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Please don't spam people looking for employment. It's just cruel

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Re: Please don't spam people looking for employment. It's just cruel

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like all paths with recruiters lead to the phone call. I really wish some of them had an email only option.

> I really wish some of them had an email only option. But why? If they need to convince someone you're a good hire, they will want to talk to you.

I don't mind having a phone call, it's the multiple layers of screening interviews with ill prepared questions that feels like a giant waste of time. I'd rather answer all those questions in an email and have the phone call as a formality. I do recognize the need to confirm that the person writing is indeed the person you are speaking to but I should at least be able to get a straight answer on salary and comp before I pick up the phone.

Re: Please don't spam people looking for employment. It's just cruel

#232
post #72
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

They also have no spaces around the em dash. Must be followers of Chicago Manual of Style (and not AP Stylebook.)

> Must be followers of Chicago Manual of Style (and not AP Stylebook.)

You know, there are more than two possible choices. I scorn to subject myself to any style guide for my personal writing… let alone an American one. People used em-dash-sans-space long before CMOS was dreamed up.

I sha’n’t follow all the older traditions I find, but I do frequently favour them.

Re: Please don't spam people looking for employment. It's just cruel

#233
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That... sounds lucrative, and exciting? Use an isolated network, snoop on what device is doing, learn a thing or two about what these threat actors are doing?

I think you need to give them your identity/bank account to route the payments. Otherwise, 50% is too high for a laptop placement + vpn.

So in my case this is partially correct, yes. They did not want access to the actual accounts but it was heavily implied that they would be using my personality, my identity, my Upwork profile (and my PayPal to receive payment). I would do it all for the most part. I think the Upwork jobs were just a front but I can only suspect. They explained it as wanting an endpoint while I did the client facing stuff. It was all strange and vague but you make a great point.

While they were never outward about the end goal it was a mix of money laundering and identity laundering. No joke I stopped using Upwork after the novelty wore off and it was a regular occurrence. Also of note, they almost always said something about how they were Chinese and wanted to do this because they could not get legit work with their identity or some other BS. This was not one time but at least half a dozen. Would love to hear from someone who took them up on these offers.

edit: will add that I speak some Chinese, I had Zoom calls with them on one occasion. I was able to glean that maybe they were not being aboveboard about their nationality and also that there were a bunch of people in the background running the same script. All so bizarre. Best guess? They use compromised PayPals to pay people out without a care what happens, launder some of the money because why not? And then they get access to a Stateside identity with an endpoint they can do god only knows what with.

Re: Please don't spam people looking for employment. It's just cruel

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Wait, is everyone who posts on who wants to be hired a sad down-and-out unemployed waif at the end of their rope? Stereotypical HN response. Jump in with a contrarian response because everything is black or white. Everything is 1 or 0. There is no subtlety; no shades of gray.

What irony.

The comment I responded to considers posts to those threads "career troubles". Others define the base as "desperate" and "unemployed". All coached in a language of "leave the poors alone".

Who, exactly, is doing the black or white, here? You seem to be saying I am (you had to pipe up with your contrarian nonsense), because I point it out? Get a grip.

Spam and spammers suck. People doing the weird white knighting, however, do no favours to anyone.

Re: Please don't spam people looking for employment. It's just cruel

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am, yes. As I said, I am aware of my privilege and even though I might technically theoretically be a valid asylum case It would feel like abusing a system designed to help people in actual dire need. So even though I am more than willing to relocate, I would definitely NOT do that through the asylum process.

Ilia, first of all, from what you've written today, you come across to me like a decent principled person and that's rare nowadays. I admire that. That said, if I may offer you my $0.02: systems exist for us to fallback on. You might know yourself and your situation best but sometimes the best way to not drown is to take a lifeline even if you know how to swim. I completely understand not wanting to take-up the space…

>> like a decent principled person and that's rare nowadays. I admire that

They could be a russian spy as well. You never know if he has an assignment from fsb/gru.

