Motion Recruitment — Local services in San Francisco

If you're in SF, and you're looking for a job, do yourself a favor and check in with Mark and the team at Workbridge SF (can't vouch for any other Workbridge branch). I've interacted with my fair share of recruiters and recruiting agencies at this point, and I have to say that this is by far THE most professional recruiting team that I've ever encountered.

Other recruiters often message you on Linkedin or via email with a fairly cookie cutter approach:

1. They'll contact you out of the blue with something along the lines of "Hi, I have a big big big! client that you're going to either know by their name recognition or know of very very soon because of the recently closed funding round that is on the web.. please please reply and I'll actually tell you the name!". At this point this is their lure - they usually do this just to get you to say "ok", what's the secret name?

2. They'll schedule a call where they would like to see the details of your resume.

3. They'll proceed to grill you on the potential fit. Usually this involves little more than pattern matching keywords from your resume to the company's job description. Company job descriptions are a joke by the way - no one ever uses ALL of the technologies on a resume. You can always tell when a recruiter is full of ** when they can't tell that you've worked with something like javascript if they ask you "any javascript experience?" after listing Node instead of Node.js on your resume.

4. That's it. That's the extent of the typical recruiting relationship. After that they'll more or less send your resume into a company's inbound inbox and pray that you get a call back. Usually the company won't even interact with you through that recruiter ever again. These types of recruiters and "agencies" often don't have any real connections to the companies that are hiring - they'll work on commission by more or less aggregating resumes and passing them onto any company that says there's an opening, looking for a cut after someone works out. You're typically much better off applying directly.

Workbridge is very different. Workbridge actually acts as a real hiring broker - by matching candidates to a list of companies that would like help recruiting. They're not on the buy side or the sell side of labor market - they're right in the middle, or maybe slightly towards the buy side since they actually have strong relationships with companies. Workbridge will ask that you come in to their physical location in downtown SF to meet with a number of different account managers to ensure they get a wholistic sense of what you're interested in. After that you'll end up with roughly 10 to 20 potential matches depending on how much experience and interest you have. From there it's anyone's guess as to what %age of those companies would actually like to meet with you (depends on luck, timing, experience, etc.), but that's not really what this post is about. This is about ensuring that you're working with the right agency to push your resume the furthest. Workbridge was so convinced that they knew what I would want, what I'd like, and that they found the right fit for me that they actually asked me for all of my references even before my actual interview with one particular company (they were right by the way). I thnk this was only possible because the Workbridge associate basically sold me to the company pretty much immediately. The connection Workbridge has with its client companies is genuine.

If you're interviewing for the sake of gaining interview experience, then by all means work with as many recruiters as possible. If you're ready for a jump and you would really like to land at a dream job, then just work...

As a relatively old-timer tech professional, I have just gone through a long and arduous job search fraught with disappointments and misplaced effort, but thanks to the people at Jobspring I ultimately I was able to adapt, overcome, and get the right job with the help of good people. I started working with them early in my search and even after some initial setbacks, they stuck with me where others didn’t. The saw something worth investing time into and ultimately it paid off for both them and myself. I felt valued and they focused their search over time to bring better opportunities and so I could better shine at interviews.

I worked with several great people there, specifically Scott, Kelly, Jackie, Sam, and Morgan. They all took the time to learn what my strengths were and gave me feedback based on their own experience as well as as from hiring managers. From this I learned what attributes were the most sought after and therefore I could stick with the specific areas that were the most interesting to me. In time, this is what led me to getting an offer from the right company. I will add that while each person on the team has their own style, they all supported each other’s work and were familiar with my profile in order to help me when I needed it.

I would like to give a special shout out to Scott for being so on-point helping me succeed at getting the position I really wanted. Not only was he always positive and supportive, he was extremely detail-oriented. He shared research notes with me that were like nothing I’d ever seen! To know what a company is searching for in a new hire is the most valuable knowledge you can walk into an interview with. Yes, your skills, experience, and overall professionalism is always critical, but if you don’t touch upon experiences relevant to a hiring manager's specific needs they won’t see a good fit. I learned that now, more than ever, technical hiring managers tend to have an extremely specific vision as to what abilities they seek. The process of assessing candidates can be near-scientific, and if you don’t identify what they are looking for quickly, you’ll miss the chance to demonstrate how you possess those skills. There were many times before this where I felt like I missed opportunities because I learned all too late what a hiring manager was specifically looking for and during my interview I simply was off-topic and eliminated because I didn’t seem to have what they needed. To be able to have the confidence to walk in the door knowing that I had the specific attributes that they were looking for, it was just a matter of demonstrating it. It really was a team effort so having quality support can be all the difference!

Huge thanks to Scott and the rest of the Jobspring...

I sent this company an email from one of my email addresses (let's call it email #1) back in March of 2016. They called me in for an interview where we discussed what I'm looking for, where I'm at in my job search and what they could do to help me in my search. One of the things they told me is if I was interviewing with any other companies to let them know what company and who I was interviewing with in order to convey to other employers that I was in high demand. At the end of the interview they said they would call me when they had any opportunities they think I would be a good match for.

I didn't hear anything from them in over a month. Finally, I get called in by Jacob for one interview with a company, but it turns out they're looking for a developer who's focused in Ruby on Rails and I said in my initial interview with JobSpring that I was focused on Front End/Javascript. Needless to say the interview was a bust. However, a day after the interview, Jacob calls me to let me know I didn't get it AND to get a list of current companies I've been interviewing for and the names of who I interviewed with. After that I didn't hear anything for about two weeks. Then I receive an email from Jacob again, this time in my secondary email address (we'll call it email #2) saying he found my resume (which contains my email #2) on some other job searching website, and that he knows of a company looking for a front end developer that he thinks I'd be good for. Unfortunately, he never sent me an email to my email #1 (which is the one he has on file) nor did he call me about this position. I didn't give him my email #2 and as far as he knows he's just contacted someone else no already in their database.

Then another few weeks go by and I receive yet ANOTHER email from Sam who posted an ad on craigslist looking for front and back end developers. Just like Jacob's email he said he knows of a company looking for a front end developer that he thinks I'd be good fit and to send him an updated resume and phone number. This was sent to email #1, so obviously this guy is just casting a large net to attempt to sign up everyone who responds to his fake craigslist ad.

I can't believe this company takes advantage of the unemployed and wastes everyone's time with the interview process when they have no intention of ever placing you in a role. This company is a scan and they're just using people to bulk up their database and find companies that are currently hiring in order to make a quick...