I don't see why you wouldn't do both. I have always done both. I don't even make a distinction. But then I never go to an agency and say "find me a job" ... I apply for a job that the agency is advertising. Some are slippery and try to palm one of their crappier jobs on you "there is this amazing company I know you would be a great fit for..."

Yeah, sure both options are valid. Which one did work the best for you?

Another option is to cold email investors in case you are open to working at a start up.

I prefer many different ways to look for a job but I try to prevent recruiters.

Usually I don't look for "jobs" but for companies I would like to work for. If there is not a job offer, you can still apply spontaneously. I also keep a list of these companies after applying successfully, because after a few years, this list might get interesting again.

Some possibilities to find interesting companies are:

- Look through job offering sites and the according company profiles (even if the offered job is not that interesting, the company can still be)

- Look through the job history of my contacts in social media (linkedin, etc.)

- Company rating sites (by employees, like glassdoor.com)

- Using google maps to look for interesting tech companies in your area

- Keeping an eye on local advertising boards

- Talking to people

The problem with recruiters is, that the company often has to pay an extra fee to THEM, if YOU get the job. These fees are extra expensive and offer no guarantees which often leads to a denial whereas you may have gotten the job if there had been no extra fee.

An example: We had an interesting candidate provided by a recruiter. He seemed promising, was a perfect match for the team and showed potential, but we were not quite sure about his skills in detail and how he would develop. Paying a fee of > 10000 bucks (!) for the recruiter was too risky for our company, where otherwise hey would have gotten the job. We took someone else, who had way less potential but applied manually...

This seems strange to me… every recruiter I’ve worked with had a guarantee period, and if the employee didn’t work out, the fee was not owed. There’s also the option to do contract to hire. If the fee to hire someone is a deterrent, it doesn’t feel like a great sign of the company’s financial situation or how they view money. $10k extra for someone who may work out is not gonna break the bank when hiring employees that are paid well north of 100k. That’s actually an incredibly small fee compared to what I’ve seen. Employees typically cost the company around 1.5-2x the salary for all other overhead, so 10k is a drop in the bucket.

> every recruiter I’ve worked with had a guarantee period

Maybe I was not told about it, I was not the person who denied the application - but at most it was a "6 months at work" guarantee, where the fee has to be paid as soon as the person has been 6 months employed at the company.

> There’s also the option to do contract to hire. If the fee to hire someone is a deterrent, it doesn’t feel like a great sign of the company’s financial situation or how they view money. $10k extra for someone who may work out is not gonna break the bank when hiring employees that are paid well north of 100k.

I agree (I'm no longer working for the company), but I made this experience more than once. In edge cases or cases where the application is about < 60k, > 10k (!) can be pretty much for a smaller company / startup, when the person is a "job hopper" that is only looking for a time filler job and leaves after a year.

> Employees typically cost the company around 1.5-2x the salary for all other overhead, so 10k is a drop in the bucket.

The fee was actually higher than 10k (I wrote >10k), but 10k was the fee, that would have been acceptable for the new applicant, that was denied.

All in all I think recruiters are maybe an option for jobs >60k, but in most cases it is better to look for a job yourself. In my experience Recruiters are intrusive (I got nonsense emails all the time), don't provide jobs that aren't already there, don't do much research about the company, they have no "early access", they don't do much "work" you couldn't do yourself besides souping up your curriculum vitae. They are PAID for pleasing the companies, so they mostly don't care about your needs or if you fit the company. Pretty often they call you after a year in the new job they offered and tell you about this new absolutely unique application they now have for you... So NO, I don't like recruiters :-)

Very informative! How do you use Google Maps for finding tech companies? What keywords do you use?

I live in Germany, so it might differ from your country. Usually I use nearby search with "software" or "IT" for a few different locations and strategies:

- My home address (here I look in a broader radius to not miss anything) - Areas with high IT company concentration (often I already see this high concentrated areas in the nearby home search) - Areas near tech universities (where the experts are)

This should give you a brief overview but unfortunately this list is pretty unqualified. After this I tend to visit the homepages to get an impression of the company.

It's a lot of work but mostly, you have to do this once and only give the list a refresh after a few years.

Thanks, sandreas!

First preference is to ask my network of people I've enjoyed working with before.

Second is to find growing companies I find interesting and contact then directly.

the market is not competitive there is just artificial scarcity and recruitment games which have been created on purpose

Don't you think layoffs are real?

my theory is that they have been created artificially to achieve certain economic goals

I prefer recruiters that already have a good job fit in mind. They have an 'in.' That's how I got 3 or so of my last offers.

Any time I've 'applied', it feels like just sending information into the void, and never hearing anything back.

I’ve never truly trusted non in-house recruiters… I was once hiring for a position and working with a contract recruiter. He literally said “let me dig through my roster and see who I placed more than 90 days ago” And they’re guarantee was 90 days. Essentially admitting that he poaches staff from one customer to feed another just to get commission. Was just so ethically poor in my opinion, never wanted to work with this type of recruiter ever since. Our goals are not aligned.

Doesn't he know those staff are the property of the corporation!

Recruiters or contacts within the company I’m interested in. Not worth playing the resume filtering game with random applications to companies.

Nope, it sometime is. Especially if they advertised on LinkedIn or Stackoverflow or even HN Who’s Hiring. Because these show they are keen.

