Dear Recruiters

If you're reading this, we figure you are probably technical enough to work out what's going on. See below for the code that generates our never-ending form.

We built this because we are always being bugged by recruiters who cold call us (http://www.distilled.net). We send them here to "qualify" them.

Thank you reddit for some funny additional question suggestions (now incorporated): http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/eng14/we_get_a_lot_of...

sameerds• 12 years ago

This one's an old gem:

"Has anyone really been far as decided to use even go want to do look more like?"

gfosco• 12 years ago

I was expecting something different, although the part about desperation rings true.. My "Dear Recruiters" letter would beg them to just Google me, or look at my LinkedIn... something, anything, spend 10 seconds to find out that I have a great job at a huge company... then think twice about sending me a lead for a short-term contract opportunity using a technology I haven't touched in years at a no-name company in some other random state.

msr1014• 12 years ago

Recruiter here.

We do not tell you the company name for a few reasons:

1. If we tell you the name of the company straight off the bat, the next recruiter will ask you some sneaky questions and get the details of the role under the guise of trying to find out where you are in the process of looking for a job. This works more times than you can believe.

2. Candidates will apply for the role directly because they hate recruiters or they think they can get a better rate.

3. Company has specifically mentioned not to disclose the name of the company until we are sure we have found the right candidate because of reason one, imagine getting calls from 10 recruiters in a day, not just that IT recruiters the worst kind of all!

Please note as well that most of these emails are not about this specific opportunity or getting to interested or compelled to apply its about finding out if you are looking for new work or open to new roles.

It works and its easy, its not right and it can be annoying but just email back the recruiter and mention you would like to see all the information you have on them as per the privacy laws in your country and they'll stop dealing with you pretty quickly.

jacques_chester• 12 years ago

If we tell you the name of the company straight off the bat, the next recruiter will ask you some sneaky questions and get the details of the role under the guise of trying to find out where you are in the process of looking for a job. This works more times than you can believe.

Can you rephrase this? I don't understand what you're trying to say.

dyadic• 12 years ago

It's other recruiters fishing for the names of companies that are hiring. And with that information they will call the company and try to get in on the game.

The questions are usually along the lines of, "I'd hate to be putting you forward to a company you're already communicating with, can you name them all for me please?". Although perhaps a little less blatant.

msr1014• 12 years ago

So one part of a recruiters job is to find jobs to work in companies - companies don't just give you these you have to go and find them its a sales job. I mean you can see which companies are advertising on job boards and then call in and try and get the job on but 20 other recruiters have already done that, and most jobs aren't even advertised.

The easy thing to do is to call to get leads of candidates you are calling:

"oh you worked for IBM, great company, I work with John Smith did you work with him?" "No i work with Jane Doe" "Where are you interviewing at the moment?" "Facebook, Google, etc" "oh I'm working the Facebook role did you meet with Jim? "no i interviewed with Sam" "was that through a recruitment agency or direct" "agency" (This last question is great news because it means that the company are open to using agencies and not just looking direct on job boards)

The list goes on, most people are clued up but we do this day in day out we are tricky with our questions and most people will eventually 'bleed' as we say

dsr_• 12 years ago

He means that all the recruiters are in competition with each other, sometimes even at the same recruitment company.

As a result, they will all back-stab each other in order to make their money... which comes from a surtax on your new employer, and thus reduces your bargaining position.

In the other direction, I've had the same person represented to me by multiple recruiters a few times. In all cases, the actual person was not at fault.

sdrothrock2• 12 years ago

We do not tell you the company name for a few reasons

Has anyone ever tried testing whether the downsides of revealing the company name (except in case 3) really do outweigh the potential upsides?

I'd like to say that I would respond to more recruiters if they offered concrete information about the opportunities. It's really hard to decide if I want to invest time in a relationship with a recruiter based on... well, nothing.

msr1014• 12 years ago

I don't like the way I do business but I don't really have a choice in the company I am in. It all boils down to the business model of the recruitment companies and who owns them. Most recruitment company owners are people who have excelled at sales in recruitment and have risen up through the ranks to get enough money to fund their own ventures. They then want to rip people off to make as much money as possible, they see candidates as cattle and think there is enough companies out there to rip them off and still have a viable business model. I love all these start ups that are trying to disrupt the industry but your gonna have to lift you game to beat these people, they are quick and ruthless and the phone is their weapon, its the cheapest and most effective way to make money

ColdHawaiian• 12 years ago

I never understood why recruiters aren't upfront about which company it is that they're trying to hire me for, and now I understand the reasons, so thanks.

