A better solution to cut the flow of low-quality recruiter spam - delete your linkedin profile. If you have your own website, that's going to be a far better conduit for attracting interesting job offers and professional contact.
An Open Letter To Recruiters
41–50 of 68 posts
Re: An Open Letter To Recruiters
#42Please spare us with the royal attitude. Congratulations, you know how computers work, and so do thousands of other people who work harder and cheaper than you. Recruiters don't care if you, candidate number 947392, is annoyed or not. They simply want to know if you're going to the damn interview or not. If not then goodbye, next. If you go to the interview, and you didn't embarrass the recruiter for suggesting you,…
> If you go to the interview, and you didn't embarrass the recruiter for suggesting you [..]
This is exactly why recruiters need to do a little bit of research beforehand. If they're recommending you as a candidate for a job, aren't they putting their own reputation on the line a little?
Unfortunately, I realize it doesn't exactly work like that. But isn't that the over-arching flaw in the whole headhunter ecosystem?
Re: An Open Letter To Recruiters
#43you won't have to deal with recruiters if you use Mighty Spring (www.mightyspring.com)
Re: An Open Letter To Recruiters
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sorry you don't consider it friendly. Personally, telling them why their pitch didn't work felt friendlier than just assuming they had no interest in improving and ignoring them, which is the other tenable option. It would be unfriendly for me to send recruiters after friends without knowing if the friend is actually a match for the company or not. At least in my opinion.
+1 for honest feedback. The world could use more of that.
I'd say kind honest feedback.
If I'm being unkind in my feedback, I would love to tweak it to be kinder.
Re: An Open Letter To Recruiters
#45Look, if my LinkedIn profile shows I just started a job three months ago, I am almost certainly not looking to move jobs right now. I noticed that last time I changed jobs I got a flood of e-mails just after I changed my LinkedIn profiles. It was deliberate, too - they'd start "I noticed you just started at X - if it isn't what you had hoped...", which is actually relatively smart in recruiter terms. My pet peeve: ca…
My pet peeve: calling me on my work phone number.
I once had a recruiter phone our office number (it's a small ~5 person tech company), ask to speak to me about a "personal matter" and give a false name. Once I got on the phone, I loudly, so everyone in the office could hear me told them to cop on.
Re: An Open Letter To Recruiters
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because then he couldn't write a blog post that is partially a thinly-veiled brag about how much he gets hit up for jobs!
And oh, man you should see the amount of junk mail and spam I get too! Be jealous of how frequently telemarketers call me! You nailed it, ace.
What is the intent of the blog post tho, if not just some vanity thing? Are you expecting recruiters to read this, are you forwarding this link to recruiters who send you emails? It feels like what you're saying is most likely not going to reach, or have an effect, on the intended audience.
Re: An Open Letter To Recruiters
#47Please spare us with the royal attitude. Congratulations, you know how computers work, and so do thousands of other people who work harder and cheaper than you. Recruiters don't care if you, candidate number 947392, is annoyed or not. They simply want to know if you're going to the damn interview or not. If not then goodbye, next. If you go to the interview, and you didn't embarrass the recruiter for suggesting you,…
> If you go to the interview, and you didn't embarrass the recruiter for suggesting you [..] This is exactly why recruiters need to do a little bit of research beforehand. If they're recommending you as a candidate for a job, aren't they putting their own reputation on the line a little? Unfortunately, I realize it doesn't exactly work like that. But isn't that the over-arching flaw in the whole headhunter ecosystem?
As long as the candidate was reasonably well matched for the job and the employer felt it was at least worth talking to that candidate in person then even if the candidate is not hired then the employer still trusts that recruiter to find other candidates worth talking to. If the candidate is an embarrassment then that employer won't work with that recruiter in the future. Recruiters can tell just by talking to a candidate if they are least reasonable enough to sit through an interview and not be embarrassingly unqualified. If the candidate doesn't get an offer, then oh well, as long as the employer still trusts that recruiter then all is good. If the candidate gets an offer then jackpot. Play again.
The recruiter is only trying to please the hand that feeds them which is the employer. The recruiter only wants to maintain a relationship with each employer. Candidates are the commodity being traded, and therefore candidates are only given enough attention to ascertain their general qualifications for the job and likelihood of getting an offer.
Re: An Open Letter To Recruiters
#48I'm always perplexed at how annoyed the dev community gets at recruiters. Sure, it's weird when they don't put forth an effort, but come on, you're getting unsolicited job offers multiple times a week! We're EXTREMELY lucky that our industry is flourishing right now. So many people have been unemployed for months (years) and they can't so much as get a phone-call.
Take the recruitment as flattery. If you're not interested, delete it and move on. Better yet, forward it to someone who might be interested.
Re: An Open Letter To Recruiters
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
And oh, man you should see the amount of junk mail and spam I get too! Be jealous of how frequently telemarketers call me! You nailed it, ace.
What is the intent of the blog post tho, if not just some vanity thing? Are you expecting recruiters to read this, are you forwarding this link to recruiters who send you emails? It feels like what you're saying is most likely not going to reach, or have an effect, on the intended audience.
Every interview I take, if I don't get offered the job, I ask for feedback on what I should have done in my past to take the job. Why did I fail? What should I be working on?
This post is that answer for recruiters. I've typed it out individually, over and over again, in response to bad pitches, highlighting what they did wrong and how they could have succeeded or saved themselves time.
This is a time-consuming thing for me to do, but I feel it's justified if it helps even one recruiter. So this is my shorthand way of handling it--just link them to the post instead of rewriting it for every single recruiter.
Most will ignore it. Maybe all will ignore it. But if a recruiter is sincerely trying to do a good job, it will provide them with useful information as to why their pitch was ineffective and how to improve it.
If I was a recruiter, this is the kind of feedback I'd want from someone I was trying to recruit, so this is the kind of feedback I offer to people trying to recruit me.
Re: An Open Letter To Recruiters
#50I think in all the time I have been contracting (and full time employed too for that matter) I can only remember one recruiter that was any good: He was knowledgeable about my field (I was an AD/Exchange consultant at the time) and I didn't feel that he was trying to make a pay cheque off me... but I can only remember one.
All the rest are just salesmen: I get emails from them these days and the first line is now "If this isn't your kind of job (paraphrasing here) then please pass it on to someone who you think would want it!" - Great pitch guys!
I don't like them and I don't actually know a single person in the tech game that has had decent dealings with them.
So for the last couple of months, at night, weekends, on the train etc. I have been working on Instajob (https://instajob.biz) to basically skip round the recruitment agents.
Only just went online so it's early days but I think they need a shakeup!
Anyway, my $0.02
Mick