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I don't understand why people complain about being contacted by recruiters on LinkedIn. It's your public CV and professional contacts; recruiting is what Linked

by adnam 13y ago

I don't understand why people complain about being contacted by recruiters on LinkedIn. It's your public CV and professional contacts; recruiting is what LinkedIn was designed for!

pietro 13y ago
Don't get it, either. What's your CV doing out there, anyway, if you're not trying to be found?
- ry_d 13y ago
  The post has nothing to do with public exposure. It has everything to do with identity security via third party integrations.
dougbarrett 13y ago
Exactly! I get multiple e-mails a week from recruiters on LinkedIn, and it's not hard at all for me to just kindly decline their offer or ignore it all together. I've never understood the stigma against recruiters, and why you would get mad at someone that wanted to try to place you at a job, that just sounds backwards and unappreciative.
- potatolicious 13y ago
  I think the frustration doesn't come from recruiters per se, but rather the shotgun-approach recruiters. I've received many recruiter contacts where the position being pitched does seem to logically connect with the experience and skills on my CV. And then you receive recruiter contacts where it's obvious they're just machine-gunning in the dark, where the jobs being pitched have zero relation to your skills and experience. There's also some pretty bad recruiter behavior where, if you reply to the initial contact, you've automatically signed up for a massive increase in the volume of communications they send you. I've even had one recruitment firm sign me up for their goddamn company mailing list just for replying to their initial contact. There's plenty to dislike about tech recruiting. Targeted, sensible contacts are really just the tip of the ice berg.
  - tomkarlo 13y ago
    It also doesn't seem like they've made any effort to combat this kind of blind spamming. I can't rate the quality of a blind inbound from someone I don't know (which is almost certainly from one of their paying customers.) And I can't see how others have rated that individual's communications in the past. So there's really little incentive for recruiters to be more judicious, and that's going to hurt LinkedIn eventually. (But obviously, those are also it's paying customers and most of us are just bait to attract them.) We expect quality ratings when interacting on Ebay... shouldn't we get them on LinkedIn, which is just another type of peer-to-peer marketplace? They've created something similar with endorsements (for job seekers) but is there anything similar in terms of recruiters?
- ry_d 13y ago
  The problem is... They are trying to place you at a job and taking a commission by obfuscating the actual salary paid by the company. I've personally hired developers, salaried under big recruiting firms, who were getting shorted 35% of their potential income just for allowing someone with a marketing degree forward over a resume. With demand as high as it is for skill sets in the tech fields... you are foolish to believe they serve any purpose other than spam. Especially when spending an hour or so shotgun emailing your resume personally with a cover letter would net you nearly double the salary. Alas the core issue in this blog post has nothing to do with the abundance of recruiter contact. Anyone with a Linkedin has already managed to figure out how to manage the difference between spam recruiters and the good guys.
  - taude 13y ago
    Your comment doesn't make any sense to me. It's in the recruiter's best interest to maximize the salary they get the candidate, so that they can maximize the %-amount of the fill. They want to get the candidate 150K so that the recruiter's 30% cut is 45K. If they only get the candidate $125K, then there fee would only be 37.5K. Are you confusing recruiting for a job with someone that does body-shop contracting?
    - greenyoda 13y ago
      "It's in the recruiter's best interest to maximize the salary they get the candidate" Actually, it's in the recruiter's best interest to maximize the return he gets over all his candidates. If he can place candidates three times as fast by offering them at 50% off their market rate, he makes a bigger total commission.
