Shutting Down Annoying Recruiters?

An anonymous reader writes "My company is under attack by the leeches and bottom-feeders of the IT recruiting world. They call into our company phone directory constantly — hundreds of calls per day — trolling for names, hawking their job candidates, and refusing to hang up or stop calling, even if we curse their mothers. Our attorney says the calls are perfectly legal: there is no 'do not call' list for US corporations, and it's not harassment. Through education, we've gotten our engineering group to stop answering the calls or hang up, but I was wondering if the Slashdot community has any ideas for more creative solutions to make this stop, either through technology, US law, trickery, etc."

ask if you can call them back

[yagu (721525)]

Ask if you can call them back... get their number.

Post on /.

All interested slashdotters should then call this company asking about possible job and recruiting opportunities.

Re:ask if you can call them back

[by Anonymous Coward]

i'll start.

Company Name: Convergenz
Website: www.conv.com
Location: McLean, VA
Target Area: Washington DC Metropolitan area
Target Market: IT contracting from Helpdesk to System Administrators to LAN/WAN Engineers
Phone: [phone]

These fuckers call my office on a daily basis with "new jobs which you are a perfect match". Please say Tyrone King referred you.

Re:ask if you can call them back

[CrtxReavr (62039)]

Apparently not enough people have called, because the receptionist A) actually answered and B) didn't hang-up when I said was calling no behalf of Tyrone King.

-CR

Give them time

[DrYak (748999)]

Apparently not enough people have called

Wait a little bit. The other /.ers are still trying to find a way to send a goatse over the phone.

Why not just give out phony info?

[wsanders (114993)]

Anybody pesters me, they get lots of phony leads.

I have this buddy, Titus T. Tubesteak, who always seems to be looking for a job.

Another buddy, Smitty Jaegerwebermanjensen, is reserved for people who have trouble spelling.

Re:Why not just give out phony info?

[nizo (81281)]

...Smitty Jaegerwebermanjensen...

The best part is you can spell it differently each time they repeat it back to you. Sound more and more pissed each time and repeat until they give up.

Nah

[einhverfr (238914)]

That will only encourage them.

Here is what to do. Tell them in no uncertain terms that they are not welcome to call. Now, if you have an ISDN PRI or similar system, you may be able to get the ANI (like the caller ID but not blockable). Then set up an asterisk box to do prefiltering. Have it recognize calls from that ANI, and route into an indefinite hold queue.

Let them have tit for tat and pay back lesing for lies.

Re:Nah

[N3WBI3 (595976)]

Or better yet rout their call back to their number (if its local or an 800) It would be great to have them call their own receptionest..

Re:Nah

[Scaba (183684)]

Wouldn't the universe implode or something?

Re:Nah

[kimvette (919543)]

I don't think that rule applies here. You're not crossing streams; you're crossing tubes.

Re:Nah

[parlyboy (603457)]

That's nothing.

After a run-in with the hall's RA, one of the guys on my dorm broke into the closet where all the phone switching equipment was.

And routed every single call coming into the dorm into the offending RA's number.

Re:Nah

[by Anonymous Coward]

I used to do something similar when I had my own business ...

I had my phone line(s) through a VOIP provider who provided an awesome set of web-based tools for call management. Whenever I got a junk fax, I'd add the offending number to my call-blocking scheme, but instead of simply blocking it (actually, I had the option of having them receive a busy signal, an instant drop, or an endless ring) I would forward the number to the reception, contact number, or "to be removed" number from another previous junk fax. Every time a new junk faxer would get through, I'd add them. Later I started adding telemarketers to the mix.

At one point I had something like 100 junk faxers and telemarketers all calling and faxing one another. The best part was that the CallerID for the forwarded calls would show the originating number - there was no indication it was being forwarded through me.

It was a thing of beauty ... to bad my current landline provider doesn't provide these kinds of functions.

Re:Nah

[Beetle B. (516615)]

Precisely. I have a VoIP line at home and get a number of calls (4-8 a day) from a company which I refuse to talk to (apparently a surveying company - they are exempt from the Do-Not-Call list).

My solution: Route all their calls back to them. They still try to call, but at least it solves my problem.

