This happens to me all the time – recruiters trying to call me or sending me emails or messages on LinkedIn, telling me about a great role available and asking me if I’m available for a quick chat over the phone.
My answer is NO – I don’t want to have a quick chat with the recruiters over the phone, at least not at the very beginning of the recruitment process.
I don’t want to make recruiter’s life difficult, but I feel that most of the times it’s a complete waste of time (no offense) – mine and recruiter’s time. Why? Here are some of the reasons:
- I have no interest in new opportunities. This is quite obvious – if I’m not interested in new opportunities it makes no sense to have a chat over the phone. No need to waste time.
- There’s no concrete project. Recruiters need to add profiles to their systems/databases and many times they will call candidates even if there is no opportunity available at the moment. Please don’t waste my time, send me an email when there is a concrete project and we’ll talk about it.
- I want to save the message for future reference. This is one of the most important reasons for not wanting to pick up the phone – it’s impossible to remember most or all the details for each role that recruiters send! Having an email with a job spec and other details such as benefits, salary, etc makes my life easier.
- I want to have some time to analyse the role. “What do you think, Rui?” – over the phone there is more pressure to give a yes-or-no response, at the moment. Having an email with the description of the role/company/etc means I can take a look at it when I have some spare time, and take my time to analyse it and even do some research about the company, etc and then decide if it is of interest or not.
- Role doesn’t match my profile. Sad but true – I receive many messages from recruiters regarding roles that have absolutely nothing to do with my profile! Java, PHP or Python opportunities? QA roles? Sysadmin roles? Network engineer roles? Seriously? I’m a .NET software engineer!
- Role is of no interest. Even if the role do match my profile, it doesn’t mean it is an interesting one. For example, I have absolutely no interest in support roles or roles that use old/obsolete technologies.
- Location is of no interest. There is a shortage of IT candidates with good experience, so recruiters will try to find talent everywhere, not only within their local recruitment market. I get messages from not only European but also other countries such as the United States! Most of the people won’t be available to move to other cities or countries without a very good reason.
- I’m at work. Recruiters need to get in touch with potential candidates and many times they will call during working time, but if I’m working I cannot (or shouldn’t) pick up the phone 3 or 4 times a day to talk with a recruiter – I have work to do. Also, that wouldn’t be very professional, don’t you think? And a complete lack of respect to my current employer. Just leave me an email and I’ll get back to you.
I believe there are many other IT guys like me that feel the same way about this. Let me say it again – I don’t want to make a recruiter’s life difficult, I just want to avoid wasting time (mine and theirs).
So, ideally a recruiter will send an email or LinkedIn message with a good job description (containing a quick description of the company, location, industry, summary of the role, responsibilities, skills and experience, salary, …) such as this one I saw on jobserve.com:
If the role is of interest then yes! I will be available for a chat over the phone, to ask for more details or clarify any doubt 🙂
Rui Jarimba 