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Want 30 Job Offers a Month? It's Not As Great As You Think
An anonymous reader writes: Software engineers suffer from a problem that most other industries wish they had: too much demand. There's a great story at the Atlantic entitled Imagine Getting 30 Job Offers a Month (It Isn't as Awesome as You Might Think). This is a problem that many engineers deal with: place your resume on a job board and proceed to be spammed multiple times per day for jobs in places that you would never go to (URGENT REQUIREMENT IN DETROIT!!!!!, etc). Google "recruiter spam" and there are many tales of engineers being overwhelmed by this. One engineer, fed up by a lack of a recruiting spam blackhole, set up NoRecruitingSpam.com with directions on how to stop this modern tech scourge.
Have you been the victim of recruiting spam?
I get these every damn day. You would think these folks might take the time to look at where I live (it's on my resume) and compare that to where they want me to work. Never happens.
Really? It's an example and all, but as developer born and raised in Detroit (the city proper) and a current resident of the city, is it necessary to kick the place even more? Any way, recruiter spam is a constant pest for me as well; one recent one was trying to get me interested in a "Live Chat Customer Service"' opportunity somewhere... I think I'll be taking a peek at NoRecruitingSpam.com .
The sharpest blade is no match for the sharpest mind.
Same thing happens with doctors and nurses, quite frankly.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Curb the H1B problem, we probably will curb the recruiter spam problem
I disagree. These Indian recruiters all live in India, they aren't H1-B workers. Basically what's going on is a bunch of Indian companies have figured out that there's a good demand for engineers in the US, and that recruiting isn't exactly rocket science, you just have to have people who speak passable English and can sit on the phone for hours calling candidates and companies and matching them up. The recruiters don't even have to be very good, as long as they have an acceptable success rate to justify their pay. Since they're in India, they're not paid much relative to US salaries.
I've even asked 'is this a real job? are you willing and able to hire a local?'
the look of shock on their faces when asked this very direct question is priceless.
usually, they lie. no, I'm wrong. they ALWAYS lie. and they fucking waste my time, collect my resume and my salary (a $100 data point, I'm told) and then I'm persona non-grateful (sic) to them.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Every... Day.... :-/
I get these every day even though I've had the current job for five years. For things that aren't anywhere near anything on my resume. Recruiters are just bottom feeding scum, and it's gotten a lot worse since people in India (and Africa, and Eastern Europe, etc) have realized they can just browse LinkedIn then shotgun resumes to companies. The hit rate is tiny, but all they need is one. Local firms are bad as well, with apparently every single person from TCC contacting me about the same job.
LinkedIn is no better - 'Jobs you might be interested in: Mechanical Engineering Manager in Baton Rogue'. Really. I'm not an ME, I specifically say no management roles, and I specifically say unwilling to move. Maybe you should contract me to rewrite your jobs candidates engine, because I think I could do better in 2 days with 300 lines of python.
So why are you still on LinkedIn, you might ask... well, it is fairly amusing, and I can handle one or two a day. And if I ever need a job my profile will be there.
I don't know about the "jobdiva" site mentioned at the "norecruitingspam" site, but I can certainly relate to getting too many unsolicited requests for my latest resume for "amazing opportunities" somewhere across the country. Obviously you didn't read my resume, asshole--it links to my web site, which always features... my latest resume!
Once I get more than one such email from the same domain, I just add 'em to my Postfix blacklist (surely I can't be the only engineer who still runs his own mail server?).
Sometimes I'll even add them after the first email (if there's any legit recruiter named "Satish Kumar", I'm sorry about the unfortunate coincidence).
Here's what my blacklist looks like at the moment:
Also, anyone who clearly hasn't read my resume (I know nothing whatsoever about Informatica... I just worked at a place with "Informatica" in the name) gets blacklisted. If you don't read my resume, you're lazy, and you're spamming. If you do read my resume, you'll also see the bit (in the first paragraph) about having little interest in working outside my city limits, and absolutely no interest in relocating. That alone has greatly reduced the far-away recruiter solicitations.
I used to work with big outfits like Tek Systems, but I've asked them to leave me alone (unlike the spammers, they will actually listen). Nothing wrong with them; I just decided I'd rather support local businesses. I've found two local recruiters, working for local companies (or self-employed) based here in my city. Both of them have gotten me great jobs. Any persistent out-of-state recruiters (who aren't named Satish Kumar) get a polite response explaining that I'm not looking for new recruiters. Any half-way decent company will respect that. I really don't get that many unsolicited offers anymore, and the ones I do get tend to be more interesting.