BTW, a very relevant link: Who Called Us [whocalled.us]. If you get repeated calls from a number you don't recognize, type it in there and very likely you'll find out about those trying to call you.

Re:ask if you can call them back

[Maxo-Texas (864189)]

Hire a college student at minimum wage.

Their job is to hold the recruiting company on the line as long as possible. Trying to go up the sales chain as high as possible. If you can afford it have a second college student for the calls to be transferred to as "someone with authority to deal with your call".

Re:ask if you can call them back

[RingDev (879105)]

Nah, ya just need one. Just tell him to put the call on hold for a few seconds, then speak in a different voice. It's especially entertaining when the intern goes from his "Tim the half deaf lumberjack" voice to his "Valry the heavy breathing transvestite" voice.

-Rick

Re:ask if you can call them back

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

Why bother with a different voice? Or even a different name for that matter? Just have the one person insist that they are in fact different people all with the same first name.

Re:ask if you can call them back

[MontyApollo (849862)]

I knew a guy who used to do this with sales calls meant for the owner of the company. Whenever we got one of those calls, the receptionist would transfer the call to him. He would be "Joe in Maintenance" then "Fred in Engineering" then "Tom in Accounting" etc... until the caller would finally just hang-up. Most peole only lasted being "transferred" about three times, but there was once or twice they went through about 5 or 6 "people" before finally giving up. His fake voice would become more and more exaggerated the longer it went on.

How to get to the heart of telemarketers

[dattaway (3088)]

What's even better than asking for their number? Asking them questions! This is pure gold when it comes to social engineering. Pretend to be open and helpful, but interrupt their script with questions, any kind of questions! Have you ever wanted to ask someone an embarrasing question, but was too afraid to ask? This is the chance. You have their time. Its NOT considered RUDE to interrupt with questions. This shows interest, even if off topic and devious. Ask questions on crack. Take notes, compile the best, and compare with others. Research the physical call center and who runs it. Posting online to your favorite forum of choice is evil and I would never suggest doing such a thing....unless you want the most popular thread of the week! Give them the attention they crave. Stop them cold.

Telemarketers can be fun. I've identified several, got a few shut down, and got retaliated against one (who happened to be the phone company forcing their employees to cold call during idle time.)

Question of the day

[JonTurner (178845)]

What's even better than asking for their number? Asking them questions!

"What are you wearing?"
I tell you what, I've gotten rid of more tele-marketers that way. They stop their script dead in their tracks and usually hang up on me without so much as another word. Mission accomplished.
However, if they DON'T hang up after that, be very afraid.

Re:Question of the day

[808140 (808140)]

This has happened to me. Once, when I was about 16, a telemarketer called our house, and I used a similar tactic: "You have a very sexy voice," I said. "Are you in the SF bay area? Perhaps we could meet?" (The telemarketer, like me, was male). There was a long pause, and I was sure I had him. Then: "Well... sure... I'd like that..."

At that point, I really didn't know what to do. To this day, I don't know if he was simply calling my bluff, or whether he was truly interested. I remember worrying about it later though, after I hung up on him -- telemarketers typically have your name, address and phone number on the computer in front of them, after all. Nothing happened (this was more than 10 years ago) but since then it's occurred to me that using this strategy comes with a decidedly high risk of backfire. YMMV.

Re:Question of the day

[nizo (81281)]

You forgot the "I'll bring my goat if you can bring some gasoline" part, though if that still didn't freak him out, you would probably have been a good candidate for the witness protection program.

Re:How to get to the heart of telemarketers

[dattaway (3088)]

The anti-telemarketer counterscript is a good starting point with great questions we want to seek, but it is a script. They can usually see through it pretty quick, especially if they are familiar with it. The average home should have enough opportunities a day (a dozen telemarketers) to work up a good fact finding set in short time. This is business, nothing personal, so hold nothing back. Their only goal is to extract money from YOU. Your goal is to extract INFORMATION from them. They give you time, you give them questions. Questions are the knife to pry information they can't defend. They can evade correct answers by making things up, but the score increases with each minute they don't make a sale. Its a game. A losing game. People just have to play it and telemarketers will cease to exist.