I’d agree with HN who’s hiring. That’s dealing with direct contacts within the company. It’s not a random HR drone who has no real understanding of the role they are hiring for and need to find somewhat arbitrary criteria to pass on to the interview stage. I’m just saying to avoid the application paths that puts your resume into a pile of 500 others to get sorted by some mystical and opaque process.

When I was younger I preferred recruiters. Now that I’m at a more senior level, I’ve found recruiters to be a net negative. The reason is that, as your salary grows, so does the commission paid to the recruiter. Companies have been much more reluctant to hire me because doing so means an instant $30,000+ expense for an unknown amount of benefit. As a result, the interviews were onerous and largely a waste of time (multiple extra rounds, meeting with outside consultants, answering the same question over and over, etc.).

Had the same experience, also company telling me they do not like the recruiters. Will not use them anymore in the future.

I think this is a wise take. I guess it was helpful to get the ball rolling as a fresher

Apply directly to companies.network with potential managers, colleagues, and their internal recruiters.

I don't even bother with responding to recruiters any more unless they're an actual employee of the company they're recruiting for. Too much noise, too little signal. I wouldn't bother with using an agency as they're still the same big ol' ball of poor communications and lack of understanding what they're recruiting for as the ones who proactively reach out to potential candidates.

I agree with this. Sadly, many of the internal recruiters got let go in the last year, so I’ve been seeing fewer and fewer out there networking.

I know HN hates recruiters but my success rate with them is much much higher than any job post I’ve reacted to online.

Do you prefer freelance recruiters or agencies?

* For large employers you can no longer apply directly without an inside connection to hand carry your resume to the hiring manager and vouch for you. These large employers are required to post open positions online and accept applications online for EEO compliance but otherwise ignore all incoming resumes. They are receiving too many resumes online and so now ignore them out right.

* Third party recruiters are expensive for everyone. Yet, they can bypass the stupidity of the prior bullet point.

* Developers, in most cases, are a commodity. A meaningless replaceable gear in a larger machine. Talent and skills are largely irrelevant in many areas of software now, but years of experience still appear to be tie breakers. You resume should account for these considerations if you want to achieve employment.

* I am noticing lately hiring is walking back from that prior bullet point because commoditization of candidate selection does not work for more senior positions. For example you cannot substitute competence for a framework and cheaply achieve security, accessibility, test automation, architecture, and so forth. Eventually making decisions becomes more important than putting text on screen. In this case your only goal is to land an interview by any means possible so that your experience can do the talking.

> For example you cannot substitute competence for a framework and cheaply achieve security, accessibility, test automation, architecture, and so forth.

Oh man but will they try anyway...

Neither have been effective for me. I look for posts by hiring managers on Linkedin, and go from there -- e.g., look for a mutual connection to give a warm intro, message the hiring manager, etc.

The common HN response that I have trouble relating to is:

"Network! Go to coffee with people you worked with, offer to help people for free with their projects, and go to many founder and social events! I never used a recruiter in my life and I'm a bazillionaire founder over in the Bay Area!"

In contrast, never in my 20 yr career have I ever found a job like that. As charming as I am, it seems I'm always going to use recruiters (and today I'm a senior manager).

Recruiters and the interview process blow, but they're unavoidable in my experience. No books or startups to my name, however.

I’ve never met a competent recruiter. I’m not saying they don’t exist but they seem to be elusive if they do.

I’ve worked with multiple and they always strike me as uninformed, minimum wage, right-out-of-school, and flakey as fuck. I’ve been ghosted by recruiters, had them miss meetings then come up with absurd excuses, and generally fail to do the bare minimum. At one point I contacted a company directly after the recruiter made multiple mistakes and/or just lied (I think they lied at least) as the go between and I ended up getting the job.

I’m not saying I wouldn’t attempt to leverage one if I needed a job but they will never be my first pick.

I got my last job from a “who wants to be hired” thread here on HN and I couldn’t have asked for a better fit. I don’t know if that’s rare since I only did it once but I think I’d try it again if I was looking. That and looking through the “who’s hiring” thread. I’ve also been approached a few times about interviewing due to comments I’ve made on this site (about certain technologies or frameworks) so overall I see HN as a great resource on this front.

Ironically I love the _idea_ of recruiters and every time I go job hunting (and inevitable see if they have gotten any better) I think about how maybe my next job should be as a competent job recruiter since they are in such short, or non-existent, supply.

Recruiter Pros: they get you through the "referrals"/"network" barrier and hype you up. Sometimes that means 1-3 less interviews. They'll also protect you against shitty companies; most good candidates will job switch every 2 years on avg so there's $$$ in maintaining good relationships on both ends.

Cons: All things equal, companies will favor the candidate who isn't tied to the recruiter.

I'll take one if I don't know the company, but if I know someone working there (and by now, I've met most people), I'd rather opt for someone on the inside. Most of the bigger companies also offer referral bonuses and highly advantage those with an internal recommendation.

Por que no los dos?

Really, why limit yourself? Last time I was looking (January-February), I went on Indeed, Monster, and maybe one or two others. I also reached out to a few recruiters. I don't remember which one led to the new job.

Note, however, that I already had a list of recruiters that I respected. I had slowly built that list over a couple of decades. When I needed a recruiter, I wasn't just randomly calling them.