
The Tenacity of Tech Recruiters - mfrisbie
http://www.mattfriz.com/#/outbursts/recruiter-email
======
aerovistae
Personally, I make the most of it. I try to see how far I can push the
recruiters while still having them respond to me. Here's one such exchange. (I
went all-caps because for some reason he emailed me in all-caps. He went back
to normal but I decided to stick with it.)

Recruiter:

\------------

Hey Aerovistae, THIS IS A GREAT POSITION FOR YOU IF YOU WANT TO GET IN THE
FIELD OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT. take a look please!

I am a technical recruiter and have a great job opening in Waltham that I was
wondering if you would be interested in! Ive included some details on the
position below, drop me a line if you have any interest! Thanks

\----------

Me:

I WOULD LOVE TO GET INTO THE FIELD OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

\--------

Recruiter:

Hey Aerovistae, Would you like to speak over the phone this evening sometime?
-Eric

\--------- Me:

I DO NOT HAVE A PHONE

\--------- Recruiter:

Hey Aerovistae, My phone recently broke also, so I feel your pain, but will
you have access to a phone in the near future?

\---------

I HAVE RECENTLY ARRIVED IN SRI LANKA AND THE BROADBAND INTERNET HERE IS VERY
GOOD BUT THE PHONE IS VERY EXPENSIVE, CAN YOU ACCEPT COLLECT CALLS?

\----------

After that he finally stopped responding. I have a whole folder of these. I
think my favorite one is the time I tried to get the recruiter to do a CAPTCHA
to prove he was a real person and not an automated bot.

~~~
iraphael
> I have a whole folder of these.

PLEASE SHARE I WANT TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS OPPORTUNITY FOR LAUGHTER

~~~
aerovistae
This is one of my very favorites.

Recruiter:

\---------

[Long email from "Steve" looking for Rails dev for a place called CustomInk]

\------

Me:

I only work for companies who recycle 100% of their paper and plastic and who
have plans to run on solar power by 2017, could you tell me CustomInk's stance
on these matters?

\-----------

Recruiter:

Unfortunately, I do not have this information. It is a fantastic company to
work for, though.

\-----------

Me:

Okay, I might make an exception if it is really so fantastic. Could you please
let me know whether there is a tactical obstacle course on the company
grounds? I am used to having this available for exercise to break up coding.

\------------

Recruiter:

Aerovistae,

There is not.

S

\----------- Me:

This is sounding less fantastic by the minute, Steve.

\---------

Recruiter:

I wish you all the best in finding an employer that offers you _everything_
you require.

\---------

Me:

Steve, don't take that tone with me.

\----------

After which he stopped responding.

~~~
SchizoDuckie
more more more :D you have me in tears here.

I recently had one in The Netherlands that was trying to look smart by using
expensive words but then failed to apply the basic syntactic rules of Dutch
grammar. They also always start these days by : "I can understand that you're
being spammed via your linkedin profile", and then provide no excuse at all
and just spam you some more.

------
bitwize
Brilliant.

But it's missing one detail: Recruiters just about never "send" emails; they
always "shoot" them. They put an email in the chamber, and they pull the
fucking trigger. BLAM!

~~~
ascendantlogic
I appreciate the Penny Arcade/Pokemon reference.

------
fecak
Recruiter here, and one who is publicly critical of this kind of behavior in
the industry. I write about career topics frequently and try to expose
recruiter bad behavior. (1)

I completely understand frustration about being contacted for jobs requiring
skills that are far out-of-date or that you don't have, the laundry lists of
technologies, etc. On behalf of some in my industry, I apologize.

Although criticism of recruiters and their approaches are frequent, I don't
see nearly as much guidance that might help recruiters in what information to
share in an introduction. If you don't want to hear from recruiters at all,
mentioning that on a LinkedIn/GitHub profile _might_ prevent some of these
unwanted contacts.

