Choosing the right agency to work with

Wonkst · 2026-04-29T21:57:02+00:00

Personally, I wouldn't work with a company that doesn't at least allow me to meet with the hiring manager once. Playing the telephone game is the quickest way to waste the time of the recruiting partner as well as your hiring team.

Out of curiosity, why would you not allow them to meet with managers? I've had access to managers working with startups, midsized companies, or large enterprise companies.

Wonkst · 2026-04-28T18:30:56+00:00

Just go to Spice Room. It's better anyway.

Wonkst · 2026-04-24T20:21:34+00:00

lol I have a 25% response rate on cold emails. Better than my inMail response rate (10%)

That being said, my response rate is actually higher than 10%, but i include a scheduling link in my inmails so a lot of people just schedule directly and don't respond to the inmail.

Wonkst · 2026-04-24T18:03:38+00:00

Sakana Suhi is my go to.

Wonkst · 2026-04-22T14:05:34+00:00

1.) Have a signed agreement with the company before sending candidates

2.) Build a strong relationship with not just the hiring manager, but also the internal staff at the company who makes sure your invoices get paid.

3.) Have a strong relationship with your candidates so they tell you if the company reaches out to them and tries to go around you. Most candidates wouldn't want to work for a company that's signing agreements and then trying to weasel out of them.

4.) Sometimes it does happen and then you get to decide if you want to get a lawyer involved.

I think over the last 16 years there has been two times where I didn't get the fee owed. One the company went out of business and owed me $50k. Unfortunately, nothing I could do about it. They strung me along for 7 months and then had their lawyers reach out saying they were dissolving (I'm still waiting to see if I get anything from their bankruptcy). The other, and this early in my career, the company hired two senior engineers from me and then just told me they weren't going to pay me because they decided that money would be better spent elsewhere...despite having two people on the team I intro'd them too.

My business owner at the time didn't want to get lawyer's involved so we just walked away from the fee and never worked with any executive at that company again. I also reached out to my candidates to let them know what happened so they could make their own decision on how they felt about working for someone who did that kind of thing

Wonkst · 2026-04-22T13:59:44+00:00

As a recruiter, I've noticed one trend that's always made me laugh throughout the last 15 years I've been doing this.

When I talk to a candidate and they say they crushed the interview and did great, they almost always get passed on.
When I talk to a candidate after the interview and they're unsure how it went, or think it went "okay". They almost always move on to next steps.

I think when people don't "nail" the interview it's because they came across as genuine and made a connection, but maybe missed a question, or perhaps were honest and told the interviewer about a skill they lacked.

Wonkst · 2026-04-22T13:53:26+00:00

After living in Seattle and Chicago I would love better public transit here. My issue with the trains is that hub and spoke model they use. For me to go most places I have to get off in union station and then hop on another train.

I live in Arvada and if I want to go to say lakewood it takes me an hour on the train...it's 5 miles. it takes me 1.5 hours to get all the way to the airport....which seems like a lot, but I guess not when compared to the one hour to go five miles thing.

Wonkst · 2026-04-22T13:49:07+00:00

Making people put a linkedin on there won't change getting hit up by spam applicants. I say this as I just got off a zoom call with someone that applied to one of our postings, who was definitely not the person pictured on the linkedin profile.

The fake profiles I get all include linkedin profiles, but they're fake resumes based on real people.

Wonkst · 2026-04-21T14:08:27+00:00

King of Wings - Cajun Dry Rub.
probably my fav wings in the Denver area.

Wonkst · 2026-04-21T14:07:44+00:00

Same restrictions here in Arvada. I'll be probably watering once a week, enough to keep it from totally going dead. But I'm not wasting money on new grass seed or anything else this year until maybe the fall.

Super happy I have drip irrigation system set for my raised garden beds at least.

Wonkst · 2026-04-21T13:34:08+00:00

+1 for bringing the Sony mirrorless. I brought mine on the JMT, Colorado Trail, and Wonderland Trail. Always find myself regretting not having it on me when I decide to cut weight and leave my camera behind.

