I get an InMail on LinkedIn every week with some new opportunity at some tech company. While some are tempting, others I wish I never received. Here is one from this week with the company removed:

Hi Max, 

<Name of Company>, a funded and rapidly growing startup in Palo Alto, currently has an opportunity for a UX/UI Designer to play a key role in our core team. 

<Name of Company> brings together a customer service rating app with an integrated enterprise system which allows businesses to continuously improve service by engaging customers in conversation, monitor employee ratings, and resolve issues with “instant feedback” technologies and real time communication/engagement platforms between businesses and their customers using smartphones. 

If the idea of combining a smartphone app with a SaaS enterprise CRM-ish analytics tool sounds like an interesting and novel challenge, let’s find a few minutes to chat. 

Additionally, please take a moment to review our exceptional ‘who’s who’ of Silicon Valley investors at <Company URL>

Detailed description at <JobScore URL> . Referrals would be greatly appreciated. 

Regards, Grant

The description is chaotic and “a SaaS enterprise CRM-ish analytics tool” sounds like something I should be running from or fighting to kill. I couldn’t believe this guy made a point to ask for referrals in a blind recruiting message. Because I felt so strongly about how terrible this message was, I marked it as “Not Appropriate” in hopes of not receiving more like it.

Then, I got this gem of an email today through About.me:

Hi max,

You have a new message from Grant:

Hi Max, You recently declined my LinkedIn InMail message as “Not Appropriate”. This affects my ability to send out InMails. If you do not wish to receive InMails related to career opportunities such as the UX design position I sent, you should revise your LinkedIn profile so that it doesn’t list you as being open to career opportunities.

You can reply to this person at their email address: grant@tolfrey.com

Classy, right? So I went back to LinkedIn and marked his message as spam for good measure.

This is how recruiters get such a bad reputation in the tech industry. They are predatory, relentless, and even annoying. I’m glad LinkedIn allows me to curb some of that behavior, and I hope more people mark, flag, and decline similar spam.