I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious. --Albert Einstein
I have over 25 years experience, and a lot of recruiters call me or email me. All the time.
For phone calls, I drive the conversation. I live in the SF Bay Area. Since I'm not willing to relocate (and it says that on my resume and LinkedIn profile), first thing I ask about is the location. If they can't be specific, are not familiar with the Bay Area, or don't live here, I tell them I'm not interested.
If the caller has a heavy accent, or has trouble understanding me, I tell them I'm not interested. If they can't communicate effectively with me, why would I want them representing me to a potential employer?
Then I ask them to be specific about the job and the company. If they are vague, or if the job is not in my niche, I'm not interested. Any contract-only position, likewise. Then comes line of business: Anything in eCommerce, banking, insurance, marketing, game development: not interested.
Then I ask about compensation. If it's below what I'm making, not interested. I don't tell them what I'm making now, or if I do I inflate it by 30%. Some stranger calls me on the phone and starts asking personal questions? None of their business.
Emails are easy to cull. Anything with a subject line intended to catch me eye or trick me into reading it (like when a stranger sends an email with subject like "long time no see") gets immediatley deleted. Anything which doesn't include the job location, or is a location I'm not interested in, gone. And anything that looks like it was sent by an algorithm (e.g. anything from CyberCoders).
Remember, there are a lot more recruiters than relevant opportunities.
Job Diva is the WORST of all. Hell they don't even hide that they use a harvester. Just Google them and there are numerous tales of their horrific nonstop spam. I get Detroit (which is a fine city IMHO), Fort Wayne, Billings and every other place I'd never move. Bravo to these guys for finally doing something, I'm signing up now.
Too many offers remind me of the last months of the dotcom bubble...
I've been unemployed for 6 months and the job market in San Diego CA for electrical engineers is the worst I've ever experienced.
1. It's mostly recruiting companies doing the hiring. There seems to be a lack of direct company recruiting going on (At least in San Diego, CA).
2. If it is companies doing direct hiring, they want "new college grads" at all times of the year
3. They want master's degrees at a minimum.
4. Thay want someone who can speak Mandarin.
5. The list of skills required is so detailed and complex, it would be very difficult for someone to be a master of everything on that list, and one would have a terrible time maintaining any degree of focus to ensure a good result.
6. They whine to congress about the H-1B cap.
Fortunately for me, I have plenty of money in the bank and in investments, plus I have rental income. I'm 54, and not sure I'll ever get to be employed as an engineer again. I'm mostly keeping my self occupied with personal engineering projects and code. I'm hoping things eventually turn around, but am prepared to retire if they do not.
The norecruitingspam guy himself spammed news.admin.net-abuse.email a few days ago with this. All he's offering is an email filtering service that blacklists the Jobdiva spambags.
He posted his screed in a Usenet thread that I started over five years ago, that's archived by Google, at apparently has a pretty high ranking when someone is searching for more information about all the spam they're getting from the Jobdiva spam factory. Over five years ago I happen to notice that every recruiter spam that I received turns out to have come from the Jobdiva spam factory. Ever since then, once or twice a year someone finds that thread in Google Groups, and post a "me too" to the Usenet group. Which I find pretty funny.
After figuring out where all my recruiter spam is coming from, it was a simple matter of adjusting a few settings on my mail server, and, poof!, it was all gone. Originally I never thought much of it, and only posted the first message in that thread as a means of sharing my thoughts, and nothing more, but apparently someone else now discovered effective email filtering and thinks it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. As Benny Hill would've said: biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig.... deal.
One good thing here is that now that he's got a good link from Slashdot, and, presuming that his web site is still up (haven't checked), because all his web site now only contains a big rant against the Jobdiva sleazebags, this will shine a bit of a brighter spotlight on those vermin, and perhaps shine some well-deserved sunshine on these sleazebags. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
It's not just with IT jobs. It's prevalent in other scientific and technical fields, too. I'm a PhD computational chemist and I constantly get bombarded with recruiter spam from addresses like 1000018179_10007281@jobbank301.com that have subject lines like, "JOBOP - Drug Discovery - Medicinal Chemist - Medford, MA". Gmail sends these all straight to my spam folder. Seriously? If there's a 301st "job bank", what's in the first 300 job banks? Does anyone check email send from an email address that starts with eighteen random numbers? I really don't think any of these recruiters know what in the hell they're doing, as I have never gotten a job from one of them. Ever. All of the jobs I've worked at since receiving my PhD have been from direct contacts and personal references. JOBOP emails are completely useless in a job search,. . .
