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]

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.

what to do

[miowpurr]

Airhorn into the phone? Nah, too harsh...

Meow

[aarku]

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

Derogitory sexual comments

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's a woman, start talking about how bad you want to drill her ass. Be very explicit. If it's a man, same thing. Just come up with the most vile stuff you can think of. If that doesn't work, bring some animals into your verbal fantasies. Try to make a game of it within the office to see who can come up with the most disgusting stuff or who can get the headhunter on the other end of the phone line to break down and start screaming.

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

[moeinvt]

press 1 now.

Re:ask them to hold, forever...

[JrOldPhart]

don't go back. For grins time how long they wait. Waste their time.

Re:There's irony in this ...

[devnull17]

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.

Re:Easy

[gfxguy]

Company Memo: All down time shall be spent calling xxx-xxx-xxxx and asking for jobs at twice your currently salary. If you get one, go for it.

Re:Derogitory sexual comments

[rubycodez]

that might cause problems with passing by HR (they'll say you're language constitutes sexual harassment of any coworkers in earshot made uncomfortable). So farm it out, tell the recruiter in a hushed voice to call your cell phone number. Give them the phone number of an adult theater in a major city that has recorded message listing all the films and plots. Or whatever cranks your tractor, the possibilities are as numerous as your yellow page directory!

Re:Meow

[east coast]

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)

Re:There's irony in this ...

[Original Replica]

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:Nah

[N3WBI3]

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..

Extension 101

[gpuk]

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)...

Re:ask if you can call them back

[RingDev]

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:Nah

[Scaba]

Wouldn't the universe implode or something?

Re:what to do

[MrNiceguy_KS]

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:ask if you can call them back

[gEvil (beta)]

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.

Hire Grandpa Simpson

[PHAEDRU5]

"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..."

Re:ask if you can call them back

[iknownuttin]

Dude! I need to burn minutes on my business/cell plan! Yes!!!!

Oh, wait, can they then use the number I've called them with to call me back and burn my minutes?

How to get to the heart of telemarketers

[dattaway]

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.)

Re:Nah

[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:Lie to them

[kestasjk]

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.

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

[GuruBuckaroo]

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:ask if you can call them back

[CrtxReavr]

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

Re:Technological solution.

[Lord Apathy]

No she is my Ex because she is a Bitch. Get your story straight before you fire off your pie hole.

Re:ask if you can call them back

[clem]

<ObDilbert>And so another journalism major enters the workforce...</ObDilbert>

Re:Nah

[FuzzyDaddy]

When I was a freshman in college, my dorm phone had call forwarding, which was completely novel to me (my parents didn't have touch tone phones yet.) Being a curious sort, I tried call forwarding to myself. The phone stopped working and I had to call someone (from another phone) to get them to fix it.

Re:Call me suspicious. Perhaps an inside job?

[raju1kabir]

"Hi, Mr. Agency, I'd like to pay you a lot of money to call my employees repeatedly and check whether any of them feel like quitting yet. Please call several times a day so they can't get any work done."

Can you say self-fulfilling prophecy?

Re:ask if you can call them back

[Ngarrang]

Have you phone admin setup a phone extension that all of the calls can be forwarded to. That line, when called, will play a LOUD shrilling sound, enough to scare the crap out of the caller, or at least give them an ear ache.

On the other hand, if you tell someone to "Please remove my number from your database and do NOT call again", the next call is harassment. If you are a woman, you could threaten to file a sexual harassment lawsuit because you could swear they just said something derogatory. This should work if you are a minority, as well, play the race card.

"We have a job that perfect for you!"
"Why? Because I am black? What are you trying to say, that I am not good enough for my current job?"

Forwarding their call to another recruiter might also be funny.

Take a cue from one of the comedians on the BoB & Tom show and when the recruiter calls, ask about the location of the job. Tell them that you might need the job for 'about 7 years, until the statute of the limitations runs out.' Ask if the location has extradition agreements with your current state. *grin* And while you are at it, ask if the recruiter knows of a good way to get blood out of a shirt, a lot of blood.

Question of the day

[JonTurner]

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:Call me suspicious. Perhaps an inside job?

[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]

I agree...

[IANAAC]

Not sure that advertising these companies for free is really the effect you want to have.

More likely what will happen is out of work slashdot readers will call in asking if they have any jobs.

Re:what to do

[hotdiggitydawg]

Here we've settled on putting them on "hold" and seeing how long they'll stay on the line until they hjust hang up... and by "hold" I mean we physically attach the phone receiver to some headphones with Barbara Streisand and Lionel Ritchie mp3s on high rotation.

So kinda like the airhorn then.

Re:ask if you can call them back

[saddlark]

The name Tyrone makes me think of ... - I thought you said he was a getaway driver. What the fuck can he get away from? - Don't worry. Tyrone can move when he has to.

Re:How to get to the heart of telemarketers

[kalirion]

Heh, this reminds me of a recording I heard online. Telemarketer calls advertising grave plots or coffins or something similar, and the guy answers with "OMG! I was just considering committing suicide and was praying for a sign! You're like the Angel of Death, man!" This went on for 5 minutes or more, with in the end the telemarketer suggesting which of his products/services to get (and pay for) before doing the deed. Not sure whether or not this was a hoax, but was still funny.

I'd take the free lunch

[marcus]

And say thank you.

You never know, you just might find a new job!

