Coal miner required … please provide own telescope

That may sound like a completely pointless job advertisement, but is pretty typical of some of the unfocused rubbish that gets sent to most consultants. Most of the people sending these are supposed to be specialist recruiters who already have a copy of your CV.

Today I got a typical cracker from one of these lazy gimps:

Permanent role, salary a fraction of my self employed rate, other side of country, not in my specialty.

The point is not necessarily about them shooting themselves in the foot, but about aiming at them in the first place. How hard can it be to get a rough idea of what people you have on your database and then writing a more targeted email at those that match.