Recruiters: get involved.

It annoys me that I'm in the process of starting a user group in the "remote" Northern Michigan. In the beginning I emailed a personal invitation to the larger tech companies in the area just to come and hang out. Mingle with developers, and eat free food that I was sponsoring. I even chose "softer" topics so it didn't come off as 100% geek. I didn't receive a single response.

In fact, a couple developers from one of the companies attended frequently, and it was a few months into it that they found out I sent an email to their company. They found out about the group from different channels. Whoever received the email didn't even forward it on.

A month ago, I received a call from a recruiter asking if I knew anyone in the group with a specific skill set. They were hiring for another company that also ignored my email.

I'm only sponsoring the group because there aren't any running up here, and I enjoy helping grow a software community. When companies want to hire people, but don't take the initiative to meet potential candidates who are obviously interested in their work, they are neglecting a very obvious talent pool.

There's really nothing less personal than a machine generated email. Which is essentially all I get from recruiters.