Eric Wherry
ewherry.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2010
Elaine Wherry, a startup founder, writes about tech recruiting, founder mistakes, and startup culture in Silicon Valley.
What HN saysHN repeatedly cites her 'Recruiter Honeypot' post as the best writing on recruiter incentives, praising its data on where she sourced engineers.
19HN people shared it
5linked it in comments
16stories submitted
777story points
11 years agolast shared
2010people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1The Recruiter Honeypot7 people · 665 points · first shared 2012 · 156 comments on HN
- 2The Best Recruiters – followup to The Recruiter Honeypot3 people · 83 points · first shared 2012 · 13 comments on HN
- 3What I Learned as an Oompa Loompa2 people · 10 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 4Top myths of Silicon Valley2 people · 4 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 5100 Mistakes as a startup founder1 people · 4 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 6The Recruiter Honeypot1 people · 4 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 7First startup ideas1 people · 2 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 8Preserving Startup awesomeness: why metrics aren’t enough1 people · 2 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 9Arranging Things (for visual designers)1 people · 1 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 10The primal code for being scary on Halloween1 people · 1 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 11Dear Elaine: A letter to myself on the first day of my career.1 people · 1 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 12Follow up1 people · first shared 2013
What HN people wrote when they linked it
GeorgeOrr · 2013-10-14
The author also posted the following follow up, also worth a read:
http://www.ewherry.com/2013/10/follow-up/
jyu · 2013-09-24
Obligatory mention of Elaine Wherry's recruiter posts:
http://www.ewherry.com/2012/06/the-recruiter-honeypot/
http://www.ewherry.com/2012/08/the-best-recruiters-followup/
robtdennis · 2014-06-18
If you haven't read Elaine Wherry's post "The Recruiter Honeypot," you haven't read the best one about recruiters. Check it out here: http://www.ewherry.com/2012/06/the-recruiter-honeypot/
A lot has been written about recruiter incentives in these comments, but the market is still clearing even with extremely high fees. The reason bad recruiters can still get paid really well is because there's zero transparency and therefore almost no accountability. I think most of the problems with recruiters could be solved just by addressing this issue.
When you're looking for a good restaurant you can go on Yelp to find one, and you can tell from the reviews what to expect. The same goes if you have a bad restaurant experience -- you can write a review on Yelp and warn others about the crappy food / service / etc. Nothing really exists like this in the recruiting space, despite people really loving to write about how much recruiters suck. And a lot of them do, but what real accountability is there? If a recruiter gets in touch about a job, how do I know he's not super shady? If I'm an employer and need to hire rapidly, how can I find good recruiters other than word of mouth?
There should be a Yelp for recruiters. If you're slimy, the world should know about it, and you should have a hard time finding new business and new candidates. If you're a great recruiter who's adding real value, that should be obvious, too, so that others will want to work with you.
Some friends and I have…
vellum · 2013-03-07
Wherry's original blog post was better. She has a nice graph of where she sourced all of her Javascript dev recruits.
http://www.ewherry.com/2012/06/the-recruiter-honeypot/
calbear98 · 2012-11-05
Read this before deciding
http://www.ewherry.com/2012/06/the-recruiter-honeypot/