[BayAreaEscapee]

Cold calls/letters from recruiters are a waste of time. I've never had a cold call or letter from a recruiter that resulted in a job.

If you have any talent at all, reaching out through your professional network is the way to go.

[Sohcahtoa82]

Anecdata...

My current job was from a cold e-mail.

Though FWIW, I was actively looking for new work at the time, so the recruiter just had good timing.

But the recruiter also had a good e-mail, including the salary range, which was slightly above the band I was expecting.

[commandlinefan]

Even more anecdata - I counted it up recently and I've had 10 different jobs in a little over 30 years. Half I found randomly through recruiters and the other half were from my "professional network". Consistently, every single "professional network"/"referred in" job turned out to be a complete nightmare and every single "through a recruiter" job turned out to be - well, better than the other ones, anyway. By far my most negative employment experiences have been the ones where I was actively recruited in by somebody I knew from my past.