This would apply mainly to the people who aren't actively looking for a job, I think.

I had a headhunter email me today. Even though I didn't recognize her name, she had my personal email address and it sounded like I had worked with her (or her agency) in the distant past.

On a whim, I answered her. This is basically how it went:

Her:

Looking for someone for a position that isn't what I work in any more, salary is about half of what I make now. Everything in the job description is stuff I know like the back of my hand. At the end, specifies that this company is not doing WFH, we're expected to work 5 days a week in the office. If I'm interested or want to chat further, I should send her my resume.

Me:

Thanked her for her interest. Let her know that I would not be interested in the position because my base salary is about double the salary. Gave her the total compensation parameters that I'd be interested in to consider looking at another job. Let her know the minimum salary requirement I have for even considering changing companies (about 2.5x the original salary she sent me), as well as my PTO expectations, and the fact that I will not work somewhere that does full in-office work. Only companies offering a minimum of 2 WFH days a week are considered. I end by saying something like "Please update my info in your system and let me know if you'd like to chat further about my needs".

I saved the email to send to future headhunters.

Basically, I'd like to do a couple of things here:

1) Make it clear to the headhunters who are only looking to place people at companies offering shit jobs that I will not be working with them (the salary listed for the job was somewhere between low and ridiculously low).

2) Make it clear that more and more people are not interested in going into the office every day, so if companies want to hire good people, they need to start thinking about that.

3) Flip the script a bit. She's coming to me, and her attitude was a bit of "I'm doing you a favor", which I feel like most headhunters do. No, hon. You're not. Generally, you're just another email to delete. If I decide that you have anything actually worth offering me, then we'll talk.

Now I am not actively looking for a job right now, but if one came along that did meet the parameters that I spelled out to her, I may consider a job change. But I have a pretty great job right now, for all that I hate it a lot of days¹, so it's going to take something REALLY alluring in order to get me to make a move. So I figure I may as well shoot high in what I say I'm willing to move for, put it out there as the mood strikes me, and see what comes back.

What do you do?

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¹I mainly hate my job because I am just really tired of working. This job has by far the most reasonable hours of any job I've ever worked, and unlike any other job I've had, there are weeks where most days of the week, I have about 2-3 hours of work to do a day (which helps balance out those 60 hour workweeks). I just really want to be retired. I am looking for a therapist to work through my extremely negative feelings on my job now, because I realistically will need to do this another 10 years and I feel so incredibly bitter about that right now. My original FIRE plan was to be retired by my mid 40s and when I got this job 10 years ago, it was so wonderful that I thought "fuck it, I can relax my savings, I really love it here, and I won't mind working here another 20 years". Big mistake on my part.