8 ms·

I also recommend a response to every recruiter, but you don't need to explain your privilege, you don't need to suck up to them, and you don't need to justify y

I also recommend a response to every recruiter, but you don't need to explain your privilege, you don't need to suck up to them, and you don't need to justify your actions. "Hey ____. Before we move forward, can you provide me with the company name, a job description, and the expected compensation. Regards"

wnolens 5y ago
This is what I do. That email in OP is gross. "Hi, thanks for the message. I would appreciate as much detail as you can via message. Interested in location, compensation, and what specific problems they need help solving. Thanks!" I don't take a call unless the work description is specific enough. I don't want to work on your "backend". If asked, I tell them my comp expectation is min +50k over what I currently make. And I sure as hell am not moving to the bay area.
commandlinefan 5y ago
Or just a canned, "Thanks for getting in touch, but I'm not looking for a change right now."
- dewey 5y ago
  If it's just that you might as well just ignore it and not cause any additional noise.
  - derwiki 5y ago
    Not GP but I can’t shake that it feels rude, even if expected. But more practically: if I decline after the first, I don’t get the other 4 emails they have queued up for me
    - wccrawford 5y ago
      If they cold-contact you, it is not rude to simply ignore them. If you have an existing relationship with them, then it could be considered rude, but it would depend on your relationship.
    - OJFord 5y ago
      I replied to a first follow up (~'I don't think I'm a good fit', nevermind anything else) this morning as it happens. Almost always ignore; took one as far as interview a few years ago, which I never heard back from (no result/feedback) until a week or so ago! But I might make that a policy, if they 'just check in' after the first email then may as well try to head it off there I suppose.
    - taormina 5y ago
      I can tell Amazon isn't banging down your door. Seriously, it's insane how no one at Amazon Recruiting talks to anyone else in Amazon Recruiting.
      - delecti 5y ago
        I've started getting very firm with them. I respond to each email with "no thank you, also stop contacting me, also here's the last person I asked to stop contacting me, but who didn't." We'll see how long it works, if at all, but after 3 separate Amazon recruiters contacted me last month I was fed up.
      - weeblewobble 5y ago
        Amazon is getting ridiculous. I get an email from them almost every day
        monksy 5y ago
        Just wait till you get a cold text from them. For me: Linkedin inmail->email->cold text within 3 minutes. When I told the guy that was pretty unprofessional. His response "it's just text mate". Escalated to jeff at amazon. That got his attention pretty quickly. I still get recruiters trying to recruit me to amazon.
      - scarface74 5y ago
        I’ve gotten two messages from internal Amazon Retail recruiters via LinkedIn about “exciting opportunities” over the past year. My LinkedIn profile clearly shows I work at AWS…
    - muh_gradle 5y ago
      They're all cold emailing you with a canned email. It's about as close to automated as possible.
    - laxk 5y ago
      In most cases they use automatic follow-up systems and if you answered then the system will stop automatically route to you next e-mails.
mrweasel 5y ago
Yep, at least tell me who your recruiting for. I have a list of companies I don’t care to work for, so let’s not waist time on those. A number of recruiters are also just bad at their job. I worked as a .Net developer 12 years ago, but most recruiters apparently aren’t smart enough to figure out that not only is my knowledge horrible out of date, it might also not interest me anymore.
Philip-J-Fry 5y ago
Yep, short and sweet. If they can't answer that then they aren't worth your time. Works most of the time for me.
Kalium 5y ago
> "Hey ____. Before we move forward, can you provide me with the company name, a job description, and the expected compensation. Regards" I've found that this makes 80-90% of recruiters go completely silent. For some reason, asking for this basic information scares off the vast majority of recruiters. I'm genuinely unsure what I - or they - get out of dragging this out into a screenful of blah blah blah.
- joezydeco 5y ago
  They go silent, or they also give a canned response about being competitive in the market when it comes to comp (without naming a number). If they do name a number and you reply it's too low, they again go into a canned response of "we're willing to reach (++x) for the right candidate", which is just as much bullshit as before. You'll complete an interview cycle and get the lowball offer of (original x). TLDR they'll lie about comp and never completely answer you.
  - Kalium 5y ago
    Sometimes I say something like "I'm glad to hear you're competitive! I'm currently being offered $REAL_BIG_COMPANY_NUMBER, so I look forward to our conversation." Generally this ends the conversation.
- lbriner 5y ago
  One of the most common reasons is simply that they don't want you to go direct to the company in question and bypass their commission. If they give you too much, it is very easy to do and many companies will recruit directly and the recruiter would have no legal basis to do anything about that. On the other hand, because of commission, it is in the recruiter's interest to get you as much money as possible so you might get a better offer via them than you would if you went direct.
  - joezydeco 5y ago
    9 times out of 10 the job description you get from the recruiter is a lazy cut-and-paste from the actual company's input. It's never anonymized and simply pasting it into Google will almost always get you a lead on the hiring company. Another lead is if they give you the company location. There is only one company on the planet, for example, that has R&D offices in both Mossvile and Aurora, Illinois.
sebastianconcpt 5y ago
This is what I'm doing so far. I typically answer stating how I would like to work and hint my conditions and let them know that I'm happy to follow up if they see a fit.
ryandrake 5y ago
I don't like to ignore recruiters, but it's hard to answer them correctly. I'm always looking for a nice way to articulate "I'm comfortable with my current job, but interested in exploring whether I'm being compensated fairly. I don't want to slam any doors. But, I am also not up for the hazing session of grinding leetcode, filling out online forms, doing take-home tests, phone screens, and 5 rounds of interviews, just to find out at the end of it all what my current market value is."
- flavmartins 5y ago
  Late to comment, but basically this is why I just ignore it all unfortunately. I'm on a subreddit that talks about my profession and basically all interview processes are now broken in my industry. A lot of just nonsense, waste of time stuff. You hire the professional prep companies so you know the right buzzwords to say and how to show you follow the "framework", but almost nothing from the interview actually really determines how well you'll do day to day. Instead of going to an interview, they should just call my dev team and scrum master and ask how things run with me and use their feedback as the evaluation.
jeremywho 5y ago
Yes, his response template is way too verbose.
BeefWellington 5y ago
It's amazing how these basic questions are often like kryptonite to these people. Protip: If you want senior people to respond, you should probably include that information up front. I've done several interviews at places only to get to the stage we're talking money and suddenly it becomes clear they were expecting to pay about a third to half of what I currently make for someone in a senior position. Each time I think it could genuinely save a lot of time and effort (and thus money) by just being up front about that stuff.

