oddevan and amirmc both point out parts of why I'd afford a reply, but it's also a signal to me that the person is at least asserting they believe something about the opportunity, having researched me ahead of time, is worth my time, even if I don't immediately see it from the initial email. It also helps me to form a what will hopefully be a useful reply, having at least partially understood where they're coming from.
Most of the time, I get emails from recruiters for things that are nowhere close to my areas of expertise or what I've publicly talked about, and they could've saved both of us the time if they did just spend 5 minutes looking me up. It boggles my mind sometimes how they thought I'd be interested or even qualified. I used to reply back to those recruiters as well asking how they came across me, and usually received nothing back.
So it may just be a gimmicky tactic, but it's one that works, at least with people like me. I should be so lucky to have every recruiting email demonstrating some knowledge about me or what I've done.
> it's also a signal to me that the person is at least asserting they believe something about the opportunity, having researched me ahead of time, is worth my time, even if I don't immediately see it from the initial email.
But if they are under instructions to do so, then it's not a reliable signal of anything except that they are following instructions and those instructions are slightly more modern than. But now that I'm thinking about it more, I suppose that is a reasonable positive signal, simply because that means their recruiters must be spending a lot more time (maybe 5 minutes vs. 1 minute) per candidate. At the bare minimum, that tells you that they were willing and able to dedicate more resources to finding candidates.
Most of the time, I get emails from recruiters for things that are nowhere close to my areas of expertise or what I've publicly talked about, and they could've saved both of us the time if they did just spend 5 minutes looking me up. It boggles my mind sometimes how they thought I'd be interested or even qualified. I used to reply back to those recruiters as well asking how they came across me, and usually received nothing back.
So it may just be a gimmicky tactic, but it's one that works, at least with people like me. I should be so lucky to have every recruiting email demonstrating some knowledge about me or what I've done.