We continue to gather the stories about recruiters that send tons of emails.

That’s the next one. By Kevin. He created a bot that talks to recruiters (pure genious).

My name is Kevin, and I’d like to tell you a story about an easy way to stop recruiter spam.

I am a Front End Developer, I have a good job, and I lead a team of 7 developers. But I receive so many letters from recruiters that sometimes I just don’t want to check my inbox. I know that they are there saying, “Hope you’re well!” and asking, “Would you like to have a chat?” No. I would not. I want to be alone with my tasks and my real job.

Sometimes recruiters even try to attack me on Facebook. Look at the Message Requests:

That’s how I decided that I would rather have a bot than read all these annoying letters again. I’ve decided to use the Messenger platform for my bot creation, because all recruiters use Facebook, and it will be easy for them to chat with my little digital brother.

There are tons of useful tools for bots, and, of course, you can do it yourself using no constructors. I’ve decided to stay on Chatfuel. It was easy to use it, especially when you understand the logic. I spent a few hours creating my bot, and here it is, shining bright!

What was important to me?

As I get a lot of proposals every day, I know exactly what is important and what is not. I am a rockstar (hello, recruiter!) at finding the information I need from these huge and stupid letters:

Location: I currently live in Chicago, and I would prefer to stay here as long as possible. Therefore, I am not interested in relocation (only if it’s like… Bali). That’s why I added the question for recruiters about job location. This way, no matter where the jobs were coming from, I could just filter proposals later. Skills: Seriously, recruiters, stop asking me about Java. I AM NOT A JAVA DEVELOPER. I wanted to add a small test or comment on the difference between Java and Javascript. I think that would be good for me… and for the recruiters also. See, I’m not evil. Something else about me — I am really interested in cool projects that can help me improve my React skills, which was another reason I added this question. Experience: I have 4 years of experience, so it’s weird when I receive letters with 5 YEARS written in black and white. Stop using this as a criteria, or know exactly how many years of experience you need. Salary: One more important thing. I added a filter at first, but it seemed impolite, so I got rid of it.

That was all it took to set up my bot — easy to use and hopefully setting me free from a garbage storm in my inbox.

But how to make recruiters use it? I took the link and put it wherever I could — on my LinkedIn page, on GitHub, on Facebook, on Slack, on Instagram. I also made a Gmail template which answered recruiters something like this:

“Hi, dear recruiter! Thank you for your interest. If you want to tell me about some career opportunities, please use this bot: It’s nice for both of us: I receive useful and structured information about your job proposal and you don’t have to spend hours writing letters and trying to find personal details that will make me open your letter. Thanks, Kevin”

Afterwards, I started to receive the first job proposals via bot.

This is how it looks on Chatfuel: