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Tell HN: Recruiters misusing HN's “Who wants to be hired”
It's getting worse each time and I'm sure I'm not alone on this. Taking advantage on "Who wants to be hired" recruiters are sending completely random (web scrap?) positions in our inboxes which leads me to think: if you don't care about your recruitment process, imagine how fcked up is your whole business. I stopped to use linkedin because of the same bs. Any idea on how to solve it here?
- yeswecatan 4y agoGet a cheap domain, create a custom email address (hn@mydomain.com), and forward email to whatever you use. In your post put something like "please put this random string in the email subject so I know you're not a bot." Set up a filter in your email. It's not foolproof but it's something.
- gruez 4y ago>Get a cheap domain, create a custom email address (hn@mydomain.com), and forward email to whatever you use You don't even need to set up a new domain/forwarding. Just use an email forwarding service like firefox relay.
- yeswecatan 4y agoTIL. Neat!
- lormayna 4y agoor use simplelogin.io I created a new email for every month and then disable it after couple of weeks.
- eatonphil 4y agoMaybe I'm defeatist but it doesn't really bother me. I just ignore/delete crappy emails.
- boredemployee 4y agoThe problem is they send an email saying "hey your profile is very much what we're looking for" and then you check it and it has nothing to do with the skills you posted on HN
- eatonphil 4y agoI should clarify. I mostly just ignore/delete emails from recruiters in the first place. The part of "Who wants to be hired" that is worthwhile is when employees of the company (hiring managers or executives) reach out.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoThey're selecting for the easiest marks they can convert.
- KMnO4 4y agoI have a snippet that I immediately send to recruitment messages, along the lines of “Thanks for reaching out, which of my skills would align best with your needs?”. I got a response from one saying “your JavaScript skills are impressive, the company is using Java and PHP” despite never having included JavaScript on my profile (although I guess full stack developer is a bit of a giveaway). I have no issue telling these recruiters to f—- off.
- duped 4y agoDon't reply, response rate is one of their KPIs.
- the_only_law 4y agoI’ve had people try to sell me shit after posting on there.
- boredemployee 4y agoThat too!
- nickphx 4y agoDon't post contact data on the internet that you don't want to be misused?
- brudgers 4y agoThere are three tiers of recruiter. The top tier is paid by the employer to recruit whether or not someone is hired. The middle tier has a contract with the employer that pays them when one of their recruits is hired. The bottom tier has no contract and hopes that they can convince the candidate to apply and the employer to pay if the candidate is hired. Most recruiters in the world bigger than tech are the bottom tier. All they need is a computer with a browser and a telephone. Their economics make extreme longshots attractive...shotgun jobs, shotgun candidates, spam emails and maybe something hits a payday.
- duped 4y agoThe usual terminology for this is first-party, retained, and commission recruiting. If a recruiter contacts you, you can always ask if they've been retained exclusively for the search.
- brudgers 4y agoFirst party and retained are both paid to recruit not only when someone is hired, the difference is internal employee of HR vs contracted outsider. Everyone else is contingent. The difference is whether or not there is a contract with the employer before the recruiter talks to candidates. On the first party and retained side, contracted recruiters have less incentive to jerk a candidate around because their relationship with the candidate potentially extends beyond a single employer. A first party recruiter is more likely to tire kick candidates for roles that don’t exist.
- ushakov 4y agoi commented on some React-related post here and couple minutes later got an e-mail from levels.fyi advertising a React role jokes on them, i have no experience with React
- stevekemp 4y agoRecruiters often scrape all kinds of sites, I've had contacts sent to the email I use for github, messages sent to my Reddit account after answering questions on /r/golang. To be honest almost any system that allows "free messaging" will result in spam, be it standard-spam, or recruiter spam.
- mdcds 4y agoI've enjoyed using trashmail.com You basically use it to generate a persistent throw-away email (aka proxy) that forwards to your real email, and then you just use the proxy email on open web communities like HN. Once you start getting spam, you can just deactivate the proxy and/or create a new one.