The signal to noise ratio from recruiters is terrible, and it makes it
incredibly difficult for recruiters with a targeted and applicable message to
get heard. I enjoyed the days post dot com bust and in the recession when
inexperienced or ineffective recruiters had to leave the industry.

Instead of parody, I'd like to seem someone write something that they think
would be appropriate. What type of approach might get you to reply to a
recruiter? What would get your attention?

(1) [http://jobtipsforgeeks.com](http://jobtipsforgeeks.com) has multiple
pieces exposing recruiting tactics.

~~~
ditonal
This is like a telemarketer asking what's the best way to sell their life
insurance policy when interrupting someone's dinner. The problem is that there
is a general lack of empathy in almost all of these 'introductions'. I already
know there's a lot of developer jobs out there. So what are you accomplishing
by emailing me, other than spamming me that the companies you represent are
also hiring? How it is going to help _my_ career to leave my current position
and join yours? Are you going to give me new experience in an interesting
field? Let me lead a critical project? Pay me more money?

Telling me what VCs have invested, how 'fast-paced' the company is, how 'work-
hard-play-hard' you are is pretty much irrelevant to me, other than I guess
the somewhat desperate sounding angle that your equity will be worth a lot.
Usually the reason you can't answer the questions I asked above is because you
don't have a good answer to them - you are just trying to spam me by 'selling'
a mediocre product with no differentiating advantages. So you're just spamming
me, so don't send the email. If you _can 't_ answer the question of why it
will be great for my career, past _OMG WE 'RE DEFINITELY THE NEXT FACEBOOK_ or
_WE HAVE MICROBREWS AND UNDEFINED VACATION POLICY_ , then you're just a
telemarketer/spammer and there's no sane advice to give you other then don't
click send. Keep it on the job board and out of people's inboxes.

~~~
fecak
I appreciate the insight, and I should probably add that I've been recruiting
for almost 20 years so my question is more geared towards helping those in the
industry improve and not for my personal use. Shaming recruiters is so easy
and trite.

The telemarketer comparison is interesting, but telemarketers aren't generally
offering things that change someone's life. Being "offered" a job is
significantly different than being offered pet insurance.

It's hard to determine how a job will help your career until we learn more
about you. I don't know if it will pay more money until I know what you make.

I agree that most people don't want to hear about the nonsense that you've
listed. But the things _you_ want to hear about, or at least a couple of the
things you listed here ($, leadership, help your career), are almost
impossible to determine via a GitHub, LinkedIn, and even a short conversation.

~~~
redblacktree
You may not know what I make, but you know what the salary range is on the
position you're recruiting for. Why not share that up front?

~~~
fecak
I'll give ranges when applicable. The challenge is getting the candidate to
understand that there is a high and low end of the range, and the high end is
reserved for a certain level of candidate. Some candidates assume the high end
of a range is their true market rate, and consider any offer below that to be
a snub (even if the offer is above their market value.

------
joshribakoff
They always ask you to rate yourself on different skills from 1-5. One time, I
had to rate myself on "SQL Injection". I felt like it was comparable to
someone asking an architect interviewing to build a skyscraper to rate himself
on "earthquakes".

~~~
rcurry
On SQL Injection, I usually rate myself a "5;DROP TABLE USERS;"

~~~
redblacktree
I thought I was done laughing and took a drink of my beer. I now have beer in
my nose.

