Recruiters and Programmers in Two Different Worlds

In order for a programmer to understand the bottlenecks of a vacancy, it is worth considering the hiring process from the recruiter’s perspective.

Regular changes in requirements and their vagueness.

When a job vacancy is posted, the vast majority of requirements are vague and based on all the technologies present in the project. The requirements description is handled by a recruiter or HR, since the hourly wage of a programmer (usually a TechLead) is too high to delegate this work.

To a greater extent, the vagueness of requirements is the root cause of their regular change in the recruitment process. The recruiter selects a programmer, presents it to the TechLead, and he confidently recites the rejection. This frustrates both the programmer who wasted time going through an HR interview and the recruiter himself, who ultimately becomes the scapegoat because he didn’t find a suitable candidate.

When a recruiter doesn’t know who he’s hunting for, he starts picking on everyone who can do everything at once, in other words, full stack developer. Therefore, it is not surprising that those who are lying through their teeth are getting such vacancies.
After an HR interview, the impression arises that the programmer: “he knows this, can do that, – and in the evenings he sews!”, – and ultimately does not have deep expertise in all the requirements, which popes out as a “turd from an ice hole” during a technical interview.

Advice for those who know how to listen:

If you don’t skimp and delegate the preparation of the job description to a TechLead, you can save a considerable amount on hiring, which will far exceed the amount that will be spent on paying for his services.

If you want to understand a programmer, think like a programmer.

How programmers behave and choose vacancies.

A programmer like Batman, often only gets in touch in the evening. So pay attention to such characters, they don’t do personal things during working hours, so they text after or before work.
As a rule, the interview will also take place outside of working hours, but he has the best chance of successfully passing it.

If the resume indicates the place of work as the NDA, then this is often interpreted as: “was on vacation and did not program anything.” It looks like an additional experience, but in fact it is a chimera that will play a cruel joke in the future.

Sometimes the vacancy indicates a frankly understated remuneration compared to the requirements. In the eyes of the customer, a senior-level programmer should show productivity of $6k, receiving $3k, but the reality is harsher, the programmer will work at the level that match up his salary.
Recruiters are often surprised why such an experienced programmer is willing to respond to such a vacancy, yet in the realities of 2026, finding a job takes months, and the number of good vacancies is equal to “the number of fingers on a carpenter’s hand.”