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Lucky hunter

How to Make the Interaction
Between Recruiters and
Developers Comfortable:
Life Hacks from the
Lucky Hunter Team

Have you ever had cases when you received not very civil replies from candidates to your job offer? Or maybe you are an IT specialist and you don't like the obsessive emails from IT recruiters?

It turns out that both sides suffer: recruiters are concerned about the not so friendly responses of the candidates, while the developers are tired of a large number of emails where a lot of them are irrelevant.

Let's talk about how to get across to recruiters and tech specialists and begin to build productive and useful communication.

Developer VS IT recruiter:
recruiters' failures

Incompetence

IT recruiting is a rather specific and complex profession, and it's quite impossible to learn it in a matter of days. A competent IT recruiter is well-versed in tech terminology and doesn't confuse basic stuff (for example, they know the difference between Java and JavaScript), understands the intricacies and nuances of every tech speciality and easily holds a discussion on any technical issue.

Unfortunately, inexperienced IT recruiters don't' fully understand the technology stack and thereby cause unpleasant emotions among developers.

If you've chosen the profession of an IT recruiter, you must understand that you are working in a very dynamic sphere. If yesterday developers wrote code using PHP 5.4 then tomorrow they'll switch to the seventh PHP 7 (yes, the sixth version doesn't even exist).

Life hack

Follow the industry trends, learn the differences between languages, their versions, libraries and frameworks. Improve your skills and in a matter of days, you'll become a cool IT recruiter, whose opinion even the pickiest Senior-level developers will begin to regard.

Emails with hackneyed phrases

Perhaps it's one of the most common problems that IT recruiters face. Emails that include such phrases as "a cool and dynamically developing company is looking for a Frontend developer to join our team of professionals" don't look attractive for tech specialists.

That makes sense: in the tech sphere, demand is out of all proportion to the supply, and if you write dull and hack emails, which are more like spam, you are unlikely to receive a reply, because your e-mail will pass unnoticed among many other similar emails.

A wide audience-centred and monotonous emails will rather annoy candidates: such an e-mail will be considered as unsolicited and promotional and will be quickly deleted.

Life hack

Write personalized and relevant emails to candidates and don't make them too long: this drains specialists, so most likely they won't finish your longread to the end. Remember: brevity is the soul of wit.

If you pay attention to the target audience, without offering a Frontend developer a role of aJava developer and stop using cliches, such as "looking for a hot-eyed super-cool specialist in our team', you'll receive a large number of replies to the email :)

Space rape

We live in the media age: we communicate in social networks and messengers, share photos on Instagram, find boyfriends and girlfriends on Tinder. Everybody can find our contacts everywhere across the Net, so it's not difficult to get in touch with a person today.

Many IT recruiters actively use this feature of the 21st century, adding candidates to "friends" and making them offers directly on Facebook. What's the biggie? This is a fast and simple way to find the right person.

But in fact, this is a space rape: personal accounts on social networks - is a place where people wind down after work and chat with friends, and cold emails with a job offer are not quite what the specialists want to read after a hard day.

Some tech recruiters call specialists directly without warning about the call in advance. This approach often causes candidates' dissatisfaction and doesn't bode for a pleasant conversation.

Life hack

Before writing a candidate on social networks or making a call, write to a specialist via email. If the candidate doesn't get in touch with you, and you understand that the only thing to do is to write on Facebook or call a candidate, in this case, apologize for disturbing the specialist and be very considerate during the conversation.

Lack of feedback

Some recruiters follow the rule: "if the candidate is not suitable for the role, let's simply write nothing to them, and they'll understand everything on their own." But just imagine: the candidate's spent time on the interview, and perhaps completed an unpaid test assignment, and the minimum gratitude that he can get is feedback.

In addition, IT is a field in which information propagates at the speed of light. If you don't give feedback, you will quickly discredit among the developers.

Don't forget that there are no former candidates: if today a specialist is not suitable for one position, then tomorrow he may become an ideal candidate for another role.

Life hack

Always give feedback :)

Developer VS IT recruiter:
developers' failures

Craftiness

Did it happen that when applying for a job you embellished your skills a little or talked round corners? For example, when applying for a job with relocation to a small town, you proudly announced that you were ready to move, but in fact, hoped to persuade the potential employers to let you work remotely?

Unfortunately, this method doesn't work well, and most often does not play into your hands: as they say, whatever is done in the dark eventually comes to the light, and as a result, you'll spot your reputation, wasting both your time and the time of recruiters.

We at Lucky Hunter have faced the insincerity of specialists, but there has never been a case when the desire to embellish reality for finding a job was beneficial.

Life hack

Hold an open dialogue with the recruiter: perhaps you get all worked up over nothing, and you'll strike a compromise and be able to get a cool job without putting your reputation and the recruiter's competence under fire.

"Will you give it a rest?"

We often receive unfriendlily, and sometimes quite aggressive, responses from developers to our emails. The worst thing is that there is no reason for such a sharp reaction.

Most often, developers get tired of a lot of daily emails, but this is quite natural: you've chosen a sphere in which demand is higher than supply.

Life hack

If you are a qualified developer with experience, try to stand the fact that you'll be regularly offered a job. But you must admit, this is much better than fighting for a place in the sun? :)

In rare cases, a condition in which we receive very sharp and aggressive emails occurs. In addition to fact that this behaviour is unreasonable in the professional community, such stories spread quickly throughout the industry and can reach your employers.

There was such a case at Lucky Hunter, and it showed that a sharp (and sometimes rough) communication with a recruiter brings the leadership's discredit to the developer.

You bet: the employer will quickly find out about this because such stories discredit the reputation of not only the specialist but also the employee's company.

Life hack

Make nice with people and remember: kindness will save the world :)

Bias

Has it ever happened to you that as soon as you saw an email from a recruiter in your inbox, you immediately deleted it without reading? It's quite natural if you are satisfied with your place of work, and you simply don't consider other offers. It's another matter that you don't like recruiters.

Thoughts like "all recruiters are incompetent and don't know anything about my profession" are nothing more than the prejudice that often turns out to be wrong. Most IT recruiters have been educated for more than one year not in the least in order to be biased towards their profession :)

Life hack

If you have a quite low opinion of the recruiters' work, try to reconsider your point of view: our goal is to help IT talents and companies find each other, making you a little happier.

We hope that now you understand more how to play nice with the interlocutor, and sometimes get perks from communication :) Contact Lucky Hunter: we know how to suss even the most non-communicative candidates out, know the subtleties of communication with developers and fill even the most difficult openings in record time!