Ask HN: Is there a recruiter email blocklist somewhere? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is there a recruiter email blocklist somewhere?

68 pointspolm2363 comments

Sometimes I get cold email from recruiters. These are uniformly useless. I don't mind too much, except for the ones who make a point of following up four times on the same day of the week.

I found a few old gists poking around but is there something like the hosts.txt files used for ad blocking?

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I have a few canned responses that I send, the majority of which are polite and grateful for them contacting me, with explanations of what type of role I'd consider.

It shuts most of them down effectively, but also keeps the door open in case they really would have an opportunity that would work for me. And over the course of a decade or two working in the same town, it built a network that I can call up when I do want work, letting me drive the process on my next search.

This. Look at the email and put it into one of 2 bins: 1) A recruiter that actually read your profile in several places (Linkedin, Github, Stackoverflow) and who understood the combined picture of what they read. Send a polite canned response with an up to date "what I'm looknig for next time I switch" email.

2) Cold emails which obviously were sent to thousands with a canned message or a pitch completely foreign to your competence. Don't reply to those, you'll only get more of them and your connection to those recruiters won't have much future value either.

I get probably a dozen emails in bin 2, for every email in bin 1. Most of the bin 2 emails right now are from a company called "Data Revolution" which seems based in the UK and that I can only assume is either completely automated recruiter spam (Their profile pictures seem oddly stock-photoish), or some sort of dystopian gig-economy recruitment firm for people who rather send emails than drive Ubers.

The bin 1 contacts have actually returned on several occasions with those really rare job profiles I describe in my response, so this does work very well. I basically have a dozen people looking at job ads for me so I don't miss those one-in-a-thousand jobs I'm looking for.

Do you mark Bin 2 as spam? I tend to, but not sure if it’s a good idea.

I never even considered that there is a “mark as spam” feature in Gmail tbh.

This appears to be the best approach.

I find it counter-productive to foster bad relationships with recruiters, although many of them have treated me most barbarously (I'm over 40, which means that I'm "radioactive").

LinkedIn sells a fairly pernicious type of spam, which allows recruiters to craft messages that seem to be quite personal. I have made the mistake of responding to these, in the past, as if they were personal. No harm in that, but I really waste my time, and the recruiters'.

This makes sense if they are proper recruiters. I usually just ignore those unless I'm looking for work.

But the worst kind are the recruiters based in India - they keep sending irrelevant emails for jobs in the US where I don't even live, and no matter how many times I flag them as spam in Gmail they keep going through. I think they found a loophole to go around Gmail spam filter, so the only way is to manually add them to a filter.

I actually have a random string of characters at the end of my LinkedIn profile to find those good recruiters. It states very clearly that I will not respond to any recruiter unless that string is in either their LinkedIn or email outreach. I get about 6 recruiters a year that actually read my profile to the end and follow the instruction. For those recruiters I always engage with a thankful response of their due diligence regardless of whether or not I'm interested. I've made a few great acquaintances over the years of great recruiters this way.

Data Revolution is one of the brands used by a UK based recruitment agency named VMR Consultants. As a hiring manager they are the worst I ever encountered - sending template emails every day where only the candidate name would change. Looking at their Glassdoor profile they look like an abusive employer as well. I am usually nice to people but in their case I would straightforwardly answer “sorry, I blacklisted your firm” and hang up to any poor soul cold calling on behalf of one of their brands… Stay away!

> 2) Cold emails which obviously were sent to thousands with a canned message or a pitch completely foreign to your competence.

Just out of curiosity, especially in UK there seem to be companies that scrape CVs from job web sites, feed all the addresses into databases, and send these indiscriminate emails if a few keywords match. And if one responds, they ask for a telephone call and might call dozens of times.

At some point, I was actually wondering whether it would be possible to automatically get phone numbers of that kind of people into said CV data bases (with an obviously useless auto-generated CV that however has matching keywords).

Delete the message and go on. There's one thing that's worse. When nobody contacts you at all.

Too many people don’t understand that not everyone has a strong online presence and not everyone is pestered by recruiters. Yes, it can be annoying, but also consider yourself blessed.

Yeah, I get a tinge of jealousy when I hear coworkers talk about getting daily messages on LinkedIn from recruiters. My LinkedIn is extremely barebones and I'm inactive on the site.

You can (an arguably should) change that by improving your LinkedIn profile. Add relevant work experience, send requests to past colleagues, update your profile pic, and use some keywords. I spend maybe a total of 20 minutes on LinkedIn in a month and receive a night trickle of job propositions in my inbox. These recruiting emails actually leak useful information and are worth reading.

I appreciate the encouragement. I find it really hard though. LinkedIn as a platform is just gross and its had so many security incidents over the years, I don't want to give them anything more than I have to.

Information I post on LinkedIn is open to the public, I keep none of it private other than DirectMessages and I keep those professional. There doesn’t need to be a security incident for someone to access my LinkedIn information, it’s essentially all open to anyone with a web browser. I don’t fully understand your desire for privacy when talking about your past professional accomplishments. If you could inform me more about your perspective I would appreciate it.