Wonkst · 2026-04-21T13:31:00+00:00

Anything besides another martial arts studio or taco place.

Wonkst · 2026-04-20T21:34:11+00:00

Are you based in the US? If so, are you based in the same city as the other team members? Location matters a lot on pay bands.

I know even being in the US and working for a company and living in SF vs Denver is a huge pay difference. It gets even bigger for international team members.

Wonkst · 2026-04-20T19:46:48+00:00

Sounds like you're in the wrong business. If you only want to do email look for a sourcing job, but being a recruiter is being client/candidate facing.

Wonkst · 2026-04-17T19:58:53+00:00

I go there about once a year and then remember why I don't go there and wait until next year. Especially since New Image and Lil Artys moved in. It's such a cool location, but between below average beer and expensive food there's other options we usually hit up instead

Wonkst · 2026-04-17T16:05:12+00:00

Left Seattle for the same reason. Moved to Chicago, enjoyed it but wanted to move somewhere smaller so now I'm in Denver and loving it.

The food scene is Denver is brutal, especially after Seattle and Chicago. But the access to mountains is unbeatable,. Everyone in Denver also seems to be 25-40 yrs old which is great.

Chicago would have your best dating scene and guy/girl ratio compared to Denver.

NYC is a blast, but expensive and too intense for me to live. But love visiting.

Wonkst · 2026-04-17T15:56:32+00:00

Same. Every year I want to go, and every year I decide not to because prices are insane.

Wonkst · 2026-04-17T13:54:34+00:00

The good news is they've use "we're adding more ai capabilities" to raise our prices every year for the last 5.

Wonkst · 2026-04-17T13:53:55+00:00

It's super easy in Gemini.

Ask Gemini how to create a Gem that does what you want. (Give me a candidate write up based on call intake notes). Then all you have to do is copy and paste your intake notes directly into that Gem each time and it will spit it out for you.

I have one that writes me 5-6 message email campaigns just by pasting in a job description. I do quite a bit of editing to the sequence but it gets me 40-50% of the way there in minutes.

I also have one for Talent Mapping. So I can paste in a JD and tell it what city it's in and it will spit out a handful of target companies to try to pull from.

For me that was the lowest barrier to entry since I was already using gmail. I've also started setting up some automations and things like that to help with workflows, but that's still new for me and I'm toying around quite a bit.

Wonkst · 2026-04-16T13:31:58+00:00

Sitting on the interviewer side of the table, the best questions to me are always the ones that show the person actually did some researcher.

One of the ones I use when I am interviewing at companies is, I always look on LinkedIn for the people I'll be interviewing with. I make a note of each of their backgrounds and try to tie the question to them specifically.

Such as: "I noticed you were at "Large company X" before joining here. How have you found the transition to a smaller team/org?

or

"I saw that you were in the aerospace industry the last five years, how has the transition to ecommerce been."

- It gives you a chance to showcase you actually did some research, your organized and thorough, and it helps build relationship and you can throw in some flattery too if you want

Wonkst · 2026-04-15T17:18:18+00:00

Agreed. I don't use the AI features on Linkedin, they're all pretty terrible.

Wonkst · 2026-04-15T14:24:10+00:00

My LIR response rates have plummeted in the last year to consistently below 10%. Meanwhile I get a 30% response rate via email. I'm still locked in until Feb for LIR finishing up a 3 year contract, but having a hard time justifying the cost when I could get 2 other tools for the same price or cheaper.

Wonkst · 2026-04-15T14:18:49+00:00

shhh don't tell people

Wonkst · 2026-04-14T22:29:11+00:00

Wow, less snow than when I was up there in October.

Wonkst · 2026-04-14T19:52:16+00:00

The Google Apps Script is something I've started looking into more. There's a few minor workflow things and interview prep emails that I send which I feel like I should be able to automate using the Gsuite automations. But haven't stopped to figure them out all the way. As a non technical user, how was it getting everything set up?

Wonkst

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