How could anyone come to this contrarian conclusion, even after reading the article it is baffling.
There is a time and place for in-house recruiters and third party recruiters. This article does not identify them and obsessively takes the contrarian view with no supporting rationale for doing so.
Hey! Thanks for your feedback. I would love to try and understand what you're saying but I'm struggling a little.
Can you explain what you mean by "There is a time and place for in-house recruiters and third party recruiters." what is that time and place?
I honestly tried to be really nuanced (but clearly failed a little, thanks for that data point).
I think it does speak to the fact that I have seen 20 years of the prevailing narrative that there is zero value to recruiters and this realization was, to me, pretty mind-blowing.
I appreciate that "never" is a word that lacks nuance, maybe that was a little too clickbait of me.
I wouldn't go so far as to say zero value, but I would say that engaging with third-party recruiters is generally an activity with a negative expected value. Generally they don't actually have or aren't willing to share the incredibly useful real and direct insights you wisely point to.
Personally, I've found that high quality messages from recruiters are usually painfully obvious. They lead with the name of the company and show evidence that the recruiter read my profile. These are so rare that I completely skip any kind of bot-ish response to handle them.
Most of the responses I can expect to the kind, compassionate, empathetic script you've so helpfully provided will not contain all three data points requested. At best, we can expect to get a JD and maybe a company name. Comp is usually withheld and the cycle goes around again.
Treating the recruiter-spammers as humans, unfortunately, does not really seem to produce the results we would all love it to. It mostly seems to be treated as proof that the spammer has hooked a fish and just has to reel them in.
I like third party recruiters because I like to use them strategically. I know how they are compensated and they learn what I want to do, so I could get raises every 15-18 months by switching companies that they placed me at and they could get paid multiple times because turns out I'm a reliable employee!
We knew to ignore each other for 15 months. It was a good symbiotic relationship. Sometimes they knew I wanted side gigs and would hook me up with the companies that "needed something yesterday!" while they knew I was employed at one of their client companies. sometimes the recruiter hired me on their payroll directly instead of letting me be a contractor with their clients. it was a fun time for some time.
This has almost nothing to do with random outreach from them on linkedin. It is barely the same topic. But thats what I used them for.
In-house recruiters are distinctly different animals with a couple of overlapping daily tasks and the same name, but the way to use them is very different. A company with one of those wouldn't be using third party recruiters and thats fine, in house recruiters can somewhat bat for you in a unique and more holistic way but they are still just gatekeepers you want to get passed so you can talk technical stuff with hiring managers.
There is a time and place for in-house recruiters and third party recruiters. This article does not identify them and obsessively takes the contrarian view with no supporting rationale for doing so.