This week Fedor Volkov, an IT recruiter from Luna Park , an HR agency employing mathematicians and programmers, spoke on our social networks .
While Fedor was at school in 1543, he went to the Olympiads in mathematics and programming, then graduated from the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics at Moscow State University. This helped him build up a huge networking among IT specialists and easily enter recruitment.
Now Fedya lives in Israel, brings up three children and helps IT companies and specialists find each other. During the broadcast, he answered questions about the state of the market, salaries, what to look for when reading vacancies in order to correctly understand what the employer is expecting and much more.
We share with you the recording and transcript of the broadcast.
My name is Fedor Volkov, I have been working at HR Luna Park as a recruiter for a little more than two years, I really like it, and now I’ll tell you a little about how I got there and what I do.
Recently, recruiting has become my favorite pastime: before my favorite pastime was teaching children math - I was a full-time tutor, and it worked out pretty well, but over time I got very tired of this process.
And it turned out that at the moment when I realized that I was completely tired of my previous activities, I came across a post on VK that the girl Nadia was looking for a recruiter to join her team. This is how I learned who IT recruiters are.
It happened quite spontaneously and quickly for me. I just decided to write, told about myself that at school I studied in the materiel class, I was mainly engaged in mathematics - I was never interested in other topics. In history and literature lessons, I was mainly engaged in mathematics - which, in general, I later regretted more than once. I took part in the Olympiads quite usually - I did not get to the All-Russian Olympiad, I did not take first places, but in the 11th grade I was lucky to receive a diploma, and this was enough to get to Moscow State University without exams. There I studied in a fun and interesting way, in the world of mathematics, for 5 years. But nevertheless, during this time it became clear that higher mathematics in the volume that I learned at Moscow State University is not quite for me. I still have a fairly large background, I have gained vast experience of acquaintance with different areas of mathematics,about which at school I only guessed And from about the first year I began to teach children and somehow merged into this world.
When I saw a vacancy from Lunapark, I realized that the guys were looking for someone like me. We do not have a very ordinary agency where mathematicians and programmers work as recruiters. At the same time, I do not know very much about the work of other recruiters - I have not come across many, but today I just ran into it, and first I will tell you this case.
Today a person wrote to me on Telegram - he said that they were looking for a developer, offered to call him (by phone or via Skype). The message was literally two sentences. To be honest, I almost immediately thought that they were looking for me as a recruiter: someone needs developers, and they want to offer me a job so that I can help them with hiring a team. I followed the link, they sent me a job description; there, in principle, the name of the company was hidden, but this did not alarm me. We agreed to call up pretty quickly; the recruiter who wrote to me was completely laconic, and it was clear that his main desire was to call me. It was a little offensive, because before calling me, I first wanted to learn more about how they learned about me, why they decided to contact an outsourcing recruiter, and so on.
We agreed to call. And then my colleagues suggested that I was actually being haunted as a developer. I reread the correspondence - indeed, it could be understood so that someone made a mistake with the contact, or for some reason, after seeing my resume, decided that I was a developer.
And I thought it would be easy to see in this example how many mistakes HR makes when they write a general message. First, there was no company name there - I didn't know where my name was. There was no description in the message itself, there was only a link to the DOC file; To be honest, I don’t read such files on my phone, they do not open very well on Android. I was surprised that the job description was not in PDF.
And there was a standard, general message from which I could not even figure out what my name was. It is really a shame for the image of recruiters, if many developers are faced with this on a daily basis.
We managed to arrange an interview, and from the other side we were sure that they were calling a potential candidate-developer, and for my part I was sure that I was calling a potential customer who knew that I was a recruiter. This is the most terrible situation in which I have never found myself and I hope not to find myself again.
If you remember how I got to Luna Park, then it turned out that the guys from the agency - that is, Nadia, who came up with our whole concept - was looking for a person with a technical background. Who could understand technology, put himself in the shoes of both the developer and the customer. And it was really easy for me to understand technology and some aspects of development, as much as possible. Nade told me that with a technical background, it will be possible to quickly delve into the technical part and develop as a recruiter.
It turned out that the job of a recruiter is not as easy as it seemed to me from the general idea of recruiting.