wnolens 5y ago

This is what I do. That email in OP is gross. "Hi, thanks for the message. I would appreciate as much detail as you can via message. Interested in location, compensation, and what specific problems they need help solving. Thanks!" I don't take a call unless the work description is specific enough. I don't want to work on your "backend". If asked, I tell them my comp expectation is min +50k over what I currently make. And I sure as hell am not moving to the bay area.

commandlinefan 5y ago

Or just a canned, "Thanks for getting in touch, but I'm not looking for a change right now."

dewey 5y ago
If it's just that you might as well just ignore it and not cause any additional noise.
- derwiki 5y ago
  Not GP but I can’t shake that it feels rude, even if expected. But more practically: if I decline after the first, I don’t get the other 4 emails they have queued up for me
  - wccrawford 5y ago
    If they cold-contact you, it is not rude to simply ignore them. If you have an existing relationship with them, then it could be considered rude, but it would depend on your relationship.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    I replied to a first follow up (~'I don't think I'm a good fit', nevermind anything else) this morning as it happens. Almost always ignore; took one as far as interview a few years ago, which I never heard back from (no result/feedback) until a week or so ago! But I might make that a policy, if they 'just check in' after the first email then may as well try to head it off there I suppose.
  - taormina 5y ago
    I can tell Amazon isn't banging down your door. Seriously, it's insane how no one at Amazon Recruiting talks to anyone else in Amazon Recruiting.
    - delecti 5y ago
      I've started getting very firm with them. I respond to each email with "no thank you, also stop contacting me, also here's the last person I asked to stop contacting me, but who didn't." We'll see how long it works, if at all, but after 3 separate Amazon recruiters contacted me last month I was fed up.
    - weeblewobble 5y ago
      Amazon is getting ridiculous. I get an email from them almost every day
      - monksy 5y ago
        Just wait till you get a cold text from them. For me: Linkedin inmail->email->cold text within 3 minutes. When I told the guy that was pretty unprofessional. His response "it's just text mate". Escalated to jeff at amazon. That got his attention pretty quickly. I still get recruiters trying to recruit me to amazon.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      I’ve gotten two messages from internal Amazon Retail recruiters via LinkedIn about “exciting opportunities” over the past year. My LinkedIn profile clearly shows I work at AWS…
  - muh_gradle 5y ago
    They're all cold emailing you with a canned email. It's about as close to automated as possible.
  - laxk 5y ago
    In most cases they use automatic follow-up systems and if you answered then the system will stop automatically route to you next e-mails.

