I do not get that many emails/contacts from recruiters, and I find a quick polite email exchange or one phone call allows to quickly clarify the situation and we're done.
I actually welcome recruiters contacting me, it keeps me in the loop of what's going, market rate etc... and sometime help me finding new gigs.
EDIT: It seems that where you are located makes a big difference. I get a few emails a week, almost zero spam. People in the bay area reports dozen of emails a day from robots based on keywords, that would indeed be frustrating.
It seems to have gotten a lot worse lately, and the recruiters all seem to copy each other now:
Recruiter: You seem to be a perfect candidate for job A.
Really? That's nice. I'll read on to see the offer...
Recruiter: The position is a senior role using X, Y, Z
Wait a minute, I don't use X, I've only seen Y once and haven't worked in Z for years. What makes this person think I'm right for this position?
Recruiter: Can you send me your resume.
Oh, I see. CV scraping. They collect them for their portfolio I guess, or sell them on or something. It really isn't worth replying if they couldn't even be bothered to read the Linkedin profile they sent a message to, from which it would have been clear that I am in no way a perfect or appropriate candidate for said position.
I've also noticed that Linkedin profile scraping has become more prevalent over the years. I've countered this by adding a few fake skills to my profile.
> "With your underwater basket-weaving chops, the <redacted> team will surpass its goal of exceeding 100M users by 2015."
These, usually more subtle markers, are helpful to scan for when glancing through any recruiter emails.
I don't mind either, but what's annoying is how frustratingly vague they are when they are contacting me first. A typical example:
Recruiter: "I have a great senior engineering position and you're a perfect match!"
Me: "Great. Can you send me a job description and tell me more about what field they're in? I'm an embedded guy and I'm going to want to know if this is (for example) medical, automotive, HMI, or something else."
And this is where things completely go to hell. The typical response is a job description that reads as "must know how to write software" and I've even gotten repsonses like "the client is starting in a new sector and is so stealth they can't talk about it." Seriously?
The other annoying trend now is the marketing and sales types that are scraping LinkedIn for buzzwords and cold calling you based on that. Don't believe me? Put the word "IoT" somewhere in your top description block and watch your inbox and voicemail over the next two weeks.
I really don't mind the emails. It's the cold calls that bug me. I'll be sitting at my desk, happy and content and writing code, when my phone starts to buzz.
"Odd," I say, "I don't know anybody from Massachusetts.. maybe it's important!"
So I answer.
"Hello, I am calling from [recruiting company] and have a perfect position for you doing [x, y, and z]! Are you interested?"
Now I think to myself that maybe the job will be good, maybe the pay will be higher than what I'm currently getting, maybe it will be doing something I enjoy. So I say "Okay, sure. Tell me more."
The response is the same every time "Okay, I will send you an email to [my email address] if you would kindly respond with haste!"
I politely say thanks and hang up the phone. I go to check my email and sure enough, there it is- "Hello, I am with [recruiting company] and have a perfect position for you doing [x, y, and z]! Kindly fill out the info below and send me your resume."
WHY?! WHY ARE YOU CALLING ME IF YOU'RE JUST GOING TO SEND ME AN EMAIL SAYING THE EXACT THING YOU TOLD ME ON THE PHONE?!?!
I never answer calls from numbers I don't know. I rarely listen to voice mails from the same. How often do important calls come from unknown numbers? In my case, never.
If its a business thing, and they don't have my email address, chances are we don't have any relationship that will lead to anything productive.
I agree wholeheartedly with you, to me it's a form of humblebragging. It's definitely a nice thing to be in high demand and 'complaining' about recruiters knocking down the door seems so arrogant and unaware.
The low quality spam I can do without, but it's never anything to whine about, filter and move on if it's a problem.
I like recruiters but I don't like the BS games. I think OPs creation is designed to cut through the BS and avoid wasting time. It really sucks to hear about a cool opportunity and set up a call to find out the pay is too low, the opportunity is at an undesirable company, or it simply isn't exactly what you were looking for. And all that happens because they try to withhold information until they get you on the phone and apply their sales tactics. OPs creation is an attempt to figure most of this out and weed out the recruiters that are just spamming and trying to get a warm body in a seat.
I'm not an engineer/developer but this happens in my area as well.
Recruiter spam has no correlation with expertise but more with your online profiles. Take linked in for example, when I had my real experience there (technologies used, etc) I got spammed a lot, but since changing all my profile to just contain the basic info (worked at X in year Y) just so I can connect with past workers, I get maybe 1-2 linked in spam emails a month. I assume if you have (or had since some recruiters scrape and store) filled your details in a job site (monster, cwjobs, etc) before, that rate will be a lot higher than if you just have a tech blog. Again, no relation with expertise, just online profile
Recruiters come in waves, I may have zero recruiters for two months then have 4-5 in a week. So sometimes its flattering after the 3rd or 4th of things that barely fit, its just "What do you want?"
