
Tell recruiters politely “no” with a simple link - leipert
https://no-thank-you.de/
======
kayoone
I am torn on this, devs are currently in a very fortunate position (if you
live in a tech hotspot) to be able to just ignore these requests or be
impolite by sending a link like this. However I believe you should still be
grateful to be in a position like this and treat people with respect. Sending
a link saying "no, stop contacting me and gtfo" is pretty rude. I have well
educated friends that work in different industries or live in less populated
areas who would be grateful for any HR inquiry.

~~~
dre85
I am not torn on this at all. You are 100% right. If you send a link like this
as a reply, it's super rude and unnecessary. I feel super grateful to be in a
position where jobs hunt me instead of the typical bs in every other field of
having to send 100 CVS out and to never hear back from anyone or to hear back
half a year later.

~~~
leipert
Author here.

Well, in my experience the people asking me if I am interested are rather
rude. I politely explain to them that I am not interested and a lot of follow-
up questions come flying in. Why is that?

That is why created the page, I answer now:

> Thank you very much for your message.

> I am not interested, before you answer me again please have a look at
> [https://no-thank-you.de/](https://no-thank-you.de/).

> Best, <name>

~~~
the-dude
Why even answer? I always say : no answer on the internet is a no.

~~~
83sjeodeke
And then they continue, “Well do you know someone? We pay a $500 referral fee
if you give me their name and we end up placing them.”

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guard0g
And give up a chance to make a long-term, mutually-beneficial friendship with
a trustworthy, honest individual who knows whats best for your career?!

~~~
excalibur
LMAO

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DoofusOfDeath
I wish LinkedIn would let recruiters realize that I'm only willing to work
within specified geographical areas. Probably 80% of my LinkedIn recruiter
spam is for jobs that require moving to SV or NYC. It's a waste of everybody's
time.

Even better would be a mechanism that cost recruiters actual $$$ for spamming
people whose profiles clearly indicate they're unsuited for the job or
unwilling to relocate to the job's location.

~~~
yegle
Not sure if that's still the case but LinkedIn used to have a service called
the Inmail Response Guarantee [1]. The simplest way to ensure the recruiter
does cost money is to respond to your inmail.

[1]: [https://business.linkedin.com/talent-
solutions/blog/2009/09/...](https://business.linkedin.com/talent-
solutions/blog/2009/09/response-guarantee)

~~~
joezydeco
They must have some mechanism like that still in place because when you switch
your profile to "I am looking", you start getting nag reminders from LinkedIn
to respond to recruiters or else your switch will slide back to off.

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phyzome
I wouldn't find recruiters so annoying if they at least took 15 minutes to
figure out who I was and what I'm interested in.

I have only once—once!—received a cold-call (well, email) from a recruiter
that was in any way relevant to me as a person and a professional. And I still
didn't want it. That's a pretty shitty track record.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Think of their track record - they call 100 people, get one that is a match to
their opening. Statistically we should expect only 1 in 100 recruiter calls to
be useful. It makes sense.

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chablent
Recruiters can be annoying, but they're also just doing their jobs. I think it
would be better if you collected some templates for politely copy & paste
point out why you're not interested on the website. If people don't back off,
you can still send something that's worded more strongly.

~~~
dkersten
“Just doing their job” is never an excuse.

The recruiters that annoy me are the ones who blatantly send me copy and
pasted messages while clearly just having done a keyword search (and certainly
not reading the parts about what I’m not interested in), who go quiet as soon
as I ask for specific information (or make it clear that I expect a
sufficiently large benefits package over what I have to make it worth my
while), who don’t pay attention to my location but require me to work on site.
Basically the ones who are wasting my time and are rude to me. Those people
can go f themselves.

I have had a few, rare, great interactions with recruiters who seemed to
genuinely care about placing good candidates in good companies in positions
that the candidate is well suited to. Unfortunately for every one of those
I’ve interacted with, I get 50 messages from the _”hey I have a lowish paying
role doing something you specifically said you didn’t want to do”_ recruiters.

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salex89
Somehow I always want to be pleasant with recruiters. Firstly because some of
my friends are recruiters so I wouldn't treat someone in a way I would want my
friends to be treated. Secondly because I kinda get "karma is a switch"
feeling and don't want to be on the receiving end of that kind ("no, buzz
off") of behaviour if I look for a job in a less then favourable state on the
job market one day. I just like to personally reply, maybe even ask a few
questions about the company, maybe there is an interesting idea or insight on
it.

------
sergiotapia
On the flipside I feel so blessed that we literally have people offering us
jobs left and right. Count your blessings and don't be rude to these people
who are just trying to make a living.

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the-dude
I have installed Streak in my Gmail specifically for the snippets.

I would type '#no' and would be done.

~~~
raoulj
I do this too.

Disclosure: I work for Streak.

~~~
the-dude
Disclosure : I don't.

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thanatos_dem
Much like many posters here, I have some preset responses that I send to
recruiters. In particular, it’s a “I’m not looking right now, but I’ll save
your info and let you know if my situation changes!”. This worked really well
when my startup fell apart, and I was able to “scramble the jets” and get
interviews set up within a week at a ton of companies. I think that the author
confused “polite” with “passive aggressive” (or maybe it’s a cultural
difference between my country and Germany).

