gild building the better recruiting email
TRANSCRIPT
Building the Better Recruiting Email: Increase Response Rates, Build Relationships, and Restore Trust with Candidates
Contents
Part One: Introduction
Here’s the Situation ...........................................................1
So How Do We Fix It? ........................................................1
Current Frustrations ...........................................................2
Part Two: The Problem
Through a Candidate’s Eyes ..............................................3
Some (Bad) Examples ........................................................4
Part Three: The Solution
The Solution: Crafting the Better Recruiting Email (Easy as 1–2–3) ...................................................................7
Tips for Candidate Research ..............................................8
Crafting Initial Candidate Communications: The How-To .......................................................................9
Subject Line and Email Body examples............................10
Call to Action examples ...................................................13
Subject Line and Email Body examples............................14
Where We’ve Been, Where We’ve Arrived, What to Expect ................................................................15
About Gild .......................................................................15
Part One: Introduction
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“Since we started working with Gild, we’ve seen a seismic shift in the quality of candidates we’re engaging. And by ‘seismic shift,’ I mean a five-fold increase in quality.”
—L.J. Brock, VP Talent Acquisition, RedHat
Here’s the SituationFinding the ideal candidate these days generally comes with the timeline of “yesterday.” With companies growing faster than we can recruit, we’re faced with a seemingly impossible scenario:
Find the candidate in the haystack with the best qualification. Now.
Certainly—we’ll get right on that! So we do.
In this era of mass communications, we’ve turned to form letters and blind-copied emails to lists of five, ten, twenty or more candidates—and all in the name of satisfying the now part of that request. As a result, however, communications with candidates have become more impersonal than ever. We, alongside our employers, are the ones who suffer, though. Candidates tune us out, ignore our communications, and the best candidates are still left undiscovered and underserviced. All because we have to do more in less time.
So How Do We Fix It?It’s time for a return to better communications skills—that’s why we’ve put together this guide to writing a better recruiting email. We were audacious enough to ask ourselves along with other recruiting industry professionals:
What kind of future would we like to see for our industry?
The answers prompted more questions, yet all with a similar goal—a better recruiter-candidate communication stream.
We could create a world where we were both efficient and personal.
On-topic and enticing.
One where candidates began to welcome our communications once again.
One where we built relationships with recruits so we always had a deep pool of talent to tap into the next time a now position came knocking.
It’s possible. We’ll review industry demands that led us to our current predicament (including some not-so-awesome examples of the breakdown in communication) and then head directly into a step-by-step guide to crafting better candidate communcations.
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Current FrustrationsIt’s incredible to think that recruiting has become a less efficient industry, what with every piece of technology we enjoy. The resources we have to locate candidates have increased multi-fold in the past twenty years, yet where do we find ourselves? With less time to fill more positions with a seemingly bottomless pool of talent, we face two critical and potentially crippling challenges:
Quantity—Most current recruiting technology relies on simple keyword searches, returning largely unqualified lists of candidates without qualification, which leads us to…
Quality—In these massive lists of candidates matching our search criteria (like “Ruby on Rails Developer”), we have just a list. We have no way of knowing which talent from that list is “better.” No stack ranking, no qualification criteria. We simply don’t know who’s worth putting on the short list so we can start the recruiting process from a better place.
The result of the quantity + quality conundrum is that our industry has resorted to buckshot-style approaches. We use mass communications like cut-and-paste impersonal emails and InMails to see if we can get a bite. Instead of fly fishing with specific bait in favorable waters, we’re dragging a net behind the company boat, hoping to catch something. The downside has been that the need to do more with less knowledge and in less time has been at both our and our candidates’ detriment.
Part Two: The Problem
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Through a Candidate’s EyesCandidates need recruiters and we need our candidates, but they’re growing weary of being treated as a commodity instead of the rare and important assets they truly are. They’re on the receiving end of a nonstop barrage of these impersonal InMails and hurried emails landing in their inboxes, yet we’ve given them nothing to grab onto. No meat, just fluff. We’ve told them that they’re not worth a personalized communication, and in return, they’ve told us that we’re not worth a response. In short: we haven’t shown them we’ve earned their attention.