------
SchizoDuckie
Contains too much detailed information about the company and too little
spelling errors.

~~~
spyspy
Not enough uses of coding ninja, -guru or -rockstar.

------
xiaoma
> _" You would work with our high-octane, driven, talented engineering team
> very closely - literally. They all share a single folding table."_

This one is a bit painful since it's so hard to escape this mentality.

------
amyjess
Worst recruiter ever, for me:

He sent me an email for an 8-month contract on the other side of the country.
This despite my profile on every job site saying "full-time only" and "I am
not willing to relocate". I ignore it.

Later that day (or maybe the next day), he calls me. I tell him no, and I make
it abundantly clear I'm not interested in any kind of contract position. He
starts arguing with me, and he starts going into how it's more like a full-
time job since the contract is long term. I say "don't call me again" while
loudly speaking over him, and then I hang up without waiting a response.

A week later, he sends me another email for the same position. I reply with a
strongly-worded email telling him to cease and desist from ever contacting me
again and that I will never work with him or his firm.

An hour later, he calls me again. I chewed him out and hung up on him right
away.

I planned on calling his recruiting firm's HR department and reporting his
extremely inappropriate behavior, but I never got around to it. And if I'd had
the money, I would've hired a lawyer to properly C&D him.

As far as I'm concerned, this guy is a spammer. I've dealt with dozens of
recruiters offering contract and/or out-of-town positions, but none of them
have been as pushy as him. With everyone else, I just ignore their emails
without reply, and they never call me or send a follow-up email.

Other terrible recruiters include the legion of people who insist on asking
for me by my old name, despite me having legally changed my name (first,
middle, _and_ last) well over a year ago.

And just for fun, I saw a recruiter link his LinkedIn profile by posting the
URL that takes you to editing your own profile.

------
cargo8
Epic

PS: Pro-tip, add a middle initial to your LinkedIn - the guys using auto-fill
without even looking are an easy filter since it is part of your first name.

~~~
moron4hire
Most of the time I just shunt everything that has the word "unsubscribe" in it
to the trash.

~~~
rspeer
I'll combine both of your suggestions and tell LinkedIn my middle name is
"Unsubscribe".

------
allworknoplay
You forgot "N years of experience in something that's only existed for N - 2
years"

------
HerpDerpLerp
List of required technologies is too short!

------
zeroxfe
I lost it at Cdim7.

~~~
imissmyjuno
I did at "Data"

------
andhess
The worst recruiter I dealt with sent an email like this to 4 of my email
addresses and tried to add me as a connection on LinkedIn twice (she had 2
profiles). All within 1 minute.

~~~
dudul
My worst experience was a recruiter who would send me an email every day and
call me 5 minutes after sending it. Literally every day. Even though I never
took her call she would try again the next day.

It went on for 2 full weeks before I lost it and finally replied to one of her
emails with a simple "Stop calling/emailing me" and it stopped.

~~~
gregjwild
heh. And here I am feeling guilty when I will occasionally send a single
follow up now and then.

------
troebr
I have an é in my first name, many automated systems still choke on this, and
the email looks something like: "Hi Name<GarbledCharacter>EndOfName"

------
rekwah
I've been known to put fake skills in my LinkedIn profile in hopes of catching
scripted recruiter emails that include these amusing keywords.

>>> "With your underwater basket-weaving chops, the Cloud Fabric Services team
will surpass its goal of exceeding 100M users by 2015."

------
brad_matheson
They missed some my favorite cliches: "Rockstar", "Full-stack", "Startup
mentality", "Outside-the-box thinking" and "Customer focused"

Very funny and completely true

~~~
spyspy
"Startup culture" is just one big bag of cliches these days.

------
drinchev
But this kind of e-mail irony is equally true for any cold-calling sales guy,
right?

I think the whole industry on the topic of "let's spam everyone and see who
will get our bite" seems absurd.

------
misiti3780
I personally respond to every recruiter email i get with the following:

Hi,

I am currently only available for consulting. My bill rate is $1000/hour, with
a minimum commitment of 20 hours.

I rarely get a response email.

~~~
sarciszewski
Make it $8000/day, with a minimum commitment of 3 days, and you might make
tptacek smile.

------
moron4hire
These days, I am judicious about marking people like this as spam. Because
they are. I'm hoping they will hopefully eventually get blacklisted.

------
noipv4
You have given all the budding recruiters the perfect email template to work
with.

------
frobware
Looks like you got the same email as I just did. How weird is that!

~~~
reustle
Knowing how these recruiters work, I'm not surprised at all.

------
Jemaclus
Spot on.

------
baturay
FRESHMAN

