The Curse of the Tech Recruiter

I recently took a client company's team out for drinks - someone I'd worked with for a while and where I'd placed good candidates; someone with whom our track record was good. The more the beers flowed, the more opinionated certain team members became about the behaviour of recruiters, and it made for interesting listening. 

I have a kind of paranoia about this anyway. I got into recruitment with very little idea about how the industry was perceived and, being a bit of a people-pleaser by nature, the idea that some people were cursing my existence before I'd even finished saying my name really bothered me. I got obsessed with trawling the web for articles and comments by developers about recruiters. Initially, it was market research - I wanted to understand the inner thoughts of the people I was trying so hard to work with. I wanted to avoid the mistakes that other people had made, and be a better kind of recruiter that worked in the way that made most sense to candidates and was helpful. But the more I dug, the more I realised we're commonly looked upon as ignorant, arrogant and careless, with no loyalty or sense of decency, and that's the stereotype I now arm myself to battle every time I pick up the phone or write an email!

The problem was that, when a member of this company's team started reeling off his dislikes, many of them were understandable yet largely unavoidable. Two main points he made that I'd like to discuss are:

1. Linkedin has become a free-for-all for unwanted cold contacts

2. Receiving an email at your work address from a recruiter is disrespectful

Both fair points - for a good developer, who is perfectly happy where they are, recruiter contact is unneeded, unsolicited and unwanted. When we argue that Linkedin/an email to a work address we know is valid are sometimes the only way to make contact with somebody we really wish to speak to, a developer might argue (and he did) that there's a reason we can't contact them and we don't have their details - they don't want us to get in touch.

The problem with this is that it's not always the case and, once you've had a success story from using one of those methods, you tend to feel that the slight annoyance caused to the majority of people is worth it if a few people get to advance their career in a way that really benefits them, taking an opportunity they'd otherwise never have known about. It's a kind of reverse utilitarianism in a world (recruitment) where you're used to the majority of your effort coming to nothing, but I've had many candidates thank me for making contact, even though it was unsolicited. Many didn't even consider moving, until they saw what they could be moving for. In fact, most of the placements we make are people who weren't actively looking; that's the nature of the current market. 

That's not to say that all recruiter contact will be like this and yes, probably, in most cases, the contact goes unreturned. And of course, another problem is the volume of emails you get which are long AND mailshotted (and I get them too so I know how annoying it can be - I'm currently being spammed by some dutch company where all the writing is in dutch (which I don't speak..)), but some of them will be genuinely well thought out and targeted towards a specific person and their career history. True, I can't know what a developer wants before we've spoken, so I do have to guess based on past experience, but if they never reply to me then I never will know I'm wrong. 

 

And if somebody replied to me and told me never to contact them again, I wouldn't. So I guess what I'm trying to say, in a very long (though not mailshotted) way, is that I'm sorry if anybody receives an email or a Linkedin message from me and it pisses them off, but it's my job, and I do it because there are many people who, as a result, get a fantastic new job that they love. And also - if it pisses you off, I'd love you to tell me it does, and tell me why!

The Rise of the Citizen Developer

I've been seeing a lot of articles about this recently and I thought it was worth a post, since it's something I have been noticing in my day job, too.

When I left University (granted, with an English Degree, but I think this applies to Computer Sciences too), and throughout the course of my education both at school and University, I was told how much value my degree would add to my job hunt. I was told employers wouldn't look at my CV if I hadn't got at least that 2:1 and I'd been to a red brick. Personally, I was always sceptical about the value my, almost entirely self-taught, literature degree was going to add to a career that wasn't research or teaching, and that's a concern I think was justified given the cost of a degree. What my degree (with its 4 contact hours a week) did allow me to do was broaden my extracurricular activities and actively make myself more employable. When I got into recruitment (a career, by the way, which doesn't normally require a degree), I realised that a degree is often similarly irrelevant in software development job hunting.

When I screen a CV on a first glance I'll look at most recent relevant experience and technical summary, and I won't even notice education on a first look unless it's something for which I'm specifically screening. I would rate an obviously strong github profile or a clearly passionate summary paragraph above a 2:1 in Computer Science where the person had not been coding outside of that. And that's because from my experience I think employers do too.

I was reading that Google announced last year they were no longer looking at GPA scores when they select candidates, preferring portfolios as a better benchmark of future job performance. Thus rises the "citizen developer" (coined by tech company Gartner). There's an argument to be made that all developers are in a sense citizen developers, because personal improvement is a continuous thing, even once you've secured a job, so I guess the crunch point centres around how you enter the market - as someone formally educated or as a freelancer turned full-time.

This doesn't happen just on a junior level (i.e people getting into their first job), and I'm seeing an increasing number of people career switching around the age of 30 to pursue their true passion which had, up until that point, only been a recreational hobby. People are training themselves either by freelancing or through formal courses from Sales backgrounds, Teaching backgrounds, Linguistic backgrounds. Most people going for a complete career 180 in this way seem to go down the formal route - I'd speculate because it seems time efficient, structured, and because they can afford to. A career change of that nature is a serious decision and I guess a formal educational course seems like a decisive and serious action point to support that. For entry level roles however, I'm sceptical about the advantages a formal education provides. I think more value is added by coding courses (like Makers Academy, General Assembly, Coderwave etc) than traditional degrees, as they are cheaper, more targeted and more intensive in many cases, besides which they will almost guarantee finding strong performers a job afterwards (based on my experience of University careers services I feel they are weak at this kind of post-study support).