First, recruiting is a highly personal endeavor. We’re in search for the ideal company/candidate fit, from skills and experience all the way down to personalities and work styles. Yet here we are, making the process as impersonal as can be with mass communications. We don’t speak to a candidate’s interests or any personal details—we’re just hoping for a bite. Impersonal communications are ineffective and ripe for either the spam folder or delete button (oftentimes, both). Which leads us to our second problem: low or totally inadequate responses rate.
When someone yells, “Hey, you!” across a crowded room, do you bother to turn around? Mass, impersonal communications fall into the “Hey, you!” category. For all of the effort spent sending out a blind-copied cut-and-paste communication, we’re rewarded appropriately: low response rates, and generally not from the best candidates.
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Some (Bad) ExamplesHave you ever reviewed the communications from those Nigerian princes and purveyors of pharmacological remedies that slip into your inbox every now and then? They’re certainly worth a chuckle! At their worst, they’re incoherent, poorly targeted, and aren’t even enticing enough to prompt a reply. The one thing that great spammers have on their side, however, is the ability to effectively communicate. That’s what gets the clicks, the phone calls, the responses—even to bogus offers.
So here you are, with a perfectly legitimate opportunity with an incredible company for just the right candidate and you’re sending off things like the examples on the next page.
What suffers most with the following caliber of communications (and we’re all guilty of sending at least one or two vague emails in our lifetimes) is our reputation and credibility. It’s no wonder candidates lose faith in our profession if their inboxes are victim to communications like these.
So how can we turn the corner with our candidate communications and increase personalization and thus, increase response rates, build relationships, and more effectively fill positions so our companies can grow? It’s time for the better recruiting email.
“I couldn’t have scripted it any better: we get this tool from [Gild], and then we get somebody in within a month. That’s pretty awesome.“
—Tim McQuillen, Founder and Chief Information Officer, StrongMail Systems, Inc.
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Some (Bad) Examples
Of course. But we’re sure that CAT scan imaging technicians could say the same thing.
This doesn’t make a candidate feel particularly special, as in “I’ll take anyone.”
Dear John,
I’m recruiting developers for Company X. We are looking for a Ruby programmer to work out of our office in San Francisco. It’s an exciting position working with a company utilizing cutting-edge technologies. Please let me know if you’re interested in the position, or if anyone you know would be. If you can send me your contact information I’ll find a time for us to connect.
From Who? What have you heard? A missed opportunity to let a candidate know you’re not shooting in the dark and you’re reaching out based on multiple referrals.
This doesn’t make a candidate feel particularly special, as in “I’ll take anyone.”
Hi John,
I’ve heard good things about you and wanted to reach out. We’re growing our dev team in Boston. If you have skills in Ruby or iPhone development I’d like to chat. Can you send your resume for me to review? I’ll get in touch if it looks like you’re a good fit. We were just voted X Website’s “Companies to Watch” and offer some great benefits including free lunch and a gym membership.
To
To
Subject
Subject
New opportunities & connection
Interested in a new career opportunity?
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To
Subject
Some (Bad) Examples
Like running a front loader? Entirely too vague to catch a candidate’s attention.
Tells the candidate flat-out that you haven’t done your homework. They have no idea how you found them or why you’re reaching out.
Hey Tom,
Wanted to reach out to see if you are interested in a new tech opportunity. Not sure about your current situation but below is the job description. Let me know if you’re interested.
Interested in a new career opportunity?
Part Three: The Solution
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1
The Solution: Crafting the Better Recruiting Email (Easy as 1–2–3)We’ll say it—we’re not all writers and technology can be the bane of our very existence. There are days where Gmail sends before we’re ready, Outlook eats something we’ve just expertly crafted, and we’re left frustrated. The good news is that writing a more effective candidate email is only a few steps away—and we’ll show you how to do so quickly, expertly, and in a way that’s easily replicable for future candidate communications without being impersonal.
Establishing GoalsThink about the times in your life where you received an email that made you do something. Maybe you were prompted to:
▪ Give to a charity▪ Click through to read a news article or blog post▪ Send an immediate reply
Those communications all had one thing in common: the sender knew exactly what they wanted you to do before they ever hit send. That’s precisely what you have to keep in mind when crafting your recruiting emails. The one question you must be able to answer is:
“What do I want this candidate to do and feel after reading my email?”
