All that you wanted, but were afraid to ask an IT recruiter

I work as an IT recruiter (to be honest, quite recently, less than six months), but even during this short period I quite often had to deal with a negative attitude towards recruiters from the IT community.
Even in close quarters, IT specialists who are familiar with my work not by hearsay, sometimes wonder what the recruiter’s job is, why is it difficult and terribly interesting?
Who are recruiters and what do they eat? Do I need to be friends with them? Are they able to help the employee and the employer find each other?
Earlier, I asked the community to ask my questions to the recruiter
Today I come back with answers.

As already mentioned, I have little experience in recruiting, there are some search practices and successful employment of a little more than a dozen candidates for various positions in IT, so I will answer some questions, guided by my understanding of the situation. But habrayuser asked such questions, the answers to which require more experience in HR in general and in recruiting in particular. In such cases I will be guided by the summary experience of my colleagues so that the answer is as complete and professional as possible.


First, I suggest that you take a closer look at the recruiter’s work schemes. This will help to understand what, in one way or another, is the cost of recruiting services for the customer.
There are three types:
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1. Recruiter “in house”.

He works in the staff of the company and is engaged in the search for specialists only for this company. Customers for such recruiters are the heads of departments and projects in which a vacancy is open. Sometimes it can be directly the CEO of a company. In house recruiter income is a salary. As a rule, the size of the salary depends on the professionalism of the recruiter and the company's capabilities.

In addition to the salary there are bonuses. The scheme of building a bonus scheme in a company is determined by the wishes of the management, their experience and certain ideas about justice. The situation is quite common in which there is a plan for recruiting personnel for a certain period, for example, a year. Further, this plan is divided into quarters and months, taking into account the influence of seasonal factors (in September, people are more likely to change jobs than at the end of December). Depending on how much interest the plan is fulfilled, the recruiter receives a bonus. There are situations when the work of the entire recruiting department is generally awarded, without taking into account the efforts of each individual person.
As a rule, the “cooler” a company is, the more cool and experienced recruiters work for it. And of course, experience and skills in this profession directly affect the level of income.

2. Recruiter in the recruitment agency.

Is there no recruiter on staff? Many urgent jobs? Recruiters companies specialize in recruiting in the banking sector, and you need an IT specialist? Are you searching for a top manager or a person of very rare specialization?

Recruitment agencies and recruiters working in them are always ready to help in difficult situations when maximum coverage, quality and speed of search in various segments of the labor market is required.
The professionalism of recruiters in agencies is quite high, because they often work on complex vacancies and carry out a search for a specialist in a fairly short time.
For the work of a recruiter in the agency is paid by the employer, in any case not a candidate.

The amounts for one vacancy vary from one monthly salary of the specialist being sought to 25% of his annual (!) Income. The suspicious cheapness of the recruitment agency services should be alerted, because recruiters need money and considerable resources to maintain the office, pay for access to the resume database and salary.
If the agency takes 1-1.5 salary, then it is likely that recruiters there are half-starved and not very highly qualified, and a comfortable office exists only on paper.
An excessively high commission (20-25% of the annual income of a found specialist) appears when a very large agency, in which high-class professionals work, conducts a search for a complex vacancy.
It happens that recruiters, by analogy with sales managers, use the “minimum salary and big bonuses” scheme, or the salary is appointed quite comfortable for life, adding to it smaller bonuses for closing positions. With different schemes of work of recruitment agencies, the size of the recruiter's bonus can vary from 4 to 25% of the fee.

3. Recruiter in free flight. Freelance.

Freelance recruiting has its pros and cons for both the customer and the recruiter himself.
Of the minuses: the customer does not have the opportunity to conclude a contract with the recruiter (individual), which will be legally binding. The freelancer does not provide any guarantees of his work and often does not even have paid access to the resume databases on the same HeadHunter, which can significantly reduce the effectiveness of the freelancer.
The advantages for the customer include the relatively low cost of work of a freelancer: from 0.7 to 1.5 of the salary of the desired specialist.
What are the pros and cons of a recruiter in freelance?
Pros: a large enough fee (with a successful closing of the vacancy), free schedule.
Of the minuses worth noting that the lack of an agreement with the customer can play a cruel joke with a recruiter, who simply will not be paid for the work. In addition, finding freelance recruiter clients is also forced to work independently, and I must say, this is not always successful. Not all recruiters have the necessary knowledge and experience in the field of sales to properly sell their services.

At the moment I work in an agency, I specialize in finding IT specialists for both large international companies and teams of cozy startups. I actively gain experience by working on complex vacancies surrounded by colleagues with extensive professional experience.

Having told about how a recruiter’s career history can take shape, let us turn to answering questions from Habr:

- How did the recruiter's professional way turn out, why did he become his vocation or did it not work out otherwise? If the calling is what it is concretely and how he understood it.

This question can be asked to each recruiter and, I am sure, the answers will be different in each case.
Together with me are those who came to IT recruiting, having experience in recruiting staff in other areas, and there are those who have been involved in development for some time, and as a result, they are well-versed in technology.
Is there any real benefit from the profile education in the HR sphere? Among my colleagues there are certified specialists - HR managers. But I can definitely say that this or that education is not a “panacea” and something, so you have to learn in the process of work. Technicians will have to pump up communication skills, and humanities will get used to IT terminology.

- Do recruiters have specialization?

Yes, recruiters have specialization, because the selection of specialists for different areas implies the presence of certain knowledge about the internal structure of this sphere.

I will list the main specializations:
- Industrial - selection of highly qualified personnel for industrial production.
- IT sphere - the native sphere of habrosoobschestva. Also requires some knowledge of the structure and understanding of terminology.
- Banking - quality selection requires an understanding of the mechanisms of banking.
- Mass recruitment - this area of ​​recruiting involves finding and conducting many interviews for low-skilled positions. Developed intuition, psychological stability and excellent knowledge of immigration laws - these are three pillars of this specialization.

- The next question was about “priorities at meetings”. Meetings in our case are understood as a face-to-face interview.

In one way or another, an interview is always an exam and your professional skills are most important here. Competent interview in the specialty begins with the basics. Further, when the employer realizes for himself that you are guided in basic concepts, he goes to the information from the resume. You are sure to be asked about the experience of working with the technologies that you indicated in your CV (from here you can make an important conclusion: do not lie in the resume, write only what you really worked with and what you can tell about).

If we talk about personal qualities and appearance at the interview - then, of course, your professional level is more important. But, you see, a good project manager always thinks about how a new employee will fit into a team, and whether there is at least someone in the team who you can become friends with when you come to a new job. Remember that a candidate is not rated as a “code-writing machine”, but as a future colleague, part of a team, and simply as a person.
The human factor and sympathy, however, as well as antipathy, has not been canceled.
Speak about yourself at the interview honestly and openly, do not be rude, keep a positive attitude, and the meeting will be excellent!

- Tell us what you think about the test items?

Test items - a controversial thing. Candidates sometimes perceive the test task as additional labor and time costs. Agreeing to the test, and fulfilling them in time, the candidate would still prefer to be hired only on the basis of a story about himself and examples of work.
Rarely, but there are situations when good developers themselves are asked to give them a test if they do not have code examples (closed repositories or a project is the property of the current employer).
For a company-employer, test items are definitely a great blessing, because they help save a lot of time by identifying those professionals who are most likely to fit in a job.

As a recruiter, I see both the pros and cons in the test tasks: of course, the test helps to determine the technical level of the candidate before the interview and understand, is it worth it to conduct the interview with him at all? On the other hand, there is a shortage of professionals in the IT candidate market, so a good specialist will immediately get a job even before he can complete the test tasks from other potential employers.

I believe that it is more correct to ask the candidate to perform the test task after the interview, because in this case the candidate is either motivated to do this (if he liked the project’s tasks and the company at the meeting), or refuses and saves the employer's time to check the task.

- Tell us about the top IT specialty CIO, CTO (I’m interested).

The question was asked quite general, so the answer will tell you about the difference between the CIO and CTO, if you are interested in any specific things - ask in the comments, I will answer with pleasure.
So:
CIO (Chief Information Officer) - information manager, director of information technology. This is an employee of the corporation, the executive of the highest rank, responsible for the implementation of new IT solutions in the company, the acquisition of computer and server equipment and the management of information resources.

CTO (Chief Technical Officer) - Technical Director. One of the managers responsible for developing new products and developing the company. Keeps control of all technologies (not only IT).

It is believed that if the CIO will more and more plunge into technical details, eventually becoming a workshop, then there is a danger of becoming a hostage of the information technologies and solutions that are used in its organization. In this case, his knowledge will not be fully demanded anywhere else, since technological solutions are always to some extent unique (it is difficult to find two enterprises where the same solutions would be deployed in the environment of the same technological infrastructures). Therefore, it is important for CIO not to narrow the technical horizon.

This is the first part of the post. In order not to overload readers, I will publish the remaining answers in the coming days.