Have you had a recruiter hang up on you? I did yesterday.
First lets just get this out front. No matter what someone says, hanging up on someone is unprofessional. I have had unprofessional things said to me all the time and I didn’t hang up. I said thank you for your feedback and that I had other things to do. You can be civil even when the other party isn’t.
I have many recruiters reach out to me each day. This isn’t to brag. I am fortunate that people find my skills interesting. However with that comes the almost 99% certainty that they are going to waste my time and energy and I try to minimize that.
What I do is state the two nonnegotiable items up front. My salary range expectations and working from home. Often recruiters will try to argue with me and I don’t accept that. They can find someone else who wants to work for the conditions that were outlined. Too many recruiters think they can convince me to change my opinion. They can not, and they will not.
This brings us back to yesterday. I told the recruiter my two expectations and said that NYC requires a salary range. He did not respond to the salary and when I started to repeat the range that I was looking for he hung up on me.
Now why am I sharing this with you? Often when I deal with recruiters I am less happy than when I started. Too many recruiters think that by increasing the salary range or talking about silly benefits will convince someone. If someone had made a decision they are sticking to it. There are too many costs to commuting and being in an office, and I won’t do it.
Its funny isn’t it? Respect costs nothing but time, and by not respecting candidates you only cause us to be less likely to talk to random recruiters. Recruiters really are their own worst enemies.