Why should he do that? Why is he jealous of it in the first place? It's like, "Don't complain about all the mosquito bites you get. At least the mosquitos like you".

Subtract the LinkedIn spam and there is nothing there. There's nothing to be jealous of.

LI can be useful. I got my last three jobs from recruiters reaching out via LI. I don’t get much spam at all on LI.

The constant messages from recruiters is one of the reasons why I deleted my LinkedIn account.

> There's one thing that's worse. When nobody contacts you at all.

This. People complain about getting micro-harassed by recruiters when others are desperate for a job and would actually enjoy being head-hunted.

Yeah, I'm sometimes surprised that people are so annoyed about cold emails.

Sweet jeez how low of an EQ you would need to possess to be annoyed by this kind of things?

Just delete and move on.

Are you gonna ask for a viagra seller blocklist next?

I don't know how old are you, but before algorithms have mostly solved the spam problem, it was a real problem. If you have something like gmail, you could try recreating this experience by copying your spam folder into your inbox and trying to sort through it manually. I just checked and I get several hundreds spams every day - most of which going directly to spambox and I never see them. But it'd be a serious problem if automatic filters didn't work.

Recruiter spam is for now not nearly as bad as this - but with enough automation, it could be too. So "just delete it" is not a solution that scales. Maybe spam filters would catch it too, but then you'd risk missing authentic offers...

If that can help, that's an up to date list to deal with recruiter spam from India:

{from:@lorventech. from:@amaze-systems. from:vsgbusinesssolutions: from:vbeyond.com from:@triveni. from:@epiksostaffing. from:@epikso. from:@conchtech. from:@nrconsultingservice. from:@rgtalent. from:@us.insigmainc. from:@inficaretech. from:@dgntechnologies. from:@techdigitalcorp. from:@nttdata. from:@askitc. from:@nityo. from:anuvaresource. from:execu-search. from:collabera. from:zodiac-solutions. from:amiseq.com from:vision-us.com from:devpozent.com from:dbsiservices.com from:Xoriant.Com from:croxconsulting.com from:ibusinesssolution.com from:itechsolutions.com from:edoorsinc.com from:saxonglobal.com from:erostechnologies.com from:okayainc.com from:tachyontech.com from:avantirec.com from:panzersolutions.com from:bereangroup.com from:bluegrasstek.com from:brainbeeus.com from:e-solutionsinc.com from:eateam.com from:estaffllc.com from:etalentnetwork.com from:intimeinfy.com from:kanandcorp.com from:oorwindigital.com from:resource-logistics.com from:tekleaders.com from:vdartinc.com from:quantumworld.us from:nityo.com from:futransolutions.com from:ittblazers.com}

I suggest you just don’t reply to cold emails and mark them as spam. Automated mass cold emailing is spam.

I've found that not having LinkedIn greatly reduces recruiter spam.

It‘s great. Also, if you take the piss out of them by asking stupid questions such as if the entire company can address you as Herr Frankfurt and speak to you only in Russian when it‘s a job in London they start removing you from lists. I went from 3-4 per day to 1-2 per week using this approach. It‘s also fun.

Diabolical person like myself.

I like to ask what the companies working in the nude policy is.

I once sent a list of prices for my contracting rates. One of the prices was "If allowed to work in just my underwear"

That sounds cute but stuff like this can backfire in industries that are small and where recruiters talk to each other.

Recruiters I did it too were agency recruiters. Even if they talk, no one is giving up the chance at comission.

If they didnt even have the time to read your resume do you think they'd remember your name to pass it on to other recruiters? I mean maybe but still...

Do you find this more effective than politely saying "no"?

Well, they keep you on their mailing list and spam you with other offers.

Bingo. And LinkedIn allows you to deactivate your account now, instead of deleting it. So you can keep it dormant and only reactivate when you actually do want to find a new job.

You can also delete all your employment history from LinkedIn. I can personally attest that it reduces spam from that to zero. Obviously save a copy first if you think you'll want it later.

The weird thing about LinkedIn is that it’s dependence for jobs is reducing (I can’t remember the last time an employer asked for LinkedIn) but it’s needed in the most unexpected scenarios. Recently a bank asked for my LinkedIn to open a company account. When I offered to send in a CV as I don’t have my employment history on LinkedIn, they stopped replying.

I had never head of that. Did they want your company's LinkedIn page? Or your own?

> I can’t remember the last time an employer asked for LinkedIn

Employers do that? I've never once had an employer or potential employer ask me for my LinkedIn account.

Too late?

It seems somehow they retrieved physical emails back in the day, before everyone removed their mails from LI. Now they're hitting mail directly but somehow still aware of your current LI profile.

I assume they have an aggregated DB connecting everyone's socials together with physical mails which they share or even sell to each other?

I often respond and tell I’m currently not interested. Legit head hunters leave me alone or ask to contact me again in a year or so (which I’m ok with. You never know when you need a new job).

Regarding the question: I don’t get many mails from recruiters. I wouldn’t invest time in setting up a block mechanism.

> _I don’t get many mails from recruiters. I wouldn’t invest time in setting up a block mechanism._

I think this is the most practical answer.

