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Show HN: A simple tool to help filter recruiter spam

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Re: Show HN: A simple tool to help filter recruiter spam

#21

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

eloisius wrote: post #11
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #8

I want OkCupid for recruiting. Recruiter puts what they're looking for, I put what I'm looking for and what my actual skills/experience are. Additional questions ("Family friendly policies?", "Active diversity program?") get answered with a rating (not important/kinda important/very important) and whether an answer is mandatory. Algorithm generates closest matches, you get matches in e-mail. Assuming the candidate is…

Recruiters will just dishonestly check all the boxes that you're looking for. They don't care if they waste your time with a bad match. They carpet bomb everyone with their 'opportunity' because it's no cost to them.

I'm not so sure. Think of the way OkCupid works: you fill out a bunch of questions and what you're looking for, and an algorithm creates matches. You can of course unilaterally send messages to whomever, but those people don't have to read the messages, they can just look at their algorithmic matches.

If the recruiter puts inaccurate information in the job listing to try to skew the algorithmic match, it actually wouldn't work; their overly-broad job requirements wouldn't be a fit for your more specific list of tech, so it would show up as a poor match. Only candidates and job listings that have very close requirements/provides would show strong matches. In other words, recruiters are not sending you some tailored thing; they can only create job listings, and the matches only show up to you if they happen to match what you list.

You could also add privacy protections so that recruiters actually can't see your profile at all until you click on a job that you like. You still see the matches and recommendations in your e-mail, so they don't even have to reach out to you. A lot of job sites already do this (automatically recommending you to one or more jobs via e-mail) but they don't have the deep profile data we could compose with questions about more than just tech.

Re: Show HN: A simple tool to help filter recruiter spam

#22

Post by 88913527 »

justusthane wrote: post #20
88913527 wrote: post #16

The simplest way to detect recruiters reaching out to you without much thought is to use weird UTF8 characters in your LinkedIn name. The recruiter's message will be canned, but parameterized with your name. The parameterization gives you a means for communicating with yourself. This fixes the problem for cold recruiter e-mails I get too, since they seem to scraping LinkedIn for contacts. You can change the character…

Seems like this has the potential for a high rate of false positives. If I were a recruiter typing out personal messages, I'd still likely copy and paste the name just to be sure I got it right.

Fortunately, you do have options for what will and won't get around the human filter, when it comes to choosing your weird character.

For example, a human knows that in name "John[Emoji] Doe", the [emoji] isn't likely a legitimate part of John's first name (imagine, if HN permitted, the emoji was a dolphin), whereas, "Renée Doe" a recruiter might copy-and-paste for accuracy.

Re: Show HN: A simple tool to help filter recruiter spam

#23

Post by addandsubtract »

justusthane wrote: post #20
88913527 wrote: post #16

The simplest way to detect recruiters reaching out to you without much thought is to use weird UTF8 characters in your LinkedIn name. The recruiter's message will be canned, but parameterized with your name. The parameterization gives you a means for communicating with yourself. This fixes the problem for cold recruiter e-mails I get too, since they seem to scraping LinkedIn for contacts. You can change the character…

Seems like this has the potential for a high rate of false positives. If I were a recruiter typing out personal messages, I'd still likely copy and paste the name just to be sure I got it right.

My personal filter is messages that read, "Hi [name], I love what you have done for [current company]..."

I develop B2B software in a niche market. How could you have possibly seen any of my work?

Re: Show HN: A simple tool to help filter recruiter spam

#24

Post by eatonphil »

onion2k wrote: post #9

Just stop accepting recruiters are a necessary part of the process. They aren't. Especially the spammy ones. Recruiters typically charge 20% of your salary to a company that recruits you. If you apply directly to the company and they hire you, they save a lot of money. That gives you a significant advantage over people who rely on recruiters to find them roles. If you're looking for a new job, make a short list of pl…

An opposite data point: I've hired people directly and through recruiters and I never felt one way or the other based on the recruiter overhead cost or not.

A good candidate is a good candidate and they're hard to find no matter the source.

Re: Show HN: A simple tool to help filter recruiter spam

#25

Post by decafninja »

onion2k wrote: post #9

Just stop accepting recruiters are a necessary part of the process. They aren't. Especially the spammy ones. Recruiters typically charge 20% of your salary to a company that recruits you. If you apply directly to the company and they hire you, they save a lot of money. That gives you a significant advantage over people who rely on recruiters to find them roles. If you're looking for a new job, make a short list of pl…

I've been working 10+ years in the industry, currently at my fifth company. I've sent out countless resumes, interviewed at countless places. Tiny mom and pop shops, small tech startups, boring cludgy enterprises, all the way up to FAANG.

I have not even once gotten anything more than an automated rejection email from all the companies I've applied to online cold.

The only times I've ever gotten to even speak with a human (leading up to phone screen, interview, etc.) was when a recruiter reached out to me first, whether internal or third party.

Even reaching out to recruiters first on LinkedIn always ends up being ignored.

Yes, I've tweaked and tuned my resume countless times, including having it reviewed by reputable people in the industry.

As far as I'm concerned, applying cold is a straight ticket for my resume into a black hole.

Re: Show HN: A simple tool to help filter recruiter spam

#27

Post by ichinco »

I really like this, but I wish I could write my own questions. For example -

1. Do you offer a 4d work week? 2. Do you offer parental leave? How much? How long after starting do you become eligible for it? 3. How many days of PTO do you get per year?

I imagine that some of these questions are pretty specific to me, hence my hope that you could add custom questions.

Re: Show HN: A simple tool to help filter recruiter spam

#29

Post by darraghor »

88913527 wrote: post #16

The simplest way to detect recruiters reaching out to you without much thought is to use weird UTF8 characters in your LinkedIn name. The recruiter's message will be canned, but parameterized with your name. The parameterization gives you a means for communicating with yourself. This fixes the problem for cold recruiter e-mails I get too, since they seem to scraping LinkedIn for contacts. You can change the character…

yea nice! I do this too with an emoji in my linked name.

Re: Show HN: A simple tool to help filter recruiter spam

#30

Post by darraghor »

rosgoo wrote: post #13

I'm trying to solve the same problem with https://leapful.dev/ that I'm currently working on! It's like a minimal LinkedIn alternative + "reverse job search" where you input job criteria and only get jobs that match those. Let me know your thoughts!

hey! That's an awesome app! It definitely feels like theres a real problem in this dev-sourcing space alright. The current recruiter model is so spammy and linked in doesn't respect my "I'm NOT looking" setting. It's hard to beat linkedin's network effects though. Best of luck with this!
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