      - taude 13y ago
        I'd buy that argument in a buyer's market. But I'm not aware of too many recruiters with a surplus of sourced tech talent right now. And they have to go through a lot of effort to source someone...so I'm going to still stand by my comment that a good recruiter is going to maximize the candidates value. Edit: I'd also add what tech talent is going to be so unaware of their market value that they'd take 50% of it?
- briancurtin 13y ago
  I can appreciate someone who took the time to figure out what my experience adds up to and then share a relevant position they're trying to fill. I've had a few companies first find me on LinkedIn, then they contacted me through email with a more personal message, possibly meaning that they looked around the web to find my email address. This I'm cool with. Depending on how the contact goes, they might follow up on LinkedIn to add to my network. However, the other 90+% of contact I've received I can't appreciate. I've been involved with the CPython project for a while, and I'm on the Python Software Foundation's board. Seeing that sends some of the shotgun recruiters through the roof, trying to "network" with me by sending me bullshit jobs and asking me to share my local contacts. I used to get plenty of messages like, "hey I have this great Django job that you're a perfect fit for." How is this possible when I've never done more than read the Django tutorial, and nowhere on my profile does it mention Django or any other web frameworks? This is a waste of time.
dripton 13y ago
LinkedIn's business model is that regular people join for free and recruiters pay for an account that lets them contact those people. Some skeevy recruiters use the "I already know this person" button when they don't, to avoid paying LinkedIn. Because they're breaking the rules of the site, I think it's correct to call them spammers. The recruiters who contact without lying to do so aren't spammers, since that's indeed a large part of what the site is for, and you agree to such contact when you join. (And I believe you can turn off such contacts in the preferences, though I can't double-check since I just closed my account.)
adamman 13y ago
His main point was that it is irresponsible for LinkedIn to ask users for email passwords.
potatolicious 13y ago
I agree with the sentiment - but that's not his central complaint. His central complaint is that LinkedIn is encouraging egregiously bad user actions (i.e., handing over 3rd party login credentials to LinkedIn). I happen to agree, LinkedIn has a greater responsibility to its user base than maximizing conversion on its invite-a-friend feature.
- Esifer 13y ago
  Facebook also does that!
  - bdcravens 13y ago
    It's one thing to access Contacts via oAuth, where LinkedIn gets no credentials. It's another thing altogether for them to request credentials and login on your behalf.
- etler 13y ago
  Even worse, what they're doing is completely unnecessary and probably more work than it should be. They can just request access to your contacts list using one of Google's APIs. Instead they're probably doing something far more complicated, using your email password to get access instead.
  - ams6110 13y ago
    access to your contacts list using one of Google's APIs Funny that more and more, email == gmail. I guess there are a few of us around who still don't use it.
    - kfury 13y ago
      I read his blog post and wondered why he didn't just OAuth in. You're absolutely right. I just assumed he was on a Gmail account.
trippy_biscuits 13y ago
Recruiters on LinkedIn never want to hire me. They just want to scavenge my connection pool. There's been one exception, Google, and they wanted me to move to California and take a 60% pay cut. LinkedIn lets me see where my coworkers have gone and lets me see what my boss looks like. Otherwise, it's useless. Recruiters have never once helped me out. In fact, one time a recruiter called me for a job I had quit the previous day! I regard recruiters lower than used car salesmen.

