Gah, recruiters, LinkedIn, and a good problem to have | Hacker News Reader

Gah, recruiters, LinkedIn, and a good problem to have

vazor.com

What an incredibly self-righteous and unnecessary response.

Everyone hates recruiters, fine, I get that. It doesn't change the fact that like you, they are also trying to make a living. They also have friends and family that give a shit about them and despite the fact that they may be exceptionally annoying at times, responses like this are simply rude and unprofessional.

6 or 7 no replies is "I'm not interested" in normal person speak.

Wrong. 1 reply of "I'm not interested, please don't contact me again." is normal speak.

Sorry Matt but your response does you no favours and it certainly doesn't educate the recruiter in question.

Dude, I get where you are coming from but seriously, the word No doesn't get processed by a salesperson the way normal people process it.

My Linkedin profile explicitly says "No third party recruiters". I have explicitly responded to multiple third party recruiters telling them I do not want my resume in their hand, I don't want to be considered for any position from whatever shitty stealth startup they are working with. Nope. Nothing. I still get emails; GUESS WHAT? THEY ARE FROM THE SAME FUCKING RECRUITER(S).

I agree with your second paragraph entirely. There's nothing to indicate that OP had a similar disclosure on his LinkedIn and he implicitly states that at no point did he tell her to stop prior to this email. If he had and she ignored that request then his response would have been entirely justified.

Most agency recruiters are terrible. Most couldn't care less what you think of them. Most of them are entirely deluded and believe they are the greatest sales people to walk the earth. Most. Not all. Recruiter bashing is easy however remaining professional is more appropriate.

THIS.

We put a job advert up on LinkedIn recently. It said in big bold capital letters at the very top "Absolutely no agencies/recruiters"

Guess what? We got 50+ calls from job agencies in under 1 week. Some, multiple times, even after we politely told them we were not interested and not to contact us again.

My only guess is that people working in recruitment have targets to hit in terms of number of calls to make each day and they'll try and hit that target anyway possible.

My only guess is that people working in recruitment have targets to hit in terms of number of calls to make each day and they'll try and hit that target anyway possible

A guess that happens to be 100% accurate. Recruiters are targeted on a huge number of factors, primarily the number of jobs they fill obviously but also the number of new clients acquired, number of clients contacted, candidate contacts, client visits, etc. It's a long list.

"the word No doesn't get processed by a salesperson the way normal people process it"

how true. don't all self professed sales gurus teach that you need to get through 7 "No"-s to get a "Yes"

"I'm just trying to make a living for my family" is the last refuge of telemarketers, car dealers, and the assholes who ship me junk mail every week that goes straight from the mailbox to the recycle bin.

"Wrong. 1 reply of "I'm not interested, please don't contact me again." is normal speak."

No. This is no different to spam, it is an unsolicited email for commercial gain for the sender. What you are advocating is that a recipient opts out of an unsolicited contact. That doesn't scale. It places the onus on clearing up the mess on the recipient.

The presence of an email address on the web doesn't confer the right to reply for the sender. It cannot be considered opting into anything. And as such, it should not require a recipient to opt-out.

Don't assume silence means consent.

And you thought nothing that they've completely taken the human part out of it and the fact that that email was sent by a machine? It's spam - a conversation isn't one way and if she wanted to have one I'd appreciate the email actually being sent by a human, not a form letter from a machine - so you can see why I don't reply in the first place and how six or seven emails gets annoying...

...they've completely taken the human part out of it and the fact that that email was sent by a machine?

As I said, that may be annoying but it's not rude or patronising.

I'm not attempting to justify her approach or persistence. Had you previously asked her to stop and she subsequently ignored that request then your response would have been entirely justified.

Professionalism goes both ways regardless of how little value you place in the other persons use to you.

I appreciate what you're saying, but I'm just numb to recruiters now - I've received enough bad-form contacts (cold-calls from people looking up my phone number in DNS records even) that I've lost all sympathy. I guess that is my failing here.

