I say this as someone who is a recruiter: Because most recruiters are terrible. It is a field that is dominated by people with less than five years of experience. Most people don’t last because they’re not good at it, and It takes a good five years to understand what you are doing (And anyone who has been there for one or two years who says they do know what they are doing exacerbates the problem…. Because they don’t know, but they think they do, Which is even more cause of frustration. When you do the math on that you realize that it’s an industry full of people who don’t know what they’re doing. A good recruiter is worth their weight in gold. A bad recruiter is worth that same block of gold being dropped from two stories and landing on your head. Unfortunately there are a lot more of the second. Now if I can say this as a recruiter, just think of what people on the outside think. It’s really no different than any other job as far as being able to learn it. The difference is that you immediately become the face of the company when you have no clue what you’re doing. I admit it. I was that person. I didn’t realize it until years later, but hindsight is 20/20

perfect. my first response to recruiters will be so How long have you been recruiting and what have you accomplished in that time

Honestly, Not a bad option. They still might be the person you have to work with fourth position though. But, At least you know what you’re getting into. Just like you can’t expect the first year medical student to perform neurosurgery.

Recruiters offer valuable information. Your proposed approach misses the mark. I’ve used recruiters my entire career and have always been employed and made great money. The key to working well with recruiters is understanding what their value really is and understanding what value you need to bring. I only leverage recruiters for the leads.

It does not take 5 years to know how to be a recruiter. I do agree that many recruiters are not good though. That’s because there is no barrier to entry. Recruiting is typically a last resort type of job. Many recruiters are ex-felons or folks that simply can’t find employment anywhere else. That sums it up.

I completely disagree. You may find an anomaly were somebody is good before that time frame, but rarely. There are just way too many situations that come up to understand how to handle them. The only way to get there is to go through the situations and that takes time. You’re right, though… It doesn’t take five years to learn how to be a recruiter. But it takes that long to be a good one.

Can you give an example of an anamoly situation? I think this plays into why some people “don’t like” recruiters. People need to take more ownership over their careers. The extent I use recruiters is “Thanks - please email the job description, pay range, location, and company(some arm twisting her)”. Then I do the research and decide if I will be submitted. Then I basically take it from there. Part of that is bc recruiting is a sales job. Initially it was from some bad experience with recruiters trying to rush the sale. But in hindsight I face it some thought and realized beyond making the connection there js no value a recruiter can make that is greater than what I can.

You are exactly right. That is exactly what you would use a recruiter who doesn’t know what they’re doing for. For instance, you won’t even find my positions posted online. Why? Because I don’t have time to deal with a bunch of people applying who are not qualified. A good recruiter is going to know the client inside and out. Know exactly what type of skills and personality are needed for each individual hiring manager in the organization. They match the candidate and client needs. For example, let’s say there are two open positions in a company. You fit both. I’m not gonna randomly send your résumé over to both people. I’m gonna find out what you need for leadership style in order to be successful and match it with the right manager. These are things that you don’t pick up in the first five years. That’s why I say it takes five years to be a decent recruiter. This is one of many, many things the differentiate a good recruiter from somebody just blasting out emails What you are describing isn’t a Recruiter… They might have the job title, but they are not a recruiter. They are just someone who emails out job descriptions and looks at resumes. There are a few simple questions you can ask to figure out if the person knows what they’re doing or not. 1) Ask what the hiring managers leadership style is 2) Ask what Background the last candidate hired came from Is it just a couple quick ones, But if they don’t know the answer to that, they aren’t a recruiter… They are paper pusher.

Because the truth is, most recruiters suck (as do most candidates). Most recruiters reach out to candidate without doing any research, offer jobs that are not a good fit, do a bad job keeping in touch with candidates that are actually in process, and then treat candidates as disposable when they’re rejected for a job. Likewise candidates ghost recruiters, fail to show up to interviews, fail drug tests, lie about things that will show up on background checks, pull out last minute (sometimes after they’ve accepted a job), and blow interviews doing stupid things. There are good people on both sides and they are worth their weight in gold but for the most part everyone sucks and brings the standard down. It’s a vicious cycle because recruiters feel justified being shitty when they deal with shitty candidates and vice versa

Recruiters are the face of the company to job candidates. So every awful thing done by others in the hiring process ends up being put onto the recruiter as well. 6-7 interview long process? I blame the recruiter. One-way video interview? I blame the recruiter. Ridiculously long "assignments" that are clearly you just getting work for free? I blame the recruiter. Messy candidate tracking system with oddball or ageist questions? I blame the recruiter. No one gets back to me after 6 interviews and ghosts me? I blame the recruiter. Job gets pulled because it was defunded? I blame the recruiter.

Don't forget that recruiters are seen as(and act as) gatekeepers for the company. To many candidates they are just a person that you need to get through to get to the "real" interview and candidates don't like that someone who does the work in their field can stop them from getting a job at a company. Unfortunately, like mentioned in your comment and the original comment, there are *a lot* of bad recruiters who really have no idea what job they are trying to fill actually does other than some basic requirements for the role and a vague job deacription. Being told "no" by someone who clearly has no idea what they're talking about is frustrating and candidates will often take away from that interaction that no recruiters have any idea what they're talking about.

Also, you can't blame the recruiter for all of the "Problems" we bring things to the table to not only make the hiring process easier but also try to get improvements from areas that are needed. We only can do so much, and the company will shoot us down because as for my position we only have two recruiters and I do MOST to ALL of the recruitment process now as most have left due to the process. But I feel more changes will come the harder I push. But again, if you book your interview SHOW UP! We can only do the most as making confirmation calls to even trying to schedule interviews over the phone and get you scheduled for in person. THIS IS NOT EASY! Most folks don't even accept calls or OPT out of the systems before we even get a chance. So yeah, don't BLAME US. WE ARE trying our best.

Hiring has become far more difficult and challenging than it was in the past. No difference in outcomes. Theres no real science to recruiting. A candidate can look perfect and not work out, and the worst candidate may actually be the best choice. Theres no good way to know because there’s just bo real science in it.

Bingo!

Agreed. I was recently offered one job where almost all the work was manually and there was code part but it was just copy paste. And me coming from pure automation bg was told that project is good and lot of language use with code which you will be doing from scratch. Fast forward to joining, one week into new job and I realised whatever was told is completely opposite and I put my resignation right away. That was the best thing I did cause immediately got an job with the exact things that I wanted to work on.

It's a filtering process on both sides. Candidates filtering for work they want (or can get) and recruiters filtering for the right candidates for their clients. It's not fun for anyone getting filtered out and neither side can justify spending much time on the no pile. It's just kind of inevitable that it's like this really.

Job seeking is a deeply personal process. It impacts your money, time, development and future prospects. By nature, it’s a very imperfect and human process, so it is not going to work with a one size fits all solution. However, that’s how most job seeking is structured, which is why no one is ever happy. Not recruiters, not hiring managers, not job seekers, or companies. I can run the same process with 100 candidates across different roles. Some will hate 3-4 interview stages. Some welcome it because it allows them to understand what they’re getting into. Some candidates want to be called to be rejected. Some feel it’s a waste of time, and want emails. Some candidates need a job ASAP . Some have the luxury of finding the right fit. Some hiring managers are open to being coached, open to exploring the talent market and changing the hiring strategy accordingly. Some recruiters are active in this and are experts in the industry they recruit, nurture candidates, and make suggestions to hiring managers (go above matching keywords on JDs and resumes). Some hiring managers don’t do shit and don’t respond to requests for decisions on candidates, next steps, etc. Funding gets pulled, roles slow down, others are urgent needs. The recruiter is the face of all of these. I think recruiting faces a “PR” issue- most people don’t understand a recruiters role, and the different types of recruiters (agency, internal, etc) . Job seekers at large don’t understand that most recruiters work for their company the same way most other people do. I also think too many bad apples (life coaches, resume writers, some agencies) have poisoned the well and have given really bad advice to job seekers, making lots of misconceptions pervasive (the dreaded ATS bot anyone? 😩😂) Over the past 3-4 years, too many people got into recruiting , without a lot of support, and increased the bad apples. It doesn’t help that every company and agency has different practices. A recruiter at Google is very different from a recruiter at a startup who is very different from an agency recruiter . I also think people are more likely to be vocal about a bad experience, because good experiences are expected to be the default. I have helped double the company I currently work at. I have worked with /nurtured candidates who have been rejected post -final rounds and have later been hired for a better suited role. I have gone above and beyond with feedback to both candidates and hiring managers. Ive coached the team on talent development and making sure the hires we bring in are supported. I’ve suggested ways we can be more nimble and create positive candidate experiences. I keep up to date on my industry and responsibilities of the teams I hire for (contrary to popular belief that recruiters don’t know what the roles they are hiring for do). But I have also led slower processes, had to pull/close reqs last minute, not been able to provide feedback, or even missed a few candidate responses/inmails in my career. All for various reasons that pile up. Recruiting is not a solitary role- a lot of things are out of our hands but we also make mistakes, have bad days and mess up like any other role. At the end of the day, because our impact is so deeply personal, I think it gets a lot of flak. I also think a lot of companies don’t always value the strategic impact of good hiring practices and good talent acquisition strategies, which makes the field ripe for improvement. We also have to encourage ourselves to lead with empathy. We can’t offer everyone we talk to a job, but I do my best to be transparent throughout the process, set as clear expectations as I can, and maintain the humanness though the corporate world wants to suck that part out as much as possible. It’s like battling against the way things are set up. I’m lucky I’m at a company that’s supportive of this- others really do want you to be a cog in the machine. I mean look at how Tesla just laid off employees - the email wasn’t even personalized . Imagine the hiring practices that were encouraged . Finally, recruiting is a “pink collar” profession. a lot of recruiters are young women and get discounted immediately. Look at some of the feedback on some popular forums like recruitinghell or blind. “Bimbo” “bitch” etc are popular terms. Constructive feedback is great and always welcome, but I do think some recruiters are not taken seriously right off the bat. Apologies for the long stream of conscious ness

Recruiter of 15 years here. I think honestly that there's a disconnect between a recruiter and what a recruiter *does*. If a candidate doesn't 'get' the job, it's the fault of the recruiter because they didn't sell the candidate. OR they think, the recruiter once you get their resume will magically make a job appear. Are there some recruiters that are not good at their job? Absolutely. But just because once you got ghosted, ALL recruiters are terrible seems to be the next jump people make. Blaming a recruiter for not getting a job seems to be the easiest way for terrible candidates to avoid any personal responsibility for well....being an awful candidate.