There is quite a lot of work going on before the candidate gets the first message. First you need to understand the vacancy, feel who they really need. To understand the amount of information that is, it is always important to isolate some special moments, parts in the company that may be important for developers. The hardest part is probably finding that little match between the big resume flow you meet and the vacancy.
Each developer, if he decides to enter the market and open his resume on Headhunter, will receive a bunch of offers: both by mail, and in Telegram and many other places. If a person with good experience and resume shows that he was doing cool and interesting things, then he will receive so many responses that he will only need a day or two to answer, and they will still come. Therefore, in order to tell why my project is suitable for him, I need to try to take his place myself and, from the resume, recognize the key points that are important for the candidate, and find them in the company that asked me to help with hiring.
Probably the most enjoyable part for me is when the candidate replies that my message has become an outlet for him during the day. Several times it happened that I write to a candidate, and in response to my message, a person writes in the evening that he could not answer during the day, because HR from different companies wrote to him all day. And one person asked if my message could be sent to all the rest of HR as a reference, we laughed a little about this. It is clear that some things are very difficult to filter, convey, but I will try to tell you what is important to formulate in this message.
Now I will try to tell you how my work in principle happens, why I like it, and where I am looking for candidates. Each job is, of course, different, and all jobs are very different from each other, so you have to use a different place for each search. From the latest cases - for example, quite recently, three months ago, we were looking for candidates for a very cool project, for research and development. The guys searched in advance for those who are difficult to find somewhere in the public domain: these are candidates who would like to be in a startup, but at the same time had special search criteria. It was clear to me that this is what is inside the network - that is, among my acquaintances or people with whom I previously spoke - and ordinary services with resume, like Headhunter or My Circle, would not work there. In them, too, it turns out quite successfully to search, but this was not the case.In this particular situation, it helped that among my acquaintances there are many guys who fit the description: I went to school with Olympiads and participated in Olympiads, I still have friends who won them.
I think that not everyone fully knows how much recruiting helps. But here, in a specific situation, if you know the people you are looking for, and in principle there are not very many of them - maybe there are only 200 such people throughout the country - then you need to know how to correctly tell about a particular situation, how correctly tell about the vacancy. And, probably, this network of mine, which has developed over the years, helped me a lot.
Every communication with a candidate for me begins with the first pitch. I try to tell about the vacancy as much as possible, but at the same time do not forget about the candidate himself - it is very important to find those reference points that connect a specific vacancy with a specific developer. I think a lot of developers have had the experience of going to interviews that turned out to be wasted time; this is my worst nightmare - to send someone whom I am interested in and to whom I told about the vacancy, to a place where he does not like at all. Probably, in 2 years I have had one or two such situations. Every time I tried to find out why this could happen at all.
But the first thing I try to think about is to make it mutually interesting for both the developer and the company. Therefore, in the first message a candidate receives, it is important to talk about intersecting points, to find what is in common between the company and the candidate, which, probably, someone else does not immediately see. This is necessary so that your message turns out to be one of the few people will answer, out of hundreds that go to the mail.
The first person whom I managed to interest in a vacancy I came across simply by reposting in VK. At that time I had a rather small profile among my acquaintances, but among them there were those who became interested. Quite quickly, from the first candidate, we managed to close the vacancy. I think this became the guarantee of my love for the profession; it is obvious that in a situation where you can quickly find the right person, you save a lot of time for the company, which spends resources on interviews; sometimes there can be 3-4 stages in it - I know that there can be more, although this was not the case in my practice. If we managed to find that one person who suited the company, this does not mean that any person would be suitable, I just coped with the task quickly. Probably, this is what motivates me every day - I stay in this profession becausethat I like helping people save their time.
The transition between professions, between companies for developers, can be even more stressful than the decision to change. Sometimes friends write to me who say that they make a decision to move somewhere, but they doubt it, because the worst thing for them is to plunge into the world of interviews. There will be a lot of them, it will be difficult to choose, I want to find a place for a long time, so that the team / tasks / conditions are satisfied.
I often write in messages “it seems to me that the team will be close to you in spirit”, or “it seems to me that this project will suit you in spirit”. This is the most important aspect. If I see in the resume that a person wants a big company, then even if his experience and stack are 100% suitable, I will not invite him to a small company. I can clarify, but I will definitely say right away that I am looking for a small company, a startup.It is important to clarify such moments before you call for an interview, so that there is no disappointment, but, on the contrary, there is joy or, at least, pleasure from communicating with new people. This is probably a rarity in the common world, but in my practice it happens often - that is, mutual pleasure from the time spent. Even if the candidate receives a refusal or refuses the offer himself - this is not such a problem for me,as the displeasure of the time spent.