The only recruiters I ever reply to are ones that state the company that they are representing. They tend to be local and actually trying.
99% is useless spam. I usually reply back with a copy/paste filling in blanks with their name to please give me more specific info about the position and salary range. Even that is too much to ask and they don't usually reply with the info.
I mean.. that's what they are doing, might as well do the same.
I don't mind emails from recruiters. I normally have enough info to know there is no reason to talk to them, and just delete the email without replying, and once in a while I'll respond if it does have promise. But nothing has yet pulled me away from my current gig.
The ones that I don't understand is the people who ask to connect on LinkedIn, with no explanation of who they are or why they want to talk to me. For those, I send a generic email telling them that if they want to say something to me, feel free to send an email. None ever have actually done so.
Title/position affects it significantly. When my title went from software engineer and manager to independent consultant (and later, CEO) it went way down because they usually don't want to deal with corp to corp consultants/firms.
Of course, I do occasionally get people pitching me for software development and staffing services, even though my profile clearly shows I do both. You can't avoid the robots and grossly incompetent.
I'm a Designer with some developer skills and I get spammed constantly for having things like "Javascript" et al on my profile.
My true developer friends seem to get it even worse. Around here, Java is the big need, so if you've got it on your profile, expect constant recruiter spam.
Heh, Java. I have well over a decade of experience using Java... to write cross-platform desktop applications using Swing. Turns out that's not the kind of Java experience most companies are looking for. :-)
There are a lot of Java jobs out there.not in startup-land but government and big fortune 500 firms wrote a lot of Java applications in the 90s and early 2000's that they are still maintaining. Also, because of this they will often write new applications in Java because that's what their in house developers who were hired to maintain old apps already know.
I worked on a java server application about 10 years ago and I get more recruiters contacting me about Java positions from that one item on my resume than I get from anything more recent or currently popular.
>> I worked on a java server application about 10 years ago and I get more recruiters contacting me about Java positions from that one item on my resume than I get from anything more recent or currently popular.
Drop it from your resume. Go ahead and leave the position and project description, but leave the language out.
I get a dozen emails a day from recruiters, sometimes more. I don't have time for the phone calls, I barely have time for the emails. If I get a particularly egregious one, like, say, for a PHP position or DBA, I go off on them because it's ridiculous.
I've been working for 15 years and get a lot of emails. OK, it's useful when I need a job, but about 1 in 30 is relevant. You know it's all keyword based, I haven't done Java for 8 years yet I get it all the bloody time!
Yeah, I don't get the hate for recruiters and find the attention flattering. A lot of my friends who are not in our industry find in foreign that I get so many emails and LinkedIn messages from headhunters on a weekly basis.
Further, when I respond to recruiters I tell them that I'm making a ton more then I am and in doing so, I get interviews where the offers are paying tons more then my current salary.
Why not use them to get a better deal? The majority of the notices you get go nowhere, while some do and you then get a new gig that pays you almost double from what you were making.
Recent exchange I had with a recruiter over email:
Recruiter: I found your email on LinkedIn and I have a few Java positions you might be interested in. Would you be interested in <blah blah blah>
Me: I don't have a LinkedIn account. How did you actually find my info?
Recruiter: It was in a database we share with a few other recruitment agencies.
Me: Could you remove me from the database?
Recruiter: Okay, you have been removed from the database.
Me: Since we both know you didn't delete it, you at least update it to say I'm interested in Python jobs? I haven't worked in Java in 5 years and have no interest in going back.
Recruiter: Okay, I've added Python to your languages.
Me: But you didn't remove me from the database and you didn't remove Java from my languages?
Recruiter: I'm not authorized to remove data from the database.
Me: So you lied about where you got my info and you lied about deleting my data from your database?
I like to think that after this he had a revelation and switched careers, but more likely he moved on to prey on another sucker.
EDIT: This was from a new recruitment address. Most recruitment emails I receive get filtered and receive an automated response telling them politely that I'm not interested in their services.
Recruiter here, and I'd welcome this type of response. I'd much prefer to reach out to someone via email address than LinkedIn, but when I can't find an address (it happens) it means a LinkedIn invite that has severe character limits. All you can usually fit is a quick intro and "are you interested in discussing a job doing..." type stuff.
This response gives the recruiter an opportunity to present a fairly decent pitch, while giving the recipient the ability to screen a more complete pitch instead of a truncated note.