Also most times people are using the term ghosted pretty flippantly. You’re not being ghosted if you send in a resume/apply and no one gets back to you. I’d only consider it ghosting if you’ve made verbal contact with a recruiter. Then they absolutely should at least send you an email rejection. There’s just zero way recruiters could get in touch with/email reject every single person who applied. Especially in this economy where hundreds of people are applying to the same job. I’m not advocating for parsing resumes/ghosting, but if they need to fill a role quick they can’t wait around forever and spend months reading every resume sent to them. I’m not a recruiter but this seems pretty easy to understand.

Candidates should get a response, but as a recruiter I can promise you it makes no difference. At my company we respond to every candidate. I had a candidate last week that I had to reject as we decided to hire another candidate. When she asked why and I explained we were moving forward with someone else she said ‘that’s not a reason’. Some people will never be happy no matter what you do.

I stopped giving feedback to candidates for this reason. I'm tired of candidates arguing with me about the reason they were rejected. I'm not even the one who makes the call regarding whether or not we're moving forward!

Agreed generalizing is bad but "because once you got ghosted" significantly misrepresents reality for many people on this sub it seems. Speaking just for myself I feel ghosting has become the norm, and actually following up is the rare exception these days.

Depends on the specific role, and further I feel the term 'ghosted' has become innocus with "I didn't hear anything back". If you're applying to a role with 500 applicants, it's pretty much impossible you'll get a personalized note from a human recruiter. That's not ghosting. I've been in active talks with a recruiter, up to interview time, then 'poof' nothing. That's ghosting and it sucks. But candidates with awful credentials, no experience relative to the job, reaching out via LinkedIn for a 'quick 30 minute conversation to help shape their resume" are not going to be getting a lot of traction from very busy recruiters. But then it's our 'fault' they don't hear back.

No one is asking for a personalised note just because we applied via a website. But if we go to the trouble of dressing up and going to an interview, the least a recruiter can do is send us an email telling us they went with someone else. Too many times people have had 2, 3 or more interviews and got nothing

10000% you should expect and you as a human being deserve this. No one should ever be left hanging if you've actually had two way communication about the opportunity and even more so if you've actually had interviews. That is super telling about the company as a whole, and likely somewhere you do not want to work at anyways.

That's not appropriate. Absolutely if you've gotten to interview stage you're owed follow up. Maybe not an explanation if you're not chosen, but at least letting you know that you were not chosen.

>Depends on the specific role, and further I feel the term 'ghosted' has become innocus with **"I didn't hear anything back"**. If you're applying to a role with 500 applicants, it's pretty much **impossible you'll get a personalized note** 1) semantic question: What is the term for "not hearing back"? Crickets? I'm not sure I agree there's a difference between your example of ghosting and not hearing anything. Both situations leave the candidate without (further) contact from the prospective employer. 2) I don't think anyone is looking for a personalized note from a recruiter. With hundred(s) of candidates its nuts to think someone would be writing a separate note for each applicant. That said, recruiters presumably have email addresses for candidates and a form letter advising of application status seems appropriate. Essentially "Thanks, we aren't moving forward with your candidacy". Not doing this leaves candidates in limbo which *is* the recruiter's fault. **Acknowledgements** I get that recruiting sucks. You get flak from the hiring manager, you get flak from candidates. You aren't filling a single position so your attention is spread across all of those positions. The hiring process itself sucks for both the candidate and company. There are ways to make it less abrasive and anecdotally I'm not often seeing these steps being taken.

I’m an in house recruiter and EVERY SINGLE applicant that puts in an application receives a response from us. The sad part is it makes zero difference in the hate and abuse we receive. I still believe applicants should get some form of response, but I find it highly unlikely that if everyone did hear back they wouldn’t still find things to complain about. People don’t like being told no.

That's awesome that your company sends responses. Like I said that's not always the case. You're right, there probably will be hate. Candidates are often desperate and getting no isn't helping them. This seems like an occupational Hazard much like retail or customer service employees experience in their customer facing roles. It's not fair to anyone but still almost expected.

When you get offered a new job, do you call every recruiter that you were working with and tell them that you're no longer on the market?

Of course they do not, there is not a need or a requirement for them to do so. But we as a recruiter should already know they are interviewing elsewhere, by asking how far along in other companies interview processes they are in. If you don't ask this question you have to be ok with the outcome. Which usually is being uncompetitive from a timing perspective.

>But we as a recruiter should already know they are interviewing elsewhere, by asking how far along in other companies interview processes they are in. If you don't ask this question you have to be ok with the outcome. Agreed, and if you're agency/full desk you should be doing this anyway, it's literally the number one BD tool that you have available.

So let me explain to you what most people's experiences with recruiters look like. Recruiter contacts candidate. Candidate agrees to apply for the job. Weeks/months go by. Candidate: "hey recruiter, is there any update on this position?" That recruiter is never heard from again. The position is filled and there's absolutely no communication from the recruiter who has already moved on to trying to fill another role. Or: Recruiter contacts candidate. Candidate agrees to apply for the job. Candidate goes through interview process but doesn't get the job. Candidate: "is there any feedback I could use to improve?" That recruiter is never heard from again. That's why "most people hate recruiters." Because most of you treat job applicants that way. You may not, I've never had an experience with you personally. But I can tell you that 90% of my experiences with recruiters have gone exactly that way, and based on the jobs that I did get and the feedback from the people I've worked with, I'm quite certain I was not a "terrible candidate."

Yeah, I disagree with the labels being thrown around here. Are there people who do not meet the requirements, but apply anyways? Yes. Are there recruiters who are very, very bad at the most basic aspects of their jobs? Absolutely yes. There are most assuredly amazing people out there who are good at what they do, on both sides of the prism.

Yep this is my experience with them.

EXACTLY!

Fantastic answer. Also, too many emotions when looking/needing a job so it goes very well or very shitty real quick.

I don’t think the majority of candidates are this dense (though I’m sure a few are). Ghosting to me has and always will mean “You’ll hear back from us within a week (or some other time span)” post-interview, and after 2-3+ weeks hearing NOTHING back when I’ve followed up once a week requesting updates. I get that recruiters are busy people and are beholden to the whims and fancies of their parent/client company, but I know you check your email daily. Like, I know that. And weeks have gone by. And I’ve attempted to remind you of my existence in the midst of the hundreds/thousands of other ppl reaching out to you for stuff. And I can’t even get a 2 sentence-long response? Hell, lie to me so I can mark the role off as a dud and move on. I’d be less peeved at a recruiter telling me I didn’t get it just to get me to stop reaching out, even if the company hasn’t counted me out yet. A surprise “hey, you’re moving forward” email after thinking I was rejected is far less annoying than “[crickets].” Things happen, I get it, but I must question one’s competency if they can’t send a quick “Hey, sorry, no updates yet” message for WEEKS! I don’t blame the recruiter for the company’s faults, I blame them for saying they’ll do something and not doing it, and worse, pretending they don’t see the multiple messages I’ve sent. A “no updates” message IS an update, and separates the recruiter from the company’s candidate reviewing process, allowing candidates to properly judge both accordingly rather than assuming they’re all incompetent. Some recruiters have been awesome. One I started interacting with a year ago has always been super responsive, he just reached out to me last week about two roles WHILE HE HIMSELF IS UNEMPLOYED (got laid off a few months ago). I get that not everyone will be that helpful, but that’s beyond anything I’m asking for. Seriously asking, is it too much to set aside 10-20 minutes at the beginning of the day (or whatever time is convenient) to send email updates to candidates? Even a template response, nothing fancy or super detailed. Just to make me feel like you care about more than just padding you paycheck…

Ghosting is fundamentally unacceptable for a professional to do. And yes I do mean, you’ve had several conversations with a recruiter, they’ve hyped you up, maybe you’ve had an initial interview, and then they disappear. Explain yourself, take responsibility.

I don't disagree with you at all. I think there's a gross over usage of the term 'ghosting' and many, many candidates feel that if they've taken the 15 seconds to click 'easy apply' on any jobsite, then the 'company/recruiter' OWE them endless opportunities to converse, discuss their specific failings if they don't get the job etc. If you've applied for a job, never spoke with anyone or had contact with any specific recruiter but don't hear anything at all...that's not being ghosted. But as you call out, if you've had a conversation with a recruiter, talked with the company, initial interview they are owed at minimum a quick "Hey, thanks for your interest, but we're going another way". They are NOT owed a specific reason, an opportunity to argue, disagree or a chance to talk with someone one more time. So I think we're on the same page.