I would suggest that young development hopefuls think very carefully about their path into employment, and really do their research, particularly given the hike in University fees the year before last. University, in my opinion, gives the student more in life experience than in educational experience. Before you get stuck in, consider your options and remember there is more than one route to life experience!  

AngularJS

Last night I was at Google Campus for my first AngularJS event. Mind = blown...

This was the first event I'd been to that took me properly out of the recruiter sphere and into the hardcore tech one. Jeans and trainers abounded, the food was delicious, the small talk was technical and mostly incomprehensible... and I was the only girl.

I actually think it's a shame for the industry! There are certainly female developers, I met lots of them at Codebar, so I wonder why they don't come to such events? If the only girl who makes it there is a technical recruiter... well there are issues surely! The event was really oversubscribed so I only got a space at the last minute, though when I got there empty chairs were plentiful from dropouts I guess. There was a space of at least one empty chair's width around me during the presentation - I wondered whether nobody wanted to sit next to a stranger, or just a woman. It's kind of sweet though rather than offensive, and everybody I did speak to was very nice.

The talk itself (and prepare here for probably horrendous inaccuracies) was basically a demo of how you can use angular in partnership with Umbraco to extend your back office UI. You create your own options which you can separately define using JS, HTML, CSS and which you can then use in the back office. It's useful because it allows the frontend developer to focus on that, rather than having to know C# which such actions would previously have required. Or maybe that's a bad thing? It's definitely a useful thing for the majority, because you can do more faster, but speaking from a purely objective position really in an ideal world a developer would understand every possible way to perform a function, no? This makes sure that work is always being done in the smartest way, not just the only way you know? 

I'm probably not entitled to have opinions about this kind of thing yet, but I guess in summary what I thought is - angular is clever in that it allows you to do something in JavaScript that you'd previously have needed C# for. BUT... if that is anything like, say, android wrappers like PhoneGap, then the best applications are still created via a purer (defined as - the most appropriate for the task at hand) method (native apps on mobile perform better and look better) and so maybe taking more shortcuts using tools like using angular would not be ultimately the best way to work.

I'm probably wrong about that - they're probably not comparable things... If I'm wrong please somebody tell me! But as a wider point, surely it is true that the more full stack you can be, the better? That's a whole other post...

Anyway, this is definitely becoming like a stream of consciousness... and it's getting on for 9:30... so til next time.

 

Codebar.io

Last night ended with mental exhaustion after my first coding workshop!

For those who know about it, I'm sure you agree that Codebar.io is a wonderful idea. For those that don't know about it, it's a free workshop for minority groups including women (sure nobody who has worked in development would argue about women being a minority... I have spoken to about ten female developers in as many months!) to teach them to code or improve their current skills.

But aside from the great opportunity to learn, what really stood out to me was how welcoming they were to me, as a recruiter. I think I often turn up to developer events kind of already feeling apologetic about my profession. I got obsessed recently with reading developers' thoughts on recruiters on blogs, and although it's obviously not comments personal to me, I still cringed at a lot of sales-phrases and situations I recognised and now realise developers hate! But anyway, my job really didn't matter, I felt like one of the group, and I had a great time!

I was really glad that I'd had time to go through the HTML module on codecademy beforehand, because even getting a head start it was making my brain hurt by the end. My tutor was very patient as I asked painstaking questions! We were working for two solid hours and by the end I had that post study feeling that I remember well from long nights in the library at university. It was weird studying again, but really cool, because I built a page that worked, and that's pretty good going for a tech recruiter (and an English graduate)!

Thank you to everyone at Codebar for being so welcoming, and to my coach for the evening :) I will definitely be coming back, CSS needs to be tackled...

First Module Down :)

I think this post is more of a check in for myself than anyone else... but... I have completed the first module on Codecademy!

 I was worried I'd find it really difficult to commit to this properly given that the day job is quite hours-demanding, but half an hour a morning/evening seems to be working nicely!

Caffeine Fuelled Geeks

So getting up early on a Thursday morning to come in before work, fuel up on strong coffee and push code is not something you associate with the lives of most Technical Recruiters. But I wanted to get through to the end of the HTML/CSS module on Codecademy...

I know there was a lot of debate recently about 2014 as the 'Year of Code' and whether that was a good thing or not. Google obviously think it is... As a technical recruiter the skills shortage in the UK market is pretty evident, so it would make sense to try and release the pressure by getting more young people coding. And it probably wouldn't stick with most people - would most people's stories become those of the self-professed 'caffeine-fuelled geek' whose CVs I come across rarely and excitedly? Maybe a few - but what a fantastic gift to give those few.

But I reckon for most people, who will use tools created by developers for a large part of every day of their lives, blissfully ignorant of how the puzzle fits together, it will help to demystify an ever more complex technical world. And if Prince Andrew is putting together a 15 minute website, then god knows Tech Recs have no excuse to remain ignorant!

This isn't my first brush with coding, actually; I did a little bit of C++ at University under the guidance of my engineer friends, so I knew what code looked like on a page. I had forgotten the satisfaction, though, that you feel when what you've written works! I think I've always written creatively or opinionatedly as a way of structuring my thoughts and making sense of them, and actually there's a very similar feeling of satisfaction that I got out of a few really (like, really) simple lines of HTML. Painfully basic initial observations and feelings: I like that you open and close things, I like that logic, it's like clauses in grammar! It reminded me of learning human languages. I wonder why the command words you use in coding are English? Are all programming languages like that?

I'm kind of excited to reach the point where I get really stuck with something - that's when you actually start learning... I doubt I'm far off that point!