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."

Lie to them

[gurps_npc]

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:There's irony in this ...

[trolltalk.com]

Its like the saying goes - the best time to look for a new job is when you already have a job.

Perhaps a sting operation

[taustin]

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]

> 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]

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.

Keep them on the phone

[Sargeant Slaughter]

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!]

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.

Treat your employees better

[PackMan97]

The best way to get them to stop is to pay your employees what they are worth and treat them well. They'll stop calling once they realize no one wants to leave your company because they are fat and happy.

This calls for an old trick

[Jtheletter]

Here's an oldschool fax machine DOS prank that should at least inconvenience them as much as they have you. There's a good chance the company has a fax machine, and since they're a business you should be able to get ahold of that number very easily. Worst case someone may need to pose as a prospective IT hire and get the fax number in order to "send in your resume".

Once you have the fax number just put together about 6 or 7 pages of whatever you like within reason and the bounds of law (i.e. don't send death threats or pornographic images), usually something inane and anonymous, perhaps lolcatz pictures. Tape all the sheets together end-to-end then insert into your fax machine, once the first part of the now super-length page comes through, loop the top around and tape it together, forming a nice infinite paper loop in the fax machine. Let this send all day if you like. On their end it will either eat all their paper, toner, or at the very least render the fax machine unusable!

Important! You obviously want to remain anonymous with this "fax" so be sure to prepend *67 to the fax number, this is the command to block caller ID. :)

Enjoy!

Get a decent phone system

[Lumpy]

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.

Re:I am pretty sure.

[Scaba]

You're doing it now reading /.

Re:Get a decent phone system

[jaredmauch]

Having this capability is an incredible asset. Frequently someone will 'sell' or 'donate' a company directory to these places. I've seen it happen at two different jobs where they call folks direct lines and have their names and titles. The ability to take someone and reject their calls either with a busy, a recording, forwarding them to another number (I use the FTC complaint number for my home phone when I blacklist folks there;)) or some other creative measures is valuable. You have a choice of who you are going to do business with (in most cases), and some 3rd party trying to poach your employees should go bye-bye.

Another effective way to combat them is to have a VP or C*O call them back. This typically immediately stops the calls.

Re:Call me suspicious. Perhaps an inside job?

[bahwi]

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:Extension 101

[raju1kabir]

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)...

I doubt it's illegal, as you'd be the one paying the premium rates for the call.

Re:I Love Leaches -- Recession is worse

[PitaBred]

I know they were readable. But when you're looking for a job, you don't want to look as if you have the writing skills of a 5th grader. It has the tendency of making people not want to hire you. I know we throw out pretty much any resume that has mistakes that a spell-checker would catch.

Re:How to get to the heart of telemarketers

[Rakishi]

I say go one better, set up an automatic system that asks questions. Basically all it does is randomly choose from a pre-existing list of responses, be it questions, pauses, hold music, evil background ranting, screaming, etc. I'd be mostly incomprehensible and make no sense when put together but thats what a few "I'm forwarding you to X" lines are there for. Don't forget to begin with a statement saying "we will be recording this conversation and by continuing you agree to give us full rights to use the recording as we deem fit" as well as one asking for their name + company. For even more fun, add in some lines that in an angry voice request that they put their supervisor on the line.

Record the responses of both sides and post them online.

Re:Call me suspicious. Perhaps an inside job?

[XnavxeMiyyep]

What does that have to do with Communism?

Legal Solution is Obvious.

[Gat0r30y]

Our attorney says the calls are perfectly legal: there is no 'do not call' list for US corporations, and it's not harassment.

I've got it. Direct all the calls to this attorney of yours, I bet it turns into harassment really quick.

Re:ask if you can call them back

[Belial6]

Just make sure your phone system says that the call may be recorded, and you can record them and put them up on the internet. You can make money from the add hits when people go to listen to the fun that the college student put the phonespammer through. I can think of lots of people that would love to have the job of just screwing with people on the phone with no or responsibility for producing anything.

Asterisk -- The Monkeys

[Anonymous Coward]

At my prior employer, we had a special extension for Telemarketers on our asterisk PBX.

