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Automatically detecting and replying to recruiter spam

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Re: Automatically detecting and replying to recruiter spam

#81

Post by Kalium »

gonehome wrote: post #54
mvc wrote: post #27

I don't understand the attitute that most software engineers seem to have with recruiters. My early years as a software developer were in locations where opportunities were not like they are in your big tech centers. In those years, recruiters would get you a foot in the door and you were grateful for any opportunities that came. Even in big tech centers, until you build your own network, recruiters will likely be an…

+1 - I’ve always hated this behavior. It’s just a status behavior (“I’m so important, everyone wants me”, etc.) that’s wrapped up in pretending this is a problem. Be kind to people on the way up, you might need them one day on the way down.

Unfortunately often, I've found that being kind to recruiters and generous with my time pays off in consuming more of my time.

I'd very much like to believe that being kind to people on my way up will pay off, be paid back, or otherwise come back to me. So far it mostly gets me treated as a soft touch.

I don't want to feel important. I want people to have some base amount of respect for my time, energy, and attention. Instead I get calls at random hours and generic sales emails from people who don't even have basic information about the job they want me to be excited for. I just wanted to be treated with a little basic respect, rather than feeling like I'm being taken advantage of for human kindness.

Re: Automatically detecting and replying to recruiter spam

#83

Post by [deleted] »

mvc wrote: post #27

I don't understand the attitute that most software engineers seem to have with recruiters. My early years as a software developer were in locations where opportunities were not like they are in your big tech centers. In those years, recruiters would get you a foot in the door and you were grateful for any opportunities that came. Even in big tech centers, until you build your own network, recruiters will likely be an…

[deleted]

Re: Automatically detecting and replying to recruiter spam

#84

Post by Tempest1981 »

angryGhost wrote: post #31
chrisseaton wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's a bit odd listening to people laugh about having to beat away Google etc recruiters with a stick.

google have recruiters? surely they have enough people applying on a daily basis

Yes, usually trying to get the word out, that their new interviewing process is not as onerous as their old one.

Re: Automatically detecting and replying to recruiter spam

#85

Post by gonehome »

Kalium wrote: post #81
gonehome wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 - I’ve always hated this behavior. It’s just a status behavior (“I’m so important, everyone wants me”, etc.) that’s wrapped up in pretending this is a problem. Be kind to people on the way up, you might need them one day on the way down.

Unfortunately often, I've found that being kind to recruiters and generous with my time pays off in consuming more of my time. I'd very much like to believe that being kind to people on my way up will pay off, be paid back, or otherwise come back to me. So far it mostly gets me treated as a soft touch. I don't want to feel important. I want people to have some base amount of respect for my time, energy, and attention…

Sure - there’s no need to reply to 90% of recruiter emails (I don’t), but that doesn’t mean people need to talk so dismissively and condescendingly of them “recruiter spam” and such.

Just don’t reply and be happy we don’t need to.

Re: Automatically detecting and replying to recruiter spam

#86

Post by Tempest1981 »

thetest3r wrote: post #53
whoisjuan wrote: post #12

In LinkedIn I have my first name as my first name + middle initial. I always know when is a mass message or a real personalized message based on whether or not they include that initial. Works surprisingly well for me but sadly for LinkedIn that’s a case of an implementation detail totally destroying their value proposition for recruiters.

Instead of an initial, I'd recommend putting an emoji in the first name. (And putting your last name as your full name). I've been able to filter out most "InMail/auto" when they say something along the lines of "Hi {emoji}." I learned of it here: https://www.glennstovall.com/the-wolf-test/

I wonder if a Unicode RTL marker would work? (but what if your name is a palindrome)

Or a non-breaking space?

Re: Automatically detecting and replying to recruiter spam

#87

Post by pc86 »

mvc wrote: post #27

I don't understand the attitute that most software engineers seem to have with recruiters. My early years as a software developer were in locations where opportunities were not like they are in your big tech centers. In those years, recruiters would get you a foot in the door and you were grateful for any opportunities that came. Even in big tech centers, until you build your own network, recruiters will likely be an…

There are (at the highest level) two kinds recruiters. Those that work for a company filling that company's internal roles, and those that work for a body shop filling the roles of whatever companies agree to pay them a commission.

The former are usually pretty good. They have an idea what the teams need, even if they don't know the specifics of the individual technologies. They usually have very close relationships with the team managers -- especially at smaller companies where there may only be one or two recruiters and a small number of development teams.

The latter are, by and large, worthless if you're looking for a good tech job. They're salespeople who simply aren't incentivized to learn more than the bare minimum about what they're selling. Especially in the current climate most of the folks getting jobs through them are either extremely junior, or can't get jobs anywhere else. By extension, the only companies who have success using them are getting by with extremely junior or extremely bad developers. This is why I, as a developer with ~12 years of experience in back-end development and distributed systems design get an email or LinkedIn message every 2-3 weeks for a junior or mid-level React or Angular job.

Re: Automatically detecting and replying to recruiter spam

#88

Post by AlwaysRock »

gizdan wrote: post #45
ThePhysicist wrote: post #36

Honestly, be grateful you receive so much recruiter "spam", sometimes great things can come from it. It's quite a HN thing to complain about receiving too many offers for jobs that are basically in the 99.9 % quantile of the highest paying jobs in the world.

Counterpoint: half of those are based on bots, and thus when you reply, you're automatically ignored because your profile doesn't really fit. Counterpoint: I really don't want spam in my email. I've got LinkedIn for that. I get countless emails from recruiters because they use some tool that scrapes LinkedIn and guesses my email. Then I get "I have a role for you, pls respond", "Please hear me out, great role!", "Las…

I agree to some extend but... Yell? How is a recruiter supposed to know you are okay with LI messages but draw a hard line at emails? A text shortener that populates, "I don't use email for recruiting messages. Please reach out on Linkedin. I'll block your domain if you send follow up emails." is direct and doesnt cause someone trying to do their job to get yelled at for not knowing your specific preference...

Re: Automatically detecting and replying to recruiter spam

#89

Post by Macha »

spacehunt wrote: post #70
Macha wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are channels where I am open for contact and channels were I am not open for contact. I notice many recruiters email my github contact address to ask about stuff on my linkedin for example. I'm not sure if they've personally scraped my commits or just bought a database of "developers in Europe" to link the two together. They could use LinkedIn, or the contact email I put on my CV (including the public copy on m…

Quite often, it's easier for recruiters to get at your email address from GitHub because it's increasingly difficult to scrape contact details off LinkedIn.

That doesn't make it an acceptable reason to do so. They could probably google my home address easier than get LinkedIn to disintermediate themselves, but a barrage of recruiters at my doorstep would not be appreciated.

Re: Automatically detecting and replying to recruiter spam

#90

Post by spacehunt »

Macha wrote: post #89
spacehunt wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite often, it's easier for recruiters to get at your email address from GitHub because it's increasingly difficult to scrape contact details off LinkedIn.

That doesn't make it an acceptable reason to do so. They could probably google my home address easier than get LinkedIn to disintermediate themselves, but a barrage of recruiters at my doorstep would not be appreciated.

The truth is they probably don't know. These days the process of guesstimating an email address behind a LinkedIn profile is highly automated. Very often what a recruiter see on their dashboard is basically a list of potential candidates' LinkedIn profiles, paired with a list of plausible email addresses for each of them (with no indication of how the bots got them in the first place).
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