[Noisebridge-discuss] Looking for a good recruiter

[Andy Isaacson]

On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 03:10:57PM -0800, Simon C. Ion wrote:
> I have a friend that I'm helping to find a job in San Francisco, proper.
> She's smart, personable, and friendly, has a BS in Math, has spent two
> years as a Programmer Analyst, one year as a Technical Services team
> lead with a Valley startup, and is currently working Enterprise tech
> support at Google in Mountain View.
> 
> Do you guys know of any good recruiters that would like to help find her
> a job within the city limits? Feel free to contact me off-list.

I haven't had very good luck with recruiters, and I wouldn't recommend
any friend of mine use one.  (And, sorry that the rest of this mail is
addressed to your jobseeking friend, more or less.)

Instead, check word of mouth, check with companies you're interested in,
post your resume on Linkedin and/or Dice etc, check the interesting job
boards like fogcreek and y combinator.  Go to community events for
technologies you're interested in.  Get involved in local communities
like Noisebridge, Women in Tech (WITI), and so on.  Go to mixers like
ones put on by the Ada Initiative.

Of the, um, 6 jobs I've had since moving to SF, the one a recruiter got
me was the worst.  Recruiter-organized interviews are almost always
less interesting and less relevant even than the ones I set up myself
off of Craigslist (which is the worst of the non-recruiter ways to find
openings).  All of my most promising interviews have been through word
of mouth.

Keep in mind that an external recruiter is extremely expensive for the
hiring company, so most of the companies that are desirable to work for
don't use them (since they don't need to; word of mouth and
non-recruiter methods work fine for most companies).

Some useful links:
http://www.swe-goldenwest.org/Region/GWR_Links.html
http://www.girlgeeks.org/education/resources.shtml

I found some relevant events on Meetup and Eventbrite as well, but
you're probably best off searching those sites yourself.

-andy