In the technology industry, we have a lot of privileges. For some, one of those privileges is a pretty regular cadence of emails from recruiters sending them emails to see if they can recruit you for their new role. Recruiters can make around 15% of your first year’s salary if they successfully recruit you for a new role. This means they or their company gets a check for tens of thousands of dollars if you respond to their email and take the job.
While there is this large incentive, there is also a pretty small window from when someone is looking for a new job, and when someone finds one. So, some recruiters have resulted to a “spray & pray” method. This results in them sending an automated email to candidates in the hopes they get the timing right and can convince the candidate to take a new job.
One of the tactics that they use is to look at your LinkedIn profile and then take your first employment listing and then send an email about how impressed the hiring manager was with your impact at that company.
I started noticing this as I launched a little app called AddsUp last year and put it on my LinkedIn. Now, this is a tiny side project alongside my job at Microsoft. But, what are all the recruiters and hiring managers impressed by? You guessed it: my AddsUp experience.
XXXX XXXXXXX, the Head of our XXXXXXXX XXXXXX team here at XXXXXXX has asked me to take the initiative and connect with you to see if you had any interest in joining his org. He was very impressed with your Learner & Builder experience at AddsUp and believes that you're the caliber of individual who'd have an incredible influence on our company.
So, as a student of human behavior, I thought I would create a fake company account on LinkedIn and see how many recruiters used it.
I decided to name it “Robot Robot” because my brilliant wife Megan taught me to test if a telemarketing call was a robocall by saying “Robot Robot” and seeing what they say.
If you also want to “work” at our company, please feel free :)