Re: Please don't spam people looking for employment. It's just cruel

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely could be selection bias, but every time I have seen a copy of a resume a head hunter has forwarded a potential employer it has _always_ had the recruiting firm's letterhead plastered above my content, and my email removed.

Source: I've been a programmer for 25 years, and ran a recruitment company for 8. This happens, but it's unusual. It's normally only really something you'd bother with as a recruiter if you were doing CV marketing, that is, reaching out to people who aren't your clients saying "this is the kind of person I could get you!". They're not really meant to do it, but recruitment regulations aren't strongly enforced in most…

I've had one good recruiter, one mediocre one, and many shit ones.

The good one got me a job that I stayed at for almost 27 years.

The mediocre one got me a job that I only stayed at for 18 months (it was a rather dysfunctional company). It wasn't really the recruiter's fault. I think they really thought that they had gotten me a good one.

The shitty ones were ones that I encountered, after leaving the 27-year job, and started looking for work.

Every single one, ghosted me, as soon as they found out that I was over 40. A couple were really quite rude.

In-company recruiters were better. They didn't ghost me, but the techies that got involved at the second interview did that.

After some of these, I just said "Bugger this for a lark," and gave up. I didn't need the work, and I certainly didn't need to be insulted, each time I tried looking.

Re: Please don't spam people looking for employment. It's just cruel

#237
post #26

Have you gotten the "hey, wanna be a North Korean proxy?" offer yet?

I've gotten the north Korean wanting to use my upwork account... I'd have to create one first.

But now the Nigerian "format" scammers are into job scams. I got an email that reeked and played along a bit. I was "hired" after a curiously simple interview via signal, and had to wait for my "supervisor" to come train me.

Eventually I got the "boss" on the line to talk, he went absolutely postal when I asked if he was an African scammer. Apparently that's racist now.

Re: Please don't spam people looking for employment. It's just cruel

#238
post #64
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should call these folks/companies out by name, they aren't respecting you, your time, or situation.

I don't think they're actual companies. One of the more recent emails I received contains this bit: "If you're already employed, I can also support you in taking on additional contract work. I'll guide you through the entire interview process to help you succeed and get hired. In this partnership, your main role would be attending client meetings, while I handle all development and written communication. We would the…

I received the exact same email, except they offered me 50% of earnings, so the message sending script probably has some randomization built in. My guess is that their true objective is to get you to install their "interview support app" which is mentioned at the end of the email, I anticipate that it makes your device remotely useful to them, or installs ransomware. But it could be a more involved scam.

Re: Please don't spam people looking for employment. It's just cruel

#239
post #42

My email is filled with junk from cybersecurity "experts" telling me that my open source project is "very compromised" and that they will gladly reveal to me what the issue is, if I commit to paying them a bug bounty. I get at least a few every week. I hate them, but I feel like we are well past the point where in any place where there is money to be made, the majority of cold outreach will be from semi-personalized…

Reminds me of all the recruiters who reach out to me saying they're working on filling some engineer position but never say the company name, and when asked, they want to have a call. Stop wasting my time, STATE THE COMPANY UPFRONT AND AT THE TOP, preferably in the subject line

The recruiter won't tell you the company bc they don't want you to just bypass them and apply directly yourself. They don't make commission that way.

Re: Please don't spam people looking for employment. It's just cruel

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether it helps or not—the typical contact like this hasn’t been a human for decades now. What I’m seeing these days is materially almost identical to what went out ten years ago. Basic form letter with a cover sentence or paragraph of either no relevance, or a tenuous but normally ill-researched claim at relevance.

yeah; just that we'll get 5x of these now that it's even easier to generate more "real-human-sounding" ones. IMO, the best way to deal with these, if using gMail, is not marking them as spam. Instead, I drag them into the Promotions tab, answer "yes" to classify all emails from the subject as such, and that's it. Promotions == Trash. I don't open/read such emails (I scan the first few words shown in the Inbox line, t…

Why not mark them as spam?
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