<story><title>Startup advice: cold recruiting</title><url>https://stripe.com/blog/startup-advice-cold-recruiting</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Jemaclus</author><text>&amp;gt; Always have the ping come from a non-recruiter.&lt;p&gt;I got an email a few days ago from the CEO of a startup in SF. In the email, he followed all of the rules in this email, including trying to get face-to-face chat by offering to get coffee. I&amp;#x27;m not really looking for a job but I am open to new opportunities, so I replied and agreed to get coffee.&lt;p&gt;The response comes from a recruiter.&lt;p&gt;What? The CEO sends me an email and then hands my response off to a recruiter? Or did the recruiter send the email on behalf of the CEO? I&amp;#x27;m not even sure what&amp;#x27;s going on, but it&amp;#x27;s incredibly misleading. And then when I respond and politely decline to proceed further, the recruiter tries to set me up with a phone call with yet another person that isn&amp;#x27;t the original CEO.&lt;p&gt;What part of this makes sense? What happened to the original, informal face-to-face chat?&lt;p&gt;You totally blew it, dude. &lt;i&gt;YOU&lt;/i&gt; contacted &lt;i&gt;me&lt;/i&gt;, not the other way around. &lt;i&gt;You&lt;/i&gt; have the burden of proof of attracting &lt;i&gt;me&lt;/i&gt; to your company. &lt;i&gt;You&lt;/i&gt; should be the one jumping through hoops, not me.&lt;p&gt;Would you do this bait-and-switch to your biggest customer? If the answer is yes, you probably don&amp;#x27;t need to be CEO. And if not, then why would you treat a potential team member worse than you would treat your best customer? C&amp;#x27;mon. Be smart about this recruiting thing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>notahacker</author><text>You can of course achieve the same &amp;quot;the top guys at this growing company are sufficiently interested in me for this not to be an HR-lead timewaste&amp;quot; effect with a senior non-recruiter email that&amp;#x27;s actually honest, more along the lines of&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;My colleague Bob was impressed by your [personalised details]. I&amp;#x27;ve asked Bob to look for people with X and our stack is based entirely on Y which I understand you&amp;#x27;re very familiar with. If you&amp;#x27;re interested in working on Z in future perhaps you and Bob could grab a quick coffee, and if that works out I&amp;#x27;d love to have the chance to learn more about [personalised detail] for myself at some point.&lt;/i&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Startup advice: cold recruiting</title><url>https://stripe.com/blog/startup-advice-cold-recruiting</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Jemaclus</author><text>&amp;gt; Always have the ping come from a non-recruiter.&lt;p&gt;I got an email a few days ago from the CEO of a startup in SF. In the email, he followed all of the rules in this email, including trying to get face-to-face chat by offering to get coffee. I&amp;#x27;m not really looking for a job but I am open to new opportunities, so I replied and agreed to get coffee.&lt;p&gt;The response comes from a recruiter.&lt;p&gt;What? The CEO sends me an email and then hands my response off to a recruiter? Or did the recruiter send the email on behalf of the CEO? I&amp;#x27;m not even sure what&amp;#x27;s going on, but it&amp;#x27;s incredibly misleading. And then when I respond and politely decline to proceed further, the recruiter tries to set me up with a phone call with yet another person that isn&amp;#x27;t the original CEO.&lt;p&gt;What part of this makes sense? What happened to the original, informal face-to-face chat?&lt;p&gt;You totally blew it, dude. &lt;i&gt;YOU&lt;/i&gt; contacted &lt;i&gt;me&lt;/i&gt;, not the other way around. &lt;i&gt;You&lt;/i&gt; have the burden of proof of attracting &lt;i&gt;me&lt;/i&gt; to your company. &lt;i&gt;You&lt;/i&gt; should be the one jumping through hoops, not me.&lt;p&gt;Would you do this bait-and-switch to your biggest customer? If the answer is yes, you probably don&amp;#x27;t need to be CEO. And if not, then why would you treat a potential team member worse than you would treat your best customer? C&amp;#x27;mon. Be smart about this recruiting thing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Ologn</author><text>&amp;gt; YOU contacted me, not the other way around. You have the burden of proof of attracting me to your company. You should be the one jumping through hoops, not me.&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;p&gt;I get contacted by a headhunter that says they know of a company looking for engineers.  I go on an interview and someone at the company asks me very officiously, &amp;quot;Why do you want to work for this company?&amp;quot;  I respond, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#x27;t know that I do want to work here.  I have a job.  The headhunter called me and told me there was an opportunity here so I came to check it out&amp;quot;.  The interviewer didn&amp;#x27;t say anything, but their expression was slightly shocked.  I guess I was supposed to launch into a pitch about how it was always my dream to work at that company.&lt;p&gt;I think you put your finger on it.  They present it to you as the CEO begging you to come work at the company.  Then you start finding out it is a bait and switch, they want you to play the role of a desperate job seeker, begging some low-level manager for an opportunity to work at the company.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a power thing.  We see CEO&amp;#x27;s here and in the tech news complain that they can&amp;#x27;t find good technical talent.  Yet every part of the job process is designed to demonstrate they have the power in the relationship from the offset.  They want references - before you have a job offer often, they want you to ask a favor from two to three people to sing your praises to them.  If you tell them you won&amp;#x27;t give them references until it&amp;#x27;s the last step before a job offer they look surprised.  Or they just hand you a form to fill out, which will be incomplete if you don&amp;#x27;t put references.  They want you to come interview for hours in the middle of your work day.  Often you get there and they tell you some important person who has to interview you to get the job is not there, and you have to come back again.  You also have to go through the indignity of not being candid - if you want the job offer.  When they ask you why you left your last company, that your boss was a jerk is not an acceptable answer.  If they ask you about unit tests at your current job, and you say you have asked management to allow time for putting in unit tests but they refused - it becomes your fault that your management told you no.  And on and on and on.  That I have to ask for a favor from 2-3 former coworkers or bosses that they give me a reference every time I apply for a job is probably the most annoying part.&lt;p&gt;Who wants to go through all of this?  It&amp;#x27;s why a lot of my jobs are at companies my friends work for.  At least I know the score before I go in.</text></comment>