Unfortunately, people are amazingly gullible. I learned how to fight them when I worked long hours on the nightshift at a manufacturing plant. They would call all day. I would play them and get email addresses "so I could send them my resume." I was very creative. They were too. One telemarketer was able to convince the powers-to-be to get my phone service suspended. I knew I hit the heart then. And with no profanity or threats either.

Call me suspicious. Perhaps an inside job?

[JonTurner (178845)]

I hate to be a paranoid, but I wonder if this could be a call from an internally-hired agency... you know, just calling up key people to see if anyone is disloyal? If the employee volunteers information or acts interested in a new job, they are mysteriously dismissed a few days later.

I had heard of this tactic being used prior to the IT Tech Boom but not recently. [IIRC, it was the brainchild of the VP of a certain large database software company and also occurred at a large company which writes OSes and application software. The idea was to remove anyone who wasn't loyal. The result was a huge number of very qualified people were dismissed and morale was crushed. But I'm sure the VPs got a nice bonus anyway.]

In this case, it might explain why the company attorney isn't too responsive, when they're normally over-eager to fire off letters of reprimand.

Re:Call me suspicious. Perhaps an inside job?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the solution is to act *crazy* paranoid about this possibility...

This is a trick, isn't it??? You're questioning my company loyalty! You just want to know if I'll bail from the company for a few dollars more or divulge company secrets!! No sir! I like it here. I like what I'm getting paid. I'm completely satisfied! Our boss is great!! I like [him/her] on a professional level!! I am loyal to all levels of management!! I signed the NDA! I don't care if you offer me 50% more!!! Death before dishonor! I'll never quit the company!!! You'll NEVER MAKE ME TALK!!!!

[click]

Re:Call me suspicious. Perhaps an inside job?

[bahwi (43111)]

I hate when people mentions "company loyalty." You can have professional integrity(don't do anything stupid, give away secrets, etc...) as well as be under contract. Looking for a new job is not disloyal. It's logical. Maybe there is something better out there. Because, at the end of the day it's just a J-O-B. They aren't loyal to you(see: layoffs) and companies have very little loyalty, always going with the cheaper or better provider. Next time someone says "company loyalty" just laugh, out loud.

My friend worked for a place that said "Don't post your resume online because we track all the job sites" and he just looked at her and said he'd make sure to post it right now just so she can catch it.

Re:ask them to hold, forever...

[jachim69 (125669)]

Do what I do. Ask them to hold just a moment, then transfer their call to 202-762-1401.

Re:ask them to hold, forever...

[blissfool (861800)]

Googled it and got Time Voice Announcer at U.S. Naval Observatory:

http://www.usno.navy.mil/telephone.shtml/ [navy.mil]

For the love of God, it won't stop!

There's irony in this ...

[Buran (150348)]

And that's that when you need someone to call and offer you a job or at least give you an interview, they don't return your calls. But when you don't want to hear from them, they don't go away?

Tell them you're looking for work and want an interview/offer and they'll stop calling for sure.

Re:There's irony in this ...

[Original Replica (908688)]

Tell them you're looking for work and want an interview/offer and they'll stop calling for sure.

You sir, are brilliant. Yes, every time they call set up an interview over lunch. Preferably somewhere you have no intention of going for lunch. Have everyone in the company do the same. After a week or so of chasing false leads they will turn their attentions elsewhere.

Re:There's irony in this ...

[devnull17 (592326)]

The way I'd always heard it was that it's always easier to pick up girls when you already have a girlfriend. But I guess it works for jobs, too.

DNC list?

[morgan_greywolf (835522)]

At one point I worked in IT support for a telemarketer. AFAIK, from what they told me, if a company tells them to stop calling, they're supposed to add you to their own DNC list and they are not to call you anymore for fear of fines. The laws could vary from state to state, so YMMV.

Lie to them

[gurps_npc (621217)]

Tell your employees to answer the calls, give interviews, and when asked their current salary, give a number twice what they really are getting paid.

If your employees are still being poached, then hey, you deserve it for underpaying them.

More likely, the recruiters will stop calling your employees. (But they might ask for a job themselves.)

