The Three Laws of Robotics (for tech recruiters)

The tech market is so hot right now that if you are a developer and can tell the difference between O(n) and your own butthole you might be getting calls from aggressive recruiters. Recently I’ve had two recruiters that I’ve never met contact friends saying that I had recommended them for a position and I’ve heard stories of continued home phone calls, at-work phone calls, and all sorts of odd LinkedIn abuse.

I’ve heard many people say that recruiters don’t have much value, but I strongly disagree – we just need some agreed-upon moral boundaries. Let’s use Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics [If you haven’t heard of these I’ll just hold on to your geek card while you go read that…]:

Law 1: A recruiter may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Harm means:

• wasting my time
• affecting my reputation
• affecting my friend’s reputation

A recruiter shouldn’t hurt me, they should only help me and themselves in that order. Long-term it can work out for both of us; don’t affect my reputation negatively and I won’t affect yours either.  Some more specific ways they can harm me:

• Submitting my resume to anybody without talking to me
• Saying that you know me when you don’t
• Talking to a 3rd party about me without us knowing each other
• Being dishonest about the positions that you have in order to have a conversation with me

Law 2: A recruiter must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

If I say I am not available at this time, don’t want you to do anything on my behalf, or would like you to stop calling me and crying into the phone – I mean all these things [But if I’m honest the crying does help me sleep].

Law 3: A recruiter must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Of course there is a place in this world for recruiters and they should be allowed to make a living.  There is a lot of tech-recruiter-bashing but they are valuable for a hiring manager in that:

• they can maintain a healthy pipeline of competent people [still up to you to find the people out of this pipeline]
• they can filter people by personality [still up to you to detect people you don’t like]
• they at times have a very good sense of the competency of tech managers (as they see loyalty from movement)
• they can tell you who *won’t* work [they will filter out some incompetent people and some jerks]

They are also valuable for people looking to get hired:

• they can tell you a good deal about the internals of particular companies
• they can provide serendipitous events like connecting you with people that you end up working with later
• they can help you get back out there after staying with one company for an extended time by giving you a feel for the market

We can even apply the later-added-4th law to recruiters:

Law 4: A recruiter must establish its identity as a recruiter in all cases.

Recruiters go to user meetings, tech conferences, social meetups, etc. I’m not sure if recruiters have gang signs (throw up a P for placement) but you should identify yourself as a recruiter to everyone other than the tollbooth operator that you talk to while you are working.

Following these laws will go far in re-establishing the reputation of recruiters within the technology industry.  Also: free pie mailed to my house.  Contact me for more details.