by adnam 13y ago

I don't understand why people complain about being contacted by recruiters on LinkedIn. It's your public CV and professional contacts; recruiting is what LinkedIn was designed for!

pietro 13y ago

Don't get it, either. What's your CV doing out there, anyway, if you're not trying to be found?

ry_d 13y ago
The post has nothing to do with public exposure. It has everything to do with identity security via third party integrations.

dougbarrett 13y ago

Exactly! I get multiple e-mails a week from recruiters on LinkedIn, and it's not hard at all for me to just kindly decline their offer or ignore it all together. I've never understood the stigma against recruiters, and why you would get mad at someone that wanted to try to place you at a job, that just sounds backwards and unappreciative.

potatolicious 13y ago
I think the frustration doesn't come from recruiters per se, but rather the shotgun-approach recruiters. I've received many recruiter contacts where the position being pitched does seem to logically connect with the experience and skills on my CV. And then you receive recruiter contacts where it's obvious they're just machine-gunning in the dark, where the jobs being pitched have zero relation to your skills and experience. There's also some pretty bad recruiter behavior where, if you reply to the initial contact, you've automatically signed up for a massive increase in the volume of communications they send you. I've even had one recruitment firm sign me up for their goddamn company mailing list just for replying to their initial contact. There's plenty to dislike about tech recruiting. Targeted, sensible contacts are really just the tip of the ice berg.
- tomkarlo 13y ago
  It also doesn't seem like they've made any effort to combat this kind of blind spamming. I can't rate the quality of a blind inbound from someone I don't know (which is almost certainly from one of their paying customers.) And I can't see how others have rated that individual's communications in the past. So there's really little incentive for recruiters to be more judicious, and that's going to hurt LinkedIn eventually. (But obviously, those are also it's paying customers and most of us are just bait to attract them.) We expect quality ratings when interacting on Ebay... shouldn't we get them on LinkedIn, which is just another type of peer-to-peer marketplace? They've created something similar with endorsements (for job seekers) but is there anything similar in terms of recruiters?
ry_d 13y ago
The problem is... They are trying to place you at a job and taking a commission by obfuscating the actual salary paid by the company. I've personally hired developers, salaried under big recruiting firms, who were getting shorted 35% of their potential income just for allowing someone with a marketing degree forward over a resume. With demand as high as it is for skill sets in the tech fields... you are foolish to believe they serve any purpose other than spam. Especially when spending an hour or so shotgun emailing your resume personally with a cover letter would net you nearly double the salary. Alas the core issue in this blog post has nothing to do with the abundance of recruiter contact. Anyone with a Linkedin has already managed to figure out how to manage the difference between spam recruiters and the good guys.
- taude 13y ago
  Your comment doesn't make any sense to me. It's in the recruiter's best interest to maximize the salary they get the candidate, so that they can maximize the %-amount of the fill. They want to get the candidate 150K so that the recruiter's 30% cut is 45K. If they only get the candidate $125K, then there fee would only be 37.5K. Are you confusing recruiting for a job with someone that does body-shop contracting?
  - greenyoda 13y ago
    "It's in the recruiter's best interest to maximize the salary they get the candidate" Actually, it's in the recruiter's best interest to maximize the return he gets over all his candidates. If he can place candidates three times as fast by offering them at 50% off their market rate, he makes a bigger total commission.
    - taude 13y ago
      I'd buy that argument in a buyer's market. But I'm not aware of too many recruiters with a surplus of sourced tech talent right now. And they have to go through a lot of effort to source someone...so I'm going to still stand by my comment that a good recruiter is going to maximize the candidates value. Edit: I'd also add what tech talent is going to be so unaware of their market value that they'd take 50% of it?
briancurtin 13y ago
I can appreciate someone who took the time to figure out what my experience adds up to and then share a relevant position they're trying to fill. I've had a few companies first find me on LinkedIn, then they contacted me through email with a more personal message, possibly meaning that they looked around the web to find my email address. This I'm cool with. Depending on how the contact goes, they might follow up on LinkedIn to add to my network. However, the other 90+% of contact I've received I can't appreciate. I've been involved with the CPython project for a while, and I'm on the Python Software Foundation's board. Seeing that sends some of the shotgun recruiters through the roof, trying to "network" with me by sending me bullshit jobs and asking me to share my local contacts. I used to get plenty of messages like, "hey I have this great Django job that you're a perfect fit for." How is this possible when I've never done more than read the Django tutorial, and nowhere on my profile does it mention Django or any other web frameworks? This is a waste of time.

dripton 13y ago

LinkedIn's business model is that regular people join for free and recruiters pay for an account that lets them contact those people. Some skeevy recruiters use the "I already know this person" button when they don't, to avoid paying LinkedIn. Because they're breaking the rules of the site, I think it's correct to call them spammers. The recruiters who contact without lying to do so aren't spammers, since that's indeed a large part of what the site is for, and you agree to such contact when you join. (And I believe you can turn off such contacts in the preferences, though I can't double-check since I just closed my account.)

adamman 13y ago

His main point was that it is irresponsible for LinkedIn to ask users for email passwords.

potatolicious 13y ago

I agree with the sentiment - but that's not his central complaint. His central complaint is that LinkedIn is encouraging egregiously bad user actions (i.e., handing over 3rd party login credentials to LinkedIn). I happen to agree, LinkedIn has a greater responsibility to its user base than maximizing conversion on its invite-a-friend feature.

Esifer 13y ago
Facebook also does that!
- bdcravens 13y ago
  It's one thing to access Contacts via oAuth, where LinkedIn gets no credentials. It's another thing altogether for them to request credentials and login on your behalf.
etler 13y ago
Even worse, what they're doing is completely unnecessary and probably more work than it should be. They can just request access to your contacts list using one of Google's APIs. Instead they're probably doing something far more complicated, using your email password to get access instead.
- ams6110 13y ago
  access to your contacts list using one of Google's APIs Funny that more and more, email == gmail. I guess there are a few of us around who still don't use it.
  - kfury 13y ago
    I read his blog post and wondered why he didn't just OAuth in. You're absolutely right. I just assumed he was on a Gmail account.

trippy_biscuits 13y ago

Recruiters on LinkedIn never want to hire me. They just want to scavenge my connection pool. There's been one exception, Google, and they wanted me to move to California and take a 60% pay cut. LinkedIn lets me see where my coworkers have gone and lets me see what my boss looks like. Otherwise, it's useless. Recruiters have never once helped me out. In fact, one time a recruiter called me for a job I had quit the previous day! I regard recruiters lower than used car salesmen.