Dear Recruiter, You're On The Wall of Shame

Dear recruiter-

You're a jerk, ya know. This is the e-mail you send me, really? I honestly don't even know how you got my contact information or why in the world your CMS thought I might be interested in being a "supply executive."

Now, if the fact that this job is absolutely irrelevant to me wasn't enough to make me want to respond just to tell you to f off, your grammar is horrendous. Then, you couldn't even add bullets and format this? That would require effort, something you're clearly lacking.

I can go on and on about how shitty the contents of this e-mail are but I have a bigger issue. You are part of the problem. This is why decent candidates ignore e-mails from the good recruiters. You know, the ones who take a half a second to think instead of uploading excel sheets built by some intern and blasting irrelevant, spammy sounding letters.

So, for that, I'm putting your awful e-mail up as a virtual Recruiter Wall of Shame.

For anyone else in our community: If you have an e-mail just as shitty as this one, go ahead and post it as a comment.

_______________

Dear Katrina,
Marketing Company is presently hiring for the position of Supply Executive.
The Supply Executive is responsible for managing projects, coordinating the delivery of goods and communicating with clients.

We are currently accepting applications for the full-time/part-time position with annual income $69,000/year located USA/All states.

You will be responsible for furnishing our offices and clients with all necessary equipment.
You will be responsible for negotiating purchase orders for the equipment at the lowest cost, but still value of source and time schedule requests across divisions are met.
You will also be responsible for giving regular reports to the company.

We accept US citizens only.
The successful interviewee will have minimum 3 years’ work experience
with more than 2 years at project coordinator level. A fully-rounded
understanding of transportation is vital as is the ability to
manage projects across teams. Strong computer skills with knowledge of basic business software like Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook.
The successful candidate will also possess excellent oral and written communication skills.

If this sounds like the job for you, We’re looking forward to your reply with attached resume.
Thank you for your kind attention.

Comment by Katrina Kibben on July 21, 2015 at 4:14pm: And another:

Good day to you ,
my name is James Adams and I work at world-renowned business named McKinsey Corporation. We are currently looking for new people who would
take the vacancy of Mail&Packaging manager .
Your resume was found on one of the job-related web-sites and our HR managers found it to be quite interesting. We would be glad to see you joining our
professional team. So, let me explain you what the vacancy of
Forwarding Manager is all about.
As a Forwarding Clerk you'll be helping us to maintain an
exceptional quality of the services we provide. In particular, your job responsibilities would include:
- receiving and checking the contents of the packages , which will be forwarded to you;
- sending those items to our customers using the labels which are already paid for;
- keeping the records of all the items you process using our online platform;
- regularly communicating with appointed Supervisor .
Please be advised that we require you to be at least 18 years old to be eligible for this vacancy . Basic experience in office equipment operation will also be expected. We offer
unprecedented career perspectives for our most talented employees and, as a matter of fact , most of our Senior Managers have begun
from the position that you may now occupy. Please reply to this e-mail to let us know that you are interested and we'll speak with you shortly. Thank you and have a wonderful day!

Comment by Kelly Blokdijk on July 21, 2015 at 9:02pm: I got one recently with the subject line: "Kelly, we'd like to hire you"

UHHHH, really?!?

Of course the email was full of crap content similar to your examples and then had a link to "apply" for this "Logistics Project Manager" role.

Pretty sure some of my older posts (here) included rants about this type of nonsense. LAME!

Comment by Austin Fraser Ltd on July 23, 2015 at 4:43am: Oh no! These are enough to make anyone cringe! I'd be intrigued to know if they actually get any replies from something very auto-generated.

-Charlotte, AF

https://www.linkedin.com/company/austin-fraser
https://twitter.com/AustinFraserLtd

Comment by Mike Houston on July 24, 2015 at 5:10pm: Sorry you had such a bad experience with what I would politely call a "very bad recruiter". But bowser on the language...on a professional site no less. I can understand getting upset about being bothered in such a weak way...very pathetic recruiting attempt...but maybe save the f-bombs and other dude night verbiage for the bar when recounting the story.

Mike

Comment by Katrina Kibben on July 27, 2015 at 9:10am: See, polite isn't really my thing. Especially in this context.

F bombs aside, I'm not particularly upset with the fact that I was reached out to in such a pathetic way but that this is where the bar is set. For every 100 recruiters who send out junk like this, there's 1 trying to make a unique impact on a candidate, acknowledging that they're asking someone to change their life - not just their commute - by taking a new role. That volume of BS trickles down and makes it harder and harder for good recruiters to reach candidates without being snubbed from the get-go. I mean, have you ever stopped to consider that maybe we wouldn't need to figure out social recruiting and every other (blank) recruiting strategy if we'd just use the tools we have the right way? If we could all commit to a certain standard of ethics that would convey value of hire instead of speed to fill?

Comment by Skip Graham on August 4, 2015 at 10:58am

If only I could accept all of the gigs I have been (poorly) pitched in the past month...

Telecom Call Center Manager
Farmers Insurance Sales Executive (weekly, despite my blunt no's)
Java Developer
Director of Marketing
Medical Receptionist
and one of my personal favorites, Fish and Wildlife Administrator

... I would be the most interesting man in America.

One of my other favorites was a really bad pitch for a "Sorcerer." I'm sure they meant Sourcer, but I couldn't resist having a little fun with that one.

It's with all I can muster not to reply to each and every one with a terse reprimand about how they dilute my profession - about how they, doing what they do, somehow makes me look bad. But I suddenly remember that in an industry where there are so few ways to differentiate, this is clearly a big one.

@skipgraham

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