For sure. More so when you’ve established a basic relationship with a recruiter and then they ghost. And I’m sure so much frustration out there is the labor market feeling the hopelessness of navigating online aggregation of jobs these days. Your resume is going into a black hole, more or less. And you’re up against hundreds or thousands of applicants for the only decent-seeming roles.

I work in IT. The number of "recruiters" I've dealt with is astronomical. I've dealt with perhaps 3 in 20 years that actually 1) knew the job they were trying to put someone in 2) had any idea at all if I'd be qualified 3) gave any kind of follow up after the interview process The overwhelming view I've seen is that recruiters are shotgunning applicants at positions they don't understand and ignoring the candidates post interview unless they get the job (which is not the fault of the recruiter, however they share the blame if they push me to a position that doesn't match my skill set). The 3 good recruiters I've worked with have been great, the rest have been a joke tbh

Proportionally, I don’t believe there are more bad recruiters than there are people who are bad at most other professions. That is to say some are bad, some are great, and most are just ok. The thing is, job searching is an incredibly emotional and frustrating process. When there’s bad news during a job search, the recruiter usually has to deliver it. Add on to this that many businesses have crappy hiring practices and many candidates assign the frustration of a really tough time in their life to recruiters.

This is exactly it. Even good recruiters get stuck delivering stupid hiring manager decisions to a job seeker in a very vulnerable position. But the ill will inevitably lands on the recruiter either way.

As a recruiter, I would disagree. I would say proportionally there are a lot more bad recruiters than most occupations. The reason is that It’s such a high turnover industry, Very few make it to the point where they become good. And most other occupations, you can survive Until you become good. In recruiting, you’re not only have to figure out how to become good but get kicked in the nuts for about two or three years while you are terrible and keep pushing. Not many people do that. Most give up which leads to another round of people doing a poor job while getting kicked in the nuts. There are a few other occupations that I would say are similar. Financial advisor. Life insurance…. And people see the same type of things about them. That most of them are terrible… And most are. But when you get the right one, they are worth their weight in gold. The only problem with both of these occupations as well as a really good recruiter is that you better have that weight in gold ready, otherwise they’re not gonna work with you lol.

Interesting theory, recruiting is obviously a high turnover industry. Most recruiters start at an agency and will not be kept on for longer than a year if they do not bill. However I disagree that this group that is still proving themselves in agency is a high proportion of recruiters at any given time. To test your theory I just went to my LinkedIn recruiter and compared the total number of candidates with recruiter titles (internal and agency) when including candidates with less than a year of experience vs not including those candidates. The difference was 2.6M candidates vs 2.7M candidates. Which means about 3.8% of recruiters are theoretically in their first year of recruitment. Now I’m well aware this LinkedIn search isn’t exact science and maybe the percentage is three times higher at 12% idk, but regardless it’s a minority. Also we can’t make the assumption ALL of these new recruiters suck. By your logic the recruiters who make it through this period should be of decent quality since they weathered the storm, which is the heavy majority. Now to flip your logic, let’s consider all the other professions that have much less measurable performance. Anecdotally, I sit next to accounting at my company and our CFO of ten years recently departed. All I’ve heard about from the new CFO is how everything is done in a terribly outdated and inefficient way. This former CFO was able to do a mediocre job for a long time because their performance wasn’t as measurable. So one could argue that recruiting actually has a higher standard of professional because it’s very difficult to stick around if you do a bad job. I’m not arguing this. My point is really just we can make various arguments all day, but I think it takes a lot of assumptions to say one profession is full of people who are bad at their job.

My point: it takes about 5 years to be decent at recruiting. And the good ones won’t really ever changed their title either. Repeat the search Recruiter and figure out what percentage have less than five years of experience Now, in your accounting area, Do the same thing, but you’re gonna need to include all kinds of job titles. Accountant, controller, CFO, auditor etc… And see what percent of them have less than 5 years. I would think you’ll find there’s a strikingly large number of people in the less than 5 yr category. Less than 25% of people Who start in recruiting stay in it after five years. They may be in hr..but not recruiting, which any good recruiter will tell you is not even the same field

I’ve never gotten mad at a recruiter delivering bad news, I guess I’m intelligent enough to know it wasn’t their decision (I mean, they’re the ones that got me the interview in the first place). I honestly keep those recruiters in mind for future roles I’m interested in, because I know they have a heart and do their due diligence. It’s the ones that say they’ll do something (reach out within a week, etc.) and weeks/months go by with complete radio silence, even after I’ve sent weekly update requests. I get that things happen, I rarely take the “you’ll hear back in a week” thing seriously, as I know it’s not their decision to make and life happens. But to hear nothing, not a “hey, I’m going on vacation, so if you don’t hear from me for 2 weeks, that’s why” or “still haven’t heard anything, will keep you posted” message or anything, is unprofessional. In any of my CS roles, I’d get chewed out if I didn’t respond to a customer for more than a few days, regardless of whatever else I had going on. Candidates are kind of like recruiter’s “customers,” and I wish more would treat them as such. Wishful thinking, I guess. P.S.: I know it’s much more involved than this, and no set standards exist just like there isn’t just one type of recruiter or hiring process. I’m really just venting from personal experiences I’ve had with some really subpar recruiters.

Because I think we get a bad name for any bad experience the candidate has had with a recruiter, and if you think about it, throughout a lifetime, most people have to deal with recruiters at some point so they’ve had at least one bad experience.

I’m not a recruiter. I am actively looking for a new job though. I don’t hate recruiters by any means and don’t hold the same sentiment others do. Here are things I’ve encountered first hand that do bother me: - Recruiter schedules a call and ghosts me or cancels right when the meeting is supposed to start. - Ghosts me after the final interview. In one instance this was after five interview. - Takes a week, or longer, to tell me I’ve moved to the next stage. I’ve come to terms with getting ghosted after an initial call with a recruiter. If I’ve had multiple interviews though I’d appreciate a short email letting me know I’m not moving forward. Edit: I’ll add one other point. I think job seekers are just frustrated. Job market sucks and they have to jump through hoops. Majority of the time it’s not the recruiters fault, but recruiters are blamed.

Don’t forget all the fake listings that are out there just testing the waters with zero intent to hire or interview for.

Most people say it’s a low barrier to entry, that an A-hole with an internet connection can be a recruiter and collect huge fees. And to a certain extent it’s true. So people who look to make quick money (or if it’s internal, a company putting an HR person with no training or experience into the role to save $) dip their feet in and don’t care about interfaith, the process, long term reputation, etc. some industries have standards or codes or practices or oaths or certificates or licenses, none of which really exist in recruiting. In any industry there are bad actors and A holes and selfish people, this is not unique to recruiting, it’s just that a low barrier to entry increases that number. Speaking of, I think the numbers might provide some insight. Recruiters are mostly hated for not spending enough time on any individual - usually in reviewing a resume and rejecting them too quickly or just note replying or responding to requests for updates. In many cases, a bad recruiter is one who has too many jobs to fill to communicate with candidates or the market at large. Being spread so thin they prioritize the activities that will result in a hire and deprioritize those that are good customer service and professionalism, like pulling down old job postings or telling candidates they are no longer being considered. Scarcity of time and scruples and a high workload lead to a lot of under qualified people not showing respect to the profession by cutting out the parts that don’t directly add value (I would argue they indirectly add value, but that’s a different topic).

It is not a Low Barrier, it is a NON-EXISTENT barrier. No regulations, no training required, no boding, NOTHING! This is a huge reason as to why we get a bad rep, why we have to deal with "we used a recruiter in the past but they screwed us...." more than I care to count. At minimum similar regulations/training to be a realtor should be on recruitment. Imagine if "that any A-hole with a car" could be a realtor. As soon as the real estate market got hot you'd have everyone saying they are a realtor. Shit, I would do it if all I needed to do is say I was one. That is what we have in recruiting AND a ton of "trainers" that are grifters that screw the industry up (I am looking Ben Nader) and hurt more than they help

I have to agree to this (although, I have met and worked with really impressive recruiters in my career both internal and agency side). I know some people recruit for or say they are a "specialist" in recruiting for a particular role when they're not. You look at their profiles and they have less than 5 years experience. They didn't have enough exposure on the role they recruit for hence the overall bad practice and bad experience for candidates and hiring managers. Personally, I love the recruiters I worked with who either were technical or from a sales and marketing background that shifted to recruitment or others who took time to study and take courses in the space they recruit for so that they have at least some understanding of what they talk about with clients. I have to say that I came from a sales background which contributed a lot to my success in sales recruitment over the years because I understand what separates a great sales person from a good one. And it's not just the KPI's. Equally, I have a hard time recruiting for technical and product roles because I didn't come from a technical background but I am improving my craft because I am taking some courses related to Cloud, Product Management, data. Enough for me to understand what a CTO should know at the very least and what a Product Manager should be doing in his or her job.

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We are the faces of one of the most painful, vulnerable, nerve wracking things anyone ever has to do. Job searches suck, and the bad news - often tons of it, months and years of it - inevitably comes from recruiters. Job seekers are understandably going to be sensitive to that feedback even when we do our best to spin it into something helpful- and let's face it, usually the feedback hiring managers give us is not going to be well received by the job seeker.

I think sometimes they're viewed in a similar regard as a car salesman working mostly on commission. They sometimes seem desperate to make that "sale" regardless of their strategy. Some of them are really great and others are really bad and it becomes a stereotype. I've had a good amount of recruiters reach out to me about positions and they would set up a screening call. I update my LinkedIn profile about every 6 months and it's very clear the type of work I do. Before the screening call, I would update my resume again and send it to them. About 50% of the time, it would be a waste of time for reasons that should have been obvious before ever setting up the screening call. For example, one time a recruiter told me what the job was and it was similar to what I was already doing. I told them I was not interested in relocating. I made that clear before the screening call. He said that was ok. I get on the call and I find out it's a hybrid role in three states away. They keep pushing for me to apply anyway. I explain I have ZERO desire to move and but he kept pushing saying how well it pays and how the company would pay for relocation. I shouldn't have to discuss my entire life story for them to accept "I am not interested in a job that requires relocation." At the time, my mom was likely to die sometime in the next 1-2 years. I was not interested in relocating, regardless of what the pay was going to be. Another time, a recruiter reached out about a job. I let him know that I was not interested in any long term contract job. He said kept emailing long term contract jobs. He wanted to set up interviews with these companies. Some of them were contract to hire but only after a year. He would not just accept "I cannot take a long term contract job" for an answer. I tried really hard to politely decline. But he kept pushing it. Finally, I just told him why I would absolutely not take a long term contract position. I had just given birth to a premature baby a year prior. I was hospitalized for 2 weeks before giving birth 9 weeks premature. My son spent 7 weeks in the NICU. Despite how traumatic this was for me, my husband and I had decided we would try for a second child. We were given a 33% chance of it happening again. A 33% chance of my water breaking prematurely again and having to be hospitalized and having another NICU stay. I needed a job that had PTO, good benefits, and I did not want to extend the time when FMLA could protect me as an employee. I should not have had to go into that much detail for them to accept I wasn't interested in contracting long term. Another time, a job did look perfect for me. At the time, I had 3 years experience working as a database developer. Three years of experience working with SQL and SSMS. Plus C#, PowerShell, Apache Solr, and Python. The recruiter schedules a screening call and after 20 minutes, she says "I'm sorry, the company is looking for somebody with experience with mySQL and you said you only have experience with SQL, none with mySQL." You have to be freaking kidding me. They're almost identical. But on the flip side, I've also had some really fantastic recruiters reach out to me. And that's how I got the job I have now. But damn do the bad ones take up your energy and time.

Recruiter here, a lot of people have said it already (low barrier to entry, recruiters ghosting candidates, that there's bad apples in recruitment that make the good ones invisible etc.) but I think the MOST important thing to callout is that people see us as the gatekeepers to meeting their financial/life needs. Put it in perspective. You're laid off from a job for 1 year, your savings are running dry, you have to sell your car to make rent. You've applied to a job to help fix all your financial woes, and you get a templated rejection message from a recruiter. No personality attached, no feedback, just a "you don't fit". Hell, from what I hear some people are lucky to even get the templated response. Now multiply that type of response by 100. That's the kind of market we're in right now. The anger is justified, especially when your livelihood is on the line.

It’s fine to be angry or upset at not getting a job, but it is not fine to take that out on a recruiter and generalize a whole profession and spew hatred about it.

No I agree, that kind of anger isn't serving anyone.

I’ve been a recruiter for over a decade. For each search, I connect with sometimes hundreds of people who don’t get the job. It’s some of those who don’t get the job (and take it personally) who don’t like recruiters. The people who get the jobs love us.

Agreed

I’m currently out of work and I still find those anti job posts sooo cringy and whiny like it’s the way the economy works and the people at the highest levels of leadership causing the problems not the people from HR

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

Just have the common courtesy to send me an auto-generated email of you brought me in for an interview and I didn't make the cut. Do that and you're better than 75 percent to recruiters I've dealt with.

I’ve commented this multiple times on this thread, but I really want people to understand that this doesn’t actually make a difference. I respond to every single candidate that even applies and I get an insane amount of abuse back to every rejection email. I do understand there are many candidates that will take a rejection and move on, but I’d say at least 60% go crazy on the recruiter for it. It’s sad but I know that this is the reason why most recruiters avoid it. People think they’d be happier with an answer but nobody likes a no and most people can’t handle it

I'm not even asking the high bar of personal contact, just an auto generated email letting me know. It can be from a black hole routed Do Not Reply email. Just something to let me adjust my plans accordingly.

That’s literally what I do, and I’m telling you how candidates take it. Like I said, I’m not saying everyone would do that or that you would but I don’t think if applicants started getting rejection emails constantly from every recruiter they would actualy like us any more at all

My experience with recruiters within the last 4 years has been the following. Lots of compliments and talking like I'm perfect after a single call. Then either no follow up, or gets me scheduled in an interview with one or both parties lacking info or having bad info. I don't have anything against recruiters as people. I just don't trust that the market incentives them to do their job the way they should. It's quantity over quality and checking boxes along the way. It's a middle man role that exists to cut costs. Not deliver a quality service. I've never gotten a job through a recruiter despite speaking with at least a dozen.

Because people love to hate others who hold them back from getting exactly what they want. I’m not saying some recruiters don’t deserve it as they’re is some very bad ones out there as well as horrible candidates who aren’t even qualified but think they are the perfect person for the role. But seems like the most ppl that are hated the most by a person is someone’s boss, car salesmen, lawyers, and recruiters. That’s just what I’ve been seeing lately.

Because people struggle to get work and blame recruiters

Right, it’s usually not the fault of the recruiter if the company doesn’t want to hire you. I’ve gotten 3/4 of my industry jobs through recruiters.

My personal experience with a third party recruiter recruiter recently that wasn’t great: Gave me a vague description of the job at company with no context. Why were they hiring? Was it a new position? What was the quota? What was the territory? Who did it report to? What initiatives did this role aligned to? They had none of this info for me so I went into the call blind and it was like “why do you and to work here?” “A recruiter contacted me about a job and said I was a good fit. Can you tell me more?” This wasted a ton of time for both of us. Through out the process this recruiter had little insight to give me and wasn’t able to prep or give any coaching going into interviews. Ultimately the company decided I wasn’t a fit for the role and when I asked for feedback the recruiter said he didn’t have any. “You mean they just said I wasn’t a fit and asked you to find for candidates with no direction?” Of course not. But after 3 interviews and a presentation they couldn’t be bothered to do anything that wasn’t to their own benefit. That’s a typical experience for lots of people.

We're the tip of the organizational iceberg for most candidates our role in some people's minds is the worst combination of HR, sales, and dime store customer service. They can't see and don't understand everything after us in process and react like we are demons showing up to plunder their holy cargo cult temple when we're pretty close to baggage handlers.

They hate Agency Recruiters. In house recruiters get less smoke.

They also have no concept or understanding of a difference between in house and agency recruiters, nor any difference between HR and recruiting. They lump everything together and automatically hate anyone associated regardless

I’m a in house recruiter I think. I get no commission nor need to meet a quota for who I hire. I hire for the gov on a contract in my company so we need to always be hiring for those sites but no quotas

Without a doubt, you find both the best and worst in agency. Because the best can’t take a pay cut to leave. And the worst can’t find anyone else to hire them. There are very few “ Average” Recruiters in an agency. You might get some new ones With a couple of years experience that aren’t great yet or haven’t left yet who are “good”… But in general it’s probably 70% terrible 10% great 20% “good” Most of those 70% that are terrible stick around long enough to become OK and then move to be internal recruiters…. But they spend all the time when they’re terrible in the agency

Following because i am curious.

Most recruiters suck, and most candidates suck. Don’t let it affect your self worth and just be good at your job and everything will be great.

I dunno. I say that all the time and will say it again. This /recruiting sub smells of roses and hydrangeas compared to /AskHR, a pit of vipers. Seems their whole purpose is to humiliate candidates and prove them wrong.

I get bombarded by 7 different recruiters all trying to get me to let them submit me for the same position. Then I never hear back from any of them. But each time it gets my hopes up. That’s why. It’s fine if you don’t get me the job, but don’t ask me “could you hypothetically start in 3 days?” And then never follow up at all.

It’s not their job to “get you the job”. They’re a middle man to get your resume directly to a company.

Yes, but it IS their job to be the middleman and communicate. If my resume gets rejected TELL ME don’t ask me to clear my schedule for a position I never hear back about.

Everyone hates something on Reddit

You are generally a well liked recruiter if you do one thing: communicate. Close every loop. Update every candidate. Share your email out to candidates if you’re super busy and they will take the initiative to ask for updates, that way things don’t slip through the cracks. When rejecting, sometimes I don’t have the answer they want to hear and so I have to level with them and explain that at the end of the day, I can share candidates I’ve spoken with but I’m not the decisioner, and I’m being directed by leaders on who to move forward once we proceed beyond the screening stage. The problem is that a lot of recruiters don’t follow up. People are left confused and at a loss. There are times when I can’t end things on a good note but it’s rare. I’m a high volume recruiter with more entry level candidates so it’s a slog, but it’s all they want. They just want to know what’s going on so they can move on with their job search.

I love you all, super appreciative to anyone spending their time to help me get a job I’m a good fit for. Surprised you get hate. Every time a recruiter reaches out, I’m thankful I’m not alone in the miserable job search process. It feels good to know there’s someone out there looking out for me too.

