A Tip for Recruiters 

13 Feb 2017

I work with a lot of recruiters (particularly tech recruiters). The vast majority of them are incredibly nice people who really are trying to help me fill a spot on my team. They’re able to get a job listing out and do the legwork of sourcing candidates, and after some trial and error, we can usually zero in on a candidate.

Some recruiters, however, are just awful.

There’s one recruiter right now (and, if you’ve ever talked to me, or had me return an email, it’s not you), who I will never do business with. Let me lay out the scenario, and see if you can figure out why.

• Office phone rings, don’t recognize number, ignore and wait for voicemail
• Cell phone rings, same number, no voicemail
• Office phone rings, different number, ignore and wait for voicemail
• Cell phone rings, that same number, no voicemail

That was within 2 minutes.

I did some googling, and it turned out that the number was a recruiter’s office I’d worked with before, and the other number seemed to point back to a particular person. Linkedin confirmed that person was a recruiter in that office.

Ok. Douchey, but I figured this person would leave a message or send an email, and then we could go from there.

Nope.

A few hours later?

• Office phone
• Cell phone
• Office phone
• Cell phone

This repeated every day for a week. And now it’s every other day or so. That’s just lazy. How hard is it to leave a voicemail, or send an email, or even send a stupid Linkedin message?

I’ve blocked the numbers on my cell phone. Shortly, I’ll do the same on my office phone. There’s enough recruiters who are willing to make my life easier (in exchange for the opportunity to make their company some money, and build a relationship). If you’re just trying to annoy me into answering the phone, why would I ever work with you?