Want to recruit more candidates to any job you’re recruiting on?

Wait…

Do you want to recruit more candidates to your job without doing extra work?

Good, then this post is for you.

Think about a role you are recruiting on right now.

There are a fixed number of candidates in your market that can do the job the hiring team is trying to fill.

For example:

For example LinkedIn shows there are 147,017 people in in the San Francisco Bay Area in California (with experience in Java).

As a recruiter you’re focused on finding and contacting the appropriate candidates. That’s your game.

All day. Every day.

Let’s say you are a solid recruiter and you currently receive a 20% open rate to your cold emails and inmails.

For every 100 messages you send. 20 people read your emails.

To get more candidates what do you need to do?

Do you know what the answer is? It’s obvious right?

Find and contact more candidates.

…..

Wrong.

The easiest thing you can do is have more people to read your message.

The secret to getting more candidates is to double the open rate of your recruiting emails.

What happens when your open rate doubles?

More people read your message. When done correctly, more opens net you more responses.

Disclaimer: Recruiting isn’t a linear equation. In addition to your message being opened it must be effective. Then there will always be life situations that the best message cannot overcome.

Welcome to doing business with people.

What does a higher open rate mean?

Your message is read by more prospects

Starting more conversations

Developing more relationships

Interviewing and submitting more candidates

Closing more jobs, quickly.

Best of all. You’re not having to spend more time searching and contacting new candidates.

How To Double Your