Posted by Merlin on Wed, 03/09/2011 - 3:36pm

Due to my prominence in the community, I get fairly regular contacts from people who need services. This is to be expected. Due to the volume of these contacts, I have gone out of my way to be difficult to contact directly. I don't have the patience for people directly emailing me with questions about my projects or my book or thinking that somehow I'm going to be cheap labour for their complicated problem.

But a word of advice: If you are looking to recruit someone -- anyone -- and you happen to get contact information (it's easy, really. If you look around a little bit, my email address is out there and not at all hard to get) and you've jumped through the hoops.

Whatever you do.

Do not make the mistake of believing that your priorities are my priorities just because you have my email address.

By way of example, I received this message this morning. I've scrubbed the identifying information. The list of things wrong with this message is longer than the actual message:

How wrong is this? Oh let us count the ways.

  1. One sentence long. Unless you count "Thanks!" and "Hi, Earl" as sentences. I don't, those are standard practices for communicating.
  2. The only reason that I know this isn't spam is that it's relevant. i.e, it's about Drupal, the domain names in the links match the domain name in the reply-to and there are verifiable phone numbers. That said, if I didn't take the time to look it up, the only thing that distinguishes this from some guy with $15,000,000 in Nigerian rubber bands that he needs laundered is the level of detail provided.
  3. Speaking of the level of detail, there isn't any.
  4. Are you trying to hire me? Are you wanting me to consult? I infer that you want to hire me, due to the title "Permanent Placement Division". What I can't understand is: What makes you think I'm looking?
  5. Which leads me to: Other than the fact that you said Please, what incentive do I have to spend the time to contact you, when as far as I can tell, your message is just spam?

    6. Even if I were unemployed and looking for opportunities, I'd have trouble responding to this, because I firmly believe that messages from strangers that are shorter than their signatures are probably from people who want to screw you.

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Comments

Submitted by mherchel (not verified) on Wed, 03/09/2011 - 10:39pm

Hahahha! Hilarious...

I personally detest recruiters. I have **never** had a good experience with them.

Submitted by molave (not verified) on Wed, 03/09/2011 - 11:25pm

This is so true. We run an online directory for health care professionals, and we get presumptuous email requests like this all time. Drives our staff nuts.

Submitted by Jamie (not verified) on Thu, 03/10/2011 - 2:52am

Agreed that this is so true, I get drupal emails of this sort all the time, in addition to Java, C#, .NET and god knows what else, and also for jobs at the other end of the country. It'd be nice if these people actually put a little bit of effort into their communications. They shouldn't be surprised when they never get a reply...

Submitted by Jeff (not verified) on Thu, 03/10/2011 - 6:16am

Not to mention the endless Skype contact requests. Seriously this is huge pita, frankly I just delete the really bad ones, such as this.

Submitted by le_petit_basil on Thu, 03/10/2011 - 7:17am

You could start breeding carrier pidgeons, like Forest Whitakker in the movie Ghost Dog. You could give them out to only the trusted people that you want to be able to contact you. They'd tie a [small] message to their claw, and let it free to find its way back to your coop. There would be a delay of a couple of days ... longer of course for international messages, but I think you'd find the reduction in spam to be significant.

Submitted by Tom Geller (not verified) on Fri, 03/11/2011 - 8:27am

(EOM)

Submitted by Ben Nash (not verified) on Thu, 03/10/2011 - 8:08am

@le_petit_basil thanks for finally connecting Drupal with Ghost Dog (one of my favorite movies), awesome. :)

That recruiter's email is down right rude.

Submitted by bleen (not verified) on Fri, 03/11/2011 - 5:18am

Hey Einstein, I'd like to buy some physics. Hit me back.

Submitted by pixelcat (not verified) on Sat, 03/12/2011 - 1:33am

I've been starting to collect Microsoft recruitment emails. One day soon I should have enough for a collage.

Submitted by Senpai (not verified) on Mon, 03/14/2011 - 3:17pm

Pixelcat, do I sense an Animoto presentation looming in our future? ;)

Submitted by Max S (not verified) on Sun, 03/27/2011 - 12:41pm

I wanted to say "Holy crap, this code you wrote is awesome. I was looking for something that would do these awesome things without me having to spend all my time on my side projects, and wow, this is some quality programming"

But then I tried finding your email or contacting you through Drupal.org, and you weren't there.... and i was sad.

And then I wondered why you don't have your own consulting firm if you get this many requests for work...

Anyways, that's me being frustrated that I can't tell you how much I like the code you wrote. It's so much better than standard drupal code. The abstraction is beautiful, and I can't tell you how nice it is to work with compared to most drupal code. I love ctools. It took me a year of programming and then coming back to Drupal to really appreciate it, but it's really great.

P.S. I totally have all these awesome vague drupal projects you would totally love. :P (j/k)

Submitted by Merlin on Sun, 03/27/2011 - 1:03pm

Most people tell me that in the issue queue or the like. :)

Submitted by John (not verified) on Mon, 04/04/2011 - 1:41am

There is some recruiter there that is on a Drupal recruitment rampage for a really shady education company that uses Drupal to suck public education dollars out of the system by acting as public education 'consultants'.

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