Dear Tech Recruiter,
Thanks for reaching out to me regarding the development positions we have open. I hope you did at least a little homework about me and Level 12 before you emailed me. If not, and your email looks completely like a form letter, I may not respond at all.
If there are positions open on our careers page, then we are actively hiring.
Yes, I’ve worked with recruiters in the past and I’ve hired three developers through them (Cyber Coders and Tek Systems). It’s not my preferred method to find candidates because of the relatively high expense. But, if you can provide candidates that make it through our process, then we will reward those efforts in kind.
There probably isn’t much you can help us with other than referring well qualified candidates. We have a relatively robust applicant evaluation process. It’s a lot of work for us, but we think that hiring developers well takes a lot of effort, so we are committed to being personally involved.
If you want to work together, I will need two things from you:
- A placement fee of 15% or less, with a good refund policy if the candidate doesn’t work out in the first 90 days.
- A commitment to not send me anything but well qualified applicants.
- You’ll need to understand the type of people I’m looking for (read my job descriptions) and only send me people who fit the description.
- I don’t play a volume game, I play a quality game. I’m looking for devs who really know what they are doing. Do you know how to tell the difference? If not, and you are just forwarding me resumes, we probably can’t work together.
If those terms work for you, feel free to point your candidates at my careers page. One of the applicant questions is where they heard about us, make sure they list you there (or you can email [email protected] ahead of time to let us know you are sending them over). Do not send us a resume first and ask us to evaluate the candidate. We have a hiring workflow that we need each candidate to go through. If they make it through our application and testing process, we’ll contact you to get a contract signed before we move them into the interview phase.
I realize this might be different than what you are used to, but it’s the only way that will work for us.
I’m sorry it has to be this way and can’t be more personal. We have so many recruiters contact us that making personal connections with each one is not realistic. If you send us a few good candidates and thereby show that you can actually be a good partner to us, we’ll be more willing to make time to talk with you and hear how you think you can help us.
Thanks.