Apparently you have know clue whats going on in detroit. Its an absolutley huge town for engineers. Hello auto industry (fca, gm and ford) with all the car infotainment and mobile devices and tech being put into cars lots of jobs. Plus a plethora of many other industries. Detroit over the last 5 years has had a renaissance of revitalization and companies are paying big cash for top talent to work and live in Detroit. Living in the midwest and make +6 figures with the cost of living is an absolute goldmine. But if you feel that way stay away and I am happy to take those jobs!
This article is about spam, not real offers. If they were real offers, it would give the lowdown-- location, skills, duties, and pay. It would be an actual employment contract, and all the candidate would have to do is sign up, or not.
So often, these so-called jobs are fake. There isn't a real job, they're just harvesting resumes. Or maybe there is but they've already settled on a candidate, and everyone else has no real chance, the employer is only going through the motions to satisfy EEOC rules.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
No, I won't get an account at an ad brokers which collaborates with the NSA and which spends millions on lobbying away your privacy. You total idiot.
What happens if you don't give them your salary? I've never, ever given a prospective employer my current salary. But my prospective employer days are behind me. Maybe things have changed and this is de rigueur now.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I got recruiter spam at my last job's e-mail address at a Fortune 500 company, which was odd because I really only used it for internal communications and didn't submit it anywhere. I actually got on the cases of a couple of them, telling them that it's unprofessional to send recruiting mail to someone's work address. Their response was the same: then add me to your junk mail list. So I did--I blocked it for the entire e-mail architecture.
You are compliance chum for their H1b hire. They need to go through the motions of looking for an American and somehow never find anyone.
Tons of published tech jobs are h1b compliance chum.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Last year I realized that I'd never changed my LinkedIn job profile info to "not interested" after starting my new job a year earlier. I'd been getting a lot of pings from recruiters, and I thought that might discourage them. Nope. Saying I wasn't interested made the recruiters even more interested in me!
Which would be great if any of them had a job better than my current one, but they never do. Everything is more boring work I'm less qualified for, for less pay.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
I had one a couple of years ago for which I expressed interest as I wanted to move to the area anyway. The guy wanted all kinds of info that was already on my resume, but also wanted my SSN, and when I refused to give him that, he wanted the last four digits. I don't know if it was an attempt at identity theft or he was just stupid, but that ended things right there.
Another one went but better at the outset but insisted that the interview had to be done over a video link. I kind of figured, OK, fine, whatever, but when I asked about Skype, he said I had to go to some particular office that was about 40 miles away and use their setup. I couldn't download software and use my camera, because it absolutely had to be done at one of the offices they contracted with, and I was to wear a suit and tie. That really broke it--there was really no need to do that when so many other options for web conferencing were available.
A friend did recruiting for a while. He's transitioned to a technical role now because he can't compete with the resume mills. I don't know what it will take to get past them and get some decent recruiters back into the fray, but it can't come soon enough.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
The fact of the matter is US politics has sold out US business on it's own people, if you are not H1B visa available for half price then you are not a candidate, you are a benchmark. Not like I have to quote how many jobs were sold to China over the last 40 years, or that China would like to have our war planes constructed as suggested by them over there now as well. Selling out the US is de rigueur now, not unlike pre WWII Germany.
uh.... it's *detroit* /nuffsaid
Oooh, sounds divine! According to the internet the city that I live in has a quality of life Index of 30.57, while Detroit scores 184.59. (Larger number is better) :)
Oh! But get this. . . My 3rd world city has a health-care score index of 'High', while 'Detroit' scores 'Moderate'. Translation: city in the USA has worse than 3rd-world standard of healthcare. I'm guessing its not the only one.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
It must be rough, having dozens of people throwing money at you.
