I have 2 main email addresses, one of which I predominantly use for junk mail / sign ups / newsletters, while the other is more for actual personal use … and so it is to the former of those two that I usually receive such emails as “seeking BDM position referrals” from some random recruiter who has me on his mailing list.
Every now and then I actually read one, and occasionally I might even reply, but sometimes those replies look something like this ( which is in reply to a BDM ( sales ) role ):
To whom it may concern | Hi <(recruiter|employer)_name>,
I’m not sure I’m ever going to be able to relate to the mind set of employers and the recruitment industry when it comes to the recruitment process … the reason being: in your email, you haven’t listed what I consider to be two of the most important details about the job ( and it seems like so very few of you ever do list these things ) – 1: the actual goods and services of the client which are being sold, and – 2: the remuneration package & other related details, including whether or not travel is involved, a company vehicle, tools of trade, expenses, authority to act autonomously ( ie: not being annoyed and micromanaged by an idiot who doesn’t understand your job as well as they think you do, and it only took 2 days in the role for that to become painfully obvious, so they keep undermining your every effort to do your job, making you regret ever accepting the position ), and whether relocation expenses are on offer for people if necessary to take up the position.
Excuse my bluntness, but my experience tells me that most employers are shit, and the only reason people put up with it, is they’ve had their expectations lowered by a lifetime of consistent disappointment … and here are the employers in the job advertisement actively seeking someone who doesn’t give a fuck what they’re selling, or how much they’re getting paid … which seems to me to be self-defeating, since that is not a recipe for getting the best ( and your industry only thinks it is hiring the best because that’s a very convenient and satisfying thought, which saves you from any need to improve, challenge yourselves, or question your confirmation bias ).
Why would I apply for ( or recommend a job to anyone ) without these details … it should be the minimum standard starting point of employers and recruiters to be more open about such things, and which is part of the reason why I rarely apply for anything anymore, because I’m just fed up with putting my considerable brains to work, only to be frustrated with conditions that sabotage my every effort to get some enjoyment out of the job by actually doing something genuinely innovative, and all for the dubious pleasure and privilege of feathering someone else’s nest ( ie: if you can’t be open enough at the outset to tell me what it’s really about, the details to assess my risk, and what the job pays, then I don’t trust you to be presenting me with anything that is actually worth applying for or even enquiring about, when there’s 20,000 other equally crap jobs out there working for other idiots that I also will neither like nor respect as human beings, let alone whatever worthless bullshit it is that their pointless business does, and which contributes to the destruction of the only habitable planet we’ve got at the moment ).
Excuse my cynicism, but I’ve been there, done that, and gotten the tattoo, t-shirt, and scars to prove it.
So either take me off your mailing list, or actually start providing real details when you write to me … because unlike other candidates, I’m neither boring, brainwashed, desperate, ignorant, naive, stupid, nor unimaginative, and I really want to know a lot more about a role before I bother with a reply.
Regards, Trevor.
PS – yes this is entirely unfair because I don’t write this response to everyone … but every now and then I need the cathartic therapy of writing it ( to deal with the frustration of having to write it – when I shouldn’t have to ), and even though I’ve only rarely ever had an intelligent and thoughtful reply to such comments from recruiters and employers, whom were grown up enough not to take it personally, and to actually have a laugh with me at the insanity of it all.
The point is: surely your industry can do way better than this? Why is such a simple process – ie: getting a good job that is interesting, rewarding, and pays well – made to be so fucking painful, and yet quite clearly the present results are not producing the kind of ecological and social outcomes we need for our species to avoid its own extinction at the hands of capitalism and its associated warmongering and other insanities … it is people like me you need ( desperately ), but you make us jump through idiotic hoops that serve no purpose, and to the point where we just want to opt out and go live in the forest as a hermit.
Also published on Medium.