I used to get recruiter spam, then I tried this one weird trick and all the recruiters stopped emailing me...
Actually, it wasn't that weird. I just moved out of the US. Changed my location on GitHub, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and the recruitment spam stopped overnight.
As for the few recruiters who are still working off of old lists and still have me as living in NYC, I just politely reply that I'd be interested in talking with them if the position they're hiring for would consider a remote working arrangement.
So far, not a single recruiter has replied that they are ok with remote...
This is purely tangential and me venting about recruiting spam in Japan.
I live in Japan and still get a bunch (~3-5 messages a week) of low-quality recruiter spam. I have the following guesses as to why it's so low quality:
1. Recruiting companies, from what I've observed, tend to draw from a big pool of English teachers looking for steady non-teaching work. That is, they are not technical or versed in the field they are recruiting in.
2. A lot of times the companies or recruiters aren't exactly sure what they're looking for.
3. Sometimes in addition to not being technical and not knowing what they're looking for, English is not their first language (whether they're Japanese, Chinese, or Indian).
I always try to engage them in some way in case I need them in the future (since Japan is the land of networking), but it never goes well.
They refuse to tell me the company they're recruiting for, responsibilities, salary range, benefits, or even basic things like whether it's a contracted (契約者) or permanent (正社員) position or, god forbid, a dispatch (派遣) position.
Whenever I ask for details, they insist that we meet in person so they can "get a feel for me and my needs." And usually meeting them would entail traveling an hour across Tokyo, or in one case, all the way to Osaka.
So essentially, it seems like they have nothing and they want to add me to the Rolodex.
Disclosure: I found my current job through a very good, very communicative recruiter who was up-front with me and worked with me to secure the terms I wanted.
I just moved from NYC to Oakland. When I moved, I switched my LinkedIn location to "Oakland, California". Immediately, I went from 2-3 recruiters per week to none at all.
Mostly out of curiosity (since I'm not looking for a new job), I switched my location to San Francisco Bay Area. And like magic, the recruiters immediately returned in full force.
Yeah, I get a trickle here in Dallas (1 - 2 per month, counting Amazon in-house recruiters). Never tried changing my location to see what happens, though.
Emails aren't offers. They are typically auto-generated. As an executive I use the honey pot that gets bombarded with recruiters as a way to filter out which recruiters I won't ever work with.
I want to work with recruiters who will give my company a good name. When they spam people and include my company name they are hurting my reputation. That's not something I can risk.
That said, as a candidate SEO for your you CV is important. A good recruiter will look for certain phrases that you need to have to drive up your odds of getting noticed. This is especially true for specialized jobs that can be great paying because of the limited number of candidates. Did you use some weird software that is proprietary to an industry or company? Put that on "A" CV.
You can have more than once CV and tuning them to every kind of job you could do is a great way to get to the phone call stage. Then send a CV tuned for what that employer actually wants after you get a job description.
But most importantly, "It isn't the number of jobs it is the quality of the job" (at least until you are desperate then it is take what you can get)
Getting 30 job offers a month probably would be as great as the author thinks. But how many of those 30 recruiter emails will lead to job offers? Probably zero.
My beef with recruiters is that they repeatedly pitch me jobs that I know their client won't ever hire me for. They're not only wasting my time, they're wasting their client's time, too.
And getting a recruiter replying to your job application is a somewhat different than getting a recruiter email without job application because there is zero effort prior to receiving the email.
Yea I posted my resume to a few job databases about 7 months ago and still get calls and e-mails on a daily basis. I'll always reply to something that seems like a personalized e-mail but when someone is contacting me asking for an updated resume or their e-mail doesn't include my name I can tell they don't really care. I feel like if a recruiting firm went for quality over quantity they'd end up with much better results.
I get 10-15 recruiter mails every month. Much worse, IMO, than being recruited, is the fucking useless recruiters who spam me about recruiting for me (which happens once you list CEO on LinkedIn, or get any press).
And the shitty contract-dev houses, mainly in India.
I'd categorically never use a recruiter who contacted me like this, nor a contract-dev house.
I've had a highly successful career so far (though I'm only in my mid 30's) without maintaining any significant online presence. My HN profile is probably the only place where you'd find my email address listed. No LinkedIn, no Twitter, and a Github account that is only mentioned if someone wants to vet my work remotely.
Granted, it could lead to trouble down the road if I ever seriously wanted to leave Austin, but just keeping good meatspace contacts in the Austin VC community along with a good track record of delivering quality output has allowed me to comfortably enjoy my career and take interesting jobs on my time schedule.
Maybe I'm just lucky, but I'd love to think that the bullshit associated with meticulously grooming some social media facade is by no means a prerequisite for a career in software engineering.