I'm not keen on Typeform's scrolling form presentation. When I'm filling in a form I like to have a mental map of where I am, whereas this feels like stumbling through fog.
There's a problem with asking how much they're willing to pay up front: It's a negotiation and in order to get an actual number, you have to sell yourself first. If you seriously want to know what they're willing to pay, you'll have to go through the whole hiring process.
> There's a problem with asking how much they're willing to pay up front: It's a negotiation and in order to get an actual number, you have to sell yourself first.
Only because enough people accept that to shift the power away from would-be employees. If there is really a shortage of good tech workers, as employers keep claiming, then they have the power -- all they have to do is choose to exercise it. Make the would be employers (and the recruiters acting as their agents) establish that its worth your time to even bother considering the work they want done by putting numbers on the table first.
Lately, if I can get a job description from the recruiter, I'll reply with 'I would require ${current salary * 1.1} to consider moving at this time'. Usually I get responses such 'they would go that salary for the right candidate'. Note you have to specify straight salary, not total compensation, otherwise they try to tack on all the benefits everyone offers now as 'total compensation package' BS.
Right -- for the right candidate. I don't buy things without vetting them first; why would I expect someone else to? The suggestion that there is some exact figure out there that you are worth is false binary thinking. There are lots of factors that make you a better or worse candidate for any particular job. The better you are at the art of feeling out the situation and presenting yourself in the best light, the better you'll do, and the more you'll realize that starting with, "What are you offering?" isn't a good tactic.
I had one track down the phone number for my employer, call here, and ask the secretary to speak with me while refusing to say what the reason was until he spoke with me.
Hasn't happened to me, but it's happened several times to a guy I work with. They always claim that they need help with some software issue, I guess to make it sound more plausible, though I have no idea why anyone outside the company would call us for software help.
Same thing here - on top he was talking in English (I'm German) and didn't even ask if I was in a good position to talk. Talk about awkwardness to my colleagues.
At another job I worked at, our team had some of the most well-known devs in the metropolitan area, and our office line received 5-10 calls a day from recruiters asking for one of the devs. We had a team rule: you answer with "Hello" only and don't give any information to the caller until they give you their name, company, and reason for calling. It didn't stop some people from calling us daily.
If they are retained, it's usually a selling point.
But an appropriate response would be-- 'reports to the VP Engineering, will share full details once we've had a live conversation and decide to move forward'
This is absolutely brilliant. The thing is, how do you actually reply the recruiters with the link? Surely it would be rather rude to simply reply a solicitation with a 'please check this link'.
I'd imagine it's done in the same automated manner the recruiters usually use when contacting a possible lead.
It does not seem rude to me to reply to someone with a brief salutation and a request to complete some forms when that is what they are requesting you do as well.
Huh, interesting. what's the feedback from the recruiters? How do they respond? This idea is absolutely fantastic that I might just as well do it myself as well.
I talk right back to them. I'm not looking for a new job, but I do have former employees and friends and if I think they're qualified, I try to get the recruiter and my colleague together.
Many commenters are talking about how they handle/manage this, generally by replying to the recruiter in some fashion.
Consider that you have no societal/politeness obligation to reply to any sales (and recruiting is sales) email, ever. You can just ignore/filter with abandon.
These folks are eating up your most precious resource - your time.
This is pretty awesome, I don't know what it is but I've been getting more aggressive recruiters actually calling me. One even called the office of my recent new job! Huge wtf; I'm a dev I like automation, don't call.
1. Name - This is already in emails I get from recruiters
2. Email - Useful since LinkedIn emails typically don't include their actual email
3. Phone Number - Ditto to #1; they typically include it
4. How did you find me - Considering you stated this is in reply to LinkedIn recruiters; LinkedIn?? ...
5. Name of the company - Most recruiters will not share this information until you have gone through the process more. What is to stop you from ignoring them and contacting companies directly once they give this? This is a poor choice and will drive away recruiters. I do see this is not a required field, but that is not obvious at first glance.
6. Location - You should consider converting this into a zipcode lookup or something. If not generic information such as state or city may be entered here. ( or possibly nothing/bogus info )
7. Job title - Often recruiters have multiple positions available depending on your experience and fit. Also job title doesn't necessarily mean anything. Half of the jobs I have had had no job title.
8. Job description - This is usually provided in the email I get from recruiters. That said, sometimes they don't so I can see the use. You might consider adding "Required skills" as a question also.
