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Ask HN: Is there a recruiter email blocklist somewhere?
Sometimes I get cold email from recruiters. These are uniformly useless. I don't mind too much, except for the ones who make a point of following up four times on the same day of the week.
I found a few old gists poking around but is there something like the hosts.txt files used for ad blocking?
- airwot4 5y agoHere's one but not sure how up to date it is https://github.com/jasoncartwright/recruiterdomains https://github.com/jasoncartwright/recruiterdomains
- endymi0n 5y agoPut this into our whole domain blocklist, but can confirm only about a 20% reduction. In the end, it's playing whack-a-mole. I've played with the idea of building a managed incoming email gateway SaaS (Codename Project S.H.I.E.L.D) where you can just exclude whole cohorts of unwanted inbounds (recruiting, offshoring, monetization, linkbuilding) powered by Machine Learning, but I'm too busy to build it any time soon. If someone's in and wants plans from my drawer, I'll be a paying first customer ;-)
- batch12 5y agoI built something like this for my personal use that filters based on domain/sender and provides per use addresses. There is no machine learning, but it has a sender learning period per address and can reject all new senders.
- onebot 5y agoThis would be great. I often get re-occurring unsolicited emails as well from the recruiting side. Not sure how many times I get "Exceptional Java engineer from X FAANG" only to find out that they were a 2 month contractor and we don't even use Java in our stack.
- nlitened 5y agoI suggest you just don’t reply to cold emails and mark them as spam. Automated mass cold emailing is spam.
- sshine 5y agoI've found that not having LinkedIn greatly reduces recruiter spam.
- that_guy_iain 5y agoIt‘s great. Also, if you take the piss out of them by asking stupid questions such as if the entire company can address you as Herr Frankfurt and speak to you only in Russian when it‘s a job in London they start removing you from lists. I went from 3-4 per day to 1-2 per week using this approach. It‘s also fun.
- nickthemagicman 5y agoDiabolical person like myself. I like to ask what the companies working in the nude policy is.
- that_guy_iain 5y agoI once sent a list of prices for my contracting rates. One of the prices was "If allowed to work in just my underwear"
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- arkitaip 5y agoThat sounds cute but stuff like this can backfire in industries that are small and where recruiters talk to each other.
- that_guy_iain 5y agoRecruiters I did it too were agency recruiters. Even if they talk, no one is giving up the chance at comission.
- westmeal 5y agoIf they didnt even have the time to read your resume do you think they'd remember your name to pass it on to other recruiters? I mean maybe but still...
- Dayshine 5y agoIf in the UK (and probably most EU countries depending on what counts as business communication locally) you can at least cause them stress for their flouting of the law with minimal effort: Make an Information Request asking how they got your personal information (email + job details) and under what legal basis they collected it. When they inevitably reply with either LinkedIn, your work website, or some data broker make a complaint that: 1. They did not get consent from you 2. They did not inform you of the collection of your data without consent in a timely manner (through purchasing or direct collection). [Right to be informed] 3. That they are in breach of the "lawfulness" requirement of GDPR as they collected your personal information in breach of the terms/conditions of the source website (LinkedIn does not allow scraping). When they deny all this and make some excuse about public information (which doesn't really exist), make a complaint to your local information commissioner. If they gave a data broker, repeat the process again with them. They will remove you and pass this notification down to any other customers. Within 6/12 months you'll be out of all the marketing lists.
- okl 5y agoI think OP wants to get rid of the spam because it annoys him, not wallow in it.
- Dayshine 5y agoGoing to the root of the problem (data brokers) could solve it more effectively than playing whack-a-mole with 2 man recruitment agencies.
- gizdan 5y agoThis is basically what I do. More often than not they'll just ignore your requests, until you threaten that you'll inform the ICO (information commission officer for the non-UK people). They usually quickly respond and take you off their lists. Either way, they usually tell you they put you on their lists because of 'legitimate interest' which is daft but there we are.
- user5994461 5y agoThat's certainly an effective way to get a bad rep and cut yourself from half the job market. In the UK, an enormous amount of jobs goes through recruiters. Even if you did not get your current job from recruiters, it's quite likely that some your coworkers did.
- kunagi7 5y agoI just mark them as spam and unsubscribe when they add my work email to a random subscription list I haven't been asked to. The weird thing is that inside the EU, supposedly GDPR protects against being automatically enlisted to email subscriptions or receiving repeated emails about the same topic without your authorization (and expires every 3 years).
- BjoernKW 5y agoThe thing with GDPR is that it mostly affects legitimate, ethical businesses without their own legal department, i.e., those that won't engage in activities GDPR is supposed to protect against anyway. Fly-by-night companies often simply don't care.
- BlasDeLezo 5y agoDelete the message and go on. There's one thing that's worse. When nobody contacts you at all.
- bnt 5y agoToo many people don’t understand that not everyone has a strong online presence and not everyone is pestered by recruiters. Yes, it can be annoying, but also consider yourself blessed.
- c7DJTLrn 5y agoYeah, I get a tinge of jealousy when I hear coworkers talk about getting daily messages on LinkedIn from recruiters. My LinkedIn is extremely barebones and I'm inactive on the site.
- Nbox9 5y agoYou can (an arguably should) change that by improving your LinkedIn profile. Add relevant work experience, send requests to past colleagues, update your profile pic, and use some keywords. I spend maybe a total of 20 minutes on LinkedIn in a month and receive a night trickle of job propositions in my inbox. These recruiting emails actually leak useful information and are worth reading.
- c7DJTLrn 5y agoI appreciate the encouragement. I find it really hard though. LinkedIn as a platform is just gross and its had so many security incidents over the years, I don't want to give them anything more than I have to.