In the recruiting profession, there are times when a candidate is suitable for a company, but there is no vacancy for him. Also quite interesting moments. I still have one acquaintance with whom we talked about the vacancy - she didn’t interest me in the end, but we remained on good terms. At the moment when a person decides to change jobs - if I even have nothing to offer, then if each of us is ready to spend time and if it is interesting (for the candidate in the first place), you can try to find a project for a long time. That is, not in a month or even a few. There was one case when a candidate was interviewed for six months, and this happened quite calmly on both sides. And the company did not urgently look for anyone, but they were interested in a specific developer, and the developer did not plan a quick transition - he was just ready to meet new interesting people and find outwhat it can lead to.
Sometimes such moments surprise me. There is some kind of mutual understanding between people that they can give each other something, but at the same time there is no unambiguous perspective or focus on results. As a result, after a long period - there were several interviews, a test interview, another interview - the person received an offer, which he accepted 5 months later. During this time, some relationship has already developed between the company and the developer, which influenced the fact that in the end the offer was accepted.
I was as pleased as possible at that time - it seems like I introduced them, and even for a person a position arose that suited him. This is not a cunning evil plan, the situation just happened so well. And this is very cool, this is what really motivates me in the profession.
It is quite difficult to find time to find your own moment for the transition before you burn out in your current place. Some of the guys I talk to try to change jobs at the moment when there is an offer for big money; of course, the biggest and most frequent motivation for the transition is the financial aspect. But recently, for many, money is not always the first thing they pay attention to. The market now appreciates remote work - now the lack of the opportunity to work from home is rather surprising.
Each of the projects that I have been able to help with hiring in the past two years had something special at once. For example, a small team that really makes dramatic changes; they are so close-knit that they are looking for a person who will have a clear cultural fit. Perhaps someone who was not yet ready to move to a small company will decide to try their hand at the current place; but some see a plus in working in a narrow team, because the result of what you are doing is immediately visible.
Many, finding themselves in the market, having already burned out - that is, having found themselves in their current place with uninteresting tasks and not seeing their own influence on the product - find themselves in a very difficult morale during interviews. Because of this, they do not show their maximum, go through the stress of interviews with great moral losses for themselves. Probably, this is something that I, as a recruiter, cannot predict in advance, the moment when the probationary period does not pass even in the case of the initial feeling that the company and the candidate have found each other.
Burnout, of course, has a huge impact on productivity. On my own I will say that this applies to any area; I cannot note any particular burnout among the candidates with whom I communicate; but at the same time, all the people who write to me “your proposal is great, but I no longer have the moral strength to go to interviews,” I understand. Here you can only nod, because there are too many offers on the market, and a person who has decided to change jobs cannot bypass them all. And my job is also about the redistribution of moral forces. Tell about good places, about the pros and cons in those large or small projects that the candidate himself may not have heard of.
I think that the biggest disadvantage of my work is a certain stereotyped approach to the recruiter. Nevertheless, people meet daily with a stream of offers on Telegram and in the mail - it's not easy. Sometimes you need to take a separate day to sort your mail. Therefore, I try to show in the first message where I saw this match.
It's always great when people give feedback on messages and conversations. Nowadays many IT-schnicks value live communication; not even talking on the phone, calm correspondence in which you clearly show that you have read the resume, thought about this person, and do not use standard clichés to lure you into an interview. The feeling when they just want to lure you into a call is always demotivating; it is unlikely that many agree to an interview when they do not know all the details.
If we talk about money: I make money if the candidate passes the probationary period. If it does not work, then we find one replacement. The probationary period is most often 3 months, sometimes more. Many developers have their own network: you can not often make money on this, but we have a referral in the agency, among our friends there are those who caught vacancies in the channel on time and successfully recommended their colleagues. This is not a way of earning money, but a way to reduce entropy around the world. Now I more and more often meet with the fact that among my acquaintances there are many people who are not too happy with their work, who could be happier working in some place that would suit them in more parameters. Everyone has the opportunity to take care of their friend.On different websites of companies in the vacancies section there is also its own referral, this may well be an additional income ...
