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Ask HN: How do you handle recruiter spam?

9 points by andersco ↗ HN
I receive unsolicited emails from recruiters on an almost daily basis. I am not currently in the market for new work, nor if I were, do I think I would use a recruiter. For this reason, I struggle with how to deal with these constant unsolicited messages.

I have tried a number of techniques for trying to reduce or eliminate these messages: - Ensure that my email address is not publicly visible on LinkedIn. -Use Just Delete Me to opt out wherever I can. - Respond to the recruiter and politely ask what service they used so I can opt out. - Report the email as spam.

None of these have been very effective. I am still being barraged with emails.

Does anyone have suggestions for how to reduce or eliminate unsolicited recruiter emails?

Thanks in advance!

14 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 38.7 ms ] thread
JSeymourATL
It’s an interesting problem to have.

Might I ask, WHY does it bother you?

Like all spam - most folks ignore/delete.

andersco
It bothers me for the same reason that any form of unsolicited email is a nuisance. It's one more irrelevant email notification, one more irrelevant email to have to archive, deal with, etc. If it were very occasional, I would not care but it is basically a daily thing, sometimes multiple per day.
dugreader
If I respond that I'm not looking for 6 months to a year, many people will thanks me for a response, and update their CRM (or whatever it is called) tool. Otherwise, ignore/delete.
colesantiago
automate it, place an email rule that sends recruiter/linkedin/indeed emails to the spam folder or better yet, delete them automatically.
andersco
Great suggestion, though how would I construct such a rule? I want to make sure I don't mistakenly delete legitimate emails.
zelon88
I have a hunch from things that are written in recruiter spam that I receive that a lot of this spam is scraped from resumes posted to job sites. I would log into these sites and remove old resume's.

Also, if the job looks especially interesting I'll sometimes ask for more information. Likewise, if the job looks completely off-base I'll reply telling the recruiter that I changed industries or am not interested in anything similar. My logic is this; If I'm going to receive this crap, at least make it relevant.

el_dev_hell
Burner emails on my own domain(s).

When I apply for roles, I'll use an email address with an ID of some kind. Usually these are something like:

* react@MY_NAME.com

* webdev@MY_NAME.com

* software@MY_NAME.com

After securing a role, I'll forward those emails to my "check every few months" email bucket.

codingdave
I respond politely telling them exactly what my criteria are to be interested in a job, and invite them to send me any opportunities that meet my criteria.

That stops most of them from ever contacting me again because they know that I am not a match for the types of jobs they have. It also surprises me once in a while, and somebody does have a job I'd be interested in.

dave_sid
I either swipe if I’m busy or reply to say I’ll keep in touch as they might get me a job one day.
killtimeatwork
Regarding LinkedIn, it's possible to configure it so that only people in your network are able to pm/email you. Set it on, delete any recruiters from your network and at least LinkedIn will stop bothering you.
sethammons
I reply to credible recruiter emails (like, referencing my actual experience and offering to talk about things I’m actually interested in). My response usually is “im currently making $(X multiple of faang salary), have $N weeks vacation, work life balance, collaborative environment, high scale, product influence, etc.” many go away at this point, but some follow up. I’m interested in talking to those who can meet the above criteria.
phekunde
I read the email most of the time but usually ignore most of them. Some, who I feel will be of help in some way in the future, I accept their linkedin invite. Emails, I ignore.

My past experience have been that very few recruiters actually understand what they are recruiting for. So most of them just spray and pray.

leipert
I created https://no-thank-you.de/en/ for LinkedIn SPAM.

Recently I got a recruiter email to my work email, scraped from my GitHub profile. The company had a German entity behind it, so I reported them for GDPR violations.

the_only_law
Mostly ignore. Majority of the recruiters are shady or are recruiting for jobs worse or only marginally better than my current job. Many of them have numerous grammatical and spelling errors and the job may not even match my resume or there’s a mismatch between the job in the subject line and that described job.

I don’t normally get phone calls from recruiters unless I’ve been actively applying recently. Some of those I ignore and the ones that don’t normally ghost me or don’t pan out. I even had one try to modify my resume while on the call.