When headhunting goes bad...

[spiker-uk.livejournal.com]

(obReminder: systems guru at major UK university)

So... a couple weeks ago, I get one of the fairly usual emails from a headhunting agency, telling me that Mr. Headhunter had got my name "by recommendation as a very strong computer scientist", and promising me untold riches with "some leading Investment Banks ({namedrop} {namedrop} {namedrop}) and Hedge Funds ({namedrop} {namedrop} {namedrop})". Unfortunately for him, I'm actually fairly happy in my current job, and so I ignored his email and left it in my inbox.

Today, a friend of mine got around to responding to the same email... and a colleague of mine, who works in the same group as I do but is a hard-core hardware tech and oh-so-very-NOT a computer scientist, also got the same email.

Anyone else's Spidey-sense tingling yet?



So I login to the mail exchangers and ask them how many emails Mr. Headhunter has sent into our CompSci Department in the last month. Let's just say it wasn't exactly a small number.

As a result... I drafted a response, which I hope will give a few of you a chuckle on a Friday afternoon / evening. A few names and locations have been redacted to protect both the innocent and guilty...

---

Dear {Mr. Headhunter},

Thank you for your recent email regarding opportunities in the financial sector for computer scientists.

Unfortunately, you have succeeded in emailing the {Systems Guru} here in the Department of {CompSci at Big UK University}. I am already aware that you have been, and are continuing, to spam quite a large swathe of our Department's staff and PhD student email addresses.

Therefore, I would imagine that your suggestion that:

> Your name has been passed to me by way of recommendation as a very strong computer scientist.

...might not have quite as much credence as you would have me believe.

Unless you would like me to arrange that we discard all emails from your company's mailservers on sight without delivering them, I suggest that you stop sending such wide-based unsolicited email -- which I am aware numbers 375 emails in the past month.

Kind regards,

{spiker_uk}

---

I won't embarrass the company concerned here yet, but I'm certainly going to keep a beady eye on my mailserver logs... :-)

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/hub_/]

I would just black-list them and report to their ISP.

[spiker-uk.livejournal.com]

It's sorely tempting, but I'll give them a chance to reform first. If the guy keeps on spamming then I'll start firing from both barrels.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

I've never known a spammer to reform. And odds are that yours isn't the only university they've been spamming either.

[brothersterno.livejournal.com]

IAWTC.

Nastygram + blacklist.

spamming = fail. I understand that it's a tough biz, but that's a risk you take, innit?

[ptstech.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Nuke the bastards from orbit, only way to be sure...

[brotherflounder]

Yikes.

And if the US mortgage crisis has had the same effect on UK investment banking and hedge funds as it's had on our own, who would want to go into those companies anyways?

[kostika.livejournal.com]

I bet I can guess the company. I had to put them on my own blacklist for my personal email because they wouldn't stop spamming me when I told them to.