I still don't like the practice though. My time and energy are valuable, and each correspondence with a recruiter uses a little of both. If recruiters are upfront about company name and details of a role in the first email they send to me, it saves me the time and energy of having to pull that information out of them through additional emails.

I can spend a few seconds (or a few minutes, if the company looks like it might be a good match) looking up the company website and blog, checking out if I like their product and team, etc. If I like what I see (or don't), I can follow up with the recruiter to let them know what I think.

I understand the point that candidates could just bypass the recruiter if they mention the company name, but unless the company is some kind of stealth startup, the candidate is going to have to find out the name of the company anyways, so what's to stop candidates from bypassing a recruiter anyways? (I've had recruiters give me the names of companies in their 2nd email, after I ask for more information, which I always have to do, since they never give enough in the first place :P )

Some candidates may indeed choose to use information like that to bypass the recruiter that reached out to them, but I'm sure that there are many more out there who have more honor than that and would not (me being one of them).

As it stands, I don't bother replying to recruiter emails that only give vague references to companies and roles, instead of explicitly naming them upfront in their initial email. I get these kind of emails all the time, and it's just not worth my time and energy to follow up on any of them. A lot of the time, the companies aren't a good fit anyways.

When looking around for positions at companies, I do so at Careers 2.0[1] and GitHub Jobs[2], and AngelList[3], because I can take my time to do all the research I want on a company and role, and it's far less a hassle than having to work with a recruiter, in my experience.

I get that recruiters have to make money and eat too, and that they've developed these secretive (and in my opinion, a little shady and dishonest) techniques to do so, but as I'm sure it's been stated many times before, those techniques and the recruitment system and culture as a whole are deeply flawed.

It's because of those flaws that web services like Hired[4] and WhiteTruffle[5] exist, to try to replace the jobs of recruiters.

[1] http://careers.stackoverflow.com/ [2]: https://jobs.github.com/ [3]: https://angel.co/ [4]: https://hired.com/ [5]: https://www.whitetruffle.com

sanderjd• 12 years ago

I do really like the existence of recruiters (if only because it seems like a good separation of concerns), but my thinking is that if you aren't adding any value to the equation besides the mere knowledge of the name of a company that may or may not be interested in hiring me, then you haven't earned your commission. It should be easier for me to get a job with a company by working with somebody recruiting for that company than by learning the name and going straight to them. Why isn't that the case? Why does it seem like it's actually easier to cut you out than to work with you? (The royal "you".)

logfromblammo2• 12 years ago

From the other end, it looks like you are intentionally withholding information from us--information that has a meaningful impact on our decision process. While that may be expected in the world of sales, to people like us, it is a mortal insult.

While you might have good reasons, in your own opinion, to do it, you should be aware that your sensible business practice is making your product hate you.

I won't waste my time on recruiters that won't tell me the company name for a few reasons:

1. The recruiter that expects me to screw them by cutting them out of the loop is probably projecting--they screw candidates so often they think that no one has any integrity.

2. I hate recruiters and think I can get a better rate without one. The one time I actually got an offer with a recruiter involved, it was for 60% what I was currently making at another job. I rejected it on the spot, and the CEO said the offer was low because they would have to pay the recruiter based on what they paid me.

3. A company that doesn't want anyone to know they are hiring should be getting cold calls from psychiatrists, not just recruiters.

But really, the only reason I need involves trust. If you can't trust me to deal with you faithfully, how can I trust you to represent my interests to the company faithfully?

hacknat2• 12 years ago

I don't even understand why you're trying to help them. Good recruiters don't need your help and the bad ones can leave.

Unless I can tell that an email has been custom tailored to my personal profile and experience I don't give it the time of day.