Obviously being a CEO requires a completely different degree of public visibility, so it's not a comparison to your situation.
I've found being online to be really helpful -- it caused me to meet most of the people I've ever worked on projects with, and I've picked up some really high dollar and/or interesting consulting work (which allowed me to work without a salary on various other projects) for most of the past 15y.
It especially helped while I was spending a large amount of time outside of major tech centers (Caribbean 1998-1999, Sealand 2000-2002, Iraq/Afghanistan/Kuwait/etc. 2003-2007 2008-2010.)
Most recruiters are terrible (as far as spam mails go) but every once in a while I get a well written email, actually applicable to my skills, with some personal touch, and most importantly explains the job I'd be doing and which company they're recruiting for. When I get a "good" one like that I like to reply and thank them for not being a shitty recruiter and that I appreciate them sharing enough details for me to understand the role they're trying to fill. But, that's like 1 in 100 at most, a majority of the messages I get are "We're looking for an iPhone/Android/Xbox developer for a new secret project at a secret company!"
Trying to recruit DHH for a junior RoR position is quite a faux-pas. In that position (no ... I'm not famous), I'd be very tempted to show up for the interview after submitting an appropriately junior resume!
My favorite quote from the article "I tried, and failed, to speak with Valley-based recruiters, who seem to be considerably less eager to return emails than to send them."
I'm constantly amazed at how hierarchical email return etiquette is. I constantly see people only returning emails to people that they see as more powerful than them. If fact, I've found that it's the engineers that are best at returning emails, and everyone else that is terrible at it. Even when they've requested your participation in the conversation. I have an email triage system. Priority emails I respond to immediately, important emails within the day, and queries within the week. In that way I respond to all my emails. With others, it's just like there's a giant email black hole that my emails fall into - never to be heard from again.
Finding people actually interested in changing jobs is challenging. I'd say it's probably one of the hardest parts of recruiting.
All the engineers at https://www.MightySpring.com (we're building an app that matches companies with job seekers) spent this week doing traditional agency recruiting to get a better sense of the problem. Recruiting really is a numbers game. Finding the right balance between personalization and efficiency - knowing that most emails get deleted immediately, unread, is hard. We don't envy the recruiters who do this all the time.
This is exactly the reason I started https://instajob.biz I have had nothing but bad experiences with them (with the odd exception of course)
I am not sure what it is like in the rest of the world but in my experience, in the UK, they really don't give a damn about you: You are a number to them and they will say whatever they can to get you in the door.
I have a few friends that work in recruitment (or used to) and they paint a worse picture than that.
I do not trust them, nor do I know anyone that likes dealing with them.
The one thing that made me take my current job is the personal touch I was given. The person who contacted me was simply just being human, and not seeing me as just another number. That makes a difference.
Totally agree. And that's why we're taking the time to make it personal. But doing this has made me understand why so many recruiters just let everything slip into automatic.
I am working with a company in (roughly your area but not specific and probably more than 100 miles from your nearest city) seeking candidates who have good skills in (very broad term 1), (very broad term 2), C++ and (redundant broad term 3).
There are a variety of positions available with different types of contract, which is my excuse for not knowing anything about the job, if it actually exists.
Salary would be around (3 times your normal rate) although if you actually did get an offer it would be (1.1 times your normal rate, max).
If you are interested, please let me know so I can set up a 30 minute telephone interview with a more senior recruiter who also knows very little about this position. He only wants to make sure you don't sound like a moron so he can forward your resume rewritten with C++/.NET/Python/Matlab/LAMP screaming in Arial Black 32pt Bold centered at the top.
If you are interested, we will arrange a gauntlet interview with a minimum of 3 interviews before you get a clear idea of what job is actually on offer. You will probably be rejected and the client will never call you to let you know.
Imagine that you're thinking about buying a house sometime in the future or are in a situation where you know you'll probably buy a house somewhere in the future and would welcome leads/connections.
You even blog about this, being quite open about what you want in a house and what your dream house is like.
Realtors keep e-mailing you saying that they have the perfect house for you, but never tell you where it is or if it's even in the same country.
Sometimes they describe the house and it's nothing like what you've publicly said that you're looking for. Or if it is what you're looking for, it turns out to be a bunch of fluff and vapor to get you to respond so that they can show you other houses that you really don't want.
If you try to keep in touch with a good realtor who doesn't have what you want now but may in the future, he just completely forgets you or what you wanted to begin with. Or maybe he just disappears in a month or two.
That's what recruiter spam feels like, to me. The semi-targeted nature of recruiter spam makes it even worse because it's aiming for something I will probably want or need in the future but doesn't actually address any of my wants or needs.
