How I created a bot that talked to recruiters for me

We continue to gather the stories about recruiters that send tons of emails.
That’s the next one. By Kevin. He created a bot that talks to recruiters (pure genious).

My name is Kevin, and I’d like to tell you a story about an easy way to stop recruiter spam.

I am a Front End Developer, I have a good job, and I lead a team of 7 developers. But I receive so many letters from recruiters that sometimes I just don’t want to check my inbox. I know that they are there saying, “Hope you’re well!” and asking, “Would you like to have a chat?” No. I would not. I want to be alone with my tasks and my real job.

Sometimes recruiters even try to attack me on Facebook. Look at the Message Requests:

That’s how I decided that I would rather have a bot than read all these annoying letters again. I’ve decided to use the Messenger platform for my bot creation, because all recruiters use Facebook, and it will be easy for them to chat with my little digital brother.

There are tons of useful tools for bots, and, of course, you can do it yourself using no constructors. I’ve decided to stay on Chatfuel. It was easy to use it, especially when you understand the logic. I spent a few hours creating my bot, and here it is, shining bright!

What was important to me?

As I get a lot of proposals every day, I know exactly what is important and what is not. I am a rockstar (hello, recruiter!) at finding the information I need from these huge and stupid letters:

1. Location: I currently live in Chicago, and I would prefer to stay here as long as possible. Therefore, I am not interested in relocation (only if it’s like… Bali). That’s why I added the question for recruiters about job location. This way, no matter where the jobs were coming from, I could just filter proposals later.
2. Skills: Seriously, recruiters, stop asking me about Java. I AM NOT A JAVA DEVELOPER. I wanted to add a small test or comment on the difference between Java and Javascript. I think that would be good for me… and for the recruiters also. See, I’m not evil. Something else about me — I am really interested in cool projects that can help me improve my React skills, which was another reason I added this question.
3. Experience: I have 4 years of experience, so it’s weird when I receive letters with 5 YEARS written in black and white. Stop using this as a criteria, or know exactly how many years of experience you need.
4. Salary: One more important thing. I added a filter at first, but it seemed impolite, so I got rid of it.

That was all it took to set up my bot — easy to use and hopefully setting me free from a garbage storm in my inbox.

But how to make recruiters use it? I took the link and put it wherever I could — on my LinkedIn page, on GitHub, on Facebook, on Slack, on Instagram. I also made a Gmail template which answered recruiters something like this:

“Hi, dear recruiter!

Thank you for your interest.

If you want to tell me about some career opportunities, please use this bot:

It’s nice for both of us: I receive useful and structured information about your job proposal and you don’t have to spend hours writing letters and trying to find personal details that will make me open your letter.

Thanks,

Kevin”

Afterwards, I started to receive the first job proposals via bot.

This is how it looks on Chatfuel:

Inside it looks like this:

What is the best thing about receiving job proposals like this?

• I can receive job proposals and job descriptions the way I want them. As you can see from the screenshot, on Chatfuel you can sort by the fields you want to see.
• My inbox is less attacked by recruiters.
• I can mass-message them! And leave everyone with feedback.
• It’s now much more likely that the recruiter won’t disappear, because I have his or her Facebook profile, and I can see if we have some friends in common.

After a month of testing, I analyzed what had changed:

I am not as annoyed as before by recruiters. I have my work email and sort letters there as I want.

I received 4 interesting proposals.

I now know much more about the job market, skills needed, salaries, and so on. I have the stats of what recruiters offer me.

It’s kind of fun! Recruiters told me that they loved the way I solved the problem.

Could I live without it?

Of course. But it makes my life better. Details and time matter, so I definitely recommend you do the same.

P.S.

You can now use Reply.id as these guys made the tool for people like me.