[conspire] Interesting recruiting development (was: Re: Interesting recruiting develoipment)

[Michael Paoli]

> From: "Rick Moen" <rick at linuxmafia.com>
> Subject: Re: [conspire] Interesting recruiting develoipment
> Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2020 15:20:07 -0800

> Quoting Texx (texxgadget at gmail.com):
>
>> For a number of years, recruiters have asked for month and day of birth and
>> last 4 or 5 digits of SS#.
>
> Then, you could either give false data or 'I will happily give that
> information to the prospective employer after receiving a job offer.'
> (Technically, SSN should be an exception.  No part of your SSN should
> be furnished except to HR on your first day of work.)

Yep, that's generally my response/position.  I've dealt with many,
and never had recruiter/agency ask for - or at least "require",
SSN or any portion thereof, or any part of birth date - at least until
not only is an employment offer on the table, but after I've accepted.
And in that case, that info. only - or mostly only - goes to and on
employer's hiring paperwork and the like - usually not anything of
the agency's (unless of course the agency *is* the employer and it's some
kind of pass-through) ... in any case, that still happens *after* I've
accepted offer.

And, one semi-exception of note - but again, that's also *after* I've
accepted offer.  Background check goop (needed for some types of
positions and/or employers).  Again, that happens *after* I've accepted
offer.  In many cases those are done by employer and via them, and often
handled by some 3rd party they work with to do those investigations.
In some cases, when it's through agency, they do it on behalf of employer,
but again, after accepting (conditional) employment offer - also in such
cases it's pretty clear, that data only goes on those relevant forms (and
generally put there directly by me) and is used only for that and not to
be used for any other purposes.

Lower quality recruiters/agencies are often "throw anything and everything
against the wall and see what sticks".  They'll submit candidates
relatively haphazardly if they think they're anywhere within the
ballpark of ... well about 2 or 3 orders of magnitude of ballparking.
They also often want to do the candidate "exclusively" - they want you to
use no other recruiters/agencies.  Why?  Best for them - they want to submit
you to anything they possibly can, and have no competition of you being
submitted by anyone else (or directly - they'll want you to tell them any
places you've already applied).  Also, many potential employers, if they
get the same candidate submitted from multiple sources, will automatically
(and often quietly) disqualify/discard.  Why?  They don't want any of
the hassles/arguments of who submitted or who submitted first or was it
direct or via agency(/ies), etc.  So, exclusive representation benefits the
recruiter/agency - almost never the candidate (unless you've got a damn fine
recruiter/agency - but unfortunately those are few and far between).
With better ones, they'll *always* ask you first before submitting you.
For the better ones, it's in their best long-term interest to build good
relationships with candidates and employers, and only submit quality
matches - they should well tell you about the opportunity, environment,
etc., and ask you before submitting.  If not, they're generally lower
quality throw it at the wall see what sticks operations.

Oh, and random pet peeve - bloody f*ckin' recruiter/agencies that
submit candidate resumes that are plagiarized (in at least significant
part).  Geez, folks do your dang checking and vetting - if you can't
bother to do that reasonably well, then you're no value add, and we don't
need you (low quality agencies/recruiters).  If we want the unwashed masses
to apply, we can stick it out there for anyone and everyone to apply directly,
if recruiter/agency isn't filtering from unwashed masses to well qualified
good fit candidates, then there's really no reason to have recruiter/agency
in the middle.  I've had to deal with far too many plagiarized resumes in the
last few+ years, and it pisses me off.  (And were it my call to make,
such agencies/recruiters would get dropped or at least temporarily
banned - at minimum - from consideration).