I always try to leave recruiters with a positive impression, so as to not burn
future bridges.

...except Herman Search. Every single recruiter has approached me flashing
large salary numbers for boring, stressful sounding financial tech jobs, and
being pushy/downright aggressive when I don’t show interest. I’ve asked every
recruiter to put me on their do not contact list, but still, every couple of
months, I get another generic male white frat bro recruiter, new to the
company, reaching out again with the exact same tact. It toes the line between
unprofessional and confrontational. With all due respect, which is none, fuck
Herman Search.

~~~
leipert
Maybe it is a cultural difference, because here in Germany we are highly
protected by employment laws. My contract has 3 month notice time. So I never
felt the need to save the contact details of recruiting agents. But then I am
just at the start of my career...

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hguhghuff
The hypocrisy is hating on recruiters until you need a job or need to employ
someone, then respect.

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joe_momma
We are the only industry complaining about getting job offers while the rest
of the country is literally falling apart with no opportunities. Please don't
take things for granted.

------
leipert
I made this to scratch my own itch. I wan't to be able to tell recruiters that
I am not interested, but instead of repeating myself, I now can drop the link.

I'll also add the link to my social media profiles (linked.in and xing).

It is a rather simple page, you are welcome to contribute translations [0].

[0]: [https://gitlab.com/leipert-projects/no-thank-
you](https://gitlab.com/leipert-projects/no-thank-you)

~~~
anoncoward111
What's really shocking is that I've never once had an acceptable experience
with a recruiter that has reached out to me. I've taken over 40 interviews
this year in a variety of fields.

I've had a much better experience and indeed _received offers_ when applying
to an ad or application posted on Indeed, Linkedin, Angel.co or the company
website.

~~~
tinco
What is the general bad experience that you have? I've engaged with one
recruiter that made a good first impression, it took a bit of convincing to
have him find me jobs with a suitable market rate (they probably like lower
salaries because it increases their chance of success and this payout) but
then he actually offered me a couple jobs that I think I would have had a hard
time finding myself. I never acted on any of his offers, so maybe I haven't
encountered his bad side yet, so I'm curious.

~~~
booleandilemma
_they probably like lower salaries because it increases their chance of
success and this payout_

From my experience it’s the opposite. Recruiters try to get you the highest
salary they can because then they get a bigger cut. More than one of them has
told me this.

There have been a couple times when I’ve told them my desired salary and
they’ve upped it by 40% or more.

Yes, there are scummy recruiters out there, but for the most part I think
recruiters are great. It’s like having an agent!

People in other fields don’t get this experience and they have to work harder
to find a job. I’m not talking about technical interviews, but just getting
your foot in the door.

~~~
tinco
I'm in The Netherlands so this might be a little different than SF where
everyone capitalizes on the value of good developers. He opened with a salary
that I'd consider average to slightly above average for a regular senior
developer, in The Netherlands. I felt a bit cocky and thought if he's worth
anything, he should be getting me jobs that pay more than I could get myself,
so I countered him 50% above that. He was really hesitant and tried to talk me
down, saying it would be difficult to find a job that pays that, saying my CV
wasn't that impressive, I held on saying that a good hiring manager would see
the value in my skills. Over ~3 months he came up with three leads, one of
which ticked all three of my professional expertise boxes (ruby, devops and
product ownership) and sounded really interesting to me, but I was pursuing
other things at the time so turned it down.

I do agree that it very much feels like having an agent. I tell him what I can
do, and what I want to make, and he goes out and find a job for me. I don't
mind him taking a cut, if he finds jobs that I wouldn't find because I just go
starry eyed from startup to startup.

------
lisper
The big red "No Soliciting" seems a tad unnecessary to me. Yes, recruiters can
be annoying, but they're just people trying to make a living.

I don't have this problem with recruiters, but I do have it with people
seeking investments. I just have a stock reply: "Thank you for the
opportunity, but I'm not doing any investing at the moment."

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chrisweekly
I prefer my brother's post "How to handle recruiter calls" which is 5 years
old and every bit as relevant as when he wrote it.

[https://david.weekly.org/how-to-handle-recruiter-
calls/](https://david.weekly.org/how-to-handle-recruiter-calls/)

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djhworld
Since the GDPR came in, the amount of recruitment spam has dropped
dramatically for me

~~~
fredley
I respond to any recruitment spam with a GDPR request for all of the data they
have on me, and a request to delete it after they've sent it. This has worked
very well so far.

~~~
dkersten
Do you know where I can find guidelines or a template on writing a GDPR
request or do you (almost) literally just say hey please send me all the data
you have, GDPR requires you do so if I ask and I’m asking thanks? (I’m in the
EU)

~~~
fredley
I just say pretty much what you said, no formal template.

~~~
dkersten
Thanks!

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paulcole
How is this better than having the same information saved as an email draft?

~~~
phkahler
In spite of what the author says, this seems a bit rude.

~~~
bostik
To be fair, it probably qualifies as a PAaaS.

(Passive Aggression as a Service.)

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mschwaig
Can we please call this a 'recruiting canary'?

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DyslexicAtheist
that's the best I've seen since the invention of _tabbed-browsing multi-
container tabs_.

suggestion for potential area of improvement: please provide detailed
installation instructions (or a docker image)