> cold-calls from people looking up my phone number in DNS records even

I actually kind of respect that. At least they took the effort to look up your domain and do a whois.

In general, I reward recruiters who bother to visit my site (and use the contact info there) by actually reading what they send.

Peroni, I notice you're a recruiter. Shouldn't you be distancing yourself from clearly bad recruiting practices?

I'm an internal recruiter not an agency recruiter. A distinction I'm very defensive about!

I've built my reputation on attacking poor recruiting practices and I agree that this particular recruiter's approach is poor, however I believe the response is significantly worse.

Yes, it seems being contacted by a lot of recruiters has really gone to this guys head.

This is incredibly unprofessional, a simple polite, "Im not currently looking" would be suffice.

The recruiter doesnt need his life story.

Does spam go to your head?

I usually reply "I'm not looking right now - thx" to principles - ie, Google or Facebook or some internal recruiter trying to hire people. I get it, I've used recruiters in the past, and when done right, they're a valuable tool.

This is spam, if you spam me, expect the pointy end of something. And it's not like I cursed her up and down and sideways or anything - just giving her a piece of my mind.

I honestly don't understand why everyone hates recruiters so much.

Yes, you say they're a "good problem" to have but how are they a problem at all? How much effort does it take to delete an email/message, especially if you automate it?

I just don't understand the fuss. If anything, I enjoy the little ego boost every time I log in to LinkedIn and see another recruiter knocking. It's nice to be wanted.

People who are old enough will remember the same argument about e-mail spam; it only takes a second to delete, so what's the problem?

Me, I still don't like spam.

> People who are old enough will remember the same argument about e-mail spam

I think that supports my point. Because when was the last time you actually saw spam in your inbox?

Yesterday, actually. Somehow it passed through the span filter (of course I marked it as spam but still).

Your point will be supported if we ever get automated recruiter-filters with 99.9% accuracy.

Most of them just seem kinda dumb.

They write mails to me where they tell me stuff about how they read my profile and think I'm the perfect fit for the position they want to fill, because of reasons that aren't in my profile.

I put stuff about ux-design, software engineering and JavaScript in and get mails about embedded systems...

You're probably right but I can't help thinking that when the time comes and I need a new job they're not going to be THAT useful because most of them are really inefficient/incompetent.

I've been collecting a list of "good recruiters" that really look like they know what they're doing and "get" my interests (OSS + Python ideally), and so far the list is depressingly short.

TL;DR: recruiting attention is OK, but quantity without quality is just annoying and useless.

Looks like I'm now up to 8 emails from this same recruiter over the past year. She must have quite the list -- a friend also receives messages from her.

All a little over a month apart and the last several sent around the same time of day? Within a dozen seconds or so?

How do I get this problem? :)

1. Get a LinkedIn account 2. Put web tech buzzwords in it - extra points for Ruby, Rails, social, mobile, or big data 3. Profit

One thing to try: ensure your LinkedIn settings allow other people to know when you've looked at their profile, then look at the profiles of lots of recruiters.

I guess Python by itself isn't "webby" enough. :/

Step 3 is always ???. Step 4 is profit.

Actually, it is not always "???".

Where this meme originally came from, step 2 was "???" and step 3 was profit[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gnomes_plan.png

The point is, there is always the "???" phase.

D'oh. You're right! Thanks for the correction.

My usual response to recruiters (if I respond) is a short and polite "Not interested, happy where I am". However, Skyrocket Ventures is different. I've received several calls from them over the last year, all from blocked numbers (Note that I use Google Voice, so it's possible that is the cause).

I'll just put this right here.

http://denniskubes.com/2013/07/18/why-you-should-be-nice-to-...

Surely it's much easier to hit DELETE than to do a reply like this (plus I doubt that the said recruiter will take note, or even read it). By replying you are only serving to waste your time even further.

I'm sure she reads every reply, that's how this works you know... She can't place me in that dream job if she doesn't read my reply.

And I was venting - maybe at least she'll stop emailing me.

Well I doubt she read it in it's entirety.

btw. it was well written, but that's not really the point here.

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