Ever gotten one of these messages?

“Hi YOUR NAME HERE, Your strong background and experience caught my eye and I wanted to connect. I’m partnering with a hiring team at COOLEST COMPANY EVER looking for a Threat Services Vulnerability Analyst… blah, blah, blah… Thank you for your time! GENERIC NAME Recruiter at BEST RECRUITING COMPANY EVER“

If you use any sort of social media or website for professional resume building, chances are the answer is “yes.” What you may or may not have been aware of before though is how some of these messages are either mass generated by recruiting companies or worse, are entirely fabricated positions by bot accounts for the purpose of intelligence gathering. You mean I’m not the perfect fit for that CEO position of a Fortune 100 company?? Shock!!

OK, so sometimes it’s pretty easy to spot the mass generated or phony positions. If you are reading this article, chances are you are in the category of people that I haven’t really told you anything new yet, and you are probably already familiar with a number of indicators of these types of messages. So allow me to give you one more tip to put in your proverbial tool belt. Try adding emoji characters to your social media profile names (i.e. 🦎Kodama the Chameleon).

DISCLAIMER: This tip is not original with me, and if I could remember where I originally heard it, I would properly cite them to say thank you.

When I first heard the tip, I was a bit skeptical. Not in so much as whether it would work, but more on how useful it would actually be. Since trying it for several months though, I can happily say it has earned it’s placement. When nefarious bots comes along promising 🦎Kodama about an amazing position, I instantly know that some sort of automated tool was deployed to generate the message. After all, most sensible people/chameleons would say, “Hi Kodama” and drop the emoji. This applies to connection requests as well. For example, when Mrs. Goodlooking asks to connect,

“Hi 🦎Kodama,
I’m a chameleon too.
What’s your favorite shade?
Mine is blue.”

You can politely tell “her”,

“Wrong hemisphere. No iguanas allowed.”

That is, if you care to say anything at all.