With the sound of hooves in the distance... A black charger galloping towards us and the unmistakable shout 'stand and deliver' is the cry... again.  We are back here again but so what, nothing has changed.  Only this time it’s not a masked gunman, nor is if Adam Ant although that would be funny...

No we are back to the bad old days with agencies (some calling themselves partners) riding back into town with a distribution list of thousands and the CV's of candidates I just couldn't have found myself.   Only in those bad old days it was probably true … and annoyingly is still true due to recruiters inability to check internal databases first.

Or LinkedIn.

Which means we are back to the "Hi Martin, I hope you are well?" not sure when people I don't know became interested in my health and I suppose I would find that comforting if I thought they cared. Only they don't. So with the pleasantries over the email follows the well worn path. A description of the candidate and why they are great, which is ok. Or at least it would be if people knew what I was actually looking. I've had a lot of accountancy based cv's lately. For candidates that live in Manchester. A quick minute on Google would have worked out our finance teams are in Dublin. A quick LinkedIn search would have revealed that my team doesn't recruit them.

The CV is always attached but to a avoid me finding the candidate myself the name and current employer is removed.  Damn those cunning agencies. Oh hang on all the other job titles, employers and dates have been left there, which after a 10 to 15 second search of LinkedIn reveal what I was looking for. Ok that isn't quite true all of the time. I work in the secretive would of IT security and so not everyone is on LinkedIn. But most are.

Attachment number two will be some T&C's that by their existence imply we have entered into some form of contract. My favourite of these included the clause that by even reading the spam email I had in fact accepted their terms and the introduction of the candidate at 35% of OTE payable in 14 days.

We need to move on from this. Not only does this no longer work, if it ever did, why would I put up with it and think it as reasonable.  We have no relationship and you start by asking for money. 

So my top tips for spam agency emails aimed squarely at external recruitment consultants:-

• Don't send it.
• If you must send it do some research first. Engage me with something I want to hear. Solve a problem I have.
• Don't send me a CV with no name with your terms and conditions attached somehow implying that we have a contract. We don't.

This is a recurring theme.  So help me to help you to help me… Let’s talk… I am sure together we can fix it?  Can’t we?

M.