Early Retirement Extreme Forums

So about twice a month a new recruiter pings me on Linkedin with a potential job. I will respond to about half of these people but they appear to be indifferent or perhaps lazy to my replies. They'll send me something along the lines of " I came across your profile and I wanted to speak with you about a Sr. Financial Analyst opportunity...blah blah job description blah blah...". I'll respond with "please give me a call so we can discuss more, here's my phone number...". 75% of the time I never hear back. The few times I got call I was told to craft a resume and they'd arrange an interview, then they almost never get back to me. One head hunter has gotten me all of my interviews, the rest have been time wasters. Is the recruiting business so non-competitive that they can simply ping their potential employee's and then expect the employee's to initiate all contact and keep the ball rolling at all times? Is this some sort of little game they're playing to see how desperate I am? it's probably a lot easier to place a desperate person then someone who just wants to do some interviews to see what's out there. Is this just a really slick form of spam?

I'd say it's spam. I used to the same thing with online dating. Ping 100, filter the replies.

One other weird thing is that some of these people will take the time to call me personally ,at my desk at work, to pitch a job. However the result is about the same as when they ping me on linkedin, i.e. I usually never hear from them again. In fact I put the last person on the spot when this happened last. They called my desk and pitched me on a job, I said "ok slot me in for an interview" she's not prepared for that and says she needs to see my resume first and might be able to get me in front of someone in 2-3 months from now and never contacts me again. It's like they're using the approach of a head hunter but at the end of the day the process is far less distinct and is really just sophisticated list building (looking for warm prospects), often at the expense of the prospects time (fielding calls, following up, tailoring a resume, researching potential employer etc.).

Why do your own research on potential prospects when you can just get them to provide you with all relevant details by cold calling them with boiler plate messaging. I guess you'd get a much higher quality list of prospects with this method vs. the traditional method of posting the job on a job board and sorting out what comes back.

As soon as I saw the title of this posting, I was ready to shout YES! Yes, they are toying with you. They are just throwing their net out there. A lot of these places like to get a "big book of resumes" to show potential clients. They can say, "look at all this talent we represent", in the hopes the client/employer will sign up for with their company. (I know this, because I worked for a very short time in a temporary agency back in the late 90s, when they actually had real jobs to send people to.) I constantly get potential job offers from recruiters and most of the time, they are not even close to what I would qualify for or they want me to move across the country. I delete every one of them.

@inchicago: Agreed. On a net basis they appear to be time wasters unless you get lucky and make it through their pipeline and get a job offer (which is what happened to me recently). The industry seems to be moving more and more to a high pressure, commission leveraged list/lead factory. Fortunately there are still good recruiters out there, they usually have an exclusive contract with the employer. Personally I ignore them now and if/when I want to look around again I will pick the headhunters and go to them not vice /versa.

I got my current job through a Linked In recruiter, who worked for a headhunting company I hadn't heard of before, but the position was for a well-known company. So don't rule them out if you're on the lookout for a new job.

Just get them on the phone / ask them to call you. A call is a quicker way to tell if they opportunity is legit and see if they are willing to spend time with you.

I will throw this disclaimer in here. I did get my current position from a LinkedIn recruiter as well. The recruiter focused on a specific industry, and I checked him out before I even replied to the email. So yes, you can get lucky, but I've found that the majority are pretty worthless.

I get a fair amount of recruiter emails through linkedin and email, and they all seem to mention a specific job they're recruiting for. I can usually tell from that first email if I'm qualified or not, unless they kept it vague enough, but I usually get more details on the second email. I respond to them occasionally and I've interviewed with multiple companies through the recruiters. Seems mostly legit to me, although there's definitely a lot of inefficiencies, and they can suck horribly at followup.