geminiforces.co.uk

Let me preface this by saying that I do love getting legitimate job opportunities from legitimate recruiters, that some of my friends are recruiters, that I’ve worked with recruiters in a previous existence and I’m well aware of how harried/busy/stressed out they can get. Recruiters: I like the breed.

So please, legitimate recruiters, don’t stop sending me your stuff. I like being on your radar even though I’m happy in my job, because we’ve all learned to our cost that happiness doesn’t always save our jobs.

But sometimes, I really have to wonder what some recruiters are thinking (typos included):

“Our route sales posistion is a unique combination of unparalleled freedom with tremendous earning potential. Based on an initial review of your resume, you may be an excellent fit for our available position. Regardless, of your sales experience we provide an excellent training program which will prepare you for immediate success.

<Name scrubbed> is a wholesaler of packaged meat.”

This is what gets me: We’ve been told that recruiters spend 20 to 30 seconds on our resumes. Get ready, get set–oops, it’s too late, you’re in the trash.

So how this person missed the fact that my resume leads off with MARKETING PROFESSIONAL and SOCIAL MEDIA is beyond me. I don’t even know where they found it anyway; they made no reference, which is another oversight.

But this is the clincher: They leave it up to me to tell them they made a mistake. “I also understand that you may not ever be interested in this type of work, in which case simply reply with ‘remove’ in the subject line and your e-mail address will be removed from our candidate database.”

Polite though all this is, I’m calling it spam. You could replace my name with anyone who falls under the criteria of “initial review” with the kind of review that’s going on here. That’s spam. Sending me a spammy email and then putting it on me to remove myself from your list doesn’t make me want to have much to do with you at all. I have my own job. Do yours.

Look at it this way: I highly doubt that me sending a recruiter an email saying “I’m an excellent fit for any available position” is going to win me any positive attention. Do a Google search on “Don’t spam recruiters” if you’re in any doubt.

But there’s always something good to be found: I got a blog post out of it, and now I know what career path to choose in case I ever wanted to do something completely different!