As for the cases that I managed to close with one vacancy. I had acquaintances from school who wanted to hire internal HR for their team - but in addition to recruiting, internal HR also has onboarding and other functions that need to be combined, I suggested us, in the end there was a rather successful cooperation.
For one of the positions, a friend of mine, a former student, advised his classmate. I managed to close the position in two interviews.
Of course, in addition to such quick hires, there are longer, resource-intensive and tricky tasks that the network cannot cope with.
About a year ago, I was able to find a development lead in a startup, where it was difficult to find because of the budget ceiling for a position. It was not below the market, but it was not too high either. Here, probably, no my network could help. And here it is important to understand how to compose a search query to the database, how well you are looking for people. Because at first, when I just started working as a recruiter, I was most embarrassed and knocked out by the fact that when I make a request to the site, I can get results from at least 100 thousand people. And from them there is no way to choose at least those that are suitable for the minimum parameter. But over time, it turns out among vacancies to highlight those keywords that are important and for which you can greatly narrow the search, this moment is gained with experience, but it helped me a lotthat I am easy about optimizing work with some approaches from mathematics, and it is easy for me to memorize and organize large amounts of data for greater efficiency. On the other hand, specifically for the position of a development lead, I reviewed about 100 candidates and talked to everyone. I then went through all the stages of acceptance, from despair to joy.
This is the part of the job that clearly looks like some kind of excitement; I myself am not a gambling person, but here it seems pleasant to me the fact that sometimes a vacancy can be closed quickly, sometimes it can be long, but at the same time, one way or another, the time I spend is nonlinear. And I need to somehow make sure that the expectation from all different vacancies is large enough, then it will be possible to maintain such an interesting system of communicating vessels, where you monitor the balance between the efforts that you make for different vacancies, so that you end up with a total profit for everyone, both companies and developers. Probably, if you follow this carefully, you can succeed, help people find a new project for a long time.
There was such a situation that my candidate, due to life circumstances, left the project, but he was also worried about me, was everything all right, did it affect my work and earnings. It is always very touching when someone remembers me and realizes that some of the efforts that have been invested are not just like that; I'm really worried about making the person happy in the new company.
The first message I send, I most often do on Telegram. Recently, people have become calm about this; about a year and a half ago - even if a person indicated his phone number - many people were not very open to this and we quickly switched to communication via email. Now it has become much more convenient, people communicate easily in Telegram, they are pleased to see short text messages, reply to them. It seems to me that this is more convenient for everyone than the initial audio calls with a recruiter.
Recently I met with the denial of Telegram as a convenient place, although at first a lot of people told me "let's communicate by mail", and I began to write at the end of the message like "I apologize for writing so abruptly in Telegram." But lately it is clear that almost everyone communicates quite calmly in messengers. This probably also says what kind of message is embedded in these messages that you send. On the other hand, it seems to me that many at a distance have become easier to relate to recruiting and what steps each recruiter takes next.
Sometimes people are surprised that I was able to write to them in Telegram, they ask me exactly how I found it. This, of course, is not a detective's job. Sometimes a candidate leaves a resume in which there are no contacts at all - both on Headhunter and on Habr-Career. It is clear that if a person has opened a resume and it is clear that it has been updated recently, then he is in search. But, if for some reason there are no contacts, then you have to be inventive. Most often, some of the resumes, projects help to get to know the person better. During the time that I have been dealing with this, I either understand that a person is suitable for the vacancy, or I stop along this path if the person still does not fit what I want to tell. Or vice versa, you can find on some other resource to find a complete resume containing contacts.
The most important thing here is to hear from the candidate which points are the most key, and which ones may remain behind the scenes, try to understand the needs, which is definitely closer to psychology than technical knowledge. If this succeeds, then the worldwide chaos that a person faces when moving to a new job decreases. And it seems to me that it was worth my efforts.
