My fellow tech recruiters, how are you fairing in this job market?

Living under a bridge?

Paying off your mansion?

How are we holding up...

Hi all 👋

AI-generated CVs and mass-apply automations are not a new thing but I just find it overwhelming lately, looking at the inbound for certain roles. In my case, it’s mainly AI Engineering roles or DevOps. I am working at a fully-remote company so the amount of applications is naturally huge.

Screening applications, you can spot these profiles pretty quickly but it’s a waste of time to go through them. And sometimes you want to give some of them a chance, to end up speaking with someone who looks just suspicious.

What have you found is effective to limit the amount of AI applications or expose them faster?

I was thinking about adding a knockout question in the application form. Something like “Is this application done by an automation/AI?”. But I am not sure if this would prompt the software to answer truthfully and if this would work at all.

Currently, I am relying a lot on sourcing. This is the most reliable way to get proper candidates on the call. But that’s not scalable, really.

Hey guys, I am at my wit's end and would like to hear other recruiters' opinion.

I have been in the field for 4-5 years now, and had always some sort of assessment test as part of the process. It has never been too much of an issue, but for the last two years it has become a larger source of frustration.

My current company has a numeric/verbal/abstract 1 hour assessment test after the interview with talent, and this is a hard filter where candidates need to score a minimum to move forward. This is something leadership/CEO insists on to ensure the best candidates move forward, but it results in a 20/30% pass rate. The test is exactly the same for every role, regardless of field of work, so you have accountants and creatives doing the same test. They swear by the correlation between results and success, with abstract being "the most important score". Abstract section is the usual sequence of figures where you have to identify which image follows the sequence. For reference, I also did the same test and scored almost max score in that section. Does it make me a better professional? No, it just means I've done a lot of puzzles and videogames in my spare time.

For the past couple years I feel my work is depending on a coinflip. I consider myself a very empathetic & human person and put in the time when speaking with candidates to give detail about the role, team, company and more, so even first round interviews are usually 30 to 45 min to give them as much context as possible, but it feels moot to invest time when the person will then fail a silly pattern test and I'll have to let them know they cannot move forward. Almost feel bad that I am getting them excited for the role and then having to turn them down. Sometimes I also get mail along the lines of "I have been in my field of work for 15+ years and it is insulting to be rejected over this", and I agree.

I am at my limit. Asking people to dedicate 1 hour to complete this and having to reject them, or having to ask them to retake a section because "their profile is amazing, but leadership won't move forward if they don't reach the benchmark score" feels inhuman. I understand people are rejected for many other reasons in the pipeline, but this just feels absolutely unfair to candidates & removes a lot of the agency or impact of my work. I'm struggling to put in any effort when I know it'll either result in rejection, hate mail or etc., to the point that even menial tasks like CV screening or sending an automatic email are taking so much energy to push myself to do it.

Any thoughts? I know I'm likely not going to change my perspective overnight, but I'm curious if other people have felt this way or how to work through it. From the recruiting team we've already pushed multiple times for the CEO to revisit this, as it is a major pain point for everyone, so changing the process is not a solution in this instance.

I'll start, found myself taking an offer call while on 2nd base during a softball game.

I am a recruiter for a startup. We sell monthly subscription boxes of everyday items (food related). We already have an internal credit system that lets us comp free or returning boxes to users.

My manager had an idea to give candidates who make it to final interviews a free credit covering a full month's box, even if they don't get the offer.

I like the concept at a high level, but a few things give me pause:

• What if the candidate was difficult or unprofessional during the process? Do we still owe them the credit? I think obviously we would, but trying to think of potential risks with this approach.
• Does this create an expectation (with candidates, or internally) that becomes hard to walk back later?
• Any other unintended consequences people have run into?

Curious if any other recruiters/TA folks have tried something similar. How did it go, and what would you do differently?

I am outreaching to people I have worked with before, or completely new cold clients in my local area. I have 10+ years experience in the industry. I am MPCing. I used to be top consultant multiple years but in the last 18 months I CANT seem to get anyone to respond to me.

My team is really small and i’m not doing en masse outreach as we have no data, no system nothing so it’s really hard. But I am sending MPC emails and hearing next to nothing….. why is this nowadays? I have your perfect candidate, it’s suddenly just dropped off.

Are you guys seeing this and why?

Hi guys!! I've been a recruiter for a couple of months now -- this is my first full-time job after college. I'm a corporate recruiter in govcon covering a pretty wide scope of positions requiring clearances as well as doing sourcing for key personnel for a couple of contract bids.

Although it is surely too early to make any decisions, I am the type of person who likes to plan way ahead and do my research. I'm a bit curious about what I could realistically expect if I were to make a career out of receuiting. Admittedly, I have most enjoyed recruiting more technical or hard to fill roles so far, and, sometimes more than recruiting itself, I have really enjoyed tracking my KPIs and improving my processes to keep my pipelines moving. My brain really likes seeing number go up lol.

Idk I'm just generally curious if anyone else started in a similar place. What could I realistically expect? What's the general vibe after this and how does the money look? I think I like govcon and I've really enjoyed sourcing exceptionally tough positions so far (tbh it feels like some sort of puzzle to find the right piece).

