I have a prominent link at the top of CV/Resume/linkedin to my "Note to recruiters" which helps with all this - <a href="http://www.rogerbinns.com/recruiters.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.rogerbinns.com/recruiters.html</a><p>For example it says to name the company (and why) and that if the recruiter has trust issues with their client that I don't want to get involved. It becomes <i>very</i> obvious which recruiters have actually read the note to make sure the company and I are possibly matched, versus those that are indistinguishable from spammers.<p>Several years ago I was interviewing somewhere and Googled the job blurb. There were over 100 recruiters who had copied the job details from the company website and pretended it was their own client. (I checked with the company - they had in house recruiters and did not accept external ones - all those external ones were charlatans.)<p>Thankfully there are some good recruiters out there, but sadly they are seriously outnumbered.
Three rules for dealing with recruiters.<p>Don't let them near your cell phone number. Keep it off your profile. Put a Google Voice number in there instead. It's like Craigslist, there are advantages to using them, but you need to wear your big boy pants and take some simple steps to protect your privacy.<p>Recruiters are not technical and never will be. "I think I'll quit programming and start recruiting" -- No one, ever. Do not expect them to know anything about the jobs they're pitching. They're sales types, skilled at making connections with people, not machines. Try to appreciate that instead of demanding they learn two difficult skill-sets just for a fairly-poorly compensated job.<p>Keep each email to a single question until you've established that the opportunity is worth pursuing. Don't let them set the direction of the discussion until then. In the situation described, I would have simply asked, over and over again, "What is the salary range offered?" until they coughed up a number.<p>A recruiter found me my current job. I might be here a month until another recruiter will find me another making more money.
Well I was with him up until:<p><pre><code> Three days later (on a Monday), she calls me, and tells me
that she has organised an interview for me for Tuesday afternoon.
What? I went to the interview [...]
</code></pre>
Why would you go on an interview under these circumstances? You're just giving positive reinforcement to their bad behavior.
Recruiters, especially those who work for third-party recruiting firms, are sales people. They have a series of incentives that only loosely align with "find good candidates" and almost never align with "don't piss off said candidates." There are some very good recruiters out there, most seem to be employed directly by the company they're recruiting for, but the rest of the lot might as well be in low-end used car sales.<p>If they set up an interview that you didn't request, that you don't want, and you go to it - you're the one to blame. Chances are you contributed to part of their incentive pay by participating in that interview. Further, they're not 'taking "no" for an answer' because you're not telling them "no."
I get tired of them never disclosing the client. If they're soliciting me while I'm currently at a position that they can only assume I'm happy with, they need to present a pretty damn good case to get me out it; ambiguity just won't cut it.
I've had to login to my phone provider's website and block numbers on two separate occasions. If I don't pick up after calls/voicemails every day for a week straight and you continue to call, you are doing your job wrong.
I imagine there are recruiters for every type of profession (I know for sure that "executive" recruiters exist). The question is, is it this bad in those other industries? Is IT particularly bad because it's intangible and an 'average person' doesn't know the first thing about the inside of a computer vs the inside of a car?
The correct way to deal with recruiters, especially if you're currently doing freelance work: find the name of the company, insist that you're not interested in the role, then contact the company directly.<p>Also, don't call it freelancing, call it consulting, and charge more.
The latest: a recruiter submitted my resume to D.E. Shaw without asking. The recruiter calls, I tell them I'm grieving a loss in my family and at the same time I'm on a death march--can we discuss this later. I then receive an email informing me that my resume has been submitted. I made the mistake of picking up the phone when they call to hector me about submitting to the recruitment process. I'm afraid they left the company with the impression that I was initially interested, but changed my mind.<p>In some cases they can be aggressive and schedule interviews, or act as if we had spoken previously and that my memory was defective. I don't tolerate gaslighting and tell them. I never hear from them again.