
Ask HN: Recruiters wont stop emailing me, what can I do? - mkoryak
I have been trying to get myself unsubscribed from all recruiter emails. I&#x27;ve had success with most of them with a simple &quot;please don&#x27;t email me again&quot; response.  
A few of them ignore these requests and keep sending me emails, sometimes calling. Others say that have removed me, only to email me again a few months later.<p>I don&#x27;t delete any of my emails, so I can search back to 2005 and find dozens of emails and requests to be removed.<p>Can I do anything about this other than blocking the domain from emailing me? I don&#x27;t think can-spam covers this, but maybe there is some other law that is on my side that I can at least threaten with?
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janbernhart
(Warning; recruiter talking here.) It's probably hard to stop my spammy
'colleagues'. If I'm correct they are sending you messages to your private
email address, so we're not talking about LinkedIn here?

Perhaps you can create rules in your inbox that automatically put messages
with the subject containing "job opportunity" directly in your spambox. The
spammy recruiters aren't very creative in the mail titles, so look for the
common patterns and direct-to-spam those.

If we are talking about Linkedin, I know a guy that uploaded an avatar with
him wearing a clowns wig, that stopped a lot of recruiters approaching him
:-).

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J_Darnley
Oh no! The horror of unwanted employment possibilities! If they're such a
problem you can forward them to me.

~~~
mkoryak
Yes, it is spam that happens to be about jobs, many of which I am not
interested in or qualified for. I would be happy to forward them all to you
but I suspect you will find yourself in the same boat.

You do love Java and XML, don't you?

~~~
gt565k
Heh, nobody loves Java and XML. Unfortunately, a lot of APIs use WSDL and thus
force engineers to deal with XML. Old legacy systems are hard to change...

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sarciszewski
If you're using a popular web-mail solution (e.g. Gmail), I would just report
them as spam so they end up in other peoples' blacklist.

Otherwise, ask them if they're willing to represent convicted federal felons,
sex offenders, and/or rehabilitated serial killers to their clients? You'll
get black-listed real fast.

~~~
mkoryak
not a bad idea, though it wouldn't be fun if I somehow ended up starting a
rumor about myself. I did resort to something similar once. I noticed that
some recruiting tool had something in their terms about not contacting minors:

[http://i.imgur.com/mINDBH2.png](http://i.imgur.com/mINDBH2.png)

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MalcolmDiggs
I'm in the same boat. I have nothing helpful to add, but I can tell you what
__DOESN 'T __work, maybe this will save you some time:

1\. Replying and telling them what kind of opportunities you're actually
interested in. That doesn't matter to them. Those who use the "spray and pray"
approach don't seem to care if there's little chance of a good match.

2\. Replying and telling recruiters to kill themselves. Although this is quite
fun, they seem immune to the insult.

3\. Clicking the unsubscribe links in their emails. In fact I think this may
make things worse (because you've just confirmed that your address is active).

4\. Flagging them as spam. Most of them are advanced enough to circumvent most
spam filters.

5\. Setting up filter rules in your inbox based on the "from" address or
subject. Many recruiters never re-use those kinds of things.

6\. Converting your resume to image format before posting it on the job boards
(so the text isn't searchable). Not sure why this doesn't work, but it
doesn't.

7\. Adding a disclaimer to your resume begging/pleading with recruiters not to
contact you. They ignore it, or think that it doesn't apply to them.

Sigh....

I guess the only option we have left is to deliberately try and crash the tech
economy. If we succeed, that should get rid of the recruiters pretty quick.
Let's split up the tasks: I'll start raising a Billion dollar seed round for
my sandwich cart, you start working on a social network for dolphins. Okay
team, let's do this.

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Gustomaximus
From a previous thread: "On a whim, I recently updated my LinkedIn picture to
a photo of myself in a multi-coloured clown wig. This put an immediate end to
all messages from recruiters."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9104947](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9104947)

~~~
janbernhart
Ah cool you actually had the link.

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kremdela
I mostly solved this problem by taking 2 minutes and writing a thoughtful
response to remind them that I am an actual human.

"Thanks, COMPANY_NAME sounds interesting, but I'm not looking to make a move.
I really enjoy working with my fantastic team solving challenging problems in
my current position. It would take an unbelievable improvement in [salary,
schedule, problem space] to make me consider a move. Let's stay in touch on
LinkedIn and feel free to reach out in N months or if any amazing
opportunities that meet those criteria come across your desk. Thanks!"

Personally, I have found that not all, but many recruiters will reply with a
LinkedIn request and an "I'd love to get to know more about what you are
looking for, or will follow up in N months."

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ahazred8ta
Create a new email account that you're never going to use. Tell the spammy
recruiters that you're shutting down your (real) address, and please to
contact you at the dummy one instead. Aside from that, put the bad senders in
an email filter rule.

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NumberCruncher
You could try to fight fire with fire setting up an automatic repply with "...
that sounds interesting, give me a call at [false phone number here], my
salary requirement is $500k at this moment..."

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atomical
Why not just set up an e-mail filter?

