One of my teammates, George, forwarded me this blog post, “Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters” where the author says he does not do interviews with Google’s (or Amazon’s, or other big tech companies’) recruiters who contact him via email or social media.

Why?

He is a programmer and his perspective is that he has come to learn that HR recruiters don’t know much about how to evaluate a candidate’s UX design, code or algorithms. So his response to these inquiries from the recruiters is always as follows:

“Thanks for your email. I’m very interested indeed. I have nothing against an interview. However, there is one condition: I have to be interviewed by the person I will be working for. By my future direct manager.”

He does not receive a reply often, and he is okay with that.

I can tell you that it has saved a lot of wasted time.

We suggest to our job seeking clients to identify and then reach out to the potential hiring manager they might report to at their target company.

When you are approaching a company unsolicited and without an existing job posting, don’t start with HR.

If there is a job posting present, don’t start with HR.

Generally speaking, HR’s job is to screen applicants out.

The line manager you might report to tends to look at the fewer candidates.

The line manager tends to think, “Can this person, with his or her background, do what we need?”

So start with the line management leadership where you want to work.