Bad recruiters can teach everyone a lesson

As many of you know, I am currently on my rigorous and sometimes disappointing journey throughout the job market. Like many other college students I have attended many career fairs, posted my resume to several job boards and constantly/religiously checked the university’s AccessUT job site for openings. There have been some promising leads, but nothing worth celebrating just yet.

But, my job hunt has frustrated me at times because of ridiculously vague emails from people claiming they are recruiters, who would like to offer me a position immediately. Here is an example of what I am talking about:

Note: I purposefully left out the company name and job ID to make a point, not to humiliate someone.

Look like anything you’ve ever received before? Why do recruiters even spend their time sending me emails like this one? The scary part is that many people actually reply back to these emails. I understand it is a bad economy, but practices like this should be banned from any job site. The best part is that “Anton” wasn’t the person who sent me an email. Also, did you notice that they want me to reply back to a @me.com account. Surely, any creditable company would have the capital to invest in business emails. Plus, the message isn’t even signed and a PDF is not attached.

The reason I am sharing this email with you is to remind you that you should always double check your sources. I am thinking about sending Careerbuilder a complaint about this, because in practice it has all the signs of fraud and spam. Just because someone sends you an incredible offer from an accredited job site, always take the time to do a quick Google search of the company and the person reaching out to you. And, as you can see from this example, check for signs in the email itself. If you don’t trust it, don’t even bother responding. Send it to trash and keep on going, just like I am!