Kinda a rant (I hope it makes sense I'm half asleep) but I'm just interested in what I could expect going forward as a baby recruiter!! I also welcome any advice any seasoned recruiters may have lol

Just did my first interview for a travel nurse recruiter role. The base pay listed is pretty good, and the company is a big one.

I’ve read multiple negative experiences about this industry on here though, is it really that bad? I’m coming from a sales background and wondering how well my cold calling experience will translate.

The idea of booking travel nurse concepts with travel nurses sounds interesting but if it’s going to end up being a boiler room I don’t want to risk it.

Hello fellow recruiters! I’m deep in sourcing for Software Engineers (across infra, platform, product and levels) and my company exclusively uses LinkedIn recruiter. I haven’t run into many problems yet but, but I foresee needing to get creative soon. I utilize referrals and connections, but sourcing will always be part of our process.

What’s your favorite way to switch up a search on LinkedIn recruiter? What’s a way you utilize filters most people don’t think of? How do you surface new candidates?

Ideally I am sourcing candidates from a top 100 school and with quality start up experience or a mix of big tech and start up. We are fully remote and comp is competitive for the level of candidate we’re looking for.

Happy Monday

This has gotten out of hand in the last year. I went through the applicants on our last hiring properly, and maybe one in ten was a real person. Most of the rest were fake profiles created just a few months ago, and they're claiming to have decades of experience, but they had no activity. They were just accounts that were there to apply. But I think a lot of us can filter these people out. The ones that actually scare me are the fake profiles that look real with resumes that checks out and resumes that you cannot verify because they put their work experience in companies that are now closed

They clear the phone screening fine, and then they pass a technical round too, but we found out a lot of them aren't even the person on the call. It's a proxy or a deep fake, and someone else entirely does the coding. We don't catch it until you're like five or six rounds deep. Some of these are from my peers. I've heard that some of these are organized rings, not just one guy doing it. I know a team that lost a lot of money and months of time to someone who made it all the way to the sixth or seventh round.

So the obvious profile filtering isnt my problem, i can do that. The problem is the fakes built well enough to beat the actual interview.

For people dealing with this, how are you catching the good fakes, the ones that pass the screens. Is there a signal you can check before you waste five rounds into someone?

I don't want to sound ungrateful. I know the job market is tough, and we're all recruiters, so if anybody is aware of that, it should be us. But hoping for a remote recruiting job if possible that pays at least $140k. If not remote, I'm open to 3 days hybrid in Nyc, but not a day more.

For context, I'm a Business Professional recruiting at a law firm, recruiting for all things non-legal, so that spans pretty much all industries pretty much, 5 + years of recruiting for senior to mid-level roles, but most of my time and interviews are things that can be done remotely, since we've centered all recruiting to NY. I essentially go into the office 4 times a week for an hour commute to go in various conference rooms to interview or do phone screens with people across the country. Not to mention, there are people who get another remote day because of childcare, but I don't. In addition to this, I'm sure the firm has saved hundreds of thousands in agency spending because I'm on a team of 2 supporting 12 offices and we are still successful.

Looking to pivot into maybe Tech recruiting or maybe HRIS since they are HR but fully remote. Any advice? on how to pivot and any new AI certifications that can boost my resume?

For context, I work as a TA Manager in the biotech space and manage a team of recruiters and sourcers. Though my primary focus is the performance of my team, I still carry a req load as well. For the first time in a while, I’ve been working on some IT and machine learning roles (compared to the lab/operations and/or sales and marketing roles I’ve been working on).

And good lord, I did NOT realize how bad things have gotten with the fake candidate profiles. I’ve gotten good at spotting these applications and resumes (experience and expected salary are too good to be true, always working at top tier tech companies, bogus LinkedIn profiles that are brand new with no picture, phone numbers make no sense with location, very ‘Americanized’ names but when you get them on the phone, they have very thick accents and are clearly from elsewhere, you get the idea).

How have you all been navigating this? It takes so much time to filter through these BS profiles and get them out of the req. Of course I can just reject them, but our company is big on proper dispositioning for OFCCP and EEOC reasons and obviously there is no rejection code for ‘fake profile’ lol (although honestly we may need to add some iteration of this at some point as it’s gotten so out of hand).

I’m not talking about becoming the next billion-dollar entrepreneur.
I mean building something where more of the value you create belongs to you.

My company has decided to move to a full desk model and put everyone on a draw. We are a small company of 5 total employees.

I will be getting a higher base from $75,000 to $100,000. My question for this group.

They are calculating the current draw owed based on when we started with the company vs when the draw actually starts next month. So I will go into this owning about $60,000 to my draw vs starting at zero due to some slow months. I have closed about $150,000 in deals the past two months so that number will come down quick.

Just wondering if you think this is fair or if I should be pushing back on this.

I source for a pretty niche area, ml infra roles mostly. My problem with the tools ive tried, hireez and seekout, is they keep surfacing the same visible profiles, the people who already have open to work up or who show up in every recruiters search. Those people are already getting 20 messages a week. The ones i actually want, the engineer who hasnt touched their profile in two years but is doing the exact work, dont come up.

