Recently, I got recruited. Badly.
Nadyne,
I am a recruiter at [somewhere] and am searching for an experienced User Experience Researcher to work at our corporate headquarters in [the Bay Area]. I saw your profile on LinkedIn and thought you might be interested or might know someone who is.
We are looking for someone with 5+ years experience and
• Mastery of user experience research methodologies
• Successful track record conducting Qualitative and Quantitative research studies
• The ability to drive the creation and adoption of new research methods and tools, including reporting tools and
• Extensive knowledge of usability methodsIf you are interested or know anyone who is I can be reached at [somewhere]
I look forward to hearing from you.
[recruiter]
I gave the email the response it deserved:
[recruiter],
http://www.nadynerichmond.com/blog/2012/06/07/the-flip-side-of-unsolicited-resumes/
Regards,
Nadyne.
It probably took me longer to write my email than the recruiter spent on their mail, since it took me a couple of minutes to find the blog post.
There’s nothing in the recruiter’s post about me. I mean, I suppose I could give him points for spelling my name properly, but given that the rest of the mail is cut-and-paste1, I’ll assume that he’s capable of cutting-and-pasting my name too. It just correctly identifies that I’ve got more than five years of experience as a user researcher. There’s nothing in that mail that does anything to sell me on why I would want to work at that company or in that role. It’s lazy recruiting, and I’m not going to invest my time in talking to a recruiter that can’t be bothered to do the most basic part of recruiting.
Amusingly, I got the following response:
Nadyne,
This is a great article.
Thank you.
[recruiter]
It is, isn’t it? Except either (a) you didn’t read it, or (b) you read it but didn’t actually comprehend how it applies to you and your lazy recruiting.
- Although you might have noticed that the bullet point about “ability to drive creation …” is cut off. That’s not actually in the job ad that’s listed on the company’s website, so apparently he’s not even that great at cutting and pasting. ↩