If that's the case, why not be upset at something that matters. There is lots of much more impactful incompetence to complain about. Bad recruiters are largely harmless.
And seriously, I can't imagine a more elitist, entitled attitude than being seriously upset at people trying to pay you lots of money to work. Do you know what a privilege that is?
> I can't imagine a more elitist, entitled attitude than being seriously upset at people trying to pay you lots of money to work.
I think the recruiters that most people complain about aren't "trying to pay you lots of money to work." The recruiters people complain about are just looking for people and don't really care whether or not those people actually fit the job description.
They may not even have a job they're recruiting for and may just be looking for people to keep "on hand."
So rather than "paying lots of money," they cost money in terms of time spent filtering them out and communicating with the duds.
In addition to that, the recruiters themselves aren't actually the ones paying money... the companies are. I don't think anyone is getting upset about companies offering jobs -- just shoddy recruiters who waste our time.
So saying that complaining about bad recruiters is an "elitist, entitled attitude" seems to me like saying that people are elitist and entitled for not liking Nigerian scammers... hey, they're offering you free money!
Obviously I have very limited experience with jobs though wanted to share some here. I am getting a few recruiter emails lately from various companies. Some of them really do over-estimate me (I always tell them the truth though) and some just don't mind and will continue the recruitment and interview process with me. For example, this week someone tried to recruit me for a senior level (from a famous company). I told him the truth; I am only an undergraduate senior, I can't really call myself a senior level engineer. At most, above junior level. The email, I am not sure if it was generic or not, but started with "I'm impressed with your experience and work...". It could be just a generic body - to make people like me excited about the email! From what I understand, they usually just crawl through mailing list and Github-like places. So to students out there, participate in OSS and OSS mailing list will get you some attention. I promise.
I obviously don't mind someone getting me 30 recruitment emails every month. But I guess when I reach that level of famous, of competence and successful, I will look at them as spams. If I want to recruit someone that successful, I'd meet that person in real life. Go to the conference, walk up to him and tell him the offer.
I generally don't get past the recruiter for jobs I would be perfect for. then for some reason recruiters always want me for something out of my league like CTO.
It's understandable that recruiters are playing a numbers game.
Imagine if recruiters were paid using the formula:
% of filled position salary / # of contacted recipients
This would encourage recruiters to contact only the best-fit(s) for the position. While at the same time reducing the "spam" some of us receive on a daily basis.
A win-win.
P.S. I understand it's nearly impossible to track the # of contacts.
I get a lot of random recruiter pings, probably mostly because I don't bother to do anything to proactively limit them (and I tend to use my real name on forums, social networks, etc and will often post my real gmail address and such).
But for me it doesn't seem like they are that big of a deal and the vast majority of them I just completely ignore. If somebody emails me out of the blue unprompted, I don't feel guilty about archiving their message away without a response. And practically speaking, given the shotgun nature that most of these emails come in on, the recruiter isn't even going to notice that I didn't respond, let alone feel slighted by it.
Getting about an average of one easily-ignorable email per day trying to let you know about an open job opportunity in your field is truly a high level first world problem... one that a lot of people living in the first world in other professions would likely be very happy to have.
That article is missing a really key point. Being contacted by a recruiter is not a job offer. It's an offer to begin the application process. People aren't getting 30 job offers a month. They're getting offered the chance to submit 30 resumes, conduct 30 phone screens and finally 30 onsite interviews.
The recruiter emails are mostly awful. One of the worst was where a recruiter emailed me three times about a position, each time getting more desperate and ending with a title about how he will change my life.
On the flip side of things, a good recruiter did help me get my first job in the tech industry, and I'm currently enjoying a great experience with another recruiter who I met at several tech meetups in the area.
I keep a pretty low profile (excepting on github), and yet I get a few attempts a day, whether via phone or email...personal or work, and my work email isn't even publicly published as far as I'm aware. The spam has got to end - it seems like these are low quality recruiters.
I've been 'recruited' for positions where I was the hiring manager. They must've seen a posting online since we never hired recruiters that I was aware of. I'd expect they'd be embarrassed when that was pointed out to them along with 'we're not contracted with you' but frankly two out of the three times it's happened they then went on to tell me about how many great candidates they had for me.
But no serious manager / founder will want to hire David Heinemeier Hansson. DHH is way too ambitious to work for someone else -- he is not a good role for a position even if he is extremely talented on paper.
Actually, it wasn't that weird. I just moved out of the US. Changed my location on GitHub, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and the recruitment spam stopped overnight.
As for the few recruiters who are still working off of old lists and still have me as living in NYC, I just politely reply that I'd be interested in talking with them if the position they're hiring for would consider a remote working arrangement.
So far, not a single recruiter has replied that they are ok with remote...