bill rates for my specialty can be extremely high. I'm not willing to let middle men take an unfair piece of the pie. The recruiters know my value. They don't argue with the rate. They just don't follow through because there's a mediocre H1B more than happy to BS his way into the job for half my rate. Is the end client getting a good deal hiring these guys? Absolutely not. Here's the reality: I have been hired more than once to clean up the crap job that H1Bs and mediocre employees did.

Is it really possible to "sell yourself properly" to an IT recruiter? 99% of them don't understand technology. All they understand are keywords on a resume and the rate.

[toddo1966]

I've worked through recruiters for over 25 years. What I will say about them is just about what I will say about anything. That is simply that some are good, some are bad, and some are somewhere in between. I typically ask how their firm gets paid from the end client. I am usually told, not that all of them are telling the truth, that they receive a percentage of what ever they bid. This would mean that the more I make, the more they make. I believe this to be the case now, a great deal more than it was 15 or so years ago. That is a win/win. If you can land contracts directly to the end client, you should obviously make more money than if the middle man was in the mix. If you can do this: go for it. I like the idea that as soon as recruiters have my resume that they are doing the foot work for me. My best work experiences through recruiters have been with HL Yoh, Ambassador Solutions, and BC Forward (formerly Bucher and Christian). I often wonder what our IT lives would be without those middle men. By comparison, I have had some very bad experiences through recruiters as well. Quite frankly, if anything goes wrong at a client's site, the recruiting firm wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire! LOL As IT folks, this trend will change as they increasingly cannot find IT candidates. Simple economics dictates that as the demand increases our wages should go up. Do you ever get the idea that there are way to many people pushing paper to possibly be efficient in the actual work that needs done.

[I_Wana_Be_IT_KID]

My logic in troubleshooting based on your comments is that;  If the compensation your are looking for is reasonable within the job market, then you should consider how you sell, present, market yourself because the recruiters are not seeing that on your resume or in you during interviews.

If I go by what I think that the consulting company is billing for me $200/h and maximum I am getting is 75/h so I want 125-150/h, then I could be chasing my tail because my skillset/profession is simply not paying that high.   If I am making 35/h and want to move to 60/h then it's a matter of negotiations and seniority.   If I want a perm salary of 250 than I should expect fewer interviews because fewer companies have this type of salaries for my profession that generally top out at 130.  

[JCPOPESCU]

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DougR wrote:

As an IT professional who is objectively above average, recruiters offer me no value. I charge more than the average contractor. My asking rate is about double the average. I'm well worth it though and have the track record to prove it.

What I find amazing is that recruiters contact me all day long, yet very rarely submit me to jobs. In fact, they are so rude that they leave me hanging after I send them my resume. I can only guess that they show my resume to their esteemed account manager and that's the end of it. So the end client never knows the level of talent that they could hire.

I believe this scenario plays out across the country thousands of times a day. No wonder IT projects bomb miserably.

Message to recruiters: Grow some balls and start selling top candidates to your clients. You are a direct contributor to the decline of this profession. You can either do something about it, or remain the used car salesman that you've shown yourself to be.

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I hear you !

When my sum total is normalized against what and who a third party recruiting company seeks and places the recruiting company picks look like complete and total invalids. 

I do NOT deal with recruiters. 

They call me I tell them WHAT, WHERE, AND HOW MUCH.  If they don't like it then don't waste my time.

If I can't understand, as the case of the Indian shops, I direct them speak up, slowly and clearly, or do not speak to me at all.  

Where I come to is VERY simple:  THEY would need ME a LOT more than I would EVER need THEM.   Lay down with dogs :  Expect fleas.