Wanted Python programmer to join team

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tuesday 17 May 2016 16:18, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:

> Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info>:
>> Personally, I think that advertising a job position without saying who
>> you are, what you do, and offering at least an indicative salary
>> range, are *astonishingly* rude
> 
> I don't believe they care.
> 
>> (to say nothing of counter-productive).
> 
> Maybe, maybe not.
> 
> 
> I bet the zebras on the savannah consider the lions astonishingly rude
> and their strategy counter-productive. The savannah would be a nicer
> place if the lions ate grass like everybody else.

A strange analogy. Employers and potential employees are not really in a 
predator/prey relationship.

(Employers and *actual* employees sometimes are, but that's a sign of a really 
dysfunctional business culture.)

The problem is that recruiter's best interests do not align neatly with either 
potential employees *or* employers. They're like real estate agents. The 
incentives for a recruiter is to find a barely acceptable hire as quickly as 
possible for the least amount of effort possible. There's no point in doing 
extra work to find the best new hire, if the employer is willing to take a so-
so hire. Since the employer is only seeing potentials that the recruiter passes 
on, the employer has no way of telling what the pool of would-be employees is 
really like.

I'm not saying that all recruiters are unscrupulous or are intentionally 
deceiving the other parties, but the incentives are such that:

- recruiters will take a bit less care to choose the right employee for the 
job;

- they'll take a bit less care worrying about attracting the right people, 
because their relationship with the parties is (on average) quite short;

- they're more likely 


The worst part of this is the vicious circle aspect. The less care recruiters 
put into targeting their positions, the more they get inundated with poor 
quality applicants. This trains applicants to carpet bomb recruiters and 
employers (since they're trained to expect that all job ads are misleading, and 
also because the unemployment office requires them to apply to X positions a 
week, whether X suitable positions exist or not), which gives employers an 
incentive to use recruiters (rather than deal with the carpet bombing of 
applicants). 



-- 
Steve