Don’t Feed the Beast – The Great Tech Recruiter Infestation

I used to hate recruiters and would delete their emails or even send them letters chastising them for their inability to even do a modicum of research into my skill set.

Then I read How to Win Friends and Influence People, as cheesy as that sounds, and now I'm extremely friendly with recruiters. I've realized that I am deeply privileged to be in a time and a place in society where my skills are so valuable that it feels like spam to be provided alternative job opportunities! Seriously, what kind of backwards world do we live in where we're angry at people for trying to keep us gainfully employed? How rude of me to have acted like a pompous rock star by not giving someone common decency and respect, even if their interests don't exactly align with mine.

So now I write back to all recruiters. I graciously thank them for even considering me for the role (no matter how off-base it was), and then simply explain to them how, for example, if you're recruiting me for a Java position, a simple look at my LinkedIn profile (which I actually link to and invite them to join my network) will show I've never held a professional job writing Java. Finally, I ask that since their time is valuable (because the higher their conversion rate, the more money they make), if they could give me the same courtesy and only send me extremely relevant leads, then I will be more likely to respond.

You know what happened?

I get thoughtful, sincere responses and apologies. They appreciate that I'm not like 99% of techies who deletes or scolds them. And then they magically disappear! I receive the least recruiter emails I ever have in my career. And the ones I do get now, they actually are worth checking out. Imagine that! Being decent and taking the high road can lead to a better outcome.

That was actually a pretty good chuckle reading that, thanks :-)

One agent spammed me once because he was recruiting an architect... to build a supermarket on the south coast. The 'software' bit in my position name didn't seem to have registered!

However, I use ONE agent, who's probably one of the rarest kind: he's /careful/ of not wasting my, or his client's time and seems to have realized that if he does that, he gets returning business -- and he does, he got a 'cut' from placing me a few times now -- and I don't really care, he saves me a lot of time, 'sells' be pretty well (as he knows me well now) and has even managed to convince me to try other things... So by now he's acting more like 'my' agent instead of 'one' agent...

YMMV however I have only had positive experiences with recruiters. There are obviously dicks in the industry but these are easy to block or ignore. I have used the same recruiter for my last 6 contracts over approx 5 years and she has been awesome I. E. Saved me a load of hassle or down time between contracts.

Half of my linkedin is like a modelling agency. Hot young chicks making cold calls. I try to go out on a business lunches as much as possible, without any intention to commit. Two can play that game.

One recruiter sent me an email saying they are looking for people with knowledge of RESTful APIs and JASON experience.....

Yep.

To this day, I still don't know who jason is.