A recruiter at a staffing agency spent weeks setting up their new LinkedIn automation tool to blast InMails at scale. Custom search criteria, personalized message templates, automated follow-ups - the works.

What they didn't account for? The tool scraping their own LinkedIn profile as a match for "5+ years recruiting experience, looking for new opportunities."

At 6:47 AM on a Tuesday, they received an InMail from their own company's LinkedIn account pitching them on a "exciting recruiting opportunity with competitive compensation and great culture."

The Response

Being a recruiter who checks LinkedIn before coffee, they saw the message and thought "Oh wow, this actually sounds pretty good. Better compensation than what I'm making now."

They responded to the message asking for more details about the role and compensation range.

The automation tool, doing exactly what it was programmed to do, sent them the pre-written second message: "Thanks for your interest! This role offers $X-Y base plus commission. Would you be available for a quick call this week?"

The recruiter, still not realizing they're messaging themselves, replied "Yes, I'm available Thursday afternoon."

When Reality Set In

The recruiter's manager, who had approval alerts set up for the automation tool, saw the message thread on Thursday morning.

Manager: "Why are you scheduling interviews with yourself?"

Recruiter: "What? I'm not... oh no. Oh NO."

Turns out the automation tool's filters were set to exclude current employees of the company, but it was checking the "company" field on LinkedIn profiles. The recruiter had recently updated their profile to list "Open to Opportunities" and hadn't updated their current employer field in months.

Perfect storm of automation meeting poor profile hygiene.

The Aftermath

The recruiter immediately adjusted the filters to exclude anyone whose LinkedIn profile matched employee email addresses. Smart.

Then they checked the message log and discovered they'd InMailed three other colleagues and two former employees over the past week. Less smart was waiting until they interviewed themselves to notice this.

One of the former employees had actually responded interested in coming back. So at least there's a silver lining?

The Real Question

The best part of this whole situation? The recruiter admitted the automated pitch was compelling enough that they genuinely considered applying before realizing it was their own job.

"If my own recruiting messages are good enough to recruit me, maybe I'm better at this than I thought?"

Or maybe, just maybe, we've automated ourselves into a loop where recruiters are recruiting recruiters who are recruiting recruiters, and nobody's actually hiring for the roles they claim to have.

The automation tool is still running. The filters have been updated. And somewhere out there, another recruiter is about to get a very confusing InMail from their own company.