Every 2 weeks roughly 2-3 recruiters message me mentioned they are looking for someone like me with my skills.
They ask for my resume and I send an English version + a 履歴書. I’ve made a career change this year so my new skill sets and Japanese are beginner levels.
What is everyone else’s experience and skill set level in regards to when being contacted by LinkedIn recruiters? I was told it’s the best place to break into digital industries?
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My biggest problem is they don’t bother doing a 2 second Glassdoor search to find out a general range for my salary or the job is looking for someone significantly junior to me (think junior engineer job to a 30 year vetran). Or a salary lower than I was making in 2000.
Basically they’re doing fishing expeditions and you match the keywords they have. Unless they specifically mention something on my resume I might play with them I might not because they’re being lazy they haven’t actually looked at my background experience or education.
Telecom engineer here. 25 years in the industry. Yea two or three a week contact me. It’s a numbers games for them.
If you don’t need LinkedIn, don’t log in, and then you won’t be shown in the “active on LinkedIn” pool that recruiters see, which they take as an indication of possibly looking for a new job.
The tools that LinkedIn offers recruiters are rather limited, so you get spam. Everyone does in proportion to what some high-up instructed recruiters to look for, be it specific universities or former employers or keywords.
For 1 good recruiter there are a few bad ones and dozens newbies… if you need LinkedIn for something, I guess you can flag these as spam / I don’t know that person and hope that LinkedIn has some kind of machine learning that takes that into account… though in the end of the day, LinkedIn needs to make money somehow.
To paraphrase Lionel Hutz, the mantra of most recruiters is ” The right job is the job that’s for sale. And the right candidate is anyone.”
They’re just doing their job, it’s in their interest to make you feel your current job is shit, and that you’re under appreciated. Then show you a prospect of a new job, so shiny, it’s almost mythical.
The more people they get, the more they seem to be doing their job.
A bit off topic but I’ve heard some recruiters use some kind of app to do the “fishing”, sending massive messages like “Hi [insert name here]” which [insert name here] is automatically generated from the LinkedIn candidate pool. They then select from people who reply.
I replied once and noticed they did not even read my profile at all.
Someone did an experiment by change his first name a emoji, for example 🍎. Then he receive something like “Hi 🍎” 😂
For a majority of them (often the recruitment agency ones), they’re just doing a scatter shot approach. They may not even have a job on hand when they’re hitting you up. Their goal is just to chat you up because that’s one of their KPIs and so they can start pelting you with whatever jobs they have on file. I’ve had recruiters hit me up without even reading my by-line on LinkedIn properly, because the jobs they had on hand weren’t even appropriate for me ^((ie a back end engineer job for a marketing specialist me))
The only ones I bother to reply to are the ones that are affiliated with a company in my industry.
20+ years in tech, and I also get 2 or 3 pings from recruiters each week. I generally ignore them until I need them 😉
I get very few fishing expedition emails from recruiters anymore, but get small waves of emails from companies looking for particular people in my field at/around my level and have found it useful to see what is out there – even if I am not interested.
There are a few recruiters that I have talked to in the past that now send targeted positions to me based on what I told them I am/am not looking for. They message me direct if they have anything that might be of interest to me and I have met them all through LinkedIn, so I have found it helpful to find ones you like and form relationships with them.
Same for me. Ignore any that ask for a resume for a role that’s not applicable to your skill set. If they haven’t bothered to read my profile then I don’t bother to respond. And I’m unemployed looking for work! You can normally tell from the message when it’s genuine and unique, not canned auto mail.
Constantly on me but I gotta say, when you need a new job it’s nice to have them
Most of them are legit, but some are shady. Make sure look up their company name or better their name before sending them any info. Better don’t send directly, but to their coming website.
Also, it seems most of them are lazy: simply clicking on keywords somewhere in the profile and sending job prospects using pasta method (throw everything on the wall, something will stick). Most don’t even bother to look up the current job title, so it’s not uncommon to get intern offers while you’re in management somewhere.
Also, it seems that for most recruiters there’s that one position which they’re desperately trying to fill. Unfortunately there’s zero after care, like offering a different position, if you get a refusal. They just disappear.
As much as I am thankful to really good recruiters out there, it seems that the market has become similar to real estate. Dominated by wild-eyed gold diggers without any moral compass. It gets harder to find pearls among them.
tangentially related it seems like all jobs in my expertise (AWS) are “fake” jobs. I get replies from all sorts of weird intermediary companies that are contracted out by the real companies to find candidates. They often want me to register for a weird website where I have to re-enter all my info and even after I do – the process leads to more emails asking me to talk about my career. So these job applications lead to weird limbos or dead ends. Hard to find direct postings where you apply, the HR sets up the interview, and then you actually interview. It seems like it’s hard to know how many “layers” of recruiting firms separate you and the real job too – so sometimes I will see postings for jobs with quite ludicrous requirements going for 500 万 per year. But a similar job next to it will be at near 1000万.
I get few a week, and I feel the more newer recruiters do not read my CV, as the things they introduce to me are too junior or something completely different from my experience and skill sets just because few keywords matched. I understand it’s a number game for them, but wish they’d do a little more research. The more seasoned ones who reach out have the answers as well as having more insight, and I tend to keep in touch with them for info.
