r/askrecruiters

Recruiters are useless! If I ever have a company, I will definitely make it recruiter-free. I just got to this conclusion after a recruiter shockingly told me that my experience in the last 7 years has been in software engineering, not development - just because the titles of my positions during this period say "integration engineer" that detail my experience as the full-stack developer that she is looking for. She added that my development experience was from before 7 years ago - just because the official title of my position then says "developer". She said all this egregiously wrong inference on my expertise and experience with an incredible confidence, no interest at all in listening to me, and a shocking ignorance about her palpable ignorance! It was quite a helpful experience for me in so many ways! Wow!

This is just the worst of the many bad experiences that I had been struggling to make sense of and ultimately led me to this conclusion!

To begin with, daring to recruit an expert without having a clue - let alone sufficient - understanding about the required expertise in itself is absurd! Choosing a career as a recruiter hence is ludicrous!

Hello y’all,

This is my first post and wanted to ask a question. I had a phone screening with a recruiter this past Monday and I believe we had a good conversation. Towards the end my final question was “is there anything from our conversation you would like for me to elaborate on?” He responded by saying “no everything from your resume looks solid and I will pass off my notes to the hiring manager. You should hear back either EOD today or by lunch tomorrow.” It has been 2 days, but I have yet to hear anything back. How should I follow up? Should I follow up?

Yes, even yours.
Unless you have 10+ years in a specialized field (medicine, academia, senior engineering), one page is the standard. Cut: hobbies, “references available on request,” your high school if you have a degree, jobs older than 10 years that aren’t relevant. Recruiters scan in 6 seconds — page 2 doesn’t get read.

ok, so I'm an in-house recruiter and maintenance tech roles are killing me. everything else on my desk closes in 30-45 days no problem. but maint techs? I'm sitting at 11+ weeks consistently. last one took me 14.

and before anyone says it - pay isn't the issue because it's solid. the problem is there's just no pipeline. indeed keeps sending me forklift drivers. ziprecruiter, same story. linkedin is basically useless because nobody who actually fixes machines for a living is scrolling linkedin on their lunch break.

so what're y'all seeing on fill time for maint techs this year? wanna know if I'm just bad at my job or if the whole market shifted on me.

Hi, just retired after 35 years in the industry. My son told me Reddit is where people actually talk about this stuff, so here I am. I have been going through the posts here a bit and realised I could provide some guidance.

For ref: Spent a great time in recruiting, mainly across US, Australia, Asia.
Mainly Tech, then shifted to Series A and up startups. Happy to answer some questions if it helps.
P.S - Still getting used to this platform so might be a bit slow in replying.

I'm a 28 year old black man with 7 years of HR and recruiting experience. I went through two rounds of interviews with this major ticketing company that required 3 years of experience.

From my recruiting background I have a lot of experience with correctly answering questions and framing them in the context of my experience. I felt like I had one of the best interviews ever.

Weeks later they come back, reject my application and say that they liked me but that I was
"overconfident" and needed to work on that in the future.

As a black man that has only been interviewed by white people, I doubt that if a white man walked in with the same demeanor and interview experience as me, that they would categorize him as
"overconfident."

Is this a micro aggression or am I overthinking??

This is something I've been sitting with for a while now.

We had a strong candidate in process for a senior role. Internally, everything looked organised to us. Our slack threads were active, calendar invites were out, and the hiring panel was aligned. From where we were sitting, the process was moving.

But… from where she (the candidate) was sitting, we had gone silent for 23 days.

She didn’t receive any update after the second round (not even the industry-standard "we're still in process" note).

Thus, she had no idea if we were deliberating or if she'd been quietly passed over. Therefore, she kept interviewing elsewhere. By the time we came back to her with an offer, she'd already accepted one.

We didn't ghost her intentionally. But she had no way to know that.

I think about this a lot now. The internal experience of a hiring process and the candidate experience of the same process are sometimes completely different things, and you won't find that out until someone tells you.

We've changed a few things since. Updates go out between rounds now, even when there's nothing concrete to say. Skills screening moved earlier, so we're not that deep into a process with someone before we catch a gap.

Has anyone built a systematic approach to candidate comms mid-process? Or is this still mostly a manual thing for your teams?

I have my third interview in person next week for a company. Both conversations were good , but the HR person just asked me to complete an assessment and it’s about ranking random things from best to worst . She said it’s standard for their process but here is an example of some things I have to rate:

- a baby
- using love to commit murder
- nonsense
- a good meal
- a thief
- a person who does not tell the truth
- a rubbish heap
- a devoted scientist
- imprison an innocent person
- love of nature
Etc…..

Has anyone seen an assessment like this??? The email said to not overthink the questions. But like what….? Help?!

I’m trying to figure out how to aim my job search when my actual capability is meaningfully higher than what my resume signals.

I have a business administration degree, but my resume does not read like “advanced analyst,” “developer,” “automation engineer,” or anything in that lane. I also don’t want to pretend I’m something I’m not. I am not a software engineer. I am not a credentialed data analyst. I am not trying to jump into a senior strategy role.

What I do have is an unusual amount of practical leverage with LLMs and tooling.

I’m a very heavy LLM user. Not “I use ChatGPT sometimes,” but tens of thousands of serious turns across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc. I use these systems as working infrastructure: to reason through processes, build scripts, create calculators, design CRUD-style tools, structure documents, automate repetitive tasks, debug workflows, and build small internal systems around whatever job function I’m doing. Basically you could drop me into a substantial amount of business admin roles where there is no expectation to code, and I can build vertical integrations for just myself, or glue pieces of a given tech stack together where the company tech stack falls short. For example, the 1% user threshold for 99% of people was 12000 turns for 2025. On Chat GPT alone I had 99k, putting me in the top .01% of users.

I’m somewhere more than vibe coding and less than a full blown software engineering. I can’t credibly sell myself as a developer, but I can usually reason my way through building targeted verticals if the problem is concrete enough. I know how to break the work down, ask the right questions, test outputs, troubleshoot, and iterate until the tool does what I need.

The type of role I’m looking for is not customer-facing and not a role where the whole office treats me as a shared resource. Ideally I answer to a small number of people, have clear expectations, and work against concrete KPIs.

For example, if the role is processing documents, reviewing files, managing records, cleaning data, generating reports, handling intake, or maintaining some operational queue, I can often build a system around that work. The ideal situation is a role where the baseline expectation is clear, and I can quietly use personal tooling, scripts, templates, LLM workflows, and process design to produce at a much higher level than the job technically requires.

I’m not looking for “challenge,” “passion,” “startup chaos,” or a role where I have to prove myself through constant meetings and stakeholder management. I’m looking for bounded back-office operations work where being unusually good at building personal leverage actually matters.

So my question is:

What job titles or industries should I be targeting where this kind of capability is valuable, but the entry gate is not “already have five years as a data analyst / software engineer / senior operations manager”?

I’m especially interested in roles that are:

internal-facing document/data/process heavy KPI or queue based low customer contact low meeting load operational rather than strategic friendly to automation and AI-assisted workflows realistic for someone with a business admin background whose actual tooling ability is ahead of their resume

I’m trying to find the right category of work where my resume gets me in the door, but my actual capability lets me outperform once I’m there.

https://preview.redd.it/hpxypfwcj02h1.png?width=5100&format=png&auto=webp&s=9a2c929569ab1af7f9876c6cc569bf283a5e736c

Recent graduate with 3+ years of experience as a software engineer with no interviews lined up and a single callback this cycle. I've applied to 1000+ jobs. Trying to figure what the issue is starting with my resume :)