- Nbox9 5y agoInformation I post on LinkedIn is open to the public, I keep none of it private other than DirectMessages and I keep those professional. There doesn’t need to be a security incident for someone to access my LinkedIn information, it’s essentially all open to anyone with a web browser. I don’t fully understand your desire for privacy when talking about your past professional accomplishments. If you could inform me more about your perspective I would appreciate it.
- schipplock 5y agoI often respond and tell I’m currently not interested. Legit head hunters leave me alone or ask to contact me again in a year or so (which I’m ok with. You never know when you need a new job). Regarding the question: I don’t get many mails from recruiters. I wouldn’t invest time in setting up a block mechanism.
- brandur 5y ago> _I don’t get many mails from recruiters. I wouldn’t invest time in setting up a block mechanism._ I think this is the most practical answer. I get a fair number recruiter emails. The unsolicited mass messaging can be a little irking for sure, but with Gmail's hot keys, it takes ~0.1s to move an email to a special "recruiting" folder. Despite a high level of messages, I don't spend more than ten seconds on this a week, and have stopped stressing about it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- infinityplus1 5y agoThere should be a way to redirect one recruiter's mail to the other. Redirect spam back to them.
- codingdave 5y agoI have a few canned responses that I send, the majority of which are polite and grateful for them contacting me, with explanations of what type of role I'd consider. It shuts most of them down effectively, but also keeps the door open in case they really would have an opportunity that would work for me. And over the course of a decade or two working in the same town, it built a network that I can call up when I do want work, letting me drive the process on my next search.
- alkonaut 5y agoThis. Look at the email and put it into one of 2 bins: 1) A recruiter that actually read your profile in several places (Linkedin, Github, Stackoverflow) and who understood the combined picture of what they read. Send a polite canned response with an up to date "what I'm looknig for next time I switch" email. 2) Cold emails which obviously were sent to thousands with a canned message or a pitch completely foreign to your competence. Don't reply to those, you'll only get more of them and your connection to those recruiters won't have much future value either. I get probably a dozen emails in bin 2, for every email in bin 1. Most of the bin 2 emails right now are from a company called "Data Revolution" which seems based in the UK and that I can only assume is either completely automated recruiter spam (Their profile pictures seem oddly stock-photoish), or some sort of dystopian gig-economy recruitment firm for people who rather send emails than drive Ubers. The bin 1 contacts have actually returned on several occasions with those really rare job profiles I describe in my response, so this does work very well. I basically have a dozen people looking at job ads for me so I don't miss those one-in-a-thousand jobs I'm looking for.
- benrapscallion 5y agoLook for some common phrases they use (e.g., the word recruiter in their email signature) and set up a filter to mark as read and archive based on those.
- Silhouette 5y agoI have only occasionally had trouble with recruiter spam out of the blue myself. What I really wanted last time I had to deal with them was a list of recruiters with a track record of deceptive or unprofessional behaviour so I could avoid the time wasters. I suspect the list of recruiters I'd want to block for spamming and the list I'd want to avoid for being misleading or unprofessional would have a lot of overlap.
- mkoryak 5y agoAmazon does this to me. I have been polite in saying no and lately I have been asking them to either remove me or put in a 3 year hold. They always say they will but then a week or 2 later I get another Amazon recruiter who was impressed with my resume. Do you know if Amazon has a decentralized recruiting system or are they just disrespecting my wish?
- bnt 5y agoYou’d be surprised how dysfunctional recruiting in companies can be. Some have multiple independent departments with different tools, some have no tools whatsoever (aka no ATS), employee turnaround on those teams is nuts etc.
- divx_dev 5y agoThat merely reinforces the popular notion that Amazon is a miserable place to work.
- JohnFen 5y agoI've been getting Amazon recruitment emails (and a couple of phone calls) a lot lately, too. I wonder what's up. I find it a bit annoying because Amazon is one of the companies that I would never willingly work for.
- laurent123456 5y agoIf that can help, that's an up to date list to deal with recruiter spam from India: {from:@lorventech. from:@amaze-systems. from:vsgbusinesssolutions: from:vbeyond.com from:@triveni. from:@epiksostaffing. from:@epikso. from:@conchtech. from:@nrconsultingservice. from:@rgtalent. from:@us.insigmainc. from:@inficaretech. from:@dgntechnologies. from:@techdigitalcorp. from:@nttdata. from:@askitc. from:@nityo. from:anuvaresource. from:execu-search. from:collabera. from:zodiac-solutions. from:amiseq.com from:vision-us.com from:devpozent.com from:dbsiservices.com from:Xoriant.Com from:croxconsulting.com from:ibusinesssolution.com from:itechsolutions.com from:edoorsinc.com from:saxonglobal.com from:erostechnologies.com from:okayainc.com from:tachyontech.com from:avantirec.com from:panzersolutions.com from:bereangroup.com from:bluegrasstek.com from:brainbeeus.com from:e-solutionsinc.com from:eateam.com from:estaffllc.com from:etalentnetwork.com from:intimeinfy.com from:kanandcorp.com from:oorwindigital.com from:resource-logistics.com from:tekleaders.com from:vdartinc.com from:quantumworld.us from:nityo.com from:futransolutions.com from:ittblazers.com}
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- macrowhat 5y agoI've told recruiters to straight up lick my butt before
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- drcongo 5y agoI missed this when it was posted, but yeah, I run a list of UK recruitment spammers in Gmail filter format: https://github.com/drcongo/spammy-recruiters https://github.com/drcongo/spammy-recruiters