Over the last 15 days I’ve been on a recruiter hunt. I’ve got our team to suggest recruiting agencies, I’ve put a blog post calling for recruiting agencies and I sent email to other entrepreneurs. Wow, I’ve been overwhelmed by responses. I didn’t know there were that many people working on the recruiting space and that many firms in town. I’ve probably got 25 recommendations, and I’ve talked face-to-face with 13 of them and on the phone with 2. Most meetings were just 20-30 minutes long, so it didn’t take that much time.
I won’t go into the detailed process I used to decide the companies I picked, but I’ll tell two things that were a constant on how some of them pitch their business which made me look the other way.
In summary, the two wrong phrases were “We work with Amazon and Microsoft” and “We’ve been doing IT recruiting for X years”. They might sound fine and harmless, but they show a lack of understanding of working with tech startups.
First, the more big companies a service provider lists the less likely I’m to work with them, as simple as that. The reason is the lack of understanding of my needs (i.e., a “startup” need). Using Microsoft, Amazon, Expedia, Real, etc. to showcase your competencies just make you look weak. If you said BuddyTV, Picnik, Redfin, mPire or Yapta then you are way more likely to get my attention and interest. I need somebody that knows how to work and find talent for my company’s needs.
Second, the “IT” word being used by recruiters just prove most of them are clueless about hiring to a tech company. Never in a million years has a tech software company called itself an IT company (w/ exceptions for companies that are IT outsourcing providers). Never Microsoft will call itself an IT company looking for IT employees. Never will Amazon, Expedia, Picnik or Sampa say they are an IT company. So why on Earth would a recruiter come to me and say they have N-years of expertise w/ the IT industry? I can see employees of a tech companies thinking this is obvious, yet, recruiters put IT developers and Tech-companies developers in the same bucket. Not that one is better or worse, but they are very different. IT recruiting is what Boing, WaMu, Nordstrom and Weyerhaeuser do. It would be the equivalent of my confusing a recruiter with an office manager. I could explain the difference, but that’s not what this post is for. If you are a recruiter, ask your favorite tech-company employee for him/her to explain this to you.
Hope I helped a few recruiters get a clue and a few entrepreneurs on how to select their service providers.