Why recruiters should be careful about spamming small developer communities

I don't like receiving unsolicited template emails from recruiters. However, you never know when you might need them, or their colleague, in future. So, although I don't respond to unsolicited template emails, I politely respond to individual LinkedIn requests, individual emails and phone calls. It doesn't take long to understand the opportunity, explain my position and ask them to only contact me in future if they have some specific kind of role I'm interested in. Usually they go away with no hard feelings and sometimes they've called me back in a couple of months with something genuinely relevant.

Now, just occasionally I've run into a total asshat. In fact, there is a guy who calls me in my current role who actually wants to act as an agent for my company. Every week he calls and asks to speak to <made_up_name>, expresses surprise when I say they don't work here and then asks who's in charge now. Every week I tell him never to call here again and every week he calls. If I could be bothered, I would report him to the phone company, authorities or whatever but frankly, life is too short and it's almost more of an amusement now.

Looks like a typical commons dilemma to me - recruiter spam weakens recruiting as an industry, but individual recruiters sometimes do find prospects and pocket a substantial fee for it. Because of this, they're not going to stop doing it.

Commons dilemmas are pretty difficult to solve without resorting to regulation.

Such a common issue, we have recruiters phone us directly and lie to whoever answers the phones by saying they have a UPS package for "John" in an attempt to talk to us. Scum bags

Every experience I've had with a recruiter has left a bad taste in my mouth.

The first didn't know the difference between Java and JavaScript, and when they wanted me to fill out an online skill quiz, she fumbled and gave me the wrong one (I only figured it out part-way through due to the first obviously language specific question, where I immediately realized I answered some previous questions wrong) and then wouldn't push for the salary I requested. Doesn't know anything and won't help me? Relationship over.

The second was an informative middleman between me and an obviously on-the-fence employer, but called me a ridiculous amount of times to relay every tid-bit of conversation he had with them and prodded me for friend referrals every time we spoke, which got old fast. Odds are good that if I didn't give up any names the first 3 times you asked, I'm not going to give any names the 9th and 10th and 20th time either without any knowledge of the recruiter's successes, I'm not wasting my friend's time with him. It resulted in nothing, wasted a ton of my time and was very annoying.

The third was totally useless and was trying to tell me about similar-salary lateral movement opportunities that required moving or a stupidly long commute, negating any possible benefit. Waste of my time.

The fourth was a cold-calling corporate HR recruiter from the company I was currently employed with, offering me my previous postion I had just moved up from. My boss and I had a good laugh, and I was tempted to apply/move forward with her to see what would happen.

There might be a handful a good recruiters out there, but the odds are so low, I don't see a compelling reason to waste my time on the off-chance they're useful, friends and networking are infinitely better. They also seem to be very adverse to sending email that contains anything meaningful, always preferring the phone.

I know they have to find candidates somewhere, but using a mailshot template to feign actual interest in a person is incredibly insulting.

I never cared about this topic till I actively started looking for employment last year.

Constant recruiter spam from LinkedIn was/is the bane of my existence ... one real asshat actually got my email and phone number, where I just got hired (have no idea how he managed that), then emailed and called me on my work phone.

If they even had an ounce of sense I could stomach it, but being pinged for .NET/PHP jobs when I clearly list myself as a Rails guy is annoying ... to say the least.

Best part is when they go on to ask if I know anybody who might be interested ... without skipping a beat.

I think Caius is overreacting. Just tell them politely that you are not interested and that you don't want to be contacted in the future.

I have friends that have worked in the recruiting industry for a long time and one has to realize that though there are some bad recruiters out there, a lot of recruiters are subject to their companies internal performance metrics, incentives, policy and company culture. So some recruiters behave a certain way because they have to.

My friend has worked in recruiting agencies that have call and email quotas. If you did not meet them you were let go. The company was strucutred and functioned as a dialing for dollars call center. So this creates a condidtion for the recruiters to spam peple like you or suffer the consequences. The companies philosophy was quantity over quality relationship building. This created the overall way the recruiter behaved.

Also, some mismanaged recruiting firms put undue pressure on the recruiter to come up with a candidate for an opportunity that is very hard to fill or can't be filled. So they are forced to make calls to people who are not a fit or have a certain key word on the resume which doesn't fit the overall context of the resume. Remember, people are just trying to make a living.

I see threads like this all the time. Someone here needs to see that this is an opportunity for entrepreneurs.The overall recruting market will exist because technical folks are getting scarce and there is more demand for them. This coupled with the majority of people having bad experience with recruiters tells me that there is an opportunity to create a better way.

Companies like LinkedIn, jobvite is providing their solution what is yours?

I see alot of recruiter bashing here. Can someone fill me in? I don't understand why. I mean, yes they make money off of you getting job, but they do help you "get a job". Alot of people need help getting jobs, so I don't understand the animosity. I've been contacted by recruiters, but have never used one, but each time, I politely say.."thanks, but I'm not looking right now. Perhaps I can contact you in a few months if anything changes?" That has worked fine for me..so I don't understand all this hostility

Check out the comment thread below the post for the recruiter in question responding to the post. Some choice tidbits:

>> I think you are taking this out of proporion, Caius, and calling someone a "cunt" does not a good impression make. So, when your employers realize youre unclean language usage, please feel free to contact me at r.evans@devonshire-recruiting.co.uk and we'll find you a more suitable job.

I've been getting recruitment spam from what I assume is my workingwithrails.com listing even though I'm listed as not looking for work.

I have seen recruiters;

Phone all the sequential numbers in the office to try and find anyone with a similar skill set.

Contact all my referees and supervisors trying to hunt them.

Ask me if I know/knew "John" who worked with me on a previous project.

Send me on an interview just to test out a potential client, so they can get my feedback.

And they always ask "Where have you interviewed recently?".

"I think you are taking this out of proporion, Caius, and calling someone a "cunt" does not a good impression make. So, when your employers realize youre unclean language usage, please feel free to contact me at r.evans@devonshire-recruiting.co.uk and we'll find you a more suitable job."

We've all heard such language before. It's not shocking and not uncommon. If Caius wants to work in an up-tight organization maybe he should give you a call.