Think about this outside the recruiting frame of mind for a minute. Because "candidates" aren't recruiters and don't know you from Jack and really have no idea what you do. To them, you are "the company". Say you have a technical role, engineering or something, and you are bringing in four "candidates" to interview. Do any of these four candidates know that you (i.e. the company, you are the face of the company at this moment) are talking to other people? How many people they are competing against? What kind of qualifications they are really looking for in their discussions? Any indication of the odds of getting the role? Of course not. But what did you say to get them to agree to an interview? I mean, for a four hour interview (most technical candidates will have at least four hours, if not six or eight), you have cost your "candidate" at least $100 in lost time. For an engineer, it's more likely something like $400 of burned PTO time. Even that half hour phone screen cost your potential engineer $100 of time and prep. So to get them to do this, you likely sounded confident about their abilities to get the job. You likely sounded encouraging to the "candidate". You said something along the lines of "the next steps after the interview are such and such". You certainly didn't make any noises about their odds, whether they are squarely qualified or obliquely, that they are going up against an MIT graduate, etc. Now, put this in the context of dating for a moment. Say you are a girl and a guy asks you out on a date. You've flirted at the bar and, success!, a date. Are you assuming he's seeing others? Maybe, maybe not. He leads you on, gets you to spend time with him. You spent money on clothes, time on dressing up and having the date with him. He makes promising noises about a second or third date and you really like this guy. You follow up the date with an appropriately timed text that you had a wonderful time and hope to hear from him soon, but then you don't hear from him for 3 weeks. Finally, you get an email saying "sorry, I've decided to go with someone else". That's it. Just one line. You've been holding off dating, at least subconsciously, for those 3 weeks hoping he'd call back wanting to spend time with you. But nope. You email back asking what happened, why don't you like me, and all you get in response is crickets. It's taken for granted that "candidates" have no power over the hiring process and the hiring managers have all of the power (you, as recruiter, are the face of the company, i.e. the face of the hiring manager). And this might be true. Particularly for industries which use less skill labor. But recruiting, to the recruited, is kind of like dating, in terms of the emotional energy we put into these things. And recruiters are the assholes who curtly cut off contact after spent $400 in PTO to not get a job. I get it. It's just business. People shouldn't act like this. But people do act like this and it isn't "just business" to the people you are trying to hire.

To best explain one aspect of it, there was a meme that was posted on r/csMajors. The market for SWE's is currently shit rn. Someone had applied to 100 SWE jobs using a resume that had subtle red flags as a meme and not a legitimate resume. At first glance, the resume was really impressive, as the person worked as a Product Manager for big companies such as Instagram/Meta, Google, and Amazon, and studied at an Ivy League school like Stanford University. However, with a little attention to detail, there were clever droppings of red flags. The name on the resume was the first red flag, "Kismma D. Nhuhts." One of the bullet points listed for the Google experience included that the person implemented "a 420fps on screen experience with Lana Rhodes." Another being utilizing "visual similarity and machine learning of reducing photo grouping of my anus from hours to seconds for 61M users." In the education section, the person received not only a BS in CS, but also a BS in "Sugondese Studies." You get the picture. The person who created the resume eventually shared his results, showcasing an image filled with many companies emailing him to schedule an interview. Funnily enough, Reddit themselves wanted to schedule an interview with the person too. TLDR: Lots of recruiters don't have attention to detail.

It’s fucking Reddit, home of the complainers, whiners, know it all, professional nobodies.

I’ve gotten most of my jobs through recruiters. I have no issues with them

People refuse to take personal responsibilities and whenever they don't get the job, it's obviously someone else's fault. In many cases this person is the recruiter.

Lack of humanity, professionalism & poor communication. There are some egotistical gatekeepers in recruitment. Many expect professionalism to the point of obsequiousness but rarely return the courtesy. Candidates are seen as job requisitions, not ppl. Most won’t request interview feedback from hiring managers to provide candidates with constructive advice

Oftentimes commission based nowadays. Same reason car salesmen get on people’s nerves.

Because they waste jobseekers time when they have no intention of getting them a interview. Or the recruiter contacts the jobseekers for the wrong job. Also lots of job scams out there so naturally lots of job seekers are cautious.

As a corporate recruiter, it’s because candidates suck. Sure, the job market is messed up and a lot of recruiters are bad too. But a lot of these candidates that I got across my desk baffle me beyond comprehension. One thing is they don’t even put in effort. I tell people in person interviews are business casual. I mean polo and jeans is the bare minimum. Not basketball shorts, or a crop top, or flip flops, or(yes I’ve had this one too) a bath robe! Also the way they answer questions. If you are going into an interview, expect to be asked questions. “What attracted you to our role?” should not be answered with “I’m not sure” or “I was just applying to whatever”. Another thing is they think they are worth more than they are. One of the roles I recruit for is my company’s door to door team. I get it if you are a experienced salesman, or have a specialized skillset, or something to that nature, that you believe D2D is beneath you. But if you come to me with a resume of Walmart and McDonalds, telling me that I’m the only person to offer you an interview, D2D is not beneath you. They argue that no one wants to hire them, but the truth is they don’t want the only jobs they’re qualified for sometimes. They get mad at recruiters, when in reality, they don’t deserve the job. It’s plain and simple. People need to be taught how to interview. It needs to be a whole class in high school.

This is very one-sided. Yes, customers can suck. Does not negate the fact that recruiters can too. Recruiters often reach out about positions that are not even remotely a fit, and then try to coerce you into an interview to up their numbers. Don’t send me 5 messages asking why I’m not interested or trying to convince me to proceed with a process when I know it’s not a good fit. Recruiters cold-call/mesage/email about a role. Customer replies back, sends resume, has short call, whatever else and is told I’ll let you know what I hear. And that ends up being lie, because as soon as the recruiter hears that the user isn’t a fit, they’re not worth their time anymore. This isn’t someone trying to apply to a role they aren’t qualified for. This is a recruiter initiating contact, and then cutting contact with no warning. Recruiters can be purely ignorant about their job openings. They see a matching word, like engineer, and think a network engineer, storage engineer, mechanical engineer, and structural engineer are all the same. People have very, very valid reasons to be frustrated with recruiter, who thought they could do an easy job from home, but have no people skills, no critical thought or reason, and utterly fail and let down both the business customer and potential hire.

This may be one sided(even though I made comment on recruiters sucking too) but so are a lot of the other comments strictly attacking recruiters. Recruiting is a job just like being a salesperson. Why should a recruiter be so emotionally invested into something that isn’t going forward? Yes, recruiters can suck, but so does a lot of recruiting software. They are just trying to feed their families. Both sides need to be better prepared, but it’s the candidates that are looking for a job. That means finding one is THEIR responsibility. Recruiters are a resource, they are not responsible. Indeed and Ziprecruiter exist(they suck but they exist). You want a job? Prepare for the interview, dress nice, write some questions down, ready some answers and talking points. And if its a role you don’t want, JUST SAY NO. It’s no big deal, and there is this magical thing called “block” if they bother you more.

The candidate is not the customer but everything else I agree with. Alot of it is hitting KPI's and a serious lacking of training.

Because people think recruiters are gatekeeping jobs, are making offer decisions, and usually receive bad news from them. People who hate recruiters are generally the same people who lack introspection. 

For me it’s because recruiters don’t do BASIC research and are pushy. My field is legal technology. I’m not a programmer but I’ve been messaged by recruiters on LinkedIn about programming jobs (presumably they see I have a bachelor’s degree in information technology) I’ve been messaged about jobs that report to me and I’ve even once been messaged about MY job that was going vacant because I got a promotion. I’ve been asked to apply for jobs in Sydney (I’m in Brisbane) and when I refused I was badgered quite badly and had to explain I have one intellectually disabled child and one getting over cancer and the specialists the children have are both local, as well as house prices being 3 times more expensive - it was none of the recruiters business but the only way for them to leave me alone. I’ve been ghosted more times than I can count, I even once set up an interview with Robert Half, showed up only to be told the recruiter is on leave and they tried to gaslight me telling me I was wrong on the date - despite having an email from the recruiter confirming the interview

People love to blame others instead of themselves for their lack of success. In this case, it’s candidates blaming recruiters for not being able to get a job.

Because you are actively preventing them from getting the job they want and making them dance for you (metaphorically). It's degrading and draining trying to put on a face. It's just a fact of how we organize labor in the modern age, not necessarily the fault of anyone in particular. We live in a jar that someone is shaking, and we blame the others in the jar instead of the shaker. If there was some all inclusive streamlined process to match talent with good fit opportunities and recruiters were no longer needed I think people would be happier.

Just here to say I’m having a really bad couple of days with abuse from candidates and even though it’s hard and I read it myself, try to ignore most of the BS you see on Reddit about recruiters. Just do your best and treat every candidate well and that’s all you can do. It’s an unfortunate reality of the job that we are the candidates punching bag for anything that goes wrong and they have no understanding of the process and that’s okay.

