From January to February 2014, I was staying in New York, seeking for an iOS developer position. It was the first time I was looking for a job in a foreign country, and a lot of things were new to me. I didn't really know where to start, and while I was sending my applications to some companies, I decided to put my resume on Monster, to stack the odds in my favor.

Right after I published my information, I started to be contacted by recruiters from all over the country. Most of the phone calls and emails that I received were not a fit for my profile. Recruiters obviously don't care that you are not willing to relocate. They obviously don't care that you are not skilled for the job they are offering. All they care about is to put a maximum of job seekers in relation with a maximum of companies, hoping for a miraculous fit. They are basically brute forcing the recruitment process for more profits.

After I discovered that these numerous phone calls and emails will not lead me to any serious job opportunity, I decided to remove my resume from Monster. One or two weeks later, I was receiving way less emails, but I realized that all the emails that I had received had been signed by the same domain: jobdivabk.com.

Even though every email was signed by Jobdiva, the emails were always sent by different recruiting companies — client's of Jobdiva's Powerful Staffing Tools. For each email, I was only able to unsubscribe from the company email list. Thanks to this vicious system, instead of being spammed by multiple emails from a single sender, I was being spammed by single emails from multiple companies, without any efficient way to opt out.

I was annoyed by these emails. Furthermore, every time I unsubscribed from a company list, I received another email to confirm that I had been removed from their list. After a few weeks, I decided to answer to these emails and ask my senders where they found my professional information. Most of them have never replied and the others were unclear about their source of information. The answer that I received the most was that I had probably published my resume on Monster.

Neither my email address nor my resume was online anymore, and I was still receiving some wacky job offers with the word "portfolios" because my resume contained the keyword "ios". I started to suspect Jobdiva to hold my personal data for its customers, so I decided to ask them directly.

Hi,

I removed my email address and my resume from internet after I found a
job. Since then, I do not receive any email from any recruiter expect
the one who are using your service.

Jobdiva is signing every single unsolicited email that I receive and
the only way for me to unsubscribe is to go to this page for every
single company who contact me.

(screenshot of the unsubscribe screen)

I have never asked you or any of these companies to send me any emails.
It is not because my email address is available once on a recruiting
website that you can store it and make money out of it forever,
especially if there is no efficient way to opt out.

I want to be immediately removed from your entire system.

Regards,

Guillaume Fort

Here is the answer that I have received.

Hi Guillaume,

To be removed from a mail list, you need to contact the sender. We are
not a job board or a holder of email lists. JobDiva is a software
service that is utilized by staffing companies. JobDiva's role in the
sent email is similar to Yahoo's mail or Hotmail - we have no influence
over the content of what is being sent through the web site. So, please
respond to the sender with your request to be removed.

The sender may have acquired your resume because you advertised it on a
job board, or you may have applied to one of their jobs.

As you noted, an "opt-out" link allowing you to request no further
contact should consistently be contained in the emails that you
receive.

(screenshot of the unsubscribe link)

If your request to be taken off the mail list is not granted, please
let us know who the sender is and we will request their compliance.

Regards,

XXX

I knew they were lying. If there is Yahoo mail, Hotmail and JobDiva, isn't that curious that the recruiting companies who are spamming me are all sending their emails using JobDiva?

I did some researches on JobDiva's website to try to prove my intuition, and after a little effort, I found what I needed to write them my answer.

Hi XXX,

"We are not a job board or a holder of email lists. JobDiva is a
software service that is utilized by staffing companies. JobDiva's role
in the sent email is similar to Yahoo's mail or Hotmail - we have no
influence over the content of what is being sent through the web site."

This is not true. Your online presentation clearly mention that:
"JobDiva’s harvesters run silently in the background to create a rich
database of candidates for your company to draw upon".

Source : www.jobdiva.info

Jobdiva collected my email address (and probably my entire resume) and
serve it to its clients for its own profits.

I'm not leaving in New York anymore. I'm not leaving in the US anymore.
I do not care about the job offers that I get everyday from your
different client companies.

I do not accept your solution to unsubscribe from each company
separately. Jobdiva retains my personal data and act like a spammer,
without giving me any chance to opt out efficiently from your
unsolicited service.

Again, I'm asking you to remove my personal information from "JobDiva's
harvesters" system.

Regards,

Guillaume Fort

After I sent this answer, I stopped receiving unsolicited emails from the recruiting companies using JobDiva.

If you are in the same situation that I was — and I know that some people are — feel free to use my email as a template.

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