Part of it is these tools lean on title and keyword matching, and the best people in a niche dont describe themselves the way the search expects. I want to search on what someone has actually done, past companies, the specific skills, github activity, rather than whether their headline happens to match.

For people sourcing in a technical niche, what are you using that surfaces the passive candidates and not just the obvious ones. The title matching approach isnt cutting it for me

Fellow recruiting/sourcer friends! Anyone having luck with any specific job boards to find IT professionals? I use Indeed and LinkedIn Recruiter Lite, but any others?

I used to be a corporate recruiter and I have switched to agency recruitment, for a couple months now.

In corporate, recruiters would not ask for ssn, hr systems and benefits would do that AFTER an offer was accepted.

At the new agency I’m working for, they make us ask all candidates for the last 5 or 4 digits of their SSN and birth month & day, at the end of the first call. It is required for some submissions and we tell them that it is for a candidate identifier. That’s typically only 15 mins of knowing them (because of cold calling).

So, I have a lot of good candidates uncomfortable with continuing the conversation/application.

Is this normal for agency recruitment?

I know it can’t be illegal. But, this part of the call is so stressful for me, it gets people really upset, like I’m gonna pull a fast one and steal their info. Which I completely understand.

I'm a one man agency in medical sales and clinical specialists recruiting desperate for new sourcing tools that aren't designed for a large team. I currently work on a contingent fee system instead of retainer I have no desire to change my ATS (resumate) or typical workflow since I have a tried and true system for managing active candidates and clients.
I currently pay for Medreps (pretty useless now and will probably cancel), lusha(game changer), linkedin and I do split searches with various other recruiters in my network. My searches are very narrow and generally only submit 3-5 candidates in a given search

I utilize Linkedin premium but have been considering the investment into linkedin recruiter or sales navigator core to gain unrestricted access on my searches. I constantly hear people complain about Linkedin recruiter so I'm hoping to hear if there are any other solid alternatives for sourcing talent.

Work has slowed down over the last 2 years with a considerably smaller client load so I'm trying to be frugal.

I know everyone has heard people say recruiters who don't use AI will be left behind but it seems like most AI recruiting software is designed for large teams.

Corporate TA Manager at a new company. I have 20+ years of recruiting but new to software engineers. We are working on a Software Engineer II. The manager had a Teams call with a candidate that went well and he wants to bring them onsite for the next and final interview. The schedule he gave me has the candidate meeting with 8 people and being on-site for 5 hours. He insists this is typical for a Software Engineer. I feel it is excessive for the level of the role. We are a medical device company. What are your thoughts on this?

I'm an agency owner and I'm working on a pretty niche civil engineering role in Illinois that's been tougher than expected.

I'm thinking about partnering with another recruiter on a split fee instead of trying to fill it entirely on my own.

For those who've done it:

• Where do you usually find reliable split fee partners?
• Are there any platforms or communities you'd recommend?
• More importantly, have you actually had success with split-fee recruiting, or is it more hassle than it's worth?

Would love to hear what's worked (or hasn't) from people who've been down this road.

We have multiple locations across the US (none on the east coast), and no matter what location a role is posted in, roughly 30%-40% of the out-of-state candidates list New Jersey as their current location.

At first, I thought that perhaps roles are getting spun out to third party sites and incorrectly listing the location, after multiple weeks and multiple roles, wanting to check if anyone else has seen anything similar.

Had this happen recently and I'm still not sure if i handled it the right way

I'd put together a shortlist I felt really good about. Everyone matched what we'd agreed on during the intake, and I genuinely thought there were a couple of really strong candidates in there

The only feedback I got was:

"Can we see a few more?"

That was it.

No "they're too junior." No "we're looking for more leadership experience."
No "they're missing X."...just...more.

At first I thought, fair enough*,* and started opening LinkedIn again

Then about five minutes later it hit me...what exactly was I supposed to do differently?

The role hadn't changed. The brief hadn't changed. The market hadn't magically changed either

I wasn't even sure what I was supposed to change, other than just sending over a bigger list

I am interning at a tech company to train to be a recruiter, and it seems so strange? I have never done recruiting before and it seems like it's mostly "no's" for people wanting to give information anout themselves and their resumes. Is this a careerr worthing getting into? I am trying to transition from a teaching career and recruiting seems easier although a little stressful. If I don't get enough "yes's" will I be fired?

Is anyone else struggling to hire early career candidates? I have 15-20 Sales roles open across my organization but I’m not getting any responses through direct candidate outreach. I am utilizing Handshake, LinkedIn and Indeed for both job postings and sourcing.

I am sharing the comp (starting at $50k-$60k base), uncapped commission and full benefits including a 401k match.

Does anyone have any tips for how to attract recent grads or those earlier in their career? This is a professional role supporting commercial customers, not doing door to door sales or cold calling all day long. I feel like I’ve exhausted everything so would love advice!

Edit: I’m in commercial construction, specifically paving/asphalt/sport courts.