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3 min read

100 Days of Recruiters - UK Edition

Table of Contents

Like many software engineers, my inboxes are full of spam from recruiters.

Some it gets pretty weird… so I decided to review every single message from the last 100 days to truly understand what makes tech recruiters tick.

Click here for the older (US-based) version


There were 300 (exactly!) total messages (compared to 66 in the US edition)

Here is how they contacted me:

268
LinkedIn
30
Email
2
Phone

Bullshit Score

At first, I tried to count the occurrences of specific buzzwords… but there were just too many to choose from. Instead, I gave each message a Bullshit Score™.

15
None
48
Low
113
Moderate
124
High

In-House Recruiters

15% of the recruiters were in-house recruiters, the rest were external recruiters.

44
Internal
256
External

Of the 256 external recruiters, only 31% were upfront with the company they were hiring for.

79
Did name
177
Didn't name

Copy Paste

Yes, we know your messages are copy paste templates.

One message even forgot to change the names and companies… 🤦

8
Mostly copy-paste
292
Fully copy-paste

As a general rule, I do generally reply to each message that does seem to have been written by a real person.


You Had One Job

These days I’m not much surprised when recruiters forget to list the key languages or tech I’ll be working on.

The surprise this time was that some also forgot to specify whether a role was Front-End, Back-End or Full Stack…

In this chart, incomplete means not specifying the role or the main programming language.

253
Adequate job listing
42
Not a job advert
5
Incomplete job listing

The Quotes

Unlike their American counterparts, there were far less wacky attempts at recruiter clickbait.

Instead, I mostly received hollow apologies for spamming.

I appreciate you probably get bombarded with messages from people like me
I can only imagine how flooded your inbox is with recruiter's messages
I imagine you've had a million messages (this is the 3rd alone from me!)
I appreciate you probably get bombarded with messages from people like me

I wonder why these folks keep spamming if they know it’s annoying? If only someone could explain?

Apologies for the double messaging, I can imagine your inbox is full of similar messages, so I wanted to make sure you got this one!
I thought I'd send you a follow up as I know you must get tons of messages / irrelevant spam and I wanted to stand out

Some really believed their own hype

I have just taken on a Full Stack Developer role within a company I'd consider modern-day Eco heroes.
Your role is more than a Software Engineer
Yats are self-sovereign emoji usernames... Creators use our custom-designed emojis to compose beautiful works of art with deep, human messages.
Hi Tom, Let's talk about Intuit, the 2nd best tech company to work for in the UK

But of course, there was always going to be a sprinkle of weird clickbait

Well, I can tell you that Cristiano Ronaldo's legs are insured for €100 million
The company could be described as a combination of Amazon, TikTok and QVC.

Finally, here are the companies that were named:

  • Hyperexponential (7 times)
  • Ecologi (3 times)
  • Virgin Media (3 times)
  • Freetrade (2 times)
  • Twilio (2 times)
  • Cazoo (2 times)
  • Multiverse (2 times)
  • By Miles (2 times)
  • Facebook (2 times)
  • Improbable (2 times)
  • Zapp (2 times)
  • Gener8 (2 times)
  • Capco (2 times)
  • Ticketmaster (2 times)
  • Scouty
  • Plum Guide
  • PPC Protect
  • Eigen Tech
  • Pollen
  • Vestaire Collective
  • Flawless
  • Grail
  • Kaluza
  • Robin AI
  • Luminovo
  • Coremont
  • Riskcare
  • Onthebeach
  • Mphasis
  • Privitar
  • Hedgehog
  • LoyaltyLion
  • Shares
  • Xe
  • NHS Scotland
  • Lenses.io
  • QBE Insurance
  • The Spectator
  • William Hill
  • GSR
  • Dunelm
  • Confluence
  • Let's Do This
  • Oja
  • YuLife
  • Habito
  • JP Morgan
  • Converge.io
  • Intuit
  • Bother
  • Nous
  • Zen Educate
  • Vortexa
  • Brit Insurance
  • News UK
  • Red Ant
  • Truepill
  • Tari Labs
  • Komi
  • Prima UK
  • Ki Insurance
  • PassFort
  • Amazon
  • Nomo Bank
  • Finimize
  • FutureOn
  • BAE Systems
  • Global Relay
  • WeGift
  • Signal AI
  • Elder
  • Pubgenius
  • Unboxed
  • Foolproof
  • Neural Alpha
  • Hudson River Trading
  • iProov
  • Fast Break Labs
  • Beamery
  • Labelbox
  • Pearl Health
  • Miter
  • Cabinet
  • Guideline
  • Boost
  • Quit Genius
  • The Nerdery
  • Switchboard