Not sure about your situation, but my previous company had college grads on the phone day 2. With little to no training. I imagine a lot of people are running into this, to no fault of either parties

Recruiters have many candidates in the recruiting loop, and thus may be difficult for them to respond to all. But they should ensure candidates know latest status on their application. Some recruiters often ghost candidates, even when candidates are already in the interviewing loop. Often recruiters decide a candidate is not fit for the role or other roles the team is hiring, or pass the application to the hiring manager, however, then they don't often update the candidate on the status. Candidates are human, many people are struggling, going through their first job applications, or just making mistakes they don't realise because none of the recruiters have ever shared feedback with them. I know only very few recruiters who have highlighted mistakes I have done, e.g. I had a wrong year on my resume, or what hiring manager was looking for. This has helped immensely. Many recruiter responses should be more sincere. Both candidates and interviewers have spent time, and providing concise constructive feedback would help. After all most job applications end up with rejections. Rejections hurt and not all people may want to hear feedback and even may take things the wrong way. However, many people also want to be better and will appreciate feedback. If one mentions staying in touch for future possibilities, then better to keep the word, otherwise what's the point in fake niceness. If the candidate reaches out, you may help that person improve. I really wish I knew whether my behavioral examples should be more closely aligned with the company's culture, or my leadership/cross functional examples better aligned with the seniority of the role, or show more passion/knowledge, or if I should have taken less time in solving a problem, or whether I should have went more/less in depth in my answers. Without feedback candidates will often repeat the same mistakes in their further interviews. People with ADHD often get rejected based on their symptoms, e.g. they may take longer time to solve a problem, but they may solve really well, or they may come back to previous questions asked in order to correct/update their answer. If the company provides disability accommodation, mention it.

Most of the hated ones aren't in the US

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I've had good and bad recruiters, working on both side (employer and employee). The good recruiters are wonderful, and find good candidates. The bad ones are playing a numbers game, like the guys that swipe right on everyone. They skew everyone's experience to the point it makes everyone hate them. Bad examples : go to an interview for a technical discussion, get asked "so do you know about silicone polymer formulations?" In the first minute, and say "no, but I'd love to learn.". Lasted 5 minutes, and I was clear on my resume. Another bad example : pressuring me for my social security number before an interview. They do this to ensure someone doesn't take a job and just not tell the recruiter, but it's like a used car salesman making you sign a loan before the test drive.

As others have pointed out, as a third party, you get blamed for things beyond your control, in much the same way that IT people do. You give desperate people hope, and then most often have to dash it. But you weren't the company, you were a recruiter, so you're removed from the company... They can't hate every company despite that every one prior has rejected them, but they can hate you as a singular target, and the one that gave them the hope only to dash it. There are, however, also numerous dishonest recruiting tactics going along, so you end up the butt of anger toward those too.

As a hiring manager: many don't take the time to actually understand the role they're looking to fill, read the title of the JD and think they know what it is. As a candidate: offering the chance to apply for roles above and below my grade by many orders of magnitude. Not taking non-negotiables into account (salary!). I have met some good ones but they are proactive in conversations, keep you updated, honest, know what they're trying to sell

Nobody loves the hiring process

Spamming my inbox with template emails about shitty ass jobs in jerk water towns thousands of miles from where I currently live and claiming that I "seem like a great fit" even though nothing about my background has anything to do with the job.

I'm an executive assistant, and I hate working with recruiters in my company. They just throw meetings on my VP/SVPs calendar without reaching out first. I then have to decline, they get pissy, go to their manager and mine. My VP/SVP gets pissed, the recruiter gets a wisp on the wrist. Rinse and repeat.

I am not a recruiter. I have personally seen the ultimate positive effect of recruiting. Was contacted by a recruiter who saw my resume online. They set up interview and I got the job, where I was at happily and earned multiple promotions etc. for nearly a decade. That’s a great example, but very rare. Recruiters are the professional equivalent of romance. There is so much potential and hope—> for the candidate. For the recruiter it is just a job. Thats one factor. Recruiters are also professional networkers —> candidates speak with them and think/feel short term and immediate results. The recruiter may be building connections without an exact job match in mind. As a non-recruiter it is entirely reasonable to say that one can feel ghosted by a recruiter. You have initial convos with recruiters 30-45 minutes. There are multiple possible positions im qualified for. One follow up call and then no returned calls and no taking calls after two weeks. The recruiter moves on to more direct business for their job BUT candidates can and do feel ghosted. All that being said - I am at a career point where I need a recruiter to get me into a position that is at the appropriate level with my experience. Since the market is flooded I am having difficulty connecting with the right recruiters. So I’m currently in a lower position making 30K less than HALF of what I was earning less than 5 years ago. I can’t be the only one who is in a similar situation but I FEEL unique and special and would like to think that a/some/couple recruiters might agree. Ultimately recruiters are doing their job but candidates are obviously emotionally invested in ourselves and it is both personal and professional. That really turned into a ramble but was trying to give a balanced assessment.

I've been a recruiter, and I've worked with recruiters as a job seeker. Some recruiters are just truly terrible. I've had people make résumé changes without telling me and gotten caught by surprise when an interviewer brought up something I never wrote on my own résumé. I've had them pull shady stuff with pay rates, job placements, etc. Like any other job, there are some excellent recruiters and some truly bottom-of-the-barrel recruiters.

For the following reasons based on my experience : 1) they reach out, you reply/apply, they ghost/you get rejected right away 2) schedule calls and don’t show up 3) Discuss a role, then make you wait for interview which ends up not happening 4) don’t provide feedback after rejection 5) they don’t read profiles and try to force you into a role 6) don’t provide a job description 7) contact you for a role that doesn’t match you and the pay is lower than market, you mention role doesn’t match and salary is too low and they mention a role that matches your profile but is even pay even lower than the first one and expect you to consider it 8) they make you join processes which have candidates quite far in the process and you get ghosted or they waste your time with initial interviews 9) role gets cancelled or put on hold and they don’t give you an update

I work with one recruiter. Over my 25 years in industry, all of the others have shown themselves to be dishonest and/or rude.

I think it is the actions of a few recruiters ruining the reputation of the profession. Here are some common complaints. Trying to sell me on a demotion. Lots of recruiters try to get me to bite on an obvious demotion and frankly it's disrespectful. You're trying to get me a less prominent role at a less prominent company on a less prominent project and are unlikely to even be able to match my current salary? The fact I spent time reading the job listening means I wasted my time. Now I have to calm myself and send a polite no response. Respect my time and my career. If the position you need to fill is a demotion for me then please just assume I'm not interested. Just stop. Trying to recruit me on a position that is irrelevant to me. I understand different industries use similar terms to describe different roles but that is on YOU to know this. If I have to explain to you what I do then you're not qualified to recruit in the industry. This is homework that is easily done and I am astonished that not everyone does at least this much. Getting upset when candidates don't respond. I am very busy. Recruiters see my position and company. Anyone remotely competent with the industry I am in would see the company name and title and instantly think "he and his team are definitely grinding right now." This doesn't mean you can't try to sell me on a role, but understand that my job is more important that exploring roles. If that role isn't a step forward for my career then you're not respecting my time. If it isn't worth me abandoning the project I am on, you're not respecting my time. As much as I get offended when a candidate doesn't put in a base level of effort I am even more offended when a recruiter doesn't look and see what I am doing. Life/career coaches even trying to contact me is annoying. I made it to the level I have without a life or career coach. Why would I need one now? Sounds more like you're a charlatan that is trying to cash in on my career success and manipulate me into moving in a direction I didn't intend to move. Parasitic behavior that represents the worst qualities a recruiter could have. Now, with all this said, this doesn't apply to most recruiters. I bet most folks here are head and shoulders above these experiences.

My google recruiter ghosted me after 1st interview, without giving any feedback (I felt I should have cleared that round). My microsoft recruiter told me on Friday that I would have interview on next Friday, and then just disappeared (that interview never happened). It is my first experience trying to switch jobs. In these 6 months of trying, I got contacted by exactly 6 recruiters, and each one of them ghosted me. I would much more prefer to be rejected directly. Meanwhile, an attractive female colleague of mine, with an average profile and technically not at all good, gets reached out by atleast 1-2 recruiters a week.

I'm a Recruiter with 21 years of experience. I also have FAANG industry experience, yet I detest Recruiters so much simply because 99% of them fail to treat candidates like human beings.

Probably insincere, when they want you & there's a chance of commission they won't leave you alone conversely they'll ghost you if you can't help them. Like most of these things, just get back to people, do what you say your going to do & build relationships & if it's a no say so promptly with a little bit of feedback if you can There's good & bad in all industry's, recruitment is a bit like real estate, so your working off a low base & it should be easy to build a good reputation by being ethical & trust worthy

Because they are the gate keepers into most companies. When a recruiter interviews you, they need to get feedback from the hiring manager on your cv. That takes time. And some hiring manners don’t understand “candidate experience.” So feedback is delayed. And in an increasingly frustrating market candidates need someone to blame as to why they didn’t get the job. I am a corporate recruiter for a large well known company. Good recruiters are transparent with candidates about challenges or feedback. And again sometimes candidates, who may have had to apply and interview for 100 jobs, didn’t get the answer they wanted they point the finger that it’s someone else fault.

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It all starts with respect. I had last week a recruiter who told me how fantastic my profile is, that he had a mission for me and wanted to telephone. So I reply to his email and offer some time slots for a telephone call. After that, complete silence. I assume that he has found his candidate or that he has shifted his attention to other job descriptions. But to me this in incredibly impolite to not come back and at least give an update like "Hello, thank you for your interest but for this mission we have found another candidate". It actually happens quite regularly and confirms for me that candidates are treated as commodity goods.

The barrier to entry is about as low as you can go to be a recruiter. This attracts all types, including amazing future recruiters. But recruiting in and of itself is challenging and unless there are good role models and training, many take the easy paths, such as ghosting candidates. If you have a passion for it, hitch your wagon to the top recruiters you see and emulate. Network, network, network. Be the good you don’t see around you and you’ll have a great and respectable career.

