
Striking Back At Recruiter Spam - loganfrederick
http://blog.42floors.com/striking-back-recruiter-spam/
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vcherubini
I rather like Atlassian's take on the issue:
[https://www.atlassian.com/company/careers/recruiters](https://www.atlassian.com/company/careers/recruiters)

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mccolin
That's a great policy. It doesn't completely remove time or energy from the
HR/hiring manager at Atlassian, but it clearly outlines objectives of working
with recruiters with a very real, tangible penalty for spamming. Nice.

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mfkp
Called the number - surprisingly real sounding, nice execution.

Still, seems like a jerk-move. I can see this backfiring in some way or
another.

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jackowayed
I hope they're keeping statistics on how long people are on the line before
hanging up.

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neil_s
Is that a fixed recording of someone reading out 5 random job descriptions, or
are you dynamically getting 5 fresh descriptions and using text-to-voice? Its
probably the former, but if not, that is amazing text-to-voice, and I'd love
to know where its available!

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Varlski
As much as i agree that recruiters can be annoying getting the right
recruitment/recruiter help can be the most amazing leverage tool for your
startup and to be honest this comes across really childish. That said
recruitment is ripe for disruption.

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nsxwolf
I admire the execution of this and simultaneously condemn it for its
douchebaggery.

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Pxtl
If legal, they should make recordings of the reactions.

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raverbashing
"this call is being recorded for quality purposes"

Not sure this allows the recordings to be divulged, though

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ryen
"This call is being recorded for quality purposes and may be used for
marketing or other purposes at our discretion."

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ianstallings
This is a waste of time and money.

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benihana
This makes me sad. It's petty vindictiveness and it doesn't help our industry.
Rather than accepting that recruiters have wasted his time, and moving on, the
author decides to waste even more time to get back at them. And for what? Does
anyone think that the recruiter who wasted the author's time is going to
reflect deeply on this and change his ways?

Rather than striking back with some ego-stroking revenge, maybe educating the
recruiter on why his behavior was shitty might help more? Maybe making a
general page that you could easily refer him to that explains why his tactics
are disrespectful so that he can _learn_ from this, rather than just having
his time wasted? You could also refer other pushy recruiters to that page.

This isn't my company though, so the author is free to do what he wants. I'm
wondering if people look at this and think "that's awesome, I can relate! I
want to work there," or if they look at this and think "that guy has no
problem spending time being mean to people he thinks deserve it, I might stay
away."

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bambax
I don't see it as vindictiveness but as some kind of "spammer's honey pot" \--
while the recruiter is listening to this at least he's not calling someone on
their team.

But I was disappointed about the low-tech quality of the approach; I was
hoping for some kind of evolved Eliza-like HR robot that could sustain some
form of conversation for some time.

If this caught on, at some point recruiters could never be sure they're
talking to a real person.

\- - -

I very often get calls at home, from people trying to sell me either new
windows for my house or some low-cost mobile phone service.

I used to hang up on those calls, but not anymore!

Now I put them on speakerphone... and give the receiver to my four-year-old.
He's very excited that someone wants to speak to him, and starts talking about
his day right away.

This has transformed a very annoying experience into a great form of
entertainment for the whole family (not to mention it "shifts the burden of
rudeness" to the caller... how do they dare hanging up on my son!!!?!)

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DanBC
Training an Alice bit for this task (and similar marketing talks) should be
relatively easy, especially because the marketer wants to stay on the line and
will make allowances for wonky conversation.

[http://alice.pandorabots.com/](http://alice.pandorabots.com/)

[http://alicebot.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/mitsuku-wins-
loebner-...](http://alicebot.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/mitsuku-wins-loebner-
prize-2013.html?m=1)

(Sorry for mobile links)

I'm surprised it hasn't already been done.

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ryguytilidie
"Ughhhhhhhhhh people keep emailing me to offer high paying jobs and I have to
click archive."-The most first world problem in the history of the universe.

~~~
jackowayed
They're actually dealing with recruiter spam on the other side. "I see you
need people, I have 'great candidates' for the roles that I would love to
setup for interviews."

And they said some go to the lengths of calling the mobile number of every
engineer at their company. So basically the recruiter is just an extremely
persistent salesperson who distracts the entire company in hopes that they'll
find a way to sell their product.

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paulgb
When entrepreneurs do that, HN calls it "hustle"

