[vijayr]

Most recruiters are terrible. The other day I was asked to fill a form (skills, work experience, personal details, the whole thing - in great detail) before the recruiter would even tell me the name of the company he is trying to hire for. I knew arguing with him is futile, so I didn't. Job search in general is a depressing experience, even when it is easy. Good recruiters are extremely rare :(

My funniest experience with a recruiter - he called me up and tried to recruit me to the same company I was working for at the time.

[smartbit]

> My funniest experience with a recruiter - he called me up and tried to recruit me to the same company I was working for at the time. I had that too once. She apologized and asked not to tell the company :-)

[will_pseudonym]

I'm a great recruiter! My approach is to help both sides understand the other side's needs completely before signing on the dotted line. I'm only happy when everyone else is. I also only work with people I would want to work with in the future, and that goes for both sides :)

Are you looking for something right now? If you are, I'll dig through your HN comment history and try to understand your needs and desires. If you aren't, I'm still going to, because good people are as hard to find as good recruiters! :)

[relkor]

That's creepy

[will_pseudonym]

Fun thought experiment: all this information is publicly available, and we're okay with it as evidenced by the fact that we're participating freely in the activity.

You're not bothered by algorithms (maybe you are, but you're not writing about it, so from this context you're less bothered) that can analyze data and language and patterns of communication, but you do have a problem with a human trying to understand the needs and desires of another human in the aim of helping that person land a job they would live?

Like I said, it's a thought experiment. I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'm always learning. Unless I'm an algorithm--they never learn. Or do they? Maybe you're just a poor Turing Test judge?! ;)

[relkor]

To be more formal, there are two possiblities that I see:

1) You are RecruiterBot born from the forge of a brillant engineer smarting from rejection and trained to communicate using audio samples from bugs placed in business schools.

- The announced intent to harvest data is a flaw in the algorithm because it is known that humans find overt monitoring "creepy". My response is to submit a ticket to your maker using the contact info, with steps to reproduce and other data.

- I assume the monitoring itself is rational because my priors tell me the marginal cost is likely low enough to be worth it.

2) You are a real person

- In this case your decision to stalk the above user represents a significant economic investment. The idea that you will spend 30 minutes? or more following stranger on the internet shows to be an imbalance in your economic incentives. I begin to wonder, are you a rational actor?

- In the interest of safety I will avoid you because the data points I have do not fit human models of behavior. My percieved risk is much higher because your economic incentives do not appear to align with mine. Therefore it is unlikely that trade is worth the opportunity cost when I know of others who do align AND have lower risk assements.

[will_pseudonym]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this! To give you some insight into my behavior--I have an intuition about who is naughty or nice (maybe I'm Santa!), and I don't spend any time on awful folks unless I'm learning from the experience. That means I can put more wood behind fewer arrows so to speak.

It absolutely seems creepy to read about my behavior, but I promise that with the people I reach out to, my batting average for them responding positively is probably around 0.600. I need to crunch those numbers--that'll be a neat piece of data to use to demonstrate that I'm effective at communicating with new people, which means my fat butt is worth it's weight in gold to companies who want to reach new clients and partners.

I think you might find that high touch sales is much more like what I've described above, than not. I love when someone treats me like I've described, because it demonstrates listening and understanding! Which is equivalent to them demonstrating that they respect me and my time.

I absolutely respect your space and won't stalk you (mostly because I don't think it'll be a mutually beneficial relationship). I would say though that if you met me on the street, you'd find that I radiate a positive aura and leave nearly every human interaction with both of us better off. I know what I'm doing is Right because of the evidence of the reactions in my life to what in putting out. And to quote the song Forrest Whitaker, "You ain't gotta love me!" :)

Have a great day, and best of luck to you!!

[will_pseudonym]

Just some things I wanted to add: * loved learning about your threat/opportunity evaluation algorithm as it played out in evaluating me. I'm def gonna steal this when working with folks who are analytical like yourself! * the business school quip was quite entertaining. * your attitude of economic incentives not aligning, so that's why we shouldn't work together, meshes 100% with my beliefs and values. Not sure if that fits under the umbrella of irony, but...

Anyway, thanks again for the convo, you're a good person in my book!

[zeroxfe]

> Fun thought experiment: all this information is publicly available, and we're okay with it as evidenced by the fact that we're participating freely in the activity.

Spoken like a true stalker.

> You're not bothered by algorithms (maybe you are, but you're not writing about it, so from this context you're less bothered) that can analyze data and language and patterns of communication, but you do have a problem with a human trying to understand the needs and desires of another human in the aim of helping that person land a job they would live?

There is a difference between machines aggregating large datasets and individuals directly targeting other individuals.

[will_pseudonym]

> There is a difference between machines aggregating large datasets and individuals directly targeting other individuals.

Could you help me understand the difference? Don't humans have access to the incredible output of those algorithms?