Slashdot Mirror
Shutting Down Annoying Recruiters?
An anonymous reader writes "My company is under attack by the leeches and bottom-feeders of the IT recruiting world. They call into our company phone directory constantly — hundreds of calls per day — trolling for names, hawking their job candidates, and refusing to hang up or stop calling, even if we curse their mothers. Our attorney says the calls are perfectly legal: there is no 'do not call' list for US corporations, and it's not harassment. Through education, we've gotten our engineering group to stop answering the calls or hang up, but I was wondering if the Slashdot community has any ideas for more creative solutions to make this stop, either through technology, US law, trickery, etc."
If your employees are still being poached, then hey, you deserve it for underpaying them.
More likely, the recruiters will stop calling your employees. (But they might ask for a job themselves.)
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Its like the saying goes - the best time to look for a new job is when you already have a job.
Kevin Smith on Prince
Have somebody ask for an interview. And go to it. And explain the situation to the company the leeches are shilling for, and that because they are using such an annoying headhunter, neither they nor anyone else in the company would ever consider working for them. Then just walk out.
> there is no 'do not call' list for US corporations, and it's not harassment.
Correct, there is no Federal Do Not Call list. It's also irrelevant -- if they are told to stop calling, they must stop calling -- period. Anything else is harrassment. If you're a big company, just ring up your legal department, tell them the problem, and they'll craft a nice Cease and Desist letter. They live for that sort of thing.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Recruiters make money by getting candidates hired. Eat up their time, pass them back and forth. They are just like telemarketers. If they can't sell, they don't eat.
It's been successful where I work.
Act interested, put them on hold for 5 minutes. Act interested again, put them on hold for another 5 minutes. Act interested again, put them on hold for another 5 minutes. Then tell them they are suckers and they just wasted 15 minuted of their life on a fruitless venture.
It is fun, rewarding, and it hurts their bottom line.
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. -Confucius
Recruiters are clients of the companies they are trying to hire for. Ask them about the job, then get the company its for. Call that company's HR department and complain and tell them the recruiters they use are harassers. Ideally, if you expose these bottom feeders as being bottom feeders most rational people would drop them. What kind of candidates are they trying to get by using this method? Probably not very good ones.
These recruiters are incredible. I used a few a few years back and I STILL get a phone call 3 or 4x a month from a breathless desperate guy who really needs to fill soem shit 2-week temp contract. I also submitted a resume or two fairly recently only to find they went through a recruiter who told me that job doesnt exist anymore and offered me to interview for some temp job. Bait and switch?
The industry really needs to take a good look at recruiters in general. I cant see them being more efficient than in-house hiring.
Here's an oldschool fax machine DOS prank that should at least inconvenience them as much as they have you. There's a good chance the company has a fax machine, and since they're a business you should be able to get ahold of that number very easily. Worst case someone may need to pose as a prospective IT hire and get the fax number in order to "send in your resume".
:)
Once you have the fax number just put together about 6 or 7 pages of whatever you like within reason and the bounds of law (i.e. don't send death threats or pornographic images), usually something inane and anonymous, perhaps lolcatz pictures. Tape all the sheets together end-to-end then insert into your fax machine, once the first part of the now super-length page comes through, loop the top around and tape it together, forming a nice infinite paper loop in the fax machine. Let this send all day if you like. On their end it will either eat all their paper, toner, or at the very least render the fax machine unusable!
Important! You obviously want to remain anonymous with this "fax" so be sure to prepend *67 to the fax number, this is the command to block caller ID.
Enjoy!
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Our voip phone system allows me to add in "blacklisted" phone numbers. that dump them to a generic mailbox. they cant access anything but the leave a message function. If your phone system cant do that, I strongly suggest upgrading as it's a function that is worth it's weight in gold.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You're doing it now reading /.
I hate when people mentions "company loyalty." You can have professional integrity(don't do anything stupid, give away secrets, etc...) as well as be under contract. Looking for a new job is not disloyal. It's logical. Maybe there is something better out there. Because, at the end of the day it's just a J-O-B. They aren't loyal to you(see: layoffs) and companies have very little loyalty, always going with the cheaper or better provider. Next time someone says "company loyalty" just laugh, out loud.
My friend worked for a place that said "Don't post your resume online because we track all the job sites" and he just looked at her and said he'd make sure to post it right now just so she can catch it.
I've got it. Direct all the calls to this attorney of yours, I bet it turns into harassment really quick.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Just make sure your phone system says that the call may be recorded, and you can record them and put them up on the internet. You can make money from the add hits when people go to listen to the fun that the college student put the phonespammer through. I can think of lots of people that would love to have the job of just screwing with people on the phone with no or responsibility for producing anything.
I may be boring but I politely tell them that I'm not looking to make a change right now, then I ask for their contact info in case I need them sometime in the future. They stop bugging me, it's a short call, and I have a list of headhunters if things ever turn South. My previous job things weren't looking so hot with layoffs on the horizon etc so I started looking and I haven't been happier since I found something new. Don't crap on those guys too much, you may need 'em some day...