Among my colleagues, with whom I work, there are very different guys. Someone studied at the Faculty of Physics, someone with programming experience, experience at the Olympiads. We are all united by the fact that, having received a technical education, we did not go into development ourselves, but rather develop not only technical skills, but also social ones. In general, the merit of the team in my love for work is also quite large. Recruiters must be a little lonely. I really appreciate the opportunity to communicate with colleagues, work together and share experience, come up with a text, find key matches between resumes and vacancies, share some comments about the first messages sent. This is the support that our team has and I would like to keep it. Now, if I ever work elsewhere, I will have pretty high standards.Before that, I always worked alone, because when you work as a tutor, you always work one-on-one with another person. There are many things about being a private teacher that overlap with what I do now - but then I was completely alone in the work. And now I have the support, the diverse influence of my colleagues. It seems to me that my experience in 2 years has become very suitable in order to be able to find the right person in the company, and, on the contrary, not write unnecessary ones, so as not to distract him from other 20-30 job offers.my experience in 2 years has become very suitable in order to be able to find the right person in the company, and, conversely, not write unnecessary ones, so as not to distract him from other 20-30 job offers.my experience in 2 years has become very suitable in order to be able to find the right person in the company, and, conversely, not write unnecessary ones, so as not to distract him from other 20-30 job offers.
I think that not everyone fully recognizes the need for recruiters. Quite often, a developer can find a company for himself, but not always. In addition, nowadays you have to outsource a lot of things in your life - from cooking to some big moments. Finding a developer for a team is something that is often worth outsourcing to small projects: perhaps they have the financial resources for the agency, but they don't have the human resources to look for candidates themselves and conduct 10-20 interviews.
By the way, if someone who listens to the broadcast is interested in the work of a recruiter, then you can write to me - I will tell you more, right now we have an open position of a recruiter with a technical background in the agency. Recently, there have been a lot of projects that are looking for, are being applied I receive letters from various companies with which we are discussing hiring new employees for them. It is always important to ask the right questions in time to understand why the company is looking for an employee, how flexible there is in this search - or is it a hard search based on specific criteria.
For a successful recommendation, we pay about 30 thousand rubles, depending on the level of the person we recommend. Sometimes, for some special positions, it may be less and more, but on average about 20-30 thousand rubles if a person passes a probationary period. Therefore, if you have friends who want to change jobs, we are always happy to receive recommendations. I would like to believe that there will be fewer myths about that annoying recruiter who writes over and over again in the middle of the night. In a given situation, a specific case can be decisive for a person, I often come across the fact that little is known about a certain company, but it turns out to be an ideal place for a specific candidate
At the same time, when I was just starting to work, once my eldest daughter sent a smiley to Telegram, and they immediately answered me. I took note of this, and now, when, perhaps, the dialogue has drowned and they simply did not have time to answer me, I send a sticker and it works, relieves the atmosphere! A good sticker is answered more often than a detailed, boring description.
It seems to me that it is important for candidates to ask as many questions as possible about the company, to voice key points that are fundamental to them, so as not to get to interviews where they are not looking for you. I think that it is important from the very beginning to frankly share your impressions - both for the company and for the developer, in order to understand what to expect at the end, so that there are fewer situations in which the offer differs greatly from the expectations.
As melancholy as it sounds, the basis of my work is the expectation of general happiness from the company and the developers. And, if this happens, if everyone in the end turns out to be quite happy with how they spent their time, they were interested, even if this is not a perfect coincidence - probably in this situation the world has become a little better. Therefore, I am very worried about those who do not like their work, I try to help with something. Advice on writing a resume if there are no suitable projects among your friends. And here for me, too, monetary compensation is not at all in the first place - although it just so happens that it is possible to fill vacancies so that monetary compensation is not in the first place.
As for the resume itself: it should always read what position you are looking for. In my resume, I would like to talk about personal projects, about what you personally took part in. Sometimes, behind a certain company name and position, it is very difficult to understand which part of a large project a developer is involved in. Therefore, even if there is a “rule of 10 seconds” - the recruiter reads the resume quickly and scrolls through - I would like to see the specific contribution of the person. Although my initial view of a resume is much longer, I probably read too slowly. It's helpful to think about the keywords you should include on your resume to get it in higher searches. Headhunter already knows how to translate into different languages - both English and Russian - but the search shows according to its algorithms. You should think about this if you need to raise your resume higher,especially if the applicant is for some starting position, junior or middle. If a person wants to find a job not through a network, but through a common aggregator, then it is important to include more keywords inside the resume and describe his specific experience more precisely. It should be clear what can be important, what has already been learned, how this can be applied to those vacancies that a recruiter has.
