I also tend to stay a lot at a given job (e.g. slightly more than 10y at the last one) but still found the current job through LinkedIn. I do 2 things:
1. connect to all recruiters, politely decline with a standard message if obviously not interested
2. when I get a potentially-interesting offer, I reply with "that's all fine and well, but I make <absurdly_high_total_comp> now; do you want to continue the discussion?". (note: I'm not lying).
I used to ignore recruiters at point 1, until I realized it costs me almost nothing to politely decline and earns goodwill; today's junior recruiter that works for a crappy company might be in 10 years the HR director at a company you want to work for. Why not be in touch?
Over the years, this adds up, a handful of opportunities actually said "yes" at point 2, and for one of them I actually went to interviews & got the job (and the very-good-offer).
Fair enough. If the position is actually relevant (i.e. not obviously scattershot spam--which I do generally just ignore), I'll at least politely decline. And I have had a couple followup phone calls but there wasn't really mutual interest for various reasons.
But, TBH, I'm far enough along in my career in this point and have a sufficiently specialized role (my current job had the description written for me after I started talking to the company) that random recruiting is unlikely to be a fit.
1. connect to all recruiters, politely decline with a standard message if obviously not interested
2. when I get a potentially-interesting offer, I reply with "that's all fine and well, but I make <absurdly_high_total_comp> now; do you want to continue the discussion?". (note: I'm not lying).
I used to ignore recruiters at point 1, until I realized it costs me almost nothing to politely decline and earns goodwill; today's junior recruiter that works for a crappy company might be in 10 years the HR director at a company you want to work for. Why not be in touch?
Over the years, this adds up, a handful of opportunities actually said "yes" at point 2, and for one of them I actually went to interviews & got the job (and the very-good-offer).