An Open Letter To Recruiters

Second Disclosure: I am not on top.

Were either of these different, I might feel differently than I do.

Some people do prefer email to the phone. I have no problem with a recruiter offering the option to have a phone call. I have problems with recruiters requiring the phone call before I can even talk to someone who will make a decision. Hell, the last recruiter blatantly told me they would not tell me the name of the company they were hiring for until I was on the phone with them. Perhaps it's my arrogance, but that doesn't to be a matter of "some people like the phone better".

You are right, not every recruiter needs to read my blog or Twitter enough to realise that I have a boyfriend. That is a terrible example. I'll iterate on it with an updated draft that better gets across the point--perhaps a suggesting I work in an enterprise environment would be a better example, as I'm decidedly unsuited to that environment, and that's obvious if you know anything about me at all.

I believe a bare minimum of a job description--the company they're hiring for, something about the culture or problem they're solving, the stack they use, maybe why they think you'd be a good candidate--is probably a good bet. I get too many recruiter emails like my sample that don't tell me, quite literally, anything about the company. At all. No name. No website. No size. Nothing that would allow me to determine if this is an opportunity I should pursue or not.

I believe I pointed out that recruiters are busy and that I am busy. I am well aware I'm not the only busy person out there. :) If you think this is disrespectful, I'd certainly love to find ways to fix this.

I think you may be unfamiliar with the level of interaction recruiters provide. The publicists sending the mass pitches you describe are the bad recruiter pitches I am talking about. It is not a matter of me having very specific guidelines for how I am spoken to before I'll consider a job; it's a matter of an industry whose norm is to type in search terms, then hit all the results with a form letter.

This letter is in case one of those who are trying to do a good job are seeing everyone else use the form letter and assuming that is how it's done. Or who simply don't know how to put themselves into an engineer's shoes to effectively communicate a pitch.

I resent your accusation that I believe recruiters are somehow beneath me. I actually, as I mentioned, believe recruiters have a really cool job. I don't have the aptitude for it, but I do not believe that making lights flash in a pleasing pattern is somehow a worthier job than connecting people to jobs that fulfill them. And yes, there are recruiters I love. They are the ones I send referrals to when a friend asks who is hiring. They are the ones I seek out. Which, for a recruiter, is a powerful card to hold in a limited market. I'm trying to give as many recruiters that card as I can.

I deal with recruiters all the time. I got my current job through a recruiter. He was fantastic. I have nothing against recruiters, or I would just set up a spam filter and call it a day.

I wrote this because I ask for feedback when I'm in the hiring process, so it struck me that recruiters might also like feedback. It seems to me that this is the opposite of what you accuse me of; if I didn't care about the recruiter, considered them lesser, or didn't think they cared about their job, why would I care if they got the feedback they needed to improve? I'd ignore them and move on. It's certainly less effort.

And it results in fewer people assuming I think my ass is the gravitational pull of the universe without bothering to find out anything about me.

Again, though, success from whose perspective? If the recruiter gets their commission, it is a success for them.

I think this is the part that bothers me most. If a headhunter contacts me, why am I not given the inside-track for the interview?