Some potentially desirable actions for a candidate to take would be:
▪ Respond with interest▪ Respond with availability▪ Request a call▪ Request additional information▪ Decline but desire to build a relationship▪ Offer a referral to a colleague
The most important shared action in all of the above bullets is respond. We make our livings by the graces of candidates that respond! And feel, you say? Yes, feel. Here are a few things you might want your candidates to feel when they reach the end of your message:
▪ Valued▪ Understood▪ Appreciated▪ Inspired▪ Curious
When you know what you want a candidate to do and feel, you’re already on your way to crafting a better recruiting email.
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2 Understanding Your CandidateWe know all too well that there are no two candidates alike, even when recruiting for similar positions. That’s why we must treat each of them as the individuals they are and not just one of many on a blind-copied digital fishing expedition.
When building your short list of candidates to contact, there are two simple ways to ferret-out additional information to make your communications as personal as possible. First, conduct your own research.
What kind of information is helpful for understanding your candidate? The answer is safely tucked away in best practices in social recruiting.
Goals + Research = Writing Better EmailsIt’s a myth that personalized communications are difficult and time consuming to create. Just remember that whatever time and energy you invest into defining your goals and uncovering additional candidate information will pay dividends down the line by helping you create:
▪ Highly targeted emails to better candidates▪ Communications with increased
response rates▪ The opportunity for ongoing candidate relationships for
future opportunities
What do we mean by combining your goals with the candidate? To begin with, even preliminary candidate information can help you better envision why your opportunity might be attractive to a particular talent. Maybe you’ve unearthed their affinity for particular best coding practices that would benefit your client’s development team. It could be that everyone on staff happens to be an avid fan of snow sports and your candidate just tweeted excitement about opening day at a local resort. They may have even gone to the same university as one of the company’s founders. When you have information like this, you can move right into the meat of crafting the better recruiting email.
You can take all of the emails on the previous page and customize them to suit your particular position, candidate, and personality. But now, you can see the tie-in between the subject line and the promise of what’s inside the email. It’s time to move on to inspiring your candidate to act on your email.
Tips for Candidate ResearchIt’s simpler than you think to embrace social recruiting practices to bolster your candidate communications. You might be surprised to see what a few search queries can turn up when you’ve found your shortlist of candidates. You might also find that the shortlist gets whittled down by one or two when you take a moment to explore past the surface of a candidate’s profile information—social sharing from their side might prove they’re not at all the fit you thought they might be. But the upside is that the social searching can both reinforce your selection and improve the quality of your initial outreach.
Here’s a list of candidate qualities you can research in advance of your initial outreach – and keep in mind this isn’t an exhaustive list. You can build your own list using this list as a starting point and add criteria that will help your company identify and hone in on better candidates.
▪ School or University attended/ shared alumni relationships with key company team members or even you.
▪ Hobbies
▪ Shared connections (easily viewed in LinkedIn and on Twitter)
▪ Likes/dislikes/frustrations passions (check Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn public updates)
▪ Sports team affinities (passionate fans are easily found in social media outlets!)
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Crafting Initial Candidate Communications: The How-ToWe’ve seen the lackluster examples. Now it’s time to make your communications stand out and shine. Each recruiting email has four parts: the Subject Line, the Email Body, the Call to Action, and the Signature.
Let’s move step-by-step through building out a better recruiting email so you can see how it all comes together before you hit send.
The Subject LinePerhaps the most important part of your candidate email—the subject line is what entices people to open, ignore, or hit the delete button. You never want to be dishonest with a bait-and-switch tactic. Rather, email subject lines are places for your creativity to shine through and let the candidate know that this is one email they should definitely read.
Great subject lines do three things:
▪ Inspire action▪ Hint towards the email contents▪ Let the candidate know it’s NOT a mass communication
All of the examples on the following page do two things: combine candidate-specific information with a specific intent. This lets your candidate know that the email is specific to them (or at least every other snowboarding Ruby developer in Colorado) and entices the candidate to click further.
The Email BodyNow that you’ve got the candidate’s attention, you have to keep it. And yes, we understand that you won’t necessarily want to craft a brand new email for every candidate you reach out to for a single position. We’ll show you how to create the “meat” of the email and add personalization to nurture candidates where they need nurturing.