9. Yearly salary before taxes - This is a required field. If I were a recruiter I would ignore you at this point. You should be more interested in the opportunity not the exact pay. This looks like a money grab. Having a good career is more important than a dollar figure. Better than this would be a set of ranges; then you can ignore all requests in the ranges you would not accept. Gets you similar info but avoids the insult.
> You should be more interested in the opportunity not the exact pay. This looks like a money grab. Having a good career is more important than a dollar figure.
If you're already in a position that you enjoy, the dollar figure is certainly one of, if not the most important items on a cold call job offer. Asking them to open the discussion with a rough number is more than fair, in my book.
I would never hire someone with this perspective. Quality of the position and the ability to enjoy it and work hard without stressing is way more important than pay in my book.
Let's assume we have two people, and for sake of discussion, both will only work 8 hours a day. Do you think enthusiasm will trump experience and profissionalism?
I don't follow the latest trends in frameworks/languages, I like solid solutions over start up mentality of ship fast and think over the problems and design good solutions for my clients. I work with SV startups that have all these people that 'care' but I'm still called to clean up their shit. And because of this, I make very very good money. I still won't work more than 8 hours a day, and except for a couple hours to unwind (HN, news, reddit) I don't even touch the computer and spend the time with my family/community. And I can tell you, if sweeping streets paid me more, I would be sweeping streets. I don't give a fuck about the work I do. Want me to work on oil platform, if you pay me, sure! A social network for gerbils, if you pay me, sure! HFT, if you pay me, sure!
Since someone who's gainfully employed and considers pay a prevailing factor wouldn't really be compatible with you it sounds like including that would effectively keep someone like them and someone like you from wasting each other's time.
In your position I'd be appreciative of that sort of honesty instead of encouraging folks to hide it since you have very different priorities.
You know what can make your life really stressful? The inability to pay rent or afford clothes/food for your spouse and kids.
Pay is hugely important in determining your quality of life. You can't just completely ignore the subject.
If the job opportunity being offered doesn't pay enough for you to afford your house or apartment, you can write it off no matter how interesting you might find the work.
Note I did not say that I would not pay my developers what they are worth. I am saying I would not put it out there initially in emails. If I stated I pay well publicly it would just attract money grubbing morons.
I've seen people happily work at much lower pay then they deserve. I've also seen people work at higher pay then they are worth and still be miserable. Pay isn't all that.
Re asking recruiters about salary - it's about not wasting everyone's time. If someone's happy with their current job and would need a substantial pay increase to consider leaving it, then it is a waste of both their time and the recruiters time if the salary requirements can't be met. I would change that field's description to include "approximate", though.
The most negative reaction I've ever gotten to something like "I'm happy with my job, and it would take a salary somewhere in the ballpark of $X to tempt me away, is that feasible?" was "If you're making anywhere near $X now I'm impressed.". The number I give for $X varies a little depending on their pitch - for example it goes up by at least $100k if they mention that they're looking for someone manage compliance for PCI-DSS, HIPPA, SOX or similar.
Can you tell me more about the last part? I am interning currently with an information security consulting company and most of what I will be doing is working on PCI-DSS audits. Accounting/Econ degree, I am having trouble finding salary ranges for professionals in this area.
There's a lot less people in security than in software engineering, and paranoia comes with the field, so the data really isn't very good. I'm also not entry level. I don't want to do compliance stuff because none of the people I've talked to seem happy with it - the salary range I quote for being willing to do that sort of work is fairly far beyond what I expect to get.
"Opportunity"! Opportunity to work for less while the recruiter sits there earning a fat fee for merely passing on my resume? No thanks.
I love how everyone thinks their job is some amazing opportunity but won't back it up with something useful you can put towards maybe buying a place to live, like money.
Recruiters don't merely pass on resumes. They work hard to find viable candidates and to tolerate their crappy attitudes when they are trying to help place people in good jobs.
I don't know about the overall market for recruiters, but it doesn't look that way to most developers, since the crappy recruiters tend to spam everyone who sounds vaguely qualified for the position based on a keyword search on Linkedin, Google, Github, etc. Any good recruiters who are actually working hard to find viable candidates for a position tend to get lost in the noise.
I have interacted to a meaningful extent with at least 10 different major recruiting firms, and I can tell you that it varies greatly. There are lots of ones that suck, but some of them are actually quite good and respond well and work for you if you actually talk to them and explain what you are looking for.
Hating on all recruiters since a large percentage of them suck isn't fair.
> Most recruiters will not share this information until you have gone through the process more. What is to stop you from ignoring them and contacting companies directly once they give this?
Common courtesy. Not giving company name is a sign that the deal with the recruiter will likely not be a "win-win" arrangement.
> This is a poor choice and will drive away recruiters.
