How did I become so inconsiderate?

Preface: This is a direct re-post of my own unedited article from last year. If you read it then there's nothing new to see. This week (yes, I know it's only Wednesday) I've gotten two recruitment InMails which, while they were at least for full time positions in my home town, generally fall into the same category as described below so I'm just feeling like a re-post is in order.

Original:

Fair warning: What follows is a rant about what I see as poor LinkedIn etiquette, feel free to move on if this sort of thing annoys you. I won't be offended and you have been warned.

I recently saw a post calling out people who ignore recruiters reaching out with opportunities. I used to be very good about this sort of thing, sending an elaborate, personal response with a "let's stay in touch" kind of feel. Now I'm not so good and I had to ask myself "Why?" Some of it is that I've landed in a very fulfilling and demanding position leaving me little spare time and, if I'm really honest with, less motivation to really cultivate relationships with recruiters. It's short sighted but remember we're being honest here, I just don't see myself ever wanting to leave the employer I have today, ever. I'm going to work on that aspect. Just because I'm not in the market and may never be again does not mean that I can't help other folks find their dream job, so this is a growth opp for me and I'm down with that.

But, now that I've called myself out, there's another element that I want to call out. It would be great if recruiters had a way of policing themselves because a few of you are giving the rest a bad rep. For instance:

Good morning- I'm a Recruiter for XYZ and wanted to reach out to you in regards to your Linux/Redhat background. I am currently working on a contract to hire opportunity with a financial client in [some place on the other side of the continent from the one that you and your family currently reside on] where your role would be to engineer and implement complex systems, applications, and infrastructure required to support our clients.

(In the interest of full disclosure the example above, in addition to being sanitized, is an amalgam of solicitations that I get regularly. However it is in no way an exaggeration and was created via copy/paste/edit, not some flight of fancy on my part.)

I'm not an elitist, I don't think I'm better than the next guy or gal, but I am an individual, a real person with a real career and a real life. If you are interested in placing me you might want to know a little something about me. If you are interested in providing a good fit to the prospective employer then similar considerations apply. I would suggest you recognize that (and all of this is in my profile):

• I'm in a full time permanent position so I'm probably not looking for a contract to hire gig.
• I had a job like this about 12 years ago and am not currently unemployed so I'm probably not looking for a contract to hire gig related to this particular role.
• I've flagged that I am not open to new opportunities (and see above) so I'm DEFINITELY not looking for a contract to hire gig or likely any other gig than the one I have.

My resume and employment status do not mean that I am in any way better or smarter or harder working than the next guy or gal. But sending me a solicitation for that opportunity suggests that

• You just scanned for the key words Red Hat Linux, looked no further and threw it over the wall.
• You don't know me and probably don't want to know me.
• You don't actually care to find a good fit for your client, you just want to process a transaction.

Note that I used the bolded, underlined and italicized word suggests above. I could be wrong on all three counts but the evidence suggests that I'm correct. If I'm wrong please prove me wrong by learning something about the people you are reaching out to, making sure that they might be a good fit for the position you are trying to fill, making sure that they are even interested in a change. All of these are easily done before throwing it over the wall, LinkedIn has gone to great efforts to make it this way, one need only use the tools at hand. If you have a job req you want to fill and think I might know someone who would be a fit then by all means drop me a line, I love helping people.

To paraphrase Simon Sinek "Relationship based businesses continue like relationships, transaction based businesses end like transactions."

For those of you in the job placement field who are not like the caricature I described above, and I know a lot of you who aren't, please try to police the minority of the folks in your industry who are giving you a bad name. Then when opportunities do hit the inboxes of candidates they'll be more likely to pay attention and life will be a just little better for all of us. Those who are like that caricature probably didn't read this far anyway.

Thanks for reading this far, this is the end of the rant, at least for now.

P.S. I've had this saved as a draft for a while now and pondered whether to post it. Today I got another misguided solicitation and so here it is.