Just today, I got my 1,000th recruiter email in the last ~4 years. I know this is the number because I’m slightly obsessed with organization and have added a specific label to each and every recruiter email I’ve gotten in my gmail account. Let’s see: 365 days per year, minus 104 weekend days and, say, 10 vacation days, gives us roughly 250 working days per year.

That means that, on average, 1 recruiter emails me every single business day.

There are a few take aways from this:

  1. Being a software engineer is awesome. We don’t apply to jobs, they apply to us.
  2. If you are a recruiter, you’re up against some serious competition.
  3. I’ve seen recruiter emails from every tech company you can think of. Some are comically bad.

In this blog post, I’m going to share snippets from a few of the bad ones. Enjoy!

Subject: Follow up

Hi Yevgeniy,

I’m not assuming you’re looking for a new roll right now but I wanted to follow up and gather your feedback.

Wrong! I could totally go for some sushi.

Subject: Opportunities at XXX

Hi Yevgeniy,

[…]

We are challenged every day, moving very quickly, and recruit only rock stars.

Man, I really wish I could join your band.

Subject: Quick question (Developer opportunities)

Yevgeniy,

Good day. Hope all is well.

I am reaching out to you because of the recent severe reorg and layoffs at your company I read about.

Wow, that escalated quickly.

Subject: Hello from XXX

Hello <name>,

My name is XXX – I’m the Director, Engineering of the Growth Team at XXX.

Yes, this email literally said <name>. Umm, no thanks <company>.

Subject: Full time Scala opportunity

Hi Yevgeniy,

Currently, we are looking for an, “Engineer” to help deliver a range of new products. High-performance, high-scalability, high-traffic, heavy Scala, etc. Any interest in having a casual chat about this role…a few minutes…you have an interesting background?

This email from a, “recruiter”, has, an interesting… way, with words?

Subject: principal java software engineer

Hi Yevgeniy,

happy valentine’s day! hope this new year has provided time for some fun activities. our family started off the new year attending a terrific concert a couple of weeks ago. the performance reinforced the experience of music as a true combination of four creative forces (composer, conductor, musician and audience) in communicating ideas, thoughts & feeling. we were fortunate to hear pieces from Wagner, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Leonard Bernstein to Holst. an awesome introduction to the symphony for kids!

if you might have time for a quick chat, i’d like to share a principal-level swe opportunity:

Worst valentines day card ever.

Subject: looking for a great technical dev manager!

Hi Yevgeniy,

I think this role may not be exactly up your ally, but I am hoping you can recommend some great folks for us!

I don’t want anything up my ally, thank you.

Subject: Getting back in touch. Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia portfolio companies.

The portfolio company that I’m most excited about is financed by Greylock and Reid Hoffman who founded PayPal and LinkedIn, which as you know is one of the high-profile IPOs of 2011.

Ah, yes, Link-ed-in… I may have heard of it.

Subject: Stealth startup

[..]

The service will be disruptive and impact billions of technology users.

Billions!