I have a profile on LinkedIn which gets me contact with recruiters who often send me job specs. This works great as I can read the spec, look at the salary and the company and very quickly see if it's for me.
With some recruiters the conversation can go:
Recruiter: "Hi Tom, I have a great opportunity in [my broad area of expertise]. Would you like to hear more?
Me: Yes, can you tell me what it is?
Recruiter: Great, let's book in a call
Me: Can you tell me what it is?
Recruiter: Give me your number so I can call you
For me this is a waste of my time, as they'll generally ask me the stuff that's already on my CV and read out the job description from verbatim. So I have to spend 20 minutes plus an interruption to my day going through their fake friendliness when I could have said yes/no from a message in 1 minute. Other recruiters just send me a job spec, ask for my CV, which I do, and then submit me. Super easy.
What's the recruiter trying to get out of this? I can imagine some reasons, none of which really make sense.
- They think they can use their charm to get me interested. NEVER true!
- They are trying to weed people out by asking them questions. But I'm just saying the names of skills I have, which anyone could do and the recruiter has no way of knowing if I'm telling the truth
- Other recruiters put up fake profiles to work out who's hiring. But could they not also have a fake personality to answer the phone?
Because there are people sending me actual jobs without having to have a call, I often ignore them. Am I missing out? Or are they just fishing (again, for what benefit of theirs)?