I made a bot that communicates with recruiters for me, and I liked

My name is Kevin and I would like to talk about how I got rid of recruiting spam in a simple way. I’m a front-end developer with good work, I stand at the head of a team of seven people. But recruiters flood me with letters to such an extent that sometimes it’s just a reluctance to go to the post office. I already know in advance that they will be there, with all of these “I hope everything is going well with you” and “Do you have a desire to talk?” No, not the slightest. I want to be left alone to do tasks and do the work that I already have.

Sometimes recruiters lurk me on Facebook. Here you are, requests from those who wish to correspond:


And so I came to the conclusion that it’s easier to make a bot than to continue reading all this and freaking out. When creating the bot, I decided to turn to the Messenger platform, because recruiters use Facebook all over, which means it will be more convenient for them to communicate with my virtual brother.

Now there are many tools for creating bots, and of course, there is always the option to do everything yourself from scratch, without constructors. I decided not to part with Chatfuel. It's very easy to work on this platform, especially when you deal with logic properly. I spent several hours creating the bot and - here it is , in all its radiant glory!

What did I focus on?

As a person who receives a lot of offers, I have already clearly decided which criteria are more important for me and which are less. In terms of fishing out the information that interests me from these long stupid letters, I’m just a rock star (you hear, recruiters?):

Location of the office. I currently live in Chicago and would like to stay here as long as possible. Accordingly, the proposals involving the move do not interest me (well, except perhaps somewhere in Bali). Therefore, I added a question about the geographical location to the chatbot's recruiter for recruiters. By taking such measures, I got the opportunity to calmly filter requests for completion of the conversation, no matter where they came from.

SkillsNo, really, stop asking me about Java, recruiters. I do not write in Java! I had a desire to include also some short check or comment which would guarantee understanding that Java and Javascript are not the same thing. For me it would be convenient ... and for recruiters, too (not so angry as I am, in fact). Another interesting fact about me: I am intensely looking for cool React projects that would give me the opportunity to pump in this area - this is another reason why I added a question about skills.

Experience. I have been working as a developer for four years, so it’s very strange to get letters where it is written in black and white: “From five years of experience”. Either remove this criterion from the requirements altogether, or decide where exactly you draw the line.

Salary.Also an important consideration. At first I included it in the list of filters, but then I decided that it was somehow completely unceremonious, and removed it.

These criteria were enough to make a bot that was easy to use and at the same time protect me (as I hoped) from an avalanche of garbage in the Inbox.

But how to make recruiters talk to him?

I took the link and stuck it wherever I could: on my LinkedIn page, on GitHub, on Facebook, on Slack, on Instagram. In addition, I created a letter template for Gmail, which was automatically sent to recruiters, with the following text:

Good afternoon, dear recruiter!

Thank you for your interest. If you want to tell me about any career opportunities, please use this bot here. It will be easier both for you and for me: I will receive all the useful information about your job offer in a structured way, and you will save time on writing text and finding personal information that could be used to personalize the letter and encourage me to write it. open.

Thanks!
Kevin

After these actions, job offers began to come to me through the bot. On Chatfuel, it looks like this:


And inside - like this:


What are the advantages of this method?
I can receive job offers and job descriptions in the format that I prefer. As you can see in the screenshot, Chatfuel allows you to sort the information by the fields you are interested in. Recruiters now smash significantly less in the mailbox. And I can send messages in bulk and give everyone feedback! It also reduces the likelihood that the recruiter will disappear from my field of view: I have his Facebook profile and I can even see if we have common friends.

After working on such a scheme for about a month, I began to analyze the results. It turned out that the proposals of recruiters were much less annoying. Once again I can have my mail and sort the letters as I see fit. I received four offers that interested me. And now I know a lot more about the labor market: what salary is paid on average, what skills are in demand - after all, I’m collecting statistics on the proposals of recruiters.

In general, it turned out very interesting! Even the recruiters themselves told me that they liked the way I got out of the situation. Is it possible to do without it? Of course, but the chatbot makes my life a lot easier. Time is worth its weight in gold, details are of great importance, so I advise you to resort to this method.

PS Already after writing the article, I discovered a toolReply.id on Product Hunt - it seems like the guys did it with an eye on people like me. Perhaps you should try it too.