With whispered apologies to my regular audience of developers who are not interested in a problem they are well aware of and we all know isn't going away any time soon.
Dear miscellaneous recruiters/agents wishing to contact me,
In general, in my day to day job hunt so far I have been going direct to the companies via contacts that I already have at those companies as there is a high likelihood I am interested in working at those companies.
I get a
lot of e-mails from recruiters/agents wishing to tell me about "opportunities" they have available, and can I give them my number so they can call me at my convenience.
The problem is, you never call at my convenience, you call me when I am eating lunch, or eating dinner, or I'm in a meeting, or I'm making coffee - and you generally call me to tell me about this "great position" where they are looking at moving from classic ASP to WebForms, but they have heard of this ASP.NET MVC thing and are definitely interested in
talking about better practises - and you know, I'm really not interested in a lot of that, and I'm even less interested in talking about them when I am doing something I actually want to do with my time.
My standard response to these e-mails is to ask for a job spec, so I can at a glance see if the role is something I wish to pursue any further. This, I believe is standard practise for those versed in dealing with recruiters and agents, and I am pleased to see that most of you do then send through some scant information about the role, which is normally enough for me to decide it is not something I am currently interested in.
This saves both me and you time and money, and makes me willing to further deal with you if you wish to e-mail me again in the future.
If you have more than one role you think I might be interested in, which is often the case, then sending them all through so I can again vet them in a similar and efficient manner
is what I would prefer happens.
If you do not send me information about the "opportunity" you are recruiting for, then I am going to believe one of two things:
- There is no opportunity and you are just trying to harvest my details
- There is an opportunity, but you are so insecure about any value you might bring to either myself or the company that I probably don't want to be dealing with you
Again, this is all standard stuff that you will have heard of time and time again, what you don't want to happen is the following, because it is not helpful to anybody.
I wouldn't ordinarily paste e-mail exchanges on the public internet, but I've removed all identifying information and this guy really rubbed me up the wrong way. I hope that is okay with most of you. I don't come across particularly well either in this exchange, and I'm not anonymous - I admit I got wound up by his attitude just a tad :-)
Recruiter
Hi Rob, is there a good time to reach you to discuss an opportunity?
Regards,
[Snip]
Me
Sure, but I don't usually give out my phone number unless I see real details about whatever the opportunity is :-)
Regards,
Rob
Recruiter
Hi Rob
I hope that you take this the right way, but I don’t know you and therefore cannot trust you. Therefore, mailing you a couple of websites and job specs could be the equivalent of flushing Spring’s mortgage payments and school fees down the toilet.
If you already have good penetration of the market and a nice offer in sight then I suggest you continue your current course, else a conversation between us could be useful.
I’ll let you make the judgement.
Regards
[Snip]
Not an e-mail, just a comment on the above
First up, you don't know me and cannot trust me? Trust goes both ways, I have to trust you if you are going to e-mail me and act as the agent between me and an employer. As far as I know, you are being paid off the back of selling me to a company, and you don't actually care whether I stay there or not - in fact it's probably better for you if I don't stay there and you can sell me down the river again at some point in the near future.
I don't want to hear about your mortgage payments and school fees, I understand that recruiters get paid on commission and I don't want to hear bull-crap terms like "penetration of the market" in e-mail exchanges about looking for roles.
I think my reply was quite restrained:
Rob
Hmm, that's the first time time a recruiter has ever refused a request for more information.
Honestly I don't know what you can't give me over e-mail that you have to give me over phone - if you're that worried I'll expend the effort required to go searching for the opportunity directly using whatever meager information about the role you guys normally end up giving then you are clearly are not confident in being able to provide enough value to either myself or the company to warrant your role in the affair.
Sure, I'm doing great on finding work, I'll never normally say no to hearing about other opportunities though - I just draw the line at handing my phone number to recruiters/agents before hearing any details, because while I can easily set up Spam rules in my e-mail, I can't do likewise for phone.
TLDR;
If you aren't willing to tell me anything about the opportunity over e-mail, then I will indeed continue on my own course
Thanks,
Rob
Recruiter
Hi Rob
Idea; how about just sending a CV then with telephone number removed? Another option would be to tell me where locations you are willing to work, for how much money and what type of company….
Regards
[Snip]
Rob
Okay, so the opportunity is actually the opportunity to get added to yet another recruiter's database so I can be hassled at any moment of the day with roles I'm likely not interested in.
The reason I asked for information about the opportunity was because I wanted to avoid that, I can search for jobs on monster/etc just as well as the next human being and don't need/want somebody doing that on my behalf
Sorry, I am really not interested - I recommend changing your tactics if you want to carry on paying that mortgage, because this sort of exchange does not give either of us any value
Past this point, I'm not going to reply any further as I am not interested in dealing with somebody who clearly doesn't have anything and is just looking to harvest my details for the future.
Recruiters, please - stop doing this, it isn't helpful and just makes people like me dislike people like you. Like I said, I am pleased that vast majority of you respond with details about whatever role it is you are recruiting for - you will always get a response from me via e-mail letting you know
- Why I am not interested
- What roles might be more suitable
Just don't waste my time and your time with exchanges like the above.
Thanks for reading, and apologies again to my regular readers for ranting on this blog, normal service to resume shortly.