Yes! Finally! A post defending recruiters. I do not understand the vitriol against them. They literally exist to find people jobs! There are bad ones, sure, bu

Yes! Finally! A post defending recruiters. I do not understand the vitriol against them. They literally exist to find people jobs! There are bad ones, sure, but there are also lots of good ones! Recruiters aren't as effective as referrals in getting people placed, but a good recruiter goes a long way! One nit: Their auto-response template is way too long for a first response. Recruiters, as they correctly indicated, are cold-calling people, usually based on leads in LinkedIn Recruiter or very targeted Google searches. This means that they are going to spend very little time qualifying people that they find. (Just because they found you doesn't mean you're a qualified lead!) While I definitely agree with stating what you're looking for up front (ESPECIALLY the role you want, compensation targets, and other preferences, like remote/hybrid and unlimited vacation), you can do that in a short paragraph with a call to action at the end, like this: "Thank you for messaging me! I would love to talk but want to discuss compensation and preferences first to respect each others time. I'm looking for ${x,y,z}. Will this role fulfill what I'm looking for? If so, let's talk on $DATE. Looking forward to hearing from you!" Super short, direct, easy to read, and the recruiter can posit what you're after within a few seconds. Remember: recruiters WANT to place candidates at the highest base salary they can. They are paid on that. The easier you make it possible for them to do this, the harder they will work to place you.