mrweasel 5y ago

Yep, at least tell me who your recruiting for. I have a list of companies I don’t care to work for, so let’s not waist time on those. A number of recruiters are also just bad at their job. I worked as a .Net developer 12 years ago, but most recruiters apparently aren’t smart enough to figure out that not only is my knowledge horrible out of date, it might also not interest me anymore.

Philip-J-Fry 5y ago

Yep, short and sweet. If they can't answer that then they aren't worth your time. Works most of the time for me.

Kalium 5y ago

> "Hey ____. Before we move forward, can you provide me with the company name, a job description, and the expected compensation. Regards" I've found that this makes 80-90% of recruiters go completely silent. For some reason, asking for this basic information scares off the vast majority of recruiters. I'm genuinely unsure what I - or they - get out of dragging this out into a screenful of blah blah blah.

joezydeco 5y ago
They go silent, or they also give a canned response about being competitive in the market when it comes to comp (without naming a number). If they do name a number and you reply it's too low, they again go into a canned response of "we're willing to reach (++x) for the right candidate", which is just as much bullshit as before. You'll complete an interview cycle and get the lowball offer of (original x). TLDR they'll lie about comp and never completely answer you.
- Kalium 5y ago
  Sometimes I say something like "I'm glad to hear you're competitive! I'm currently being offered $REAL_BIG_COMPANY_NUMBER, so I look forward to our conversation." Generally this ends the conversation.
lbriner 5y ago
One of the most common reasons is simply that they don't want you to go direct to the company in question and bypass their commission. If they give you too much, it is very easy to do and many companies will recruit directly and the recruiter would have no legal basis to do anything about that. On the other hand, because of commission, it is in the recruiter's interest to get you as much money as possible so you might get a better offer via them than you would if you went direct.
- joezydeco 5y ago
  9 times out of 10 the job description you get from the recruiter is a lazy cut-and-paste from the actual company's input. It's never anonymized and simply pasting it into Google will almost always get you a lead on the hiring company. Another lead is if they give you the company location. There is only one company on the planet, for example, that has R&D offices in both Mossvile and Aurora, Illinois.

sebastianconcpt 5y ago

This is what I'm doing so far. I typically answer stating how I would like to work and hint my conditions and let them know that I'm happy to follow up if they see a fit.

ryandrake 5y ago

I don't like to ignore recruiters, but it's hard to answer them correctly. I'm always looking for a nice way to articulate "I'm comfortable with my current job, but interested in exploring whether I'm being compensated fairly. I don't want to slam any doors. But, I am also not up for the hazing session of grinding leetcode, filling out online forms, doing take-home tests, phone screens, and 5 rounds of interviews, just to find out at the end of it all what my current market value is."

flavmartins 5y ago
Late to comment, but basically this is why I just ignore it all unfortunately. I'm on a subreddit that talks about my profession and basically all interview processes are now broken in my industry. A lot of just nonsense, waste of time stuff. You hire the professional prep companies so you know the right buzzwords to say and how to show you follow the "framework", but almost nothing from the interview actually really determines how well you'll do day to day. Instead of going to an interview, they should just call my dev team and scrum master and ask how things run with me and use their feedback as the evaluation.

jeremywho 5y ago

Yes, his response template is way too verbose.

BeefWellington 5y ago

It's amazing how these basic questions are often like kryptonite to these people. Protip: If you want senior people to respond, you should probably include that information up front. I've done several interviews at places only to get to the stage we're talking money and suddenly it becomes clear they were expecting to pay about a third to half of what I currently make for someone in a senior position. Each time I think it could genuinely save a lot of time and effort (and thus money) by just being up front about that stuff.