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by Phillip Pearson.
Original Post: Recruiter storm!
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Wow. So, I moved to San Francisco in February, and the company I work for just did a round of layoffs. This isn't my first such experience (and thankfully I wasn't affected this time, which was a bit of a relief as my right to stay in the country is tied to me being continuously employed here), but what's different this time is that I'm actually living in the Bay Area, which means I come up when recruiters do LinkedIn searches for hiring leads. So far I've received 41 messages from recruiters - 23 on Thursday, 9 on Friday, 5 over the weekend, and 4 today. Crazy!
This is really interesting, because it's the opposite of the usual situation, where you put out a job offer and get a bunch of resumés. Now I see where people are coming from with their job application advice posts; there are some things you can do to really make your e-mail stand out a lot. Several recruiters have sent me vague "Job Opportunities in the Bay Area!" posts, including one who wrote today asking for a phone number where he can call me about some undisclosed position. These probably work OK when generally fishing for people to shop around to companies, but at times like this when everyone's getting dozens of messages, putting specific information in your messages would make it much more likely to get responses. If I'm ever sending out recruiting messages, they'll be titled something like "Web Developer (PHP/JS/CSS) opportunity at Fictional Software Company, Palo Alto, CA". Title, tech, company name and location. That sort of thing would seriously stand out.
(Just to be clear, I'm staying at Ning for now. Recruiters, thanks for your e-mails, though; they would have been great if things had turned out differently! Keep 'em coming; I won't be replying myself, but I'll summarise them and pass them on to the people I know who are on the job market.)
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