Recruit this
blog.samuellevy.com
blog.samuellevy.com
For example it says to name the company (and why) and that if the recruiter has trust issues with their client that I don't want to get involved. It becomes very obvious which recruiters have actually read the note to make sure the company and I are possibly matched, versus those that are indistinguishable from spammers.
Several years ago I was interviewing somewhere and Googled the job blurb. There were over 100 recruiters who had copied the job details from the company website and pretended it was their own client. (I checked with the company - they had in house recruiters and did not accept external ones - all those external ones were charlatans.)
Thankfully there are some good recruiters out there, but sadly they are seriously outnumbered.
I use LinkedIn, and have a personal website with my CV on it, and I experience this almost daily.
Recently, I've started keeping a list of all the recruiters that spam me or try to get in contact with me. I know quite a few of the companies in my area that are hiring so I usually run these names past people that work there and more often than not these recruiters will just scrape sites like Stack Overflow Careers to find companies that are hiring, only to sell people already on their books.
The worst I've experienced is when one of the large agencies in Bristol were hiring. My company received a phone call from a hurried man saying "Something is wrong, I need to speak to EnderMB". The second I picked up the phone, fearing the worst, this guy told me he was a recruiter and asked if I was happy at my job. After some harsh words he hung up, and then sent me a message on LinkedIn asking me to recommend other developers to him. Half an hour later, the phone rung again with someone saying that they needed to speak to someone else at the company. The boss gave the phone over, and it was the same guy again, doing the same thing to everyone in the company on my LinkedIn friends list. I checked with the hiring company and they'd blacklisted this guy and his company before, but they had tried to sell developers to him under another holding company.
Recruitment is entirely out of hand now. The only recruiters I've ever wanted to deal with are internal recruiters who seem to actually give a shit about getting good talent to their company.
Don't let them near your cell phone number. Keep it off your profile. Put a Google Voice number in there instead. It's like Craigslist, there are advantages to using them, but you need to wear your big boy pants and take some simple steps to protect your privacy.
Recruiters are not technical and never will be. "I think I'll quit programming and start recruiting" -- No one, ever. Do not expect them to know anything about the jobs they're pitching. They're sales types, skilled at making connections with people, not machines. Try to appreciate that instead of demanding they learn two difficult skill-sets just for a fairly-poorly compensated job.
Keep each email to a single question until you've established that the opportunity is worth pursuing. Don't let them set the direction of the discussion until then. In the situation described, I would have simply asked, over and over again, "What is the salary range offered?" until they coughed up a number.
A recruiter found me my current job. I might be here a month until another recruiter will find me another making more money.
From what I gather, the UK and EU don't value software developers as much, so the bill rates are probably lower.
I guess I'm the exception to the rule then. I studied software development in a prestigious university and worked as a developer for a few years and left because I simply didn't enjoy it and wasn't making as much money as I hoped. Admittedly I wasn't the greatest developer in the world but I was at the very least average. I left development to work in sales and eventually and (unintentionally) fell into recruitment. I currently work as an inhouse recruiter for a large development company and make significantly more money than what I could have expected had I stayed in development.
for a fairly-poorly compensated job.
Base salaries in agency recruitment are poor but if you do nothing more than hit your targets then you'll comfortably clear £60k a year in the UK whilst still in your early twenties. There are plenty of recruiters who would struggle to print 'hello world' in any language that still clear six figures a year.
Your advice about protecting your cell phone number is absolutely spot on though.
Three days later (on a Monday), she calls me, and tells me
that she has organised an interview for me for Tuesday afternoon.
What? I went to the interview [...]
Why wouldn't you go to the interview? The recruiter seemed to be so out of the loop that you may have missed a great opportunity had you not gone. Also self promotion and meeting new people in your field is never a bad thing.
If they set up an interview that you didn't request, that you don't want, and you go to it - you're the one to blame. Chances are you contributed to part of their incentive pay by participating in that interview. Further, they're not 'taking "no" for an answer' because you're not telling them "no."
Firms like Riviera Partners in SanFran have different tiers of clients. Some pay 33% on base salary, others 25%... guess what interviews you'll be pushed into first?
If you pass, you probably won't even hear about the job openings at the companies that are "only" paying 25% commissions, even if it's potentially a better fit for you.
OTOH, we've seen posts before from a company trying to be the equivalent of an agent for developers. Negotiating better salary and finding jobs the developer is going to enjoy more is indeed a service that is worth the expense for the developer; the company is also more likely to get a long-term, quality (viz. someone at least interested in the company's vision) hire. The problem is that this kind of recruitment requires effort, real communication, and thoughtfulness, instead of email-blasting as many addresses as you can find.
Even at DeveloperAuction we get clueless recruiters pitching us Java Engineers in NYC (We're rails in SF) and sending us "blinded" resumes with personally identifiable contact details removed. It's craziness!
Also, don't call it freelancing, call it consulting, and charge more.
In some cases they can be aggressive and schedule interviews, or act as if we had spoken previously and that my memory was defective. I don't tolerate gaslighting and tell them. I never hear from them again.