Your email body should accomplish a few specific tasks:
▪ Show the candidate that you’ve done your homework▪ Explain exactly what you’re looking for▪ Provide enticing details to encourage a response
“I found myself truly engaged and interested in the projects, as opposed to numbing my brain scanning resumes for keywords. [Gild Source] really diversified the sourcing experience and helped me learn to contextualize the technologies I see every day as stuff people actually do.”
—Alexis Albaugh, Recruiter, Rumble
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To
Subject Recruiting snowboarding Ruby developers—can we talk?
John— I was researching Ruby developers on the Front Range and came across your profiles on both GitHub and then Twitter. After all of the noise in the office last week about A-Basin’s opening day, I had to reach out to see if I could open a conversation with you about an opening Company X has for a local Ruby developer. Your activity on GitHub is well received by your fellow coders and we think you’d fit on the slopes with the rest of the team here. Would you be open to a conversation?
Subject Line and Email Body examples
To
Attach a file
Attach a fileSubject Referred to you by John Smith for your JavaScript talents
Mark— I received your information from John Smith at Company Y. We had coffee last week and I let him know that we were in search of a JavaScript developer in the area who would thrive in Company X’s fast-paced startup culture. He couldn’t have recommended you more enthusiastically.
Would you be open to having a brief conversation so I can learn about your current commitments and perhaps how I could help you explore a career with our company? And no worries if you’re not looking to make a career shift at this moment – I’m looking to build relationships with talented candidates for both present and future opportunities.
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Subject Line and Email Body examples
To
Attach a fileSubject
Mark— I’m all about doing my research before ever contacting a candidate for a position I’m tasked with filling. I happened to notice your activity on GitHub in the C++ community and then stumbled across your hang gliding photos on your Twitter feed as I was determining the best way to reach out to you. I took my first hang gliding lesson about two years ago and was hooked from the get-go – it’s rare that I find others who don’t think I’m crazy for my high-flying adventures.
I have to say that I’d like it if we could open a conversation about a current opening we have for a C++ developer on the Company X team.
Seeking a hang gliding C++ guy (you’re on our short list)
To
Attach a fileSubject
John— I never want to waste a candidate’s time by sending along an impersonal email that says I haven’t done my homework. I came across your information and JavaScript skills via both your LinkedIn and GitHub profiles. I’m with Company X and we currently have a position available for a senior JavaScript developer. I’d like to explore if you’d be a fit for our team, as we like what we see so far.
Company X digs your JavaScript talents (we’re hoping you’ll dig us)
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The Call to ActionYou’ve gotten the candidate to open the email and you’ve made it clear you’re talking to him and his specific talents and passions. The next step is to motivate the candidate to respond so you can take the next step. The goal here is to let the candidate know exactly what action you’d like him to take.
The Call to Action tells your client what you want and what they need to do to take the next step. And the best Calls to Action let your candidate know that you’re flexible and would like to build a long-term relationship with them even if your current opening isn’t a fit.
And Finally—The Signature LineDon’t sign your emails “Mary.” Your initial candidate communication isn’t the place for being overly casual. Your signature line is a place to establish credibility and let the candidate do some checking up on you in return. Best practices indicate that you should include:
▪ Your full name▪ A link to an online profile such as LinkedIn or Vizify▪ Your direct phone number or cell phone▪ Your email address▪ A link to the company’s careers page if applicable
The key is to reinforce how candidates can contact you and do their own version of snooping around to ensure that you’re legit before they begin a relationship with you.
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To
Attach a fileSubject
Mark— I’m all about doing my research before ever contacting a candidate for a position I’m tasked with filling. I happened to notice your activity on GitHub in the C++ community and then stumbled across your hang gliding photos on your Twitter feed as I was determining the best way to reach out to you. I took my first hang gliding lesson about two years ago and was hooked from the get-go – it’s rare that I find others who don’t think I’m crazy for my high-flying adventures.
I have to say that I’d like it if we could open a conversation about a current opening we have for a C++ developer on the Company X team.
I’d like to set up a brief call to review your current employment with Company Y and your goals for your next position. Even if you’re not looking to make a switch right now, I’m more interested in long-term relationships with talented candidates than anything. Would you reply to this email or give me a call and let me know if:
1. You’re open to a conversation and when
2. If you’re not looking right now, if it’s OK for me to reach out to you from time to time when I have an opportunity that might be of interest.