I think that's sort of a point of that form. There's way too much recruiter spam in tech, so it's good for you to get rid of the more exploiting ones.
> You should be more interested in the opportunity not the exact pay. This looks like a money grab. Having a good career is more important than a dollar figure.
I don't think this really applies to most programming jobs; the current trend in tech is to switch a job every couple of years.
I agree it is reasonable to share the company name once you express interest. It is not reasonable to need it to decide whether you will even speak to the recruiter.
If your desire is just to weed out recruiters, why not just say "fuck off" and see which ones still persist. This is nearly equivalent.
The whole attitude of "I want to know the salary since I intend to switch again in a couple of years" is exactly why I wouldn't hire people with this attitude.
> I agree it is reasonable to share the company name once you express interest. It is not reasonable to need it to decide whether you will even speak to the recruiter.
Fair enough.
> If your desire is just to weed out recruiters, why not just say "fuck off" and see which ones still persist. This is nearly equivalent.
That's actually the reverse filter - it would weed out the ones you'd like to talk about, and leave out spammers.
> The whole attitude of "I want to know the salary since I intend to switch again in a couple of years" is exactly why I wouldn't hire people with this attitude.
In tech, most people you're recruiting already have a job. So I want to know the salary as an input for consideration if I care to leave my current position.
This circles back to the company name issue - if I am to treat a new job primarily as an "opportunity" for doing something good/interesting, I'll need to know a lot more than just what kind of skills they're looking for. I'd like to do my own research, and for that, I need the company name.
You would be surprised at recruiters tolerance for being told off. I have experimented with some and they actually take it very well. They are human beings, as long as you are real they will respond in term.
I don't say something like that until they know me a bit though. I have asked my current consultant group "What happens if I tell you to fuck off?" The guy responded "Well I wouldn't like it, but you do your job well and I wouldn't take it personally."
5. is interesting, I honestly never considered your reasoning, but it makes sense. It also backfires though, I wouldn't talk to recruiter that wouldn't tells me the name of the company. There are companies that I wouldn't want to work for. They are usually the same companies that outsource recruitment, so it works out okay.
> Having a good career is more important than a dollar figure
I consider a decent salary part of a good career. If it was just about doing stuff I care about I wouldn't work at all, I could do all those things without a job. Giving at least a salary range would be expected.
While I agree you need to know the company before accepting; the goal of recruiters primarily is to give you some limited information and then see if you are willing to talk on the phone. A short phone call is the best most efficient way to handle recruiters. You can have a frank conversation and determine exactly how valuable they are in a short period of time.
Dragging on initial email crap does not truly handle the situation.
As stated already, I think a range is reasonable. Asking the exact number is not.
9. I disagree you're wasting everyone's time if the numbers are way too far apart. I.E they would like to pay 80k+ Options when you're currently @ 130k + Vested Options.
Agree with this. Most recruiters just spam. If you reply and theres a 50k spread on what you need vs what they're offering, time has been wasted on both parts.
I wouldn't even waste the harddrive space for a database entry unless I knew the exact location where I would be working and the name of the company that I would be working at. Most companies are bullshit and I have a very low tolerance for that or commuting (since length of commute is inversely correlated with happiness).
No, I am not going to go outside and apply directly - I wouldn't get a higher salary that way.
I did not intend for it to be taking so seriously. It is more a mirror for the recruitment business and the fact that they on occasions spam people big time.
Do you think the recruiter asks the employer? If so, there are two possible reasons: because it's pertinent information for candidates, or because the recruiter gets paid based on that info. If the former, no insult. If the latter, the recruiter is in familiar territory if so "insulted" by the candidate.
Yes it is. Many companies doing direct hire ( going past recruiters entirely ) will drop you as a candidate entirely if you ask for salary too soon in the process.
Sounds like another awful BS filter with a high false positive rate, like the outfits that require you to submit a resume, and then painstakingly duplicate that information into a set of form fields (one or the other sure, but both?)
For the most part, people are working to get paid. I see absolutely no need to sugar coat or dance around this simple fact.
Recruiters typically make a percentage based on what you end up getting paid. It is in their best interest for you to be paid more not less. The only reason they would pay less is to try to get people into a position to which they don't otherwise fit well.
I do not get that many emails/contacts from recruiters, and I find a quick polite email exchange or one phone call allows to quickly clarify the situation and we're done.
I actually welcome recruiters contacting me, it keeps me in the loop of what's going, market rate etc... and sometime help me finding new gigs.
EDIT: It seems that where you are located makes a big difference. I get a few emails a week, almost zero spam. People in the bay area reports dozen of emails a day from robots based on keywords, that would indeed be frustrating.