Re:Lie to them

[kestasjk (933987)]

Tell them your employees know Fortran, LISP, and Excel macros, they have all completed an A+ course as part of their training, and that many of your employees were part of the Adobe's Adobe Reader optimization team.

Tell them that the employee they're currently after can't be reached because he has been trying to remove spyware from his work computer, or that he's out for a drink because it helps his code "flow".
Or tell them that he'll take your call on the VoIP system he installed, and then just hang up.

Perhaps a sting operation

[taustin (171655)]

Have somebody ask for an interview. And go to it. And explain the situation to the company the leeches are shilling for, and that because they are using such an annoying headhunter, neither they nor anyone else in the company would ever consider working for them. Then just walk out.

no federal DNC, but private ones

[nuzak (959558)]

> there is no 'do not call' list for US corporations, and it's not harassment.

Correct, there is no Federal Do Not Call list. It's also irrelevant -- if they are told to stop calling, they must stop calling -- period. Anything else is harrassment. If you're a big company, just ring up your legal department, tell them the problem, and they'll craft a nice Cease and Desist letter. They live for that sort of thing.

Toy with them...

[TrentTheThief (118302)]

Recruiters make money by getting candidates hired. Eat up their time, pass them back and forth. They are just like telemarketers. If they can't sell, they don't eat.

It's been successful where I work.

I am pretty sure.

[LWATCDR (28044)]

I am pretty sure that if you ask them to not call you back and get the company name that you can stop then from calling.
When they call they are using company resources so they are a cost to you. A simple nastygram from your lawyer should telling them to stop or accept that you will charge them by the hour for the time they waste should work.
Or hire someone for minimum wage to waste their time. When ever they call just forward them to the min wage worker and have them just eat up as much of their time as possible. Summer is coming up so I bet some employee at your company has a teen that would like a summer job.

Re:I am pretty sure.

[Scaba (183684)]

You're doing it now reading /.

Meow

[aarku (151823)]

Act completely insane, or just meow. Works for me. Acting... yes, just acting..

Re:Meow

[east coast (590680)]

Mac: All right, how about "Cat Game?"
Foster: Cat Game? What's the record?
Mac: Thorny did six, but I think you can do ten.
Foster: Ten? Starting right 'meow?'
[Mac laughs - they walk up to the car, and Foster taps on the driver side]
Larry Johnson: Sorry about the...
Foster: All right meow. (1) Hand over your license and registration.
[the man hands him his license]
Foster: Your registration? Hurry up meow. (2)
[Mac ticks off two fingers]
Larry Johnson: Sorry.
[the man laughs a little]
Foster: Is there something funny here boy?
Larry Johnson: Oh, no.
Foster: Then why you laughing, Mister... Larry Johnson?
[pause]
Foster: All right meow, (3) where were we?
Larry Johnson: Excuse me, are you saying meow?
Foster: Am I saying meow?
[Mac puts his hands up for the fourth one, but makes an "eehhh" facial expression, as he is considering the last one]
Larry Johnson: I thought...
Foster: Don't think boy. Meow, (4) do you know how fast you were going?
[man laughs]
Foster: Meow. (5) What is so damn funny?
Larry Johnson: I could have sworn you said meow.
Foster: Do I look like a cat to you, boy? Am I jumpin' around all nimbly bimbly from tree to tree?
[Mac is gut-busting laughing]
Foster: Am I drinking milk from a saucer?
[feigned anger]
Foster: Do you see me eating mice?
Foster: [Mac and the man are laughing their heads off now] You stop laughing right meow! (6)
Larry Johnson: [the man stops and swallows hard] Yes sir.
Foster: Meow, (7) I'm gonna have to give you a ticket on this one. No buts meow. (8) It's the law.
[rips off the ticket and hands it to the man]
Foster: Not so funny meow, (9) is it?
Foster: [Foster gets up to leave, but Mac shakes his hands at him, indicating only nine meows] Meow! (10)

"If you are a bottom-feeding IT recruiter . . ."

[moeinvt (851793)]

press 1 now.

Keep them on the phone

[Sargeant Slaughter (678631)]

Act interested, put them on hold for 5 minutes. Act interested again, put them on hold for another 5 minutes. Act interested again, put them on hold for another 5 minutes. Then tell them they are suckers and they just wasted 15 minuted of their life on a fruitless venture.