It's a lie. These are not job offers, they are job spams. They are required to "look" for an American candidate before hiring a cheaper H1b, so they send out spam emails and try to act as scummy as possible in the hopes that no one will replay so they can hire the H1B of their choice. If you do reply, they will ask for you visa number. Yes, their application will literally ask you for your visa number. It won't ask if you are a citizen. If you don't fill in the visa number (because you don't have one because you are a citizen), then it goes in the round file.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Seriously, their 'smart' systems suck balls. CareerBuilder gives me programming jobs from my horticultural resume. Monster gives me retail jobs from my culinary resume. Neither can figure out my IT resume so I get shit from security guard to administrative assistant.
All they're doing is selling you out to data harvesters.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You have that a bit backwards. US businesses have paid off US politics to sell out US workers. Wal-Mart did more for China than any US policy ever could.
I usually get one or two of these spammy mails every day. My favorite was one I got several years ago, which described an interesting opportunity, but I wasn't (and still am not) willing to relocate. So, I wrote back and asked the guy if the gig could be done via telecommuting. His response was "yes, but they require that you work from the office. Will that work for you?". I wrote back asking if he knew what "telecommuting" meant, and never heard back.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Find a few local recruiters, make friends with them and touch base every year. When they get tired of your coy nature, rinse and repeat. They need your money and will hang on long enough that if you do ever get laid off, you have at least one starting point. Saved me once.
Unfortunately, the actual recruiters (people) around here have a very high turnover rate.
The recruiting company itself may endure (or be purchased), but they don't have any retained knowledge of what I might bite at. So I get useless offers, blow them off, then they don't think about me when something more interesting comes along.
Without even signing up for Linkedin I could tell they were a spam factory. I was getting incessant sign-up emails because a friend was listed and made the mistake of giving them emails of his friends. I yelled so loud I think Linkedin must have put me on their blacklist, as I've not seen a peep out of them since, and that was several years ago. Recruiters are just another form of telemarketer. I remember a good one or two back in the 1980s, but if they still exist they're well hidden. Fortunately, I've been around so long I have no need for such foolishness-- I know enough people now if I were to need it, I can find out about good jobs via word of mouth or personal email. Certainly any place that only wants fresh grads is going to be a place only an actual fresh grad would ever want to work, and even then only long enough to build up a resume.
Many of these offers are for temporary positions. Where they want you to make this program and then you are out of work. Sometimes they are jobs for pie in the sky type of projects. "The killer app!" Without much understanding on the limited functionality of computing, or the practicality.
These jobs are career poison, and should be avoided.
Also these spam jobs are an attempt to try to pickup a low ball offer. Sr. Software Architect for 60k.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
No. Those were different positions.
Folks - the industry considers software development an entry level job. It is only the companies making obscene profits which pay $100K+ for software people and they think over-35 yrs old is over-the-hill - most of the time.
If you want to pick and choose a software job, you've got to become extremely well-known inside an industry, speak at industry conferences, and find a recruiter who cares enough to learn what you want.
Most recruiters are like ugly men trying to get laid at 1am in a bar. Numbers. numbers, numbers.
Having my time wasted by 20 "recruiters" taught me early to find one who took the time to understand my wants before bothering me. He learned my interests, my rates, my travel requirements and which jobs I'd be willing to travel 80% or relocate over.
Taking a 6-12 month vacation every few years is nice too, while my "guy" searches for the right job.
* US$120K+ - I'm a F/LOSS solutions architect with 25 yrs experience; 10 yrs cross-platform C/C++.
* Never in Cali, NY - cost of living and lifestyles in those places don't agree with me.
* Jobs within 5 miles of my house or telecommute, I'll work for less.
* Nothing north of Tenn - I've lived enough north of there to know 6 months is beautiful weather - 6 months sucks.
* I'd love to work on 6-12 month overseas contracts which include nice housing, local language training, not living in a shack, solid electricity, internet, and time off for regional travel.
* Aircraft or space industry jobs and I'll pack. Former rocket scientist with avionics development experience here.
Since I have my FU-money already, the overseas work is less about pay and more about experiences.
I would move for an Airbus job in France on June 1. However, I would NOT move to Cali for a SpaceX job. Don't get me wrong, visiting Cali is fine - just don't want to live there. ZERO interest in living there. Send me to Uruguay first.
....and you get zero job offers....or jokes like 3 month contracts at the other end of the continent.