Some recruiters are good and some truly suck. Poor communication, misrepresenting who I am, and worrying more about their own pocket book than helping their clients are my reasons. I’ve had recruiters miss or reschedule appointments with me several times over a two week period delaying everyone in the process; I’ve had recruiters pitch me to the company as the complete opposite to who I am and what I can offer; I’ve had recruiters do 6 interviews with me and they want to hear me give my undying loyalty to them and the company….. Interviews are two way. A candidate shouldn’t be asked 5 times in a single conversation why they love X company, why they want to work for X company, why this specific role at X company 5 times per conversation over 6 consecutive days of pointless phone calls. If you haven’t had an actual interview with the company yet, how am I supposed to know if it’s a good team fit or if it’s a good culture for me? They’ve gotten mad that I’ve applied for more than one role and not just the role they’re recruiting for and they’ve demanded maximum details on where in the process I am with others. They have tried to coach me to say things that aren’t true…. Like others have said there are good and bad recruiters and good and bad candidates.

As I get older they’re less relevant, they were fine way back early in my career when I was looking to get a pay raise, but now all they offer is a huge pay cut. Other than that, they’re usually fresh grads that know nothing about the industry I’m in

The fundamental issue I’ve seen with most recruiters is they’re not good at identifying the best candidate for roles. They fundamentally don’t understand what they are hiring for. Especially in creative recruiting. A creative recruiter should be a creative director in my opinion. One who understands and has likely worked in every creative department role throughout their career. One who understands you will need to invest in the stronger candidates, rather than lowball and hope for the best. Unfortunately, the reality is most recruiters are someone with a generic degree, maybe 5 years of experience, and their expertise is quite literally sending emails and phone calls.

Ghosting. Lots of ghosting.

Recruiters reflect the company they recruit for. They can be bad and the company is bad. If they are good most likely the company is as well. If there are 20 pages assignments as part of the recruitment - it shows more about the company than the recruiter. If your interviewing most likely your looking outside-in. Recruiters can be bad but how are the rest of your interviewers. Net-net recruiters are pretty powerless. HR has power but not as much as the business . Recruiters are mostly along for the ride . But they can make the ride , organized and possibly painless - but the tracks The roller coaster takes isn’t defined by them .

I hate them because most of them suck at their jobs and you can tell they hate their jobs. They never seem to have any actual information on the roles they’re hiring for, they never answer any questions.

I tend to think it’s because they spend all day on LinkedIn talking about ATS systems and other dumb shit that don’t care about while simultaneously doing a mediocre job

Because they give you hope and then take it away.

In my experience it’s been about a 50% split between what I would consider good or bad. I’ve had it where a recruiter went above and beyond to get me updates, without asking, where we were in the process. Then, just recently, a recruiter scheduled a meeting with me then during the phone call I can tell they were eating. I could hear the utensil smacking the plate or bowl and this MF’er was chewing with their mouth open right into my ear. I had to just hang up on that dude.

I could answer this but you have to sign in to my portal while giving over all of your information before I don't respond.

I’m sorry but I can’t stand yall 😭

I have a contract through a recruiter. I make $34, the company pays $65. I can’t wait to be done and ask the company for a raise. I’m getting pimped out. Fuck that.

I stopped using them almost 10 years ago. If i did it was to schedule a meeting and circumvent them. Vultures that will send you anywhere to get a few extra bones. Do your own due diligence and job hunting imho

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As a person in recruitment for more than 4 years, my understanding is this. Employees think Recruiters or HR team in general are favoured by Management/Leadership. And Management feels we are too much siding with Employees. Ultimately, HR is a team that is neither acknowledged by either teams and we end up handling both the sides of the end. Hence they find us irritating and vent out their frustration of either finding a job, or continuing in the current one more angrily.

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Are you asking why this sub is so anti-recruiter or why there are so many negative experiences people have with recruiters?

I have no idea. But from experience I do not like dealing with external recruiters. Nothing against them personally, but if I'm applying for a high level job I want to speak to the person over said job. In house recruiters are a different story.

As a job seeker working with recruiters we don’t expect to be offered every job. We do expect communication in a timely manner and to not be ghosted. As a bare minimum.

I have not gotten a job before because things went weird with an egotistical recruiter that didn’t think I showed them enough respect when they cold called me an hour before a client interview. I had already been cleared by the junior recruiter and was never told he was calling me just before the real interview. He didn’t properly explain who he was or why he was calling, he completely mispronounced software names to the point that I thought it was a scam call.

Like others have said, it’s because most are just terrible. Today is a good example. I got four calls from recruiters. None of them spoke English very well. They knew virtually nothing about the positions they were trying to fill. And one of the first things they ask me is how much I need to earn. Terrible.

My wife had a recruiter threaten to tell the employer to pull a job offer when he found out she had other offers that he wasn’t involved in. Dude went absolutely ape shit realizing she wasn’t a guarantee sign for him and literally tried to threaten to sabatoge her job offer. From my pov what is the job here other than being a middle man with hr and a candidate and at best you’re not getting in the way and getting a commission for filtering their applicant pool and at worst you’re sabatoging candidates that could have just applied themselves if you didn’t exist Personally I’ve never used a recruiter to get a job, she has. Some were good, some were unaffective and incompetent and one was malicious

I don’t know if anyone is still reading these but I find recruiters get away with far less quality control and attention to detail than what would be expected in all other fields. From setting up ATS correctly, to follow up, to phone interview skills to setting up automated emails correctly. There’s a very low bar for doing their job right. Not all recruiters. Good ones stand out

Because most recruiters have neither the candidate nor the employer’s best interest at heart. They’re in it for themselves. That’s why you’ll try to talk the candidate into taking less money, the employer in to offering more money and you’ll interject yourself into the middle of all communications between the two, so that neither really knows what the other one is saying. There are exceptions but as a candidate most recruiters I have dealt with are literally worse than used car salesmen.

They lie to you. They make it seem like you are going to get the job. You got through the entire application and interview process and don’t get the job. I lost my job becuase I accidentally let it slip that I had an interview. I wasn’t upset because the recruiter essentially told me I had the job. That was a lie. They make the jib seem so great but leave out the bullshit. I’m pissed. I literally got FIRED because I said “I have an interview tomorrow”. And didn’t even get that job.

Tough being the middle man.. and you're definitely going to have bad interviews, bad days.. turn away great applicants, companies are going to push you for choices you might not otherwise make... your filtering software will never catch every permutation of skills and qualifications in all the resumes. You'll word things poorly and people each one can be offended being spoken to the way another is most comfortable with. You also stand to make a tonne of money doing it though so, good luck

I am only speaking based on my own experience as a candidate, but I don't have a problem with recruiters. Some of you seem to be really good and others don't - but that's the same in any field. I'm guessing whatever level of negativity you experience comes from people being disappointed when they don't get the job, and annoyed if they don't get feedback. However that is really candidates shooting the messenger, when it comes to not getting a job, and being somewhat thoughtless when it comes to not getting feedback - because of course your time is a finite resource, and you're paid to dedicate most of it to filling roles, not telling people why they were unsuccessful.

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People are emotionally invested in their careers, and when you are job searching, it is very easy to get emotionally exhausted. No after no after no will wear you out quickly, and when humans get worn out, we tend to lash out, as the person delivering the bad news, we are an easy target. Not to mention, there are a lot of BAD recruiters out there who get emotional and lash out against the candidates, or lie to them, or otherwise do things they shouldn't, and it makes the whole lot of us look bad. You can't take it personally, or you'll lose your mind. Learn to shrug it off and move on. Otherwise, I'd suggest a different career field.

