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A Letter to LinkedIn Recruiters

Espoir Murhabazi on April 11, 2022

Dear LinkedIn Hiring Managers and Aka Tech Recruiters, I am writing to you people on behalf of my fellow developers. Thank you for always trying...

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Makar • Apr 12 '22 • Edited

JSON CVs -- great idea!

fischgeek • Apr 12 '22

I couldn't stop thinking about this so I very quickly and crudely slapped this together. I hope this becomes a thing some day. Resumes can feel like a competition on who can point-and-click in Word fancier than the next person.

gist.github.com/fischgeek/c066fc29...

Espoir Murhabazi • Apr 12 '22

I like this..

fischgeek • Apr 12 '22

I agree! We need to get moving on this idea.

webbureaucrat • Apr 12 '22

I read this as "JSON CSVs" [comma-separated values] and my brain snapped in half.

Espoir Murhabazi • Apr 12 '22

to be honest, although I write this,, when I am going through it again , I am reading it that way...

Makar • Apr 12 '22

🤯

Espoir Murhabazi • Apr 12 '22

Loool...

Shrikant Dhayje • Apr 12 '22 • Edited

its funny that it is actually very relatable like few months ago i found an old advertisement for job opening on internet for web developers with 4 years of Experience in FastAPI Web Framework and that time the first FastAPI first version was released 3 years ago. 😂

Espoir Murhabazi • Apr 12 '22 • Edited

Yeah man.. it happened..

I remember the creator of fastapi tweeting about it.. I couldn't find the tweet.. I will post it if I find i t.

Alin Pisica • Apr 12 '22 • Edited

Here it is :)

Espoir Murhabazi • Apr 12 '22

Thanks you...

elrubens • Apr 13 '22 • Edited

JSON CV format: github.com/getmanfred/mac

Dave • Apr 13 '22

I wrote a similar letter and simply posted it on my LinkedIn profile.

Some recruiters are fantastic, some are just pushy sales folks.

Espoir Murhabazi • Apr 14 '22

I am curious to see yours..

Dave • Apr 14 '22

Since you asked, this is it, copy/pasted from LinkedIn:

Dear recruiters,

I'm a software developer, and I signed up to LinkedIn, probably like many others - I'm not actually actively looking for a new job. I like my current job. That said, my employer knows that I'm not silly enough to turn down a better opportunity, if one comes along.

I also signed up to LinkedIn, knowing that I'm essentially "The Product" - we all know recruiters get paid a finders fee by a new employer, and I'm aware that LinkedIn charges for some of their services.

In my job, I write systems that interface with other systems, and I take personal responsibility for not overloading 3rd party systems, and generally for writing clean, efficient, optimised code. I work in an Agile environment, and as part of my job, I'm involved in Discovery and post deployment Support phases of the Development Lifecycle. That is, I don't just "throw code over the wall." (We've all seen the "DevOps" meme's.)

I'm genuinely open to approaches by recruiters (and I'm writing this, expecting that I might alienate some of you, I apologise in advance).

I only ask one simple thing of you.

Don't spam me. Don't send me mail-shots from LinkedIn's InMail system (though, do use InMail for personalised messages, if you wish). Don't just call my number out of the blue.

If you genuinely care about your clients (the employers), view my profile (before sending me a connection request, ideally). Skim read by all means, and if you think my skill set matches what your client is looking for, get in touch. I'll be able to tell if you've taken the time to get the feel of my skills before contacting me (LinkedIn provide a number of notifications), and if you have, I promise I'll take the time to reply with my honest thoughts.

Sure, I'm asking you to do more work. I get that. But I also know that I'm The Product, and without The Product, you don't get paid by the client. By all means, find an automated way to list potential candidates, then filter through those manually (heck, talk to a Developer... maybe LinkedIn will have some sort of API exposed...)

If you insist on spamming me, then depending on my mood, I will either ignore your message, or I'll reply to tell you that I don't want to talk to you, purely because you just spammed me. If I do reply to any spam, feel free to continue the conversation with righteous indignation. At least you'll have made me laugh for a few seconds before I carry on my day.

(And for those that are curious, yes, this post is in response to the latest bit of righteous indignation - but no, I won't be naming the recruiter responsible. In future, I might just reply with a link to this post.)