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> It's somewhat dishonest, but not sure how it hurts job seekers (not advocating it, but seems a somewhat victimless crime). You see an advert for tasty doughn

> It's somewhat dishonest, but not sure how it hurts job seekers (not advocating it, but seems a somewhat victimless crime). You see an advert for tasty doughnuts. Oh boy! You jump in your car / catch the bus etc, and head over to the purveyors of tasty doughnuts to find that instead there are no doughnuts, but you're assured that if you're interested in tasty doughnuts you must have friends that are too, so take some flyers and spread the word. You've wasted your time, effort and money to become an uncompensated advertising agent for purveyors of mythical doughnuts, and you might reasonably reserve a new circle of hell for these people before shredding their flyers with particular zeal. Similarly, to have answered an advert for a job that doesn't exist, spent time considering what compromises in your life might be necessary to take the position, followed sound advice to tailor your CV to the position, crafted a covering letter, and then found that your time and effort is used to stripmine you of your contacts with no compensation for any time and effort put in on your part before moving onto the next mark, once again you might reserve a new circle of hell for these people. It's clearly fraud and exploitation, hand in hand.

fecak 14y ago
Good points. I was under the impression that this was referring to a scenario where you send a résumé to a recruiter ad, and you either get a reply that the job was filled (a lie here) or no reply at all (impolite if you were qualified). No time wasted with dialogue or advertising. This may be a uk thing, as I don't think firms here in the US tell you that you need to bring your friends if you want to deal. Never heard of that.
- ZachPruckowski 14y ago
  The friends thing he's talking about is taking your reference contacts and then using them as future leads. And there is a fixed cost to sending a resume and cover letter. Sure, the first one isn't such a pain, but if you're unemployed and sending out 30 resumes, it's sort of a pain if 10 of them are fake, and another 5-10 are duplicates of different recruiters trying to fill the same position. It increases the work I have to do, and provides an awful lot of false hope. Again - one recruiter doing that amid a sea of legit openings isn't all that bad, but in larger markets it's not just one recruiter misbehaving.

fecak 14y ago

Good points. I was under the impression that this was referring to a scenario where you send a résumé to a recruiter ad, and you either get a reply that the job was filled (a lie here) or no reply at all (impolite if you were qualified). No time wasted with dialogue or advertising. This may be a uk thing, as I don't think firms here in the US tell you that you need to bring your friends if you want to deal. Never heard of that.

ZachPruckowski 14y ago
The friends thing he's talking about is taking your reference contacts and then using them as future leads. And there is a fixed cost to sending a resume and cover letter. Sure, the first one isn't such a pain, but if you're unemployed and sending out 30 resumes, it's sort of a pain if 10 of them are fake, and another 5-10 are duplicates of different recruiters trying to fill the same position. It increases the work I have to do, and provides an awful lot of false hope. Again - one recruiter doing that amid a sea of legit openings isn't all that bad, but in larger markets it's not just one recruiter misbehaving.