Seeking a hang gliding C++ guy (you’re on our short list)
To
Attach a fileSubject
John— I never want to waste a candidate’s time by sending along an impersonal email that says I haven’t done my homework. I came across your information and JavaScript skills via both your LinkedIn and GitHub profiles. I’m with Company X and we currently have a position available for a senior JavaScript developer. I’d like to explore if you’d be a fit for our team, as we like what we see so far.
We’re having a small event to introduce select candidates to Company X on Tuesday, March 17, and I’d like to invite you to attend. Our CEO, John Smith, and lead developer, Tom Thumb, will both be at the event. It’s completely casual, but will give you the opportunity to get to know us in a relaxed way along with getting any questions you might have answered.
Company X digs your JavaScript talents (we’re hoping you’ll dig us)
Call to Action examples
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Subject Line and Email Body examples
To
Attach a fileSubject
Mark— I’m all about doing my research before ever contacting a candidate for a position I’m tasked with filling. I happened to notice your activity on GitHub in the C++ community and then stumbled across your hang gliding photos on your Twitter feed as I was determining the best way to reach out to you. I took my first hang gliding lesson about two years ago and was hooked from the get-go – it’s rare that I find others who don’t think I’m crazy for my high-flying adventures.
I have to say that I’d like it if we could open a conversation about a current opening we have for a C++ developer on the Company X team.
Could you reply to this email or give me a call at XXX-XXX-XXXX and let me know if we can expect to see you? Either way, it’d be great to know if we could explore this opportunity further or if timing isn’t right, I could reach out to you in the future with additional opportunities.
Seeking a hang gliding C++ guy (you’re on our short list)
To
Attach a fileSubject
John— I never want to waste a candidate’s time by sending along an impersonal email that says I haven’t done my homework. I came across your information and JavaScript skills via both your LinkedIn and GitHub profiles. I’m with Company X and we currently have a position available for a senior JavaScript developer. I’d like to explore if you’d be a fit for our team, as we like what we see so far.
Our CTO, Jim Thomas, would like to schedule a 10 to 15-minute conversation with you in the next couple weeks. Could we get you two on the phone together? You can reach me via a reply to this email or just give me a call at XXX-XXX-XXXX. If this is interesting to you, we’ll get it on the books. And if not, I totally understand. If you would, just reply and let me know if I could contact you in the future when other opportunities that might interest you arise.
Company X digs your JavaScript talents (we’re hoping you’ll dig us)
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Where We’ve Been, Where We’ve Arrived, What to ExpectWe’ve traveled (far) from the land of the impersonal mass communications with little rhyme, reason, or hope of reply to a place where we’re crafting personalized messages to a shortlist of candidates. Less is left to chance, candidates can begin to get to know us as a profession again, and with any hope, they’ll begin to welcome our personalized messages for what they are:
Recognition that we can’t be successful with our careers unless we help them be successful in theirs.
But not every ideal candidate will respond, even to the most well crafted email. Some of those ideal candidates will turn out to not be the great fit we initially thought. We’re holding out for the ones who will stay for the long haul, grow with the company, and refer their friends because it’s a fantastic place to build a career.
And they’ll remember us—the recruiter—as the person who opened the door so they could thrive. That alone is worth the process of crafting every personalized email, every minute of additional candidate research, and showing the candidate that we respect both their time and talent. What do we mean by combining your goals with the candidate? To begin with, even preliminary candidate information can help you better envision why your opportunity might be attractive to a particular talent. Maybe you’ve unearthed their affinity for particular best coding practices that would benefit your client’s development team. It could be that everyone on staff happens to be an avid fan of snow sports and your candidate just tweeted excitement about opening day at a local resort. They may have even gone to the same university as one of the company’s founders. When you have information like this, you can move right into the meat of crafting the better recruiting email.
About GildHR and recruiting have been begging for innovation. That’s why Gild is here. Gild exists to bring meritocracy to the professional world by providing hiring solutions that illuminate who’s talented. Companies use Gild’s patent-pending hiring solutions to find and engage the best candidates out there. Unlike professional networks and job boards, Gild’s solutions tell companies how good different prospects are, and provide the social insights hiring teams need to engage prospects effectively. Launched in 2011, Gild is backed by Globespan Capital Partners and is headquartered in San Francisco, CA.
email [email protected] call (800) 664-2366 visit gild.com read gild.com/blog