- Spends ages talking about what a great opportunity it is, then switches to "So what are your resourcing needs?"

- Not telling me the name of the employer. I kinda need to know that if I'm to write an effective CV. Or if I want to move to where they're based.

- Emailing my work address. Last think I want is my Outlook to pop-up a notification saying "Thanks for the job application" while I'm presenting to my boss.

- Lying. So many do this - they lie about salary, experience needed, benefits, location, timescales.

There are some good recruiters out there - but a lot of charlatans as well.

Where do I start.

1. "My client is a leading company in x..."(does the client have a name?)

2. "My client is looking for university graduates from a top 20 university..."(so because I didn't go to Harvard/MIT/Oxford/Cambridge et.al you wont consider my application)

3. "Fast paced environment which is constantly changing..."(this company sounds like a confused sweatshop which decides to chose another technology because they hit technical debt.)

4. Experience in C/Haskell/Python/Java/C#/F#/Clojure/Lisp/Erlang/Rust/GO/Ruby/Assembly/Forth/Brainfuck...(Signs of a dodgy recruiter)

5. "Github account a must and you should have a contributing history to opensource"...(I use open source, I'm a huge fan of it, but because I didn't contribute to it means I can't get a job? Clearly this recruiter is following media trends. And what if I don't want a Github account, with what happened a couple of days ago[0] I would be pretty concerned about having one(though awesome work for getting the message out Github, other companies would just keep quiet and hope nobody notices))

6. Graduate with 2 years of commercial experience(I just finished university when I "learn" hoping to get that experience which you are asking for.)

I could probably write a blog post. I probably will when I get the energy. HR is a dodgy industry which doesn't know a lot about each of the sector it works with.

[0] http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/12/critical-git-bug-all...

Asking for X years experience in a technology that is Y years old:

X > Y

Seeing cookie-cutter job descriptions (companies always talk about keeping CVs short, so why do they let recruiters write out template-style blocks of text try to magically explain what a great company it is without just saying the name - in fact, if you are bothered enough, you can work backwards and figure out the company)

When a recruiter told me about an awesome opportunity in Michigan (I live in Chicago), I pointed out that my then-girlfriend probably wouldn't want to move there. His response? "Sometimes when an opportunity presents itself you have to evaluate whether a relationship is helping or hurting you."

Pretty much this:

https://scott.arciszewski.me/blog/2014/08/technology-recruit...

Cold call or email me. I'll call you, don't call me.

Linked in to me for no specific reason other than to build network.

Tell me about an amazing opportunity that they then forget about when I reach back out to them.

Sending their first email as a connection request on LinkedIn

Cold-calling my office receptionist (who has caller ID and also works as an EA for my boss) and asking for my extension.

Every opportunity they present is awesome⸮