The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

I know it’s small – and blurry – so out of the kindness of my heart, let me replicate what it says:

Hi Rob, I hope this message finds you well.

Warm Regards.
Thomas Ryan
Recruitment Consultant

I’ve got to be honest, it really pissed me off.

Not just because it was speculative.
Not just because it was unsolicited.
Not just because it was ambiguous.
But because it was also presumptuous – exemplified by the ‘book a call’ link at the bottom.

I am fed up of how lazy some recruiters are – especially as some poor company is paying them for their ‘expertise’ in finding talent – so this time, instead of ignoring them, I decided to reply to them.

So I sent this:

Hello Thomas, thank you for reaching out.

Thank you so much.

I know, polite eh?

And why – given I was so pissed off?

Well, because I wanted Thomas to respond so I could prove he hadn’t actually read my profile and was just ‘talent farming’ … by that I mean sending out copious amounts of emails to all and sundry to see who bit so they could tell their client about their extensive search and charge their fee.

And did I get a reply?

Not exactly. A few hours later I got an email saying my response had not been sent as the email it was sent to didn’t work.

I should have known given so many of these type of emails are sent out with the sole goal of ensuring they don’t have to deal with any direct contact … however I was still pissed at the lazy and impersonal approach, so I went back to the original email to see if there was any way to contact them.

Having looked again, I realized there wasn’t any except that link to ‘book a call’.

At this point I’d decided to write a blog post about Thomas and how horrid and presumptive his approach was – so in a bid to try and find out more info on how to reach him for the content of the post, I clicked on the link and …

Well, at this point I should be showing you an image of what I found, but I forgot to take a photo, so instead … maybe this will give you a good idea of what I discovered:

Yep, I was caught in a phishing scam. Except they weren’t trying to steal my data, they were ‘teaching me’ that I needed to be more careful before I click on links sent on email because this ‘scam’ was from our own IT department.

Now I appreciate I work for an Omnicom company. And I appreciate security is rightfully very important to them and they understandably want all their people to take security seriously too. And I acknowledge I’d just demonstrated that I need to be extra vigilant because these things can – and do – happen all the time, even though it was the first time I’d fallen for something like this in my 5 years with the company. Which I will. And finally, I also acknowledge that on closer inspection, the email was riddled with little tell-tell spelling mistakes that I should have noticed … though the reality is not only did I miss them, I only saw them when I replicated the email above for legibility and corrected them for ease of reading this post.

However – and maybe it’s just me – the way they approached this ‘lesson’ feels a bit yucky.

Not because I was caught out – it was definitely an effective way to remind people to keep on their toes where company internet security is concerned – but because their approach could be read by some as a way to scare people into fearing – or staying clear – of any genuine recruitment enquiry they receive from any outside party.

Now you might think who cares, it was effective. And that’s fair.

Or you may think that couldn’t happen … but imagine you’re new to the business and have never experienced dealing with a recruiter before? Add to that the endless rounds of redundancies they’re hearing about – and most probably fearing – and let me tell you, I can absolutely see this sort of thing potentially putting someone off who is young in the industry from responding or replying for a long time.

As I said, I get why they do this sort of thing and I hold my hands up in acknowledging I was caught out by it – albeit for reasons they probably hadn’t anticipated which is namely some bloke with a blog suddenly wanted name and shame the sender for their lazy and sloppy professionalism. And it’s because of that I would like to take this opportunity to genuinely congratulate the Omnicom IT department for their devious and – all credit to them – creative way to teach an important and valuable lesson.

[As an aside, I wonder if they send similar sorts of things to different CEO’s of different Omnicom companies? Except instead of Thomas being a fictional recruiter with ambiguous job openings, he’s now a potential client with a billion dollar advertising budget he wants to talk to them about, via a ‘book a call’ link]

But for any younger person who has never been in the position of being approached by a headhunter and was caught out by this exercise – and looking at Reddit and Fishbowl, there were – let me ease your paranoia by saying should you ever end up wanting or needing to explore new opportunities and don’t know where to start, who to turn to or what to do, seek out Lea Walker or Lesley Cheng, who are both based in Australia but work internationally.

Not just because they’re brilliant humans who happen to be incredible, smart and deeply knowledgeable experts in talent, careers and roles … but because they will never send you an email that could be an Omnicom IT phishing test in disguise.

I will now never be responding to any email, let alone make the stupid mistake of clicking a link … even if its in the quest to write a scathing blog post.