Why developers don't take recruiters seriously

Everyone is looking for them, no one finds them, yet they exist, they're there — but they don't reply, or rather they don't reply anymore. Why this scourge?

You can use dozens of platforms, spend half your day on LinkedIn, and nothing works. What do you do when no reply is the rule, the no-show its corollary, and loneliness the daily life of a recruiter looking for talent?

Don't hold it against developers — they are the critical resource of a market that has never needed them more to grow. Welcome to a huge machine where investors rush to put their money into the digital projects with the highest valuation potential. This massive arrival of capital increases demand by the same amount and makes the market totally undersupplied.

Why don't developers respond to your outreach?

For the same reason you no longer answer the emails of the B2B salespeople you receive several times a day. They get too many solicitations and the quality of outreach has become too low, because it's been hit by a massive wave of automation and is often written by junior recruitment associates that no one has taken the time to train in this discipline — which is nonetheless becoming an international sport.

These recruiters haven't yet understood the multiplicity of skills. They don't yet know that there are as many — if not more — differences between two developers as there are between a baker and a mechanic. Imagine a bricklayer being offered a job as a gardener — what would they answer? They both use a shovel, you'll tell me. That's exactly the same reason why two developers, who use the same languages, don't necessarily do the same job.

No need to add smileys and colors — your outreach is drowned in the mass, you are quite simply spam in their inbox.

So what can you do to maximize your chances of getting a reply?

You have to stand out by improving the quality of your outreach! Stop talking about yourself and your project!