We would "transfer to our supervisor" which would play hold music for 30 seconds, a female voice would say "Mr. Smith is just finishing a call. It will only be another moment." Then hold music for a minute and a half, then the sounds of screaming monkeys from the Asterisk-sounds package.

Perfect Slashdot Content. Torturing telemarketers with open source!

Ellie

Re:There's irony in this ...

[Anonymous Coward]

At the risk of being too serious, the best thing you can do when looking for a job is to have one. Companies prefer candidates who are currently employed, and top headhunters and blood-sucking recruiters know this.

From the individual point of view, there is a psychological advantage to having a job when searching for one, a sense of security that emboldens and lessens the fear of failure. Same applies to getting girls.

Sincerely,

Married and Fully Employed

Re:Nah

[shellacked]

I may be boring but I politely tell them that I'm not looking to make a change right now, then I ask for their contact info in case I need them sometime in the future. They stop bugging me, it's a short call, and I have a list of headhunters if things ever turn South. My previous job things weren't looking so hot with layoffs on the horizon etc so I started looking and I haven't been happier since I found something new. Don't crap on those guys too much, you may need 'em some day...

Re:ask if you can call them back

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a 10 year IT vet turned recruiter. I have flashbacks whenever I even talk IT so I focus on the semiconductor market which is much more enjoyable.

One company calling you over and over is pretty crazy. We do cold call people a lot, but I keep lists and if someone is not friendly or interesting - I just dont call them back. In my experience, the Jr people are the least receptive where as the more senior people (especially the old-timers) are great to talk to.

Currently we are in a situation where there are more jobs than people. Wah, poor you. It has not been this good for almost 10 years. If you absolutely do not want to talk to a recruiter, just say no thanks and hang up.

The other thing you can do is re-work your phone system. Remove the lookup directory or at least get a system that requires 4 letters to be entered and does not let you cycle through names and extensions.

You might also go to 100% receptionist answer (get a mean, ornery one who likes to shut people down) after hours make all calls go to general delivery voice mail. A few basic things like that will drastically cut down on unsolicited calls but really, if your buddy refers a legit headhunter to call you, they will still be able to get through (since they know your name) and the losers will go elsewhere.

Re:Call me suspicious. Perhaps an inside job?

[fishbowl]

>just calling up key people to see if anyone is disloyal?

Disloyal? WTF? My employer knows damned well I work for him for two reasons:

1. The compensation is acceptable.
2. I enjoy the environment enough that I choose to remain, since reason #1 can be met elsewhere.

I am *loyal* to my *dog.* If an employer got on some kind of trip where *loyalty* is asked, I am quite certain reason #2 flies straight down the crapper at that instant, and certain people who can accommodate reason #1 get contacted, which would make a few of them *very* happy.

What's this about phones anyway? People still use those things? How quaint!

If you want to work for somebody who expects *loyalty* join the army or something. Sheesh. I would not last a day with that crap.

Re:Question of the day

[fishbowl]

>My brother says that he tried "What are you wearing?" once and the clueless caller said, "Jeans and a T-shirt. Why?"
>I guess he wasn't ready for that. The next question should have been, "Are you wearing any underwear?"

It's both amusing and sad when people think they are somehow the first person to abuse that telemarketer today, or that they are somehow the funniest or most offensive or whatever that day.

All you ever need to say is "please take us off your list, thank you."

The person at the other end of the line is doing one of the few shiddy jobs in his nowhere town. The other one is something like cutting up chickens 14 hours a day. The ones with a brain and a sense of humor have heard *everything* and they just want their day to end. The ones without, don't get it anyway.

I know the original topic is about recruiters, and not telemarketers in general. I tell the recruiters point blanc what I want. Sometimes they think I'm kidding, sometimes a big dollar sign lights up over their heads as they consider how lucrative it would be if they could actually find that gig for me, and then it fades as they realize, say, nobody is actually looking for me to take a C-level or EVP or director position for $1.5 mil plus preferred stock located in Maui or Gstaad. I can find regular jobs on my own, thank you. It bothers me a lot when people think I'm kidding when I name my price :-)

Re:Give them time

[JShadow21]

Fax?