A recruiter, in one or two paragraphs, should be able to tell me about the company (without mentioning the name) and why several items in my personal history (work experiences, patents, articles written, code bases committed to, etc) are relevant to what they are trying to do. Anything short of this is garbage and should be treated as such.

jonny_eh• 12 years ago

Why can't a bad recruiter become a good one?

hacknat2• 12 years ago

I didn't say a bad recruiter couldn't become a good recruiter. I said the, "bad ones can leave", which, I acknowledge, is quite dismissive. What I meant is, "pay no attention to the bad ones".

hackdays• 12 years ago

Its annoying when recruiters email you especially when the job description doesn't quite match your expertise but they think all 'backend roles' mean the same and you are a perfect match!

The best people to connect talent to job roles are the ones who work in the same field. aka Referrals!

With that in mind we are creating a platform where you can can bring right opportunities to talented folks you admire and earn a referral bonus for it (instead of the recruiters getting rewarded for spam)

Checkout the initial version of http://referralhire.com

odonnellryan• 12 years ago

I actually tend to hate the exact opposite: When they need someone very experienced in a specific technology, but do not consider a very similar and related technology.

crorella• 12 years ago

Only in the valley...

Volscio• 12 years ago

Applies to just about every industry.

nsmnsf• 12 years ago

Seriously, we like you.

I don't. I'm not looking for a new job currently. Recruiters aren't any different than Viagra spammers to me (I'm also not looking for Viagra).

stox• 12 years ago

Or better yet, demonstrate that you have done the most basic research into what the real job entails rather than a vague paragraph submitted to you by HR. You know, something silly, like spending 5 minutes on the phone with the manager being recruited for. 10 minutes for extra bonus points.

lostcolony• 12 years ago

"Please, for the love of all that is holy, lead with the company's name. That's all we ask."

Not so. I also ask that -

You understand the role better than just a list of bullet points and so can answer questions.

You are in contact with the team that is hiring so that any questions you can't answer you can get me an answer for.

You have read enough about me to have proactively filtered the job; I'm not interested in a junior position, nor a lead position requiring a decade of experience. If you say you think I would be a "great match for this Perl position!" I will cut you.

You know enough about the industry to accurately sell the job. "An exciting Java opportunity!" followed by a description that makes it sound like it's writing business CRUD apps is an oxymoron. And any description that clearly shows you have no idea what you're talking about ("You must be familiar with the following languages: Java, HTML, CSS, JSON, OO, Functional") means immediate deletion from my inbox.

You actually remain in contact until a yea or nay is decided upon, either by me or the company. Don't just disappear. This also means if you change positions, you pass your leads to another recruiter. I filter email addresses of recruiters who don't do this.

jmaha• 12 years ago

It's usually pretty easy to find out the company by simply Googling a line or two of the description as well.

CmonDev• 12 years ago

"Awesome companies are facing a talent crunch, and finding the most awesome software people out there is hard." - that is the biggest misconception: looking to buy cheap something that simply is expensive.

redmattred• 12 years ago

Dear Entitled Software Engineers,

Take a step back. You're living during one of highest periods of unemployment and economic depression in recent history, and you're complaining about being bombarded with job offers. Usually this is happening on LinkedIn, a website entirely about having a public resume that shows you are a good candidate to be hired.

That staffing recruiter who is emailing you probably didn't dream of becoming a staffing recruiter - they took the job they could get. Most staffing recruiters are a recent graduates who were recently un/underemployed. They're working in a cutthroat, sink or swim environment where 40% of their coworkers won't be there next month. If they don't make their numbers, they're gone. Most of the jobs they work on are impossibly hard to fill jobs in an industry they don't know anything about.

Those annoying staffing recruiters also provide liquidity in the labor market. Remember that 20K salary bump your new employer didn't blink at? That's because they know how hard it is to hire good software engineers and they understand the competition they face.

Remember that time you were constantly being proactive about your career, always checking to see if there might be something better out there? Yah, I don't do that either, but a good recruiter will.

Yes, there are terrible recruiters out there and many of them are annoying. But they do serve a purpose to both you and the companies you will work for.

With every good there is a bad. You're lucky enough to be in a position where thousands of companies are desperate to hire somebody like you. It could be worse :)

XOXO

Dear Recruiters

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