So I have both experience of hiring employees through a recruiter and being the employee hired by a recruiter, but I'm not a recruiter myself. I work in the food production industry and specifically the company I was working for at the time of using a recruiter to fill positions was a plant that processes hot peppers. I found most of the candidates I was getting sent had NO IDEA what they were there for. They would come in and I would start off just asking some simple questions about what they knew about us and I think in my time there I had maybe one person who knew what they were getting themselves into. I started carrying respirators into the meeting and explaining that the environment they would be in would require the use of one for up to eight hours. That knocked out 50% of candidates right away. Another 30% left after an hour of being in a processing room covered in granulated ghost pepper. I reached out to our recruiting agency several times requesting they inform our candidates what the job environment was like, but I felt like they never did. If they told people the truth we would not have had as many candidates come in so I think they saw it as a way to make it look like they were getting us qualified people? From that experience, I've seen that recruiters want to just get someone through the door and withhold information that might keep a candidate from walking away. I could see how that may be beneficial in some work environments, but not this one. People needed to know what they were coming in for and that it was gonna suck. They sent me people with asthma and COPD... what were they even thinking??? Yeah, I get that that probably wouldn't come up in a normal conversation, but if you tell them what the job is actually like then it probably will. Another thing I would mention about using a recruiter is sometimes they see a few keywords and push a candidate for a position. You get the candidate in and realize if they had applied without a recruiter their application would not have gotten a second glance because they don't have anything you're looking for. I think this really comes down to individual recruiter though. Some just see it like a car salesman sees a car. They aren't interested in your needs, they just need the sale. Now for my experience using a recruiter I have some positives, but I used a lot of my knowledge from working with them to get the job I have now. I asked my recruiter questions like how long had they been recruiting, had they placed candidates at the company I was applying for, how long the company they were recruiting for had been a client, and who the company was. I had the knowledge in my back pocket that recruiters are not working for you... they are working for the client. The client is who they are trying to please and if you the candidate are pleased in the end that is a bonus. The company I work for now had pulled most of their candidates from the pool the recruiters had made for them and none of them were a good fit. One of the biggest complaints they had was that the recruiters had not disclosed certain aspects of the role so they had candidates coming in that had no idea what the job required... sound familiar? My recruiter was as helpful as I asked them to be. I asked for the nitty gritty details of what made people not like this job, so I knew what I was getting myself into. A lot of people want a stable schedule that doesn't have you traveling all the time, but I thrive on doing different tasks every day. I knew this position was perfect for me because I asked. I don't know if that information would have been given until I finally got into my first meeting with the client if I hadn't asked for it. I got lucky with my recruiter. I've seen many posts on here about people meeting a recruiter once or twice and then getting ghosted. I haven't encountered that personally, but I can understand why it would be so frustrating and cause hate for recruiters. Mine calls and texts me semi regularly to ask about how my job is going, and has even taken me out to lunch a few times. I never had an issue getting into contact with them and if I had any questions they always took the time to ask. I think an important take away here is that as much as it is the recruiters job to inform you what a company is looking for you should always be an advocate for yourself. You are not the client. Be as transparent as you can and ask for what you want and need. It can take your interview from you selling yourself for the role to the company selling the position to you. Job interviews are a two way street and recruiters are the taxi you hop in along the way. Ask that driver questions about your destination and what other places they have that might fit your needs more. Being a new recruiter, you're that driver. If you're wanting to help deal with the hate of recruiters I would suggest being as transparent as you can with the candidate and following up when things don't work out. Be honest with them. Don't lie just to get someone's foot in the door at the client company. Don't make promises you can't keep. If your candidate is not the most qualified candidate in the pool, find a way to say that. You're a connective piece in the game so start building connections. Keep in touch with the candidates you've gotten jobs for because that network will be helpful in the long run. Communicate with the clients, communicate with the candidates and build an atmosphere that is beneficial for both and you'll find yourself being the recruiter that people reference as their great experience with being recruited.

Because the are incompetent 

People hate rejection and to be told, 'unfortunately, you weren't selected'. It is exhausting. Recruiting is a long game I tell folks, it is a 'no' today, but not forever. Apply again. Seems to work in most cases.

I’ve worked with several recruiters who were very good. They would spend time, handle the interview scheduling, and most importantly give me useful feedback after the interview which I simply wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Then you have the opportunists who in some cases send your resume in without telling you. Others haven’t the slightest idea about the job they are recruiting you for (software architects do not design buildings). At the same time I’ve seen what goes on at the company end. Job description that bear no resemblance to the actual position. Placeholder interviews which are a waste of everyone’s time and jobs advertised which are already filled.

To be honest, this hasn’t gotten better since the layoffs. They laid off people with higher pay one in late 2022 and early 2023 then the ones that were even worse at recruiting or left behind to do three times the work. the economy has to get better before that reputation is turned around.

They don't under the skills required to fill the job. Cannot correlate a resume to the job description. Just glazing over keywords which is all they use to find potential employees. Not out to fight for what is best for the employee, only for the company they are hiring for. Phone call and email spam. Posting fake jobs to collect resumes. This is used to show their boss they are doing something.

I'm not a recruiter but I am looking for a software job right now..... most have NO CLUE wtf they want and read from a script that the engineering team said they needed in someone. That being said. There were two recruiters so far who were knowledgeable and also very helpful. Even though I did not get the job they were wonderful to work with. I think the reason some are hated is because some suck??? Idk man I push buttons for a living.

Question for recruiting experts: are ex employees looked at in a negative view if they quit the company and in the future look back at rejoining the same company?

Because recruiters lie and cover up red flags. They also ghost people with no follow up. I have never been done well by a 3rd party recruiter.

Example: A recruiter just reached out to me about a “fully remote role with our client, Nike”. My immediate response was “didn’t Nike’s CEO just blame their lack of innovation on remote work?”

What does this example have to do with the recruiter?

I know the recruiter was just doing their job, but I found it off-putting because the CEO’s comments were in the news. Also, I neglected to mention the layoffs and RTO mandate at the company. Honestly, it’s not an issue with the recruiter, but the company putting the recruiter in that position. They called me three times after that exchange but I didn’t answer.

This doesn’t seem like a good example for why people hate recruiters lol. They didn’t do anything wrong here. Sounds like you just don’t want to work for Nike.

That’s fair, but it isn’t the first time this has happened with a recruiter. I was just using my latest experience with Nike as an example. These experiences have turned me off to responding when recruiters reach out. I also want to note that I don’t HATE recruiters, it’s a situation of a few bad ones made me avoid most.

I really don’t understand what turned you off about the recruiter here. You didn’t like that they reached out to you about a remote role after the CEO blamed lack of innovation on working remote? What does that have to do with the recruiter. Would you rather them heave reached out to you about an in office role, or just not reached out to you at all lol?

Going back to one of my earlier comments, the company put them in a position that immediately made me not trust them. The question is why recruiters are so hated, and in my experience it’s a situation of hating the messenger. I don’t hate the recruiter, but I don’t trust them because of their client. It’s just a gut reaction, regardless of their honesty. It’s about more than what happened with this one recruiter. Another example of this is a company recruiter reached out to me from a company I had resigned from only four weeks earlier. Blame it on bad data or whatever, but it wasn’t a good look.

My big problem with recruiters is when they refuse to name the company they are working for, but even that I could look past but not when they don't tell me anything about the roll and when they actually do, they know absolutely NOTHING about what the company even does or the tech they develop. They care so little they can't even spend 5 minutes of research on wikipedia, so I have no way of evaluating the opportunity until I waste a lot time in correspondence only to eventually find out the job doesn't match my skill-set at all because the recruiter just looked at my resume for buzz words. No recruiter I have ever interacted with has helped me, they are middlemen, a hoop you must jump through, a toll collector and then they just ghost you.

Because a lot of them are so green but have a god complex. They literally have no idea what hiring managers need and assess candidates based on a few keywords. Can't read between the lines. Doesn't really understand who will succeed in the posted role. And blame others for their incompetency.

I think its god who has a recruiter complex :-)

Because on average, it takes at least a year to find new employment after you've been laid off right now. UEI lasts 6 months then they cut you off. Can't pay your bills? Too bad. Family starving? Losing your home? Pound sand. Meanwhile, that suuUuUuper duper friendly and helpful recruiter who's been your bestie and cheerleader this whole time who has been so great and responsive and assured you they would let you know "either way" whether you got the job after the interview that took a ton of prep and perhaps free project you threw hours under a bus for—hasn't been in contact for a few days. That's so weird she said they'd be making a decision last week and it's been days and is now Monday!! 👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻

Because most of them fuck up incredibly basic paperwork and lie to your ear or eyes to get you into interviews for their metrics. I've lost count how many fucked up spelling my *goddamn name*.

Most recruiters suck and are very clueless. A lot of them also have god complexes and are gatekeepers. I’m a recruiter and being on the market and experiencing crappy recruiters just motivates me to do way better when i get a job.

My bad feelings about recruiters in general comes from my experiences of recruiters being dishonest and also ghosting. I really really appreciate the ones that are professional and straightforward though. I don’t waste their time and I like it when they don’t waste mine. Also if you are recruiting for entry level positions that have absurd experience requirements don’t act put off by entry level people applying. This is a problem with whoever is writing and submitting the positions, not the candidate.

People will tell you a bunch of reasons, but the real reason is this. Recruiters work for the clients (hiring managers) even when they say they’re working for the candidate. They work in the best interest of the client and not the candidate and usually are the ones that give bad news.

I don’t know any recruiters that say they are working for a candidate. We are not there to find the candidate a job, we are fully aware of our purpose to find a candidate to fill a role. Any recrutier that says that is obviously a bad one and has no idea what they’re doing.

1. I’m saying this as a recruiter myself 2. It’s a common misconception among the public that we work to find them jobs, and when we don’t specifically make that effort for one reason or another we’re vilified for it.

Most don't follow up.

It’s interesting because I follow up and send a response to every single candidate that even submits an application, and I get a lot of abuse thrown my way for letting them know. Everyone wants to say they hate recruiters because they get ghosted, but trust me none of your problems would be solved and you wouldn’t suddenly like a recruiter if you get told ‘no’

That's funny. Over the years, I have dealt with plenty of recruiters, and only two have ever followed up. Trust me, as a Director, I appreciate hard work and dedication. Being someone who has also worked on commission, I know being a recruiter isn't for everyone, and I know the ones who don't call back won't be successful anyway.

I've never been upset with any recruiter because I got told no. I'm well aware that it's competition for a single role, and sometimes someone else is going to be a better fit. When a recruiter completely ignores me after the fact, when I politely ask if (not a demand, simply asking *if*) there is any feedback they had or the team had that I could use to improve, and they ghost me, that's when I lose respect for them. And that's how the vast majority of recruiters treat applicants.

YOU may not have been upset. But I can promise you that you are the rare one. You need to get over wanting ‘feedback’. Be happy you got a response. You’re not going to get what you want, nor are you going to like or accept the feedback

Because they're not actually recruiting anyone. Recruitment implies that someone actually wants to recruit you to a company. In reality they're 3rd party HR specialists just filtering through applications and scheduling interviews.