Dear Recruiters, From the Recruited

Recruiters, can we have a frank discussion? 60+% of messages I receive from you miss the mark, and this means you’re probably missing the mark with a majority of your cold outreach. So let’s take a look at what’s going wrong:

1. I’m not sure what the statistics are, but if someone has started a new job within the last ~6 months, you may want to let them breathe for a second. It’s unlikely they’re ready to jump ship, and if they are, that could even be a red flag. I’m not saying this is always the case, but if you’re working in bulk, we have to think strategically here. You’re probably just annoying us.
2. Look 👏🏻 at 👏🏻 candidates’ 👏🏻 profiles. When you only rely on your automation software, it shows. Use your tools to create a consolidated list, then spend the time to actually comb that list and look at profiles. For example, if you’re placing for a Ruby on Rails job at some shoddy oil or chemical company in Boston, seriously consider, “Does a senior level frontend/React engineer in Chicago with obvious sociopolitical awareness want to move back to backend for a company in an industrial, regressive industry?” Know your candidates, know your roles, and reach out more personally so that they know that you know them. This may take more time, but I can guarantee it’ll have a higher conversion rate. For example, one of my hobbies is running a pretty large food Instagram account. The recruiter who placed me for my last job stood out from the crowd because she mentioned waffles, made a Parks and Rec reference, and had obviously looked more into me as a person — now we’re still friends to this day, and her ability to refine her search obviously worked.
3. This is related to some ideas above, but know the technologies you’re placing for. Know what’s frontend, what’s backend, and what a full stack engineer looks like amongst the specialists. Also recognize even full stack engineers usually are better at one or the other, and do your research to cater to that. If my last 5 roles have been frontend-only, I’d probably sooner rage quit and go live in a commune before I touched C# again.
4. If a candidate has expressed they aren’t looking, they have no reason to hop on an intro call with you just to get to know you, unless you’re a super cool person for some other reason. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve formed real friendships with a couple of recruiters. Otherwise, you’re quite literally asking them to waste their time so you can add them to some proverbial Rolodex, and it’s inconsiderate.
5. Referrals aren’t coming from cold outreach. If a candidate has no other relationship to you or the company, and they’ve expressed lack of interest, then following up with, “Well, if you know anyone, there’s a $1,000 referral bonus,” is futile. If we’re referring our friends, we’re not picking one of the recruiter messages we get every day at random for a quick $1k; we’re referring them to people we know or companies we know that make sense for them. Your referral bonuses aren’t what make you stand out when everyone offers them; your personal relationships do.

In short, know your company, know your candidate, know your technologies, and don’t lazily lean on LinkedIn automation or recruitment tools when they clearly miss the most important details in terms of conversion. Stop wasting your time, your clients’ time, and our time; do better so that we can all win.