Trolling recruiters who harass our engineers

http://blog.42floors.com/recruiter-black-hole/

by darrennix • 12 years ago

27 11 12 years ago

blog.42floors.com

Mithaldu• 12 years ago

Any idea how i can listen to this without paying international phone fees?

benguild• 12 years ago

Call on Gmail/Hangouts

Jemaclus2• 12 years ago

I'm somewhat curious as to why you blurred out the recruiters name. Seems like a good ol' fashioned public shaming would be useful.

Also, unless you Photoshopped that image, it looks like all of those emails came to you as well. Do you automatically get CC'd in employee emails?

Finally, what are your opinions on recruiters in general? You mentioned Oli as being a good one, but in my experience, there aren't very many good ones at all. I tend to get bombarded by recruiters every day that have zero idea of what it is that I do, which just turns me off to the idea of recruiters in general.

For instance, this one "Head of Talent" for a company contacted me about a position that I'm completely unqualified for. I emailed back and basically said "I'm not really qualified for this, but thanks for thinking of me." Instead of saying "Ok, great, thanks," he pivoted and pushed another position that I'm uninterested in. I wrote back and said, "Thanks, but I'm not interested in that position." Instead of taking the hint, he writes back and says "No problem, but I have this other great position that I think you'd be a perfect fit for" -- and it's the original position he sent me in the first email!

Sadly, this is very, very typical of interactions with recruiters. Are they all morons, do they think we're morons and don't talk to each other, or do they just not care?

DmitriRavinoff3• 12 years ago

They don't have to care. If the current spam methods weren't working for them, they'd stop. But someone's replying to those e-mails, and someone's paying their referral fees.

Why should they bother filtering when we do it for them? They prefer to be ignored unless you're going to sign up for an interview or five. This is one reason why I always reply with a short form letter: "Thanks for reaching out, I'm happy where I am, etc" so they have to take the time to filter me out as someone who isn't interested.

Jemaclus2• 12 years ago

Yeah, agreed. I tend to ignore them, because even when I say "thanks, I'm not interested," they treat me as a warm body that can be blasted with more opportunities, and I just get more opportunities that I'm not interested in, even though I previously stated I'm not interested. Annoying. Recruiters are terrible. :(

timjahn3• 12 years ago

"This is one reason why I always reply with a short form letter: "Thanks for reaching out, I'm happy where I am, etc" so they have to take the time to filter me out as someone who isn't interested."

But see, in my experience, they DON'T filter you out in any way. They just keep spamming you.

maxk42• 12 years ago

Jeez... I know "James L." Even met with him in person. He's a nice enough guy but I'm not a fan of the organization he works for which is one of the worst offenders when it comes to spamming engineers.

timjahn3• 12 years ago

Ugh. I know people say there are good recruiters out there (somewhere), but stories like this are all I ever seem to hear, and are a large part of the inspiration behind creating matchist (http://matchist.com).

I understand technical/creative recruiting is generally a "spray and see what sticks" industry, but it seems things very rarely sticks. Is there really a good enough ROI on these seemingly ineffective techniques that justifies recruiters' continued use of them?

That said, this is a genius idea for dealing with it. I truly hope the recruiters get it, but sadly, I honestly don't think they're capable of understanding how pointless their actions are.

Trolling recruiters who harass our engineers

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