Doing My Own Small Part

Experience has taught me that working with out-of-state recruiters is a complete waste of my time and resources. They don't know the area, they don't know the commute, and—for a increasingly large number of them—they don't know how to speak English. I don't have a problem working with people for whom English is not their primary language, but when you're in a public-facing profession and people can't understand a single thing you're saying, perhaps you need to rethink your career choice.

Normally I just respond to their emails with a polite, "I do not work with out-of-state recruiters. Please do not contact me again," and that's the end of it. A few don't take the hint and respond with "WHY NOT?" and at that point my civility goes out the door with a response of "What part of DO NOT CONTACT do you not understand?" The domains of mail coming from repeat offenders are finally routed at the server immediately into the trash and I never even see them.

I never answer calls from unrecognized numbers on my phone, forcing them to go to voice mail. So after these recruiters have left their rambling, unintelligible messages, the phone numbers get added to my blocked "Out of State Recruiters" contacts entry. BOOM.

Anyway…

For some reason today, I've been emailed by a dozen or so recruiters all based in North Carolina—all for the same job opening and half coming from the same damned company. (This is another ongoing irritation in working with recruiters; none of them in the same office ever seem to speak to each other.) This has afforded me the opportunity to respond in a more specific, non-generic fashion and be political at the same time; they don't need to know that I wouldn't work with them in any case, but I wrote back and told them that I would not do business with any company based in North Carolina because of HB2, and I suggested they pass that onto their employer.