I’ll start with Exhibit A: a series of unsolicited marketing emails sent to my business address, which seems to have found its way onto some shady lists by virtue of existing. And yes, I know I could’ve hit “Unsubscribe” right away, but all of these were routed to my spam inbox, so I didn’t cop on to this person wasting email tokens until about a month in.
First email:
Exclusive first look at this Cloud DevOps Engineer
I don’t work in DevOps.
Second email:
Did you catch the candidate I shared yesterday? To keep things moving, let’s hop on a call.
Nothing’s moving, because I don’t work in DevOps.
Third email:
I hope my persistence shows how much I believe this Cloud DevOps Engineer could be a great fit for your team.
I. don’t. work. in. DevOps.
Fourth email:
Subject: Bittersweet update
Message: I wouldn’t believe it either, but the candidate I sent over yesterday to you has already been scooped up and is currently in interviews. That’s how quickly our top talent is moving right now.
Good for them! I’m sure their new place was a stronger fit than my team of people who don’t do DevOps.
Ten days in, after some more candidate profiles I couldn’t give less of a fuck about (wrong job title, wrong location or both), I got this:
What are your current hiring needs? I want to discuss how we can help fill the gaps.
Should’ve lead with that instead of spray-and-pray. I do have hiring needs. I’d rather poke my eyes out with a fork than work with this agency.
Two more weeks of profiles later, they finally seemed to cop on to something:
I get the sense that you may not be actively hiring in the project management department right now. However, I also have candidates in marketing, HR, accounting, and sales who are confidentially exploring new opportunities exclusively through us, and they’re local to your area…
Number of candidates they’d sent me so far who were “local to my area”: zero.
Number of candidates in “marketing, HR, accounting, and sales” that I’m hiring right now: also zero.
The last email from them to hit my inbox before I realized the spam was happening and unsubscribed was this:
Subject: Weird question
Hey {{name}},
Do you ever look at a candidate and think they might be too good to be true?
I sent over a Full Stack Developer and a VP of Engineering yesterday, and I would love to hear your thoughts.
My good (presumably) human being (and totally not marketing automation bot), if I had the authority to hire a VP of Engineering, I’d get off the Internets, buy a private island, and you’d never hear from me again.
Maybe this pushy attitude coupled with geriatric millennial sass works with some people, I don’t know. I’ve been sold things before, but people? Like this? That’s a new one. And it’s kind of gross.
Which brings me to a LinkedIn Lunatics post from a while back
Some sales guy in an engagement pod posted about how marketing your business is a moral imperative and a God-given right. How your very survival as a business owner relies on people spending money on whatever you have to sell, and so pretty much anything you do that gets you customers is a-OK.
It doesn’t get any more late-stage capitalist rot than that, but it got me thinking.
Marketing has been getting increasingly more aggressive as competition grew and people realized they can push boundaries without repercussion. I’ve had salespeople accosting me in the street, banging on my door despite the NO SOLICITING sign, even blowing up my phone at 7 a.m. I’ve been getting spam email since I was twelve and made my first myname_birthyear@yahoo.com address.
I’ve also had enough cold emails and unsolicited LinkedIn DMs to fill out a small booklet titled Things I Neither Work With Nor Care About, and I’ve made it a point to never hire any of those companies. Nine out of ten times, what they’re selling has fuck-all to do with what I need. The last guy loses on principle. A little extreme, sure, but it’s a matter of boundaries in the end. You wouldn’t barge into my office yelling about your AI-powered SaaS solution, so why do it digitally?
Maybe I’m old-school. Maybe I’m just tired of weird hooks, passive-aggressive follow-ups and the odd insult when I reply with a polite “no thanks”.
Speaking of weird hooks, this just crossed my feed, so now you have to see it, too:
Imagine opening a business email with “I got your email from your ex”. You don’t even need to have had a stalking, psychotic ex-whatever to feel the ick.
One more thing…
The person spamming me was the agency owner/CEO, and their email signature had a long list of awards won by both themselves and the agency. I guess this is the kind of attitude capitalism rewards: pushy, aggressive, shameless.
At the end of the day, the world we all live in is just a little shittier for it.
