"As I write this, all in all I have received: 266 emails and 96 voicemails. This roughly equates to 12.7 emails and 4.3 voicemails per workday."<p>I just went through this myself and it was nuts. The phone rang from 8 am - 6 pm almost every 30 minutes for a week when I updated my resume on monster. My skills are back-end Ruby and SQL, both seemed to be high in demand in Chicago last month. I didn't capture detailed notes like you, but I wish I had.<p>"For the first week, I actually answered all incoming calls, but this eventually became unmanageable. I used the opportunity to hear them out and also sometimes give them a reverse pitch on GroupTalent for feedback."<p>Ha! I did the same pitching my start-up Vouched ( <a href="http://getvouched.com" rel="nofollow">http://getvouched.com</a> ) and doing impromptu Lean Startup style customer interviews. There is quite a range of talent and process in the recruitment industry. Some are real professionals, others are just playing on volume. I spoke to one recruiter who makes around 70 calls a day to get 3 possible candidates. The reasonable ones called 20 people at most and actually tried to develop relationships instead of dialing for dollars.<p>It's an interesting space, or as Charlie O'Donnell put it... a bad neighborhood. <a href="http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2011/3/21/five-reasons-why-the-job-space-is-a-bad-neighborhood.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2011/3/21/five-reason...</a><p>Best of luck to you.
I'm in the recruitment process right now, the signal-to-noise ratio with recruiters is so low that I've basically stopped paying attention unless they are an internal recruiter.<p>Is it just me, or is it far more productive to simply make it known to your network that you're looking, and let companies come to you? That's what I'm doing this time and it seems to be working quite well.<p>For one thing, my friends won't refer me to bullshit positions, and more often than not I'd already know someone working there, or formerly worked there, who can give me some inside scoop about the work environment and any gotchas.<p>I honestly can't imagine trying to find my way through the meat market that is Dice and Monster.
I'm curious as to how much overlap there is in those Emails and Voicemails. My experience is that 10-15 Recruiters will all be recruiting for the same position and they monitor for new resumes and blast them with automated emails the minute you post your profile.
"Seeking freelance or short term contract iPhone and Android development positions."<p>That's a dream guy for so many emails I get daily and I'm not even looking for work. From my perspective it looks like everyone wants to hire someone for a 6 month contract in a city nearby (which in Texas seems to mean 3 hours is nearby) for a company whose name they won't disclose. If he said he wanted full time employment and relocation reimbursement I think the number would have been much smaller.<p>Edit: looks like I didn't read closely enough and I ended up venting rather than seeing that this was a research and discovery project and not an after thought while looking for a job
My biggest problem with recruiters comes to my SharePoint skills. I get a ton of calls, but they don't seem to understand, "No, I don't want a SharePoint job. I dislike it intensely."
I posted some numbers last week from the viewpoint of a passive candidate (my resume is on the internet and in innumerable recruiting company databases, but I do not have a Monster, Dice, etc profile):<p><a href="http://www.recursion.org/2011/5/21/recruiting-inquiries-per-quarter" rel="nofollow">http://www.recursion.org/2011/5/21/recruiting-inquiries-per-...</a><p>For me, I got more enquiries in 2010 than 2011 so far, but I didn't keep track of LinkedIn requests, which could skew the numbers.<p>Most enquiries are very keyword spray-and-pray spam but I occasionally get a "smart" recruiter who will look me up on GitHub or Stack Overflow. The best one was a startup co-founder who evidentially spent considerable time reading up on me, and referenced something from a talk I gave.
I've had much better luck with the 'Hiring Freelancers?' threads here than with any job board or recruiter service. For one thing it seems like people actually read posts rather than just looking for keywords.
"My profile on StackOverflow careers was viewed by employers a whopping 1 time and had 3 search hits."<p>I've had similar experience with StackOverflow Careers. Even though my skills listed and location are in the top 5 for each, I have 31 views of my profile and 6 inquiries. And I've been on the site for over 6 months.<p>I get the feeling that while SO Careers has the right idea it's really a matter of where the recruiters are.
Can anyone here share some ideas about how all that recruiting activity can be automated?<p>It is already partially automated (keywords search), but that's obviously not enough.<p>Better matching algorithms are needed, so neither job seekers nor recruiters would be overloaded with poor matches.<p>Anyone?
I'm going through a similar experience. I haven't posted my resume anywhere and I'm not even really 'looking' right now. But I've got a ton of emails from people who've seen my tweet on leaving MSFT or better, from a post on HN about it.
I would love to know how many job postings and recruiter calls there are per actual job. I seem to see a number of suspiciously similar job descriptions anytime I look.<p>I've had to completely obliterate sections of my resume because keyword-searching recruiters would glom onto them like flies on a turd.<p>Oh, and one tip: never, <i>ever</i> go to a recruiters office because they "might have some positions for you". I relented and did this <i>once</i>. It's a phenomenal waste of time where they try to pump you for information and contacts.