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Comment by herge | Hacker News Reader

To anyone who gets harassed by clueless recruiters with doubtful job fillings, I have a much better idea than answering with angry or rude responses.

Simply send them a stock email that tells them that you have had bad experiences with other recruiters and that to filter out the serious job offers from the shots in the dark, ask for 500$ before continuing any conversation.

Do not remove yourself from the market, simply price yourself too highly for them to bother. And asking for money up front sure shuts them up fast. You still maintain "good relations", stay polite, and, in the worst case, you get 500$ to send them your C.V.

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You will never, ever get a single recruiter pay $500 to see your CV.

If you really want to reduce the amount of recruiter spam then I suggest you change your linkedin privacy settings and if you have a personal site, make it crystal clear you aren't interested in hearing from recruiters. Any recruiter who continues to contact you after that has done one of two things:

1. Ignored the message on your site

2. Found your old details on their internal database.

There's not much you can do about the first one but the second one is easily fixed. Simply ask them to remove your details and send you confirmation of the fact. They are legally required to do so if requested.

> You will never, ever get a single recruiter pay $500 to see your CV.

Good, then. I have never found a job through a recruiter, always through word of mouth.

You're not maintaining good relations to ask a recruiter to give you $500.. you're communicating that you have entitlement issues. Here's a possible helpful adjustment, if a recruiter is serious about representing you, ask them to write up a contract guaranteeing that they will donate $500 from the placement fee to the charity of your choice. If they fail to do so within 30 days of your starting date, then they are liable for the entire fee generated from your placement to be sent to the same charity. By doing it this way, you still know if they are serious, it's not about you getting money, and it helps society.

A recruiter improves hist relation with his client for every good C.V. he sends. My time is not worthless, why should I let a recruiter profit from it?

Your premise is incorrect; a recruiter only makes himself vulnerable with every good person (or C.V.) he introduces. If that person has no interest in the role/company or is not a good fit for the role then the recruiter's credibility suffers.

I've had similar results by informing recruiters that I'm planning on moving abroad in 2-3 years, and that I really don't want to switch jobs unless it directly furthers that goal. If I get even one recruiter who has contacts in New Zealand or Australia, that's a big win - otherwise, it politely tells them that I'm not on the U.S. job market.

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