Re:How to get to the heart of telemarketers

[Bugs42]

Hehehe... reminds me of the good times I've had with telemarketers.
My favorite was a call from something that sounded suspiciously like a cult... they kept asking me if I was "happy with life" and whether I was "searching for meaning." Well, naturally I told him that I already knew the answer to life, it's 42, and hung up.
'Bout 30 seconds later, he calls back saying we must have been accidently disconnected. I laugh and hang up again. The guy calls AGAIN saying we must have been accidently disconnected... and so on.

Of course, things can get ugly. In a different case from the above, a telemarketer called back after I gave him the run-around with a bunch of stupid questions, and he called me a "stupid little punk" and threatened to "show up at my house with a baseball bat."

Re:ask if you can call them back

[MontyApollo]

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.

Supermarket Stock Computer

[Roger W Moore]

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!

Re:Nah

[fbjon]

What about forwarding them to some random number in North Korea? That'd give them pause.

Re:Nah

[241comp]

Rather than block the number, route it to a box connected to the Internet with voice recognition and text-to-speech software. Direct the computer to answer as Alice [pandorabots.com] and proceed to engage the caller in mind-numbingly pointless but realistic conversation.

Re:Nah

[nitehawk214]

This reminds me of a company I used to work at.

There was a bug in the internally developed fax software that would cause it occasionally to forget to dial 9 before dialing out. I would see "FAX SERVER" on the caller id window of my phone, so I would just hit the transfer button and hand it off to say... the developers responsible for it. The beauty of it was it would say my name as the originater, then as soon as they pick up "BEEP - SCRATCH - GARBLEGARBLE - incomming fax"

That was quite effective in convincing them to fix the bug sooner rather then later.

I also had an amusing time when dialing someone up and getting their voicemail. You could transfer them back to themselves, giving them a voicemail message that is their voicemail greeting.

Re:This calls for an old trick

[Anonymous Coward]

No. no. You messed it all up.
You grab a spool of thread, and stick that in your fax.

It doesn't use up their toner, and it doesn't waste paper. In fact, they often wonder why in the world their fax machine keeps spewing out blank pages.
They might have to replace their "broken" fax machine.

Re:ask them to hold, forever...

[jachim69]

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

Re:ask if you can call them back

[Maverick390]

Whatever you do don't hook them up to a gay porn store using google click to call. Because that just wouldn't be right! I'm just sayin!

Re:How to get to the heart of telemarketers

[sd_diamond]

Here's a few good starter questions:

1. "The only functioning vehicle I have right now is a 40-foot motor home. Do you have space to park a vehicle of that size?"
   This will (hopefully) lead to a comment on how expensive it must be to drive such a vehicle. Fortunately, you're ready with this response:
   "Yeah, it used to be pretty hard. Fortunately, I've worked out a way to offset the costs. I've sold advertising space on the side of the vehicle to a local adult video store. And a strip club on the other side."
2. "Do your employee guidelines say anything about the minimum amount of clothing required for employees to wear? If so, is it more or less than what is legally allowed to be worn in public?"
3. "Do you perform random drug tests? If so, do you have any sort of an amnesty policy for positive results? No reason; just curious."
4. "Do you have any sort of official hierarchy of how bad positive results are for different types of recreational drugs?"
5. "What is your policy on employees carrying concealed weapons to work?"

Re:Nah

[kimvette]

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

Re:Question of the day

[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:Nah

[parlyboy]

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.

Why not just give out phony info?

[wsanders]

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:Nah

[jinxidoru]

You could do what my friend did. He owns a dial-up ISP. He got the phone number for the company then had a bank of modems constantly call them non-stop.

Re:Flirt

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask out for lunch/dinner (depending on your sexual orientation)

The decision to ask someone out for either lunch or dinner depends on your sexual orientation? Whoo boy, relationships get more complicated every day.

So if I am heterosexual do I ask someone out for lunch or for dinner? If I am into bestiality do I ask them out to breakfast?

I'm confused.

Re:Why not just give out phony info?

[nizo]

...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.

You work for Dell Support Don't You?

[MoronBob]

You work for Dell Support Don't You?

Re:Question of the day

[nizo]

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:ask if you can call them back

[Associate]

Ah, the joys of double entendre.

Give them time

[DrYak]

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.

Re:Question of the day

[MrWhitefolkz]

For awhile I used to be a loan officer and we had to make the cold calls to people all the time. When people started doing things like this, I loved it. I finally had fun at my job again. There is nothing worst then going through the same speech over and over again. I had one person tell me he was in the middle of an orgy but would talk to me if I felt find with that. He kept getting worst and worst with graphic detail too. So being someone who has browsed the internet's finest video's from time to time, I started getting graphic right back. The look from my manager as I describe some freaky things to this guy over the phone was priceless. That day was the highlight for me. The best part of all, I did get the application eventually (it was a long phone call), and he actually told me after the application that he was just messing with me the entire time but being that I played along, he figured he would at least look into it. To bad he had a sub500 credit... I'll never forget that phone call though.

Re:There's irony in this ...

[theskunkmonkey]

Even better, set up recruiters to meet each other for lunch. Tell all the recruiters in a given week to meet you next Tuesday at 1pm in some trendy popular spot. Just give your name as the previous recruiters name.

I bet that would be worthy of filming. Nothing like 20 fuming recruiters that just wasted an hour for great entertainment.

Skunky

Re:Derogitory sexual comments

[kjs3]

The Aristocrats!

Re:ask them to hold, forever...

[blissfool]

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!

Re:Give them time

[Flodis]

I have a friend who can whistle 300 baud. I'll surf to goatse and hand him the phone while the page loads.

.. wait for it.

Ok. here goes [a1freesoundeffects.com]