Tuesday, June 24, 2008

let us imagine you were a recruiter

I received an amusing blind approach from a recruiter today. Included below with certain details redacted:

Cory,
Hello my name is [redacted] and I am from [redacted] in Boston. I am an IT Recruiter and I am working with one of my top clients in Boston which is looking for an OpenGL developer for an iPhone/game application. Please send me your updated Word formatted resume and also give me a call at [redacted] to discuss the opening if you are interested. If you are not interested and know someone who may be please forward my contact information along. I want to thank you for your time and I hope to hear from you soon.
Best,
[redacted]
Wow. Sending a spam email that demonstrates zero time spent investigating me is not the way to get me to send you a resume or help you find someone else, which is kind of silly given how many developers I know.

This was one of two recruiter emails I received today. The other one was also spam, but took things up a notch by arriving with several hundred email addresses that were supposed to be BCC-ed showing up. Is the tech job market once again hot enough to support such poor recruiting?

13 comments:

Tateru Nino said...

Wherever there is money to be made, there are people who look to obtain a share with little or no effort.

I've had worse from recruiters in the last couple decades, and it's made me very fussy indeed about which ones I go to when I look for new hires.

Tateru Nino said...

(Speaking of which, Google - if you're not going to make a superior offer, please stop contacting me. I've turned down the same offer like eight times now)

The Speaking Wood said...

I am glad someone finally brought this up!

It is truly a nightmare, especially when you are looking out for a job and end up getting such mails from recruiters.

Troy Mc said...

This looks like a recruitment email, but it is in fact a clever mind virus, designed to make you spend some time thinking about the iPhone. Maybe EMI could benefit from an iPhone application... You completed the local viral cycle by posting a bit of the email on your blog, thereby spreading it to all your readers.

Humans: soooo predictable!

Tim Allen / FlipperPA said...

Even worse are some of the companies supporting these folks. There's a company here in Philadelphia that has had the same "job" listed with area recruiters for over a year now. Just about every recruiter who contacts me blindly mentions the same job, same company, same "too good to be true" nonsense. Out of curiosity, I was asked for more information. It turns out to "prove yourself" they want you to write code - for free - after an informal phone interview. This sent up all kind of red flags for me, so I did the phone interview. It turns out, the free code they wanted written was to steal all of Facebook's data using PHP and cURL. Be careful out there!

shekeh said...

i have never heard anything like that before.Oh My

Unknown said...

I got cold called like that once on my cell. They wouldn't tell me the name of the company or the job, but proceeded to have someone with barely passable English quiz me on basic C++ concepts, which I of course answered out of mere curiosity :) When the recruiter got back on the line, I read her the riot act.

Then again, being on the hiring end of things has been even stranger -- I've received persistent calls about interviewing some "amazing female coder" who's about to take another offer (I can only imagine why he thought that trick would work). He wouldn't even set up a phone interview or pass an anonymous resume -- I was supposed to come interview in person in the recruiter's downtown office.

I was almost tempted to do it just so I could later press charges for false imprisonment. And the recruiter is still trying to get into my LinkedIn network and passing himself off as my cousin, etc..

Matt Clark said...

Oh man that is so lame! The nerve of some people and these lame companies that promote such tactics!

By the way, I thought you might be interested Mr. Cory in our blog

http://ilovegrapedrink.blogspot.com/

but if not, maybe you know some people that you could send our way.

Good luck in your job hunt, and we hope to hear from you soon!

Brett said...

The more you put into something the more you get out, you think recruiters would know this.

Noah S-L said...

I have a name for those people. I call them eJerks. I once got an email about my science blog from someone called "My Life Is [redacted]". Apparently they were anti-science

Etheone said...

You did the right thing. Too many of these jerks think Individuals are stupid enough to fall for the scam, on the other hand so many desperate j/seekers respond and soon learn the lesson - nothing is free.

Mr. Nissan said...

I would try to get someone i think has potential and would do things without me having to tell them.

Talent Diva said...

I absolutely detest these email. I posted one on my blog and I posted my response to said recruiter. These tactics make it bad for all recruiters. Very irritating indeed.