For the past two months, the whole of India is on the upswing when it comes to hiring entry level to middle managers. There’s even some movement for top level executives. It’s a great sign for the economy, but there’s also a down side to this: an increase in spam and unwanted mail. Here are the top 7 most annoying things that recruiters do online. Hopefully you’re not one of them, and if you are, time to mend your ways – it’s never too late! Please feel free to add to the list in the comments.

1. Wrong Person, Wrong Position
The first sign of an HR-tard, is asking someone to apply for a position that they’re not fit to apply. It’s really apparent in their email when someone tries to offer a senior level person an entry level position. This form of mass emailing is close to spam, and it’s the most annoying habit of recruiters. It’s usually because these mass emailing or cold calls are done by entry level HR pros, or those who are testing the waters to decide whether to go into HR or not. As a result, they lack attention to detail. Only the numbers that go out, and the numbers that come in are counted, so relevancy goes out the window. I just wish these folks had more training before they start emailing others.

2. Not Doing Research
Another trait of a lazy recruiter is not reading. A person who specializes in online marketing is very different from someone who will do a door-to-door marketing. Sometimes, the recruiters see “marketing” or a couple of skill sets and they’ll send the offer or the email to apply. It also shows that the recruiter doesn’t know what he or she is recruiting for.

HR pros in India are most confused by the new jobs that are coming up like “social media marketing executive”, or even recruiting programmers. Just because a person has an Orkut account doesn’t make them a social media expert. And just because a person knows .NET doesn’t mean they specialize in it.

Again, lack of training is to blame here. At times it’s because ‘social media’ is the fad, and one fine day a CEO or a Team Leader would decide to pitch to the CEO, “Yes, we need social media experts.” then they tell the HR folks, “Go, get us some social media experts” and these poor recruiters have to go out the field and fend for themselves without any guidance. So you have all sorts of mails going across, job descriptions that are not clear, and characters walking in the door. (This is a larger issue that deserves its own post so I’ll come back to this later.)

3. Offering Jobs to Consultants
The most annoying thing a consultant faces, is when they’re ready for a meeting to assist a client in a project and the client turns around and tells you that they were looking for someone to interview. In India, consultants and freelancers are frowned upon by established businesses, especially in cities like Kolkata. The mentality is, it’s cheaper to hire someone full time so he or she does more work. Check with your boss or whoever gave you the name of the consultant first before you approach the meeting as an interview. If you’re a consultant like me, I won’t even carry a CV to the meeting, actually, I’ve stopped carrying resumes since LinkedIn was invented. And whatever you do, don’t poach! Poaching talent from a partner firm you work for or is working for you is just plain wrong. 

4. Copy-pasting Someone Else’s Email.
This is a true story that happened on LinkedIn. A high level executive of a third party recruiter firm copy-pasted what appears to be one of his “juniors” emails straight into the LinkedIn message box. He was recruiting for head of marketing for a top branded travel dot com in India. If you’re going to outsource your recruiting, do it for entry level positions or even middle management positions. But if you really want quality people on your leadership team, recruiters like this will turn people away from your firm instead of talking to you. If the person is active talking about professional matters with colleagues, expats, and friends alike, your firm is going to have a bad name. That means whatever efforts you’ve put in to have a great employer brand just went out the window.

5. Unrelated Recruiting Practices
I despise LinkedIn newbies and recruiters who haven’t researched on LinkedIn etiquette. Messages that read, “Your profile is impressive. Here’s a job for you,” just turns me off. Junior level HR recruiters adding connections as if LinkedIn was MySpace is annoying, too. Say something! Respond to my messages! Or get your profile updated with your free time and stop wasting other people’s.

6.  Incessant Phone Calls.
Before the days of the “Do Not Call” listing and law in India, recruiting firms would harass people into going to interviews. There are firms that are notorious for this, and once you’re in the database, your number will be there forever. I used to be polite to a certain point, and sometimes, the recruiters would keep pushing to the point where they’d change the position they’re recruiting for and ask, “You have a nice accent, why don’t you go for a BPO job?” This is when I go ‘New York’ on them over the phone. Forcing someone to go to an interview just so you can have that ticked off your list, or meet your numbers is not cool.

7. Do You Have a Job for Me?
The worse question a recruiter can ask, but sadly this happens, too. People get bored being a recruiter and they shift jobs in a short span of time. Instead of trying to look for a job in their own time, when they learn that the other person on the line is in a position to hire a team member, they’d pop the question. Not only have you annoyed me, wasted my time, you’ve practically lost any chances of getting a job in the company I work for.

Have you experienced any annoying habits of recruiters lately? Let us know in the comments!

Graphic by: Lightning-Rod Man