It is fun, rewarding, and it hurts their bottom line.

thats how recruiters operate

[gad_zuki! (70830)]

Recruiters are clients of the companies they are trying to hire for. Ask them about the job, then get the company its for. Call that company's HR department and complain and tell them the recruiters they use are harassers. Ideally, if you expose these bottom feeders as being bottom feeders most rational people would drop them. What kind of candidates are they trying to get by using this method? Probably not very good ones.

These recruiters are incredible. I used a few a few years back and I STILL get a phone call 3 or 4x a month from a breathless desperate guy who really needs to fill soem shit 2-week temp contract. I also submitted a resume or two fairly recently only to find they went through a recruiter who told me that job doesnt exist anymore and offered me to interview for some temp job. Bait and switch?

The industry really needs to take a good look at recruiters in general. I cant see them being more efficient than in-house hiring.

Extension 101

[gpuk (712102)]

At our company we have a special extension we use for all suspected marketing calls, known affectionately as extension 101.

This extension is hooked up to a CD player and is programmed to auto answer incoming calls. One of our audio guys has mixed up a CD containing endless "on hold" muzack and promotional messages for our company and this is left to play repeatedly in the CD player.

End result - all unsolicited calls get responded with a "I'll just connect you to the person responsible for that department" and are then transferred to extension 101 where they remain until they hang up. The best bit is that a red LED lights up on the line the marketer has called in on (indicating line in use), making it possible to time how long they spend listening to the 101 CD before disconnecting. The record so far is just over 18 minutes :o)

I suppose if you wanted to be even more devious you could set extension 101 to divert to a premium rate number and make a bit of extra cash for every minute the dumb marketer stays listening to the 101 CD - this is probably illegal though (as most fun things are)...

Get a decent phone system

[Lumpy (12016)]

Our voip phone system allows me to add in "blacklisted" phone numbers. that dump them to a generic mailbox. they cant access anything but the leave a message function. If your phone system cant do that, I strongly suggest upgrading as it's a function that is worth it's weight in gold.

Hire Grandpa Simpson

[PHAEDRU5 (213667)]

"We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere -- like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. 'Give me five bees for a quarter,' you'd say.
        "Now where were we? Oh yeah -- the important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones..."

Six Words: "I will not wear a Tie".

[GuruBuckaroo (833982)]

That's always worked for me. Somebody calls trying to recruit me, I tell them "Can you find me a job paying this much that doesn't require me to wear a necktie?" Wonder of wonders, they never call back.

That's pretty sad, now that I think about it... tells you just how much recruiters think (or companies believe) a tie is worth compared to competency.

Re:what to do

[MrNiceguy_KS (800771)]

At my last job, I got a lot of telemarketing calls trying to sell me toner cartridges. I'd always say, "Let me forward your call to the right person," then forward them to a fax machine. If they called back, I'd apologize and do it again - repeat as necessary.

Re:This calls for an old trick

[CodeMunch (95290)]

I thought you were supposed to use black construction paper? Boy...did i ever mess this prank up :( Guess I'll need to re-do it.

Supermarket Stock Computer

[Roger W Moore (538166)]

There was a story in the UK papers quote a few years ago about a guy who kept getting woken up in the early hours of the morning by repeating computer modem calls. After contacting BT he traced the call to a local supermarket who had incorrectly entered his number in the list to call. Trouble was it only called his number after the first on the list was busy so it only happened a few times a week. He repeatedly contacted them asking them to fix it and after a month of them not doing so he had his mate with a computer hook it up to await the incoming call.

It turned out that the call was the supermarket's stock taking system trying to phone a central depot to order more stuff. Given the simplistic nature of the system the guy's mate fixed the stock levels for lots of items to zero and then told the system to call the next number on its list. The following day they drove past the supermarket to find loads of lorries there trying to deliver things they already had. The supermarket eventually figured out what happened and tried to sue. However, given the very primitive computer laws in force at the time the case was thrown out because the supermarket had initiated the call and so legally it was assumed that they wanted to talk to the computer on the other end. Needless to say the nuisance calls stopped!