Dear recruiters, here is why developers don’t respond to your messages | Hacker News Reader

Dear recruiters, here is why developers don’t respond to your messages

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23 pointsRaed6676 comments

A decent amount of the messages I'm getting have actual unfinished boilerplate in them, like "Your experience in put experience here looks very interesting".

Doesn't feel like someone is reaching out to me as much as a trawler is passing by and my linkedin or whatever got caught in the net.

The "candidate relationship management" tools have repurposed the state of the art in phishing for emailing potential applicants. This seems unsustainable and ripe for disruption, but I don't know what better looks like given the cost of real candidate research and necessarily low conversion rate.

What's your take on recruiters that cold contact you with a contact-to-hire (C2H) position?

I stopped responding with questions regarding all the red flags in that (why C2H? Culture problems? You hire and fire too rapidly to bother with benefits? You suck at screening candidates? Or are you just cheap?) and just go right into my contracting pitch.

"Hi, thanks for reaching out. I'm more than happy to engage FOOCORP as a contractor, I'll send over my MSA and when it's signed we can talk about first statements of work. I'm currently fully employed with benefits so my 1099 rate is (1.5x hourly) for weekend work under 10 hours, anything over that is a 40-hour week rate of (2.5x yearly salary). Once the MSA is signed I can have a phone conversation at $Y/hour. Send me the email address of your accounting department as well."

This never works, but it's fun to send. Some don't get the hint at all and try to still "have a chat" and burn up my time with whatever they want to talk about. Some don't get it until I mention an actual dollar amount to talk on at the phone. Most just want me in their LinkedIn contacts, which was probably the goal all along.

This rings very true to me. Most cold call emails have almost no information.

Worse, it feels like recruiters are realizing that their shotgunned "[X]-backed [Y]tech startup" emails are not getting replies, so they are starting to write clickbait subject lines!

In the past few months, I've seen a reduction in emails with subjects like, "Interested in a [general industry] [company type] role?" with some details in the body.

They've been replaced with subject lines like "What's up?" or, "Quick question" with minimal details beyond an invitation to "connect sometime".

It feels like they didn't get what they wanted by asking nicely, so they've decided it's better to be manipulative and evasive rather than taking "no response" for an answer.

In most forms of online communication, this type of behavior is considered creepy and disrespectful of boundaries. In recruiter world, apparently it's all in a day's work.

How about putting a salary range and WFH expectations in the subject line? We get a LOT of these emails; give us more information, not less.

The other point is the lack of follow up. I have had sometimes given in even with vague requirement and send my resume, but then I get nothing back. I don't expect to be the most appropriate candidate for every job. Just let me know - good or bad news.

The so called "continuous recruitment" is the mother of all those problems. If only there was a way to weed out such companies.

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