That said, I only use recruiters for employment market info, and go directly to the in-house HR or referral if I know someone at the company.
OP, good luck with job hunt if you’re looking!
Fuck recruiters. they are so unnecessary in job hunting. most of the are in fishing business. apply directly to companies if possible
Tech here too but 3 years.
I recently had my profile set to open to work/opportunities or w/e that setting is. Some weeks maybe 1 message a week, other weeks 2-3.
I did follow up with some of them, and it’s just proceeding to a casual interview with the company in most cases. Also the recruiter always wants to talk to you. Many times it ends up being “you’re not the best fit for this job, but I have a few other options for you” which are usually more junior positions etc. (This shouldn’t happen if they bothered to actually read your profile but it is what it is in this day and age).
I also found that most of the roles going around are from the same big companies. Not sure if it’s alright to mention here so just to be safe, a lot of corporate health insurance companies etc. They seem very average across the board jobs from online reviews etc. I guess it’d be alright to take it if your current job is really shit? Wasn’t the case for me though so I didn’t bother.
Had better experience just using recruiters from my side (signing up on their site, applying to a few listings they have, they will set up a talk with you, go from there).
Makes sense if you think about it, LinkedIn messages are either just mass advertising or very specific scouting through connections. If it’s the latter you will know from their introduction. If not, it’s the former. And in that case usually the jobs aren’t that great (not necessarily bad though), because the good ones are listed on their website or LinkedIn jobs and have tons of people applying for them.
Don’t send them shit, 95% are just useless tire kickers. Generally speaking:
If they haven’t viewed my profile > delete
If they’ve been in their role under 3 months > delete
If they’re from a back-alley sketchy agency > delete
If they make no mention of an actual job / JD > delete
For the 5% who type out a personal message with reference to a role that sounds interesting. Request and review the JD, speak to them on the phone, only after that send through your CV
They will just harvest your info otherwise
How times change. When I was last in the job market in the mid to late 2000s (before switching to freelance translation), recruiters were to be avoided like the plague.
My experience has all been negative. except for in house company recruiters.
I have been messaged for an opening at my current company with the exact same job title I have… They cant read or do a minimum amount of research.
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Interviewing for a position that requires N3 but in the interview they wanted perfect keigo. which is not N3 level at all.
They try getting you to switch from full time to contract work with possibility of becoming permanent. But when the transition happens overall salary would be lower than current job.
Normal- say will send info about a position and then don’t send anything at all.
I’ve been on linked in for years as a software engineer. Only ever been contacted once. I’m not sure where everyone is getting all this recruiter spam from.
It’s like wading through sooo much bullshit.
“Hi, I have a company that is really interested in your profile for an upcoming position.”
“Oh? What’s the company and what is the position?”
“I can’t tell you. Please register on our candidate portal.”
“No. You reached out to me, and your whole pitch was company and position, so what is it?”
<Recruiter completely ghosts.>
My 2 most recent-ish jobs have been from headhunted on LinkedIn that I actually talked to went through interview processes with them and got jobs that were a good fit. Though I also get a lot of BS ones, so it’s like 2 out of 100: not great odds.
There’s massive demand for IT professionals. You will get a lot of messages but a lot of it is simply them “swiping right”. They rarely screen your profile properly.
I work in the industry and recommend finding a few agencies (2-3) that you can really partner with. Agencies can be really helpful and help with career advancement. But there are a lot of bad apples out there just like in any industry and you’ll need to sort them out. Keep in mind you’ll have to disclose a lot of personal information. The more they know about you, the more they can help (real experience levels, real motivation for job change, priorities etc).
They’re time wasters. If things don’t workout with the hiring manager they stop replying or say there’s ‘another role at another company’ and they’ll send you more information. All together they stop replying to your messages despite sending chasers.
For context – LinkedIn is the only external tool (outside their own databases) most agencies have in Japan. And the low LinkedIn usage in Japan means those who are on it get SMASHED by every recruiter under the sun.
Japan also has the lowest reply rate globally so they spam hundreds of people.
It’s basically what the “recruiting” jobs you always see pop up in Japan are. Just slapping out copy pasta messages on linkedin.
It can be an ok place to find a job but more often than not its essentially the equivalent to a chat bot it seems. Especially for those in IT or engineering.
I also get about 3 a week.
About half of the offers I get clearly haven’t read my profile though – I get offered positions which I am massively overqualified for, some I’m definitely not qualified for, people citing experience that I don’t have and haven’t written on my profile etc.
Almost all of the offers I get are for some “big project” which apparently will only take 3 months, which is complete rubbish (in my field a “big project” is usually around 5 years, a small project might only be 2 years).
Apart from that, if they open their message with “Hello name-san” in English it goes right in the bin. That’s cringe.
If they write in English and have any spelling or grammar errors, that also goes in the bin. Happens most when they are clearly not native English or Japanese speakers.
Basically everyone gets the premade response (if they message me in English) or I write a quick response in Japanese (if they message me in Japanese).
The answer is always the same – I’m not currently looking for a new job – but I don’t like to shut them all down completely because I might be interested in the future.