> I'm a recruiter and I simply do not understand things like this. Sure, many of my colleagues have given us a reputation for being incompetent assholes. But ma

> I'm a recruiter and I simply do not understand things like this. Sure, many of my colleagues have given us a reputation for being incompetent assholes. But many of my friends contact me the second they are looking for a new job because they know I like to help people out. Isn't pressing archive on a couple annoying emails worth meeting someone like that? I'm sure that a fellow like yourself, who seems quite considerate of others' time, can appreciate that it depends how easy it is to tell you apart from the less exemplary members of your profession. There might be some fantastic recruiters out there but if it takes five minutes to see whether someone's serious and people have to pay that cost for every interaction - are they really going to do it? It's not like someone's just paying the cost once or twice to talk to you, they're paying the cost with every bit of spam they go through to find you. I know that's something I have extreme reluctance to do. I get hundreds of emails every weekend, most work-related. If the field is heavily slanted towards abusive personalities, then almost every time I invest in that activity, rather than dealing with one of the pressing issues, it feels like I've wasted my time. Very discouraging when the returns are purely hypothetical, (never met a recruiter who made me feel like he was taking me seriously.)