I get a fair number recruiter emails. The unsolicited mass messaging can be a little irking for sure, but with Gmail's hot keys, it takes ~0.1s to move an email to a special "recruiting" folder. Despite a high level of messages, I don't spend more than ten seconds on this a week, and have stopped stressing about it.

Here's one but not sure how up to date it is https://github.com/jasoncartwright/recruiterdomains

Put this into our whole domain blocklist, but can confirm only about a 20% reduction. In the end, it's playing whack-a-mole.

I've played with the idea of building a managed incoming email gateway SaaS (Codename Project S.H.I.E.L.D) where you can just exclude whole cohorts of unwanted inbounds (recruiting, offshoring, monetization, linkbuilding) powered by Machine Learning, but I'm too busy to build it any time soon.

If someone's in and wants plans from my drawer, I'll be a paying first customer ;-)

I built something like this for my personal use that filters based on domain/sender and provides per use addresses. There is no machine learning, but it has a sender learning period per address and can reject all new senders.

If in the UK (and probably most EU countries depending on what counts as business communication locally) you can at least cause them stress for their flouting of the law with minimal effort:

Make an Information Request asking how they got your personal information (email + job details) and under what legal basis they collected it.

When they inevitably reply with either LinkedIn, your work website, or some data broker make a complaint that:

1. They did not get consent from you

2. They did not inform you of the collection of your data without consent in a timely manner (through purchasing or direct collection). [Right to be informed]

3. That they are in breach of the "lawfulness" requirement of GDPR as they collected your personal information in breach of the terms/conditions of the source website (LinkedIn does not allow scraping).

When they deny all this and make some excuse about public information (which doesn't really exist), make a complaint to your local information commissioner.

If they gave a data broker, repeat the process again with them. They will remove you and pass this notification down to any other customers.

Within 6/12 months you'll be out of all the marketing lists.

I think OP wants to get rid of the spam because it annoys him, not wallow in it.

Going to the root of the problem (data brokers) could solve it more effectively than playing whack-a-mole with 2 man recruitment agencies.

This is basically what I do. More often than not they'll just ignore your requests, until you threaten that you'll inform the ICO (information commission officer for the non-UK people). They usually quickly respond and take you off their lists.

Either way, they usually tell you they put you on their lists because of 'legitimate interest' which is daft but there we are.

That's certainly an effective way to get a bad rep and cut yourself from half the job market.

In the UK, an enormous amount of jobs goes through recruiters. Even if you did not get your current job from recruiters, it's quite likely that some your coworkers did.

Hah, you think recruiters have some centralised database and/or are going to hold a grudge when they're looking at a £20-30k for finding you a role?

The kind of recruiters who send bulk spam emails don't seem to be the kind of recruiter that have exclusive contracts anyway, so no loss.

I have only occasionally had trouble with recruiter spam out of the blue myself. What I really wanted last time I had to deal with them was a list of recruiters with a track record of deceptive or unprofessional behaviour so I could avoid the time wasters. I suspect the list of recruiters I'd want to block for spamming and the list I'd want to avoid for being misleading or unprofessional would have a lot of overlap.

Look for some common phrases they use (e.g., the word recruiter in their email signature) and set up a filter to mark as read and archive based on those.

Exactly what I did. I would share it but I deleted it about 2 months ago since they quite rightly lost all interest.

This is how I deal with recruiters and people who email me about SEO for my website. It removes 95% of the emails, with no false positives found so far.

Amazon does this to me.

I have been polite in saying no and lately I have been asking them to either remove me or put in a 3 year hold. They always say they will but then a week or 2 later I get another Amazon recruiter who was impressed with my resume.

Do you know if Amazon has a decentralized recruiting system or are they just disrespecting my wish?

You’d be surprised how dysfunctional recruiting in companies can be. Some have multiple independent departments with different tools, some have no tools whatsoever (aka no ATS), employee turnaround on those teams is nuts etc.

That merely reinforces the popular notion that Amazon is a miserable place to work.

I've been getting Amazon recruitment emails (and a couple of phone calls) a lot lately, too. I wonder what's up.

I find it a bit annoying because Amazon is one of the companies that I would never willingly work for.

I missed this when it was posted, but yeah, I run a list of UK recruitment spammers in Gmail filter format: https://github.com/drcongo/spammy-recruiters

This would be great. I often get re-occurring unsolicited emails as well from the recruiting side. Not sure how many times I get "Exceptional Java engineer from X FAANG" only to find out that they were a 2 month contractor and we don't even use Java in our stack.

There should be a way to redirect one recruiter's mail to the other. Redirect spam back to them.

I've told recruiters to straight up lick my butt before

I just mark them as spam and unsubscribe when they add my work email to a random subscription list I haven't been asked to.

The weird thing is that inside the EU, supposedly GDPR protects against being automatically enlisted to email subscriptions or receiving repeated emails about the same topic without your authorization (and expires every 3 years).

The thing with GDPR is that it mostly affects legitimate, ethical businesses without their own legal department, i.e., those that won't engage in activities GDPR is supposed to protect against anyway.

Fly-by-night companies often simply don't care.

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