idealpeople blog

Dearest readers, we need your advice.

We recently received some particularly cutting feedback from one individual that one of our staff had sent an e-mail to in relation to a Computer Vision position we’re trying to fill on behalf of a client.

The feedback took the form of two e-mails. The initial one was a response to the original e-mail we had sent, and accused us of being “unprofessional” - primarily because of the two or three minor “grammatical errors” it contained. When we responded to explain this, and to try and understand exactly why we were being “unprofessional”, we were told that we were “nothing more than SPAMMERS clogging up my inbox” and told to “just sod off”.

Now, we’ve met our fair share of linguistic purists (or to use a much better term, “Language Mavens”, coined by Steven Pinker in The Language Instinct, a book we recommend heavily for anyone who allows their lives to be taken over by some sort of anger about supposed “exact usage” of “English”). These people are normally under the impression that Eat, Shoots & Leaves is some sorts of Bible by which everyone’s lives must be lived - despite the fact that the academic linguistics movement sees them as totally unhelpful in terms of widening people’s understanding of what actually makes human language so breathtaking. So, we’re quite used to it - and perhaps we shouldn’t mention any more about it [*takes deep breath*]. All we’ll say is that the second mail we recieved particularly angered us. Whilst the mail was written by someone whose first language is English, it was actually sent by someone whose first language isn’t (you can clearly tell that from his or her name) - and the response suggested that some of the grammar was so poor (it really wasn’t) that maybe it was stolen directly from a “crazy Japanese t-shirt” (the sender was referring particularly to the phrase “superpower hardware acceleration” - maybe they didn’t know what that meant, so they probably weren’t suitable for the job anyway). Whether intended or not, this was taken to be racist.

Anyway, rant over - the wider issue at stake here is Spam. It’s only very occassionally that the word spam pops up (in this context) at Idealpeople HQ - but the last thing we want is to be labelled as Spammers. So we thought we’d ask the world for some advice.

For a little context, the person we were contacting had taken a step we thoroughly approve of - putting their CV online (as per our ealier article here). As they appeared to be a Computer Vision expert, we found it during a search using Google, and promptly got in touch (there was no phone number, just an e-mail address).

Now, Spam is commonly classified as being unsolicited e-mail sent in bulk form - i.e. the same mail sent to many recipients, and it can also be argued that most spam is completely untargetted - i.e. there is no connection between the auidence of the spam and the content contained within the mail. We never send “bulk” e-mail. It makes no sense for us to do it. All of our e-mail communication is personalized, and - because we’re better than most at understanding and deciphering people’s career histories and skillsets - highly targetted. Most mails of this nature go to potential candidates who we think could be suitable for a particular position, and most is received in the way in which is was meant to be.

It’s possible in this case that the receiver assumed that he or she was part of some sort of database “mailing list”, which is not the case. To be fair, it wasn’t the first time we’d sent a mail to that particular address, although we normally operate on the basis of “most people would want to hear about new career opportunities”, so we don’t feel guilty about sending someone three of four e-mails over a two-year period.

However, we appreciate that not everyone feels the same as us. So help us out - are we spamming? Should we change the way we get in touch with people, and how?