The Recruiters Who Aren't

The email arrived on a Tuesday. The recruiter said my background in Solutions Engineering was exactly what companies are competing for right now. Then, in the very next paragraph, she said she had openings for finance professionals.

I am not a finance professional. I have never been a finance professional. My LinkedIn says "Solutions Engineer" in a font size you can read from space.

But I responded anyway. Not because I believed him, but because I wanted to see how the play unfolded.

Here's the script, in case you've been getting these too.

Step one: the flattering cold open.

It always starts with a Gmail address. The recruiter claims to work for a firm you've never heard of, or sometimes a firm you have, but the email doesn't come from that firm's domain. Their LinkedIn profile, if you can find one, has been active for about four weeks and lists no work history before the recruiting role.

The email is vague in a very specific way:

I came across your background in [your role], and I'll be honest, it's exactly the kind of profile companies are competing hard for right now. I'm working with a few organizations (from established leaders to fast-growing firms) that are hiring [some job title] professionals into roles with real influence, strong compensation, and clear progression.

You'll notice there are no company names. No locations. No comp range. No actual job titles, just nouns that sound like job titles. "Professionals into roles with real influence" is a thing humans say when they don't have an actual role to describe.

Step two: the resume request.

You send it. Of course you send it. You're unemployed and someone said "competitive compensation" in a sentence directed at you.

Step three: the pivot.

A day later, the tone shifts. Your background is clearly impressive. You've worked with high-profile enterprise accounts. But:

…as it stands, the resume may not fully capture or highlight your strengths in a way that maximizes attention from hiring managers or gets past the first round of reviews.

Then comes the soft offer. They could share a few recommendations on optimizing your resume so it positions you for maximum attention. Would you be interested in hearing those suggestions?

You ask the question you already know the answer to: Is this a fee-based service?

Yes. It turns out it is.

Step four: the disappearing act.

You tell them your resume has been professionally rewritten already and you're not interested in the service. The roles, however, you'd love to discuss.

You will never hear from them again.

There were no roles. There were never any roles. There was a resume service wearing a recruiter costume, and once you declined to pay, the costume came off and the recruiter walked out the back door.

The tells, all together

• Gmail address. Almost all real recruiters at real firms have @theirfirm.com email addresses. There are legitimate independent recruiters who use Gmail, but they tend to have an actual track record and don't try to sell you something on day two.
• Vague openings. No company name, no role, no comp band, no location. Just adjectives.
• Wrong industry, wrong role, wrong everything. My pitch was for finance roles. I am not in finance. The email was scraped and blasted, and the script wasn't even adjusted for the target.
• The resume pivot. Praise, then a "but," then a paid service.
• Emails arriving at addresses that aren't on your resume. This one is my favorite. The email I got the finance pitch on isn't listed anywhere on my LinkedIn or my resume. They scraped it from somewhere else and matched it to my profile. Whatever data broker they're buying from is doing real work.

What this actually is

It's a lead funnel for a resume writing service, dressed up to look like recruiting. The "recruiter" is a salesperson on commission. The job opportunities are the bait. The resume service is the product. You are not a candidate; you are a lead.

The cruelest part is the timing. These emails hit your inbox when you're at your most vulnerable, when any signal that someone sees your value feels like proof you're not invisible. They know that. The whole script is built on knowing that.

What real recruiters look like, briefly

• They have a company email.
• They name the company they're hiring for, usually in the first email, sometimes after a short call.
• They give you a comp range when you ask.
• They have a LinkedIn profile with more than four weeks of history.
• They do not, ever, pivot from "you're a great fit" to "let me sell you something."

If you're getting the other kind, you're not doing anything wrong. You're on a list. The list got sold. Welcome to the club; the merchandise is bad.

A small piece of advice

If you want to engage, engage. I do, sometimes, mostly out of spite and partly out of curiosity. Just don't send your resume until they've named the company. And don't pay anyone who pivots from recruiting you to selling to you.

The job search is hard enough without paying strangers to make it worse.