I've started looking for a new job recently. I clicked the button on LinkedIn saying recruiters could contact me and have gotten over 100 incoming messages since Christmas. I'm not sure which buzzwords I have that are causing it. Many are junk, but not all. They all want a 'quick chat' to proceed. There are probably 20 I would talk to but getting started scheduling phone calls is going to be a huge pain given I have a software job that I do all day. Just responding to the 100 messages as "no thanks" or "let's schedule something" is going to take a day. I outsourced updating my resume and website, and am trying to get Hubspot working to set up a sales funnel (but that works horribly with linkedin email redirects, so not sure that's going to stick). I'm trying to get organized and would even pay for someone to actually represent me and help with logistics, but the 3rd party recruiting industry is built around pleasing companies for money, never the candidate.

So I'm not sure recruiters and hiring managers need more coddling and new tools to target candidates. They already have the candidates out-gunned by a few orders of magnitude. And they have resources (and their own time) to deal with their pipeline. I don't. Maybe they could spend a little time and effort differentiating themselves? Cuz these job ads all look the same, and they all think they're doing me a favor for allowing me to be considered for an interview. If they are getting a lot of resumes that look the same, maybe that's a signal about themselves and not about the overall population of developers looking for jobs?

And as for getting my past employers to provide recommendations... They are all hiring. It seems crass to ask them to write me a recommendation while making it clear I don't want my old job back. The time to ask for the recommendation would have been when I was working there.