Sorry, not interested
April 13, 2021 9:31 AM Subscribe
I work in tech and I get a lot of emails from recruiters who find me on LinkedIn. What’s the polite way to respond to emails I’m not interested in?
I’ve just been ignoring them, but the recruiter will often follow up and I worry I am being marked as a rude person when I might need them in the future. I’m currently employed and just not looking for other work, I don’t want to leave a stable job during the pandemic. A lot of the messages are for jobs that aren’t really in line with my skill set anyway. Should I respond to all of them with a generic polite email, or just ignore them?
I’m not marked as looking for work on LinkedIn but still get these messages.
I’ve just been ignoring them, but the recruiter will often follow up and I worry I am being marked as a rude person when I might need them in the future. I’m currently employed and just not looking for other work, I don’t want to leave a stable job during the pandemic. A lot of the messages are for jobs that aren’t really in line with my skill set anyway. Should I respond to all of them with a generic polite email, or just ignore them?
I’m not marked as looking for work on LinkedIn but still get these messages.
Ignoring them is what everyone I know does. Unless you're going out of your way to be mean to them, you're fine.
posted by nebulawindphone at 9:35 AM on April 13, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by nebulawindphone at 9:35 AM on April 13, 2021 [6 favorites]
Recruiters have a few levels of people they keep tabs on.
"Never going to look for new work"
"Currently happy, but might want to look for work in 2-3 years"
"Actively looking for work".
They value the second group almost as much as the first group. I would just say "Thanks for reaching out! I'm currently happily employed, but I may be looking for my next step in 2-3 years. At that time I will be looking for a position as (Tech manager II) with a company that (company size/type) in (Specific technology). Is it okay if I reach out to you when I'm at the place to start looking?"
posted by bbqturtle at 9:36 AM on April 13, 2021 [4 favorites]
"Never going to look for new work"
"Currently happy, but might want to look for work in 2-3 years"
"Actively looking for work".
They value the second group almost as much as the first group. I would just say "Thanks for reaching out! I'm currently happily employed, but I may be looking for my next step in 2-3 years. At that time I will be looking for a position as (Tech manager II) with a company that (company size/type) in (Specific technology). Is it okay if I reach out to you when I'm at the place to start looking?"
posted by bbqturtle at 9:36 AM on April 13, 2021 [4 favorites]
Honestly, the majority of recruiters appear to just blast out emails to random people on LinkedIn and see what sticks. I get some pretty amusing "matches" that have nothing to do with my background.
I figure there are two classes of recruiter reach-outs - those that are random (as above) and those that are actually targeted (for instance, due to interest from the hiring manager). For the former, responding to the recruiter is probably just wasting your time and the recruiter's time because they need to read the response and probably respond back to it. For the latter, I figure the recruiter will reach out more than once.
So, my general policy is to:
posted by saeculorum at 9:47 AM on April 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
I figure there are two classes of recruiter reach-outs - those that are random (as above) and those that are actually targeted (for instance, due to interest from the hiring manager). For the former, responding to the recruiter is probably just wasting your time and the recruiter's time because they need to read the response and probably respond back to it. For the latter, I figure the recruiter will reach out more than once.
So, my general policy is to:
- ignore all recruiter emails that have no connection to my background/interests.
- respond with polite non-interest to targeted recruiter emails that make sense given my background or follow-up emails from recruiters.
- respond with what would change my interest to recruiter emails that make sense and I'm actually interested in (ie, "I'm not willing to work in Kansas right now, but if you ever open an office by my house, please contact me!")
posted by saeculorum at 9:47 AM on April 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
I've had recruiters constantly email me for close to a decade without any response from me, so I wouldn't worry about getting placed into the "rude" file. I even told Google I'd never be willing to go through their hiring process bullshit, and they skill call and email me every six months or so to see if "never" actually means "never".
About the only persistent recruiters that have stopped emailing me because of "rudeness" are Facebook, but only because I would just reply with screenshots of the FEC paperwork for their donations to Devin Nunes Congressional re-election PAC.
One thing I used to do, back when I was attempting to "curate" the pool of recruiters who would reach out in order to weed out roles that were a waste of everyone's time to talk about, was come up with a form letter I'd used to reply with. It was something along the lines of "Hello, Thanks for your interest. I'm currently an X at Apple. My current salary is Y, and my outstanding RSUs are Z. I love my job, so any future opportunities would need to be much better for me to consider blah blah blah".
That initially cut down on the recruiter spam of the "$30/hr for an on-site 6 month contract role" at a company described as "Louisville-adjacent". But, that just put me into a tier of recruiter spam with eye watering total comp numbers, especially after crypto really got going
So, now I just ignore them all. And I can tell you that recruiters will still email you if you do that, don't worry.
posted by sideshow at 10:30 AM on April 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
About the only persistent recruiters that have stopped emailing me because of "rudeness" are Facebook, but only because I would just reply with screenshots of the FEC paperwork for their donations to Devin Nunes Congressional re-election PAC.
One thing I used to do, back when I was attempting to "curate" the pool of recruiters who would reach out in order to weed out roles that were a waste of everyone's time to talk about, was come up with a form letter I'd used to reply with. It was something along the lines of "Hello, Thanks for your interest. I'm currently an X at Apple. My current salary is Y, and my outstanding RSUs are Z. I love my job, so any future opportunities would need to be much better for me to consider blah blah blah".
That initially cut down on the recruiter spam of the "$30/hr for an on-site 6 month contract role" at a company described as "Louisville-adjacent". But, that just put me into a tier of recruiter spam with eye watering total comp numbers, especially after crypto really got going
So, now I just ignore them all. And I can tell you that recruiters will still email you if you do that, don't worry.
posted by sideshow at 10:30 AM on April 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
If I'm not currently in the market:
Unless the offer is absurd (they want me to relocate to another country, totally unrelated to my skillset, pay absurdly - mockingly - low) I start with "Thank you for reaching out." Then I either tell them "I'm not currently looking for new opportunities at this time" or "My past experience is in X for Y number of years. I have worked with 1, 2, 3. I would be interested in hearing about (type of role/type of company/type of team/type of technology) roles on a (contract-to-hire/FTE/contract/freelance) basis."
I rarely hear back from recruiters when I send the 2nd type of email, because they are often in response to blast-messages where the recruiter only wants to hear back from people who are more interested in the role they're trying to fill right then.
Other people are right, in that lots of recruiters - especially those who ping a whole lot of people at once - don't expect to get a response from everyone they contact. But if a message may have been aimed specifically at you, it never hurts to send a polite response. (Unless you're getting dozens of totally off-the-wall pings each week. That's why I finally removed all of my job-description info from LinkedIn: they were all chock full of keywords and I got spammed like crazy because years ago I'd worked at, for example, the Cloud Connection or the Developer Depot.)
posted by Tailkinker to-Ennien at 11:19 AM on April 13, 2021
Unless the offer is absurd (they want me to relocate to another country, totally unrelated to my skillset, pay absurdly - mockingly - low) I start with "Thank you for reaching out." Then I either tell them "I'm not currently looking for new opportunities at this time" or "My past experience is in X for Y number of years. I have worked with 1, 2, 3. I would be interested in hearing about (type of role/type of company/type of team/type of technology) roles on a (contract-to-hire/FTE/contract/freelance) basis."
I rarely hear back from recruiters when I send the 2nd type of email, because they are often in response to blast-messages where the recruiter only wants to hear back from people who are more interested in the role they're trying to fill right then.
Other people are right, in that lots of recruiters - especially those who ping a whole lot of people at once - don't expect to get a response from everyone they contact. But if a message may have been aimed specifically at you, it never hurts to send a polite response. (Unless you're getting dozens of totally off-the-wall pings each week. That's why I finally removed all of my job-description info from LinkedIn: they were all chock full of keywords and I got spammed like crazy because years ago I'd worked at, for example, the Cloud Connection or the Developer Depot.)
posted by Tailkinker to-Ennien at 11:19 AM on April 13, 2021
It is unsolicited commercial email; you don't have to respond. It might be useful to pay attention to what jobs are on offer, or for jobs that might be of use to friends.
posted by theora55 at 12:14 PM on April 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by theora55 at 12:14 PM on April 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
Recruiters make their money placing people. If you ignore one now, if they have an opening down the line that you are interested in, they're highly unlikely to hold a grudge. You're one random person that they send unsolicited messages to out of dozens or hundreds for every position they have. Their payout is thousands of dollars for every placement (very low five figures is not uncommon in tech for mid to senior roles) - no one's going to skip out on that because you ignored an unsolicited bunch of messages. Chances are they're just using an automated platform to send the messages anyway.
One thing I found helpful is my profile prominently says that they must include certain information for me to consider a position. Anyone that doesn't include that is just spraying based on keywords and not actually reading profiles to look for a good fit. The ones that do include the information get added to my list of recruiters to possibly work with if/when I'm looking.
posted by Candleman at 1:27 PM on April 13, 2021
One thing I found helpful is my profile prominently says that they must include certain information for me to consider a position. Anyone that doesn't include that is just spraying based on keywords and not actually reading profiles to look for a good fit. The ones that do include the information get added to my list of recruiters to possibly work with if/when I'm looking.
posted by Candleman at 1:27 PM on April 13, 2021
Ignore them. They send those sad sack guilt trip follow ups in bulk. If they can’t take being ignored, they are in the wrong job.
posted by advicepig at 3:50 PM on April 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by advicepig at 3:50 PM on April 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
100% agree with all here. Ignore them. Most recruiters don't know who specifically they're sending to; they won't be upset if one of the 85,645 emails they sent out goes un-replied-to. Delete, ignore, go on with your day.
posted by pdb at 9:17 PM on April 13, 2021
posted by pdb at 9:17 PM on April 13, 2021
If you look at the Messaging section of the website, a recruiter-generated message will have an auto-reply button on there that sends a precooked "thanks, but not interested" message. Polite but at arms-length.
Now I see there's also a "decline without message" button if you want to go that way, too.
As a rule of thumb don't accept connection requests from recruiters, ever. If they have an interesting job or listing they can email it to you, but don't give them a reason to spam you with stuff.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:55 AM on April 14, 2021
Now I see there's also a "decline without message" button if you want to go that way, too.
As a rule of thumb don't accept connection requests from recruiters, ever. If they have an interesting job or listing they can email it to you, but don't give them a reason to spam you with stuff.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:55 AM on April 14, 2021
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2. I mean it, they do not care at all.
3. If it's an internal recruiter for a great company you could possibly be interested in at some point, or a recruiter from a well regarded major agency, and you really want to, "Thank you for reaching out but I am happy in my current role and am not seeking a change at this time. Best, vanitas"
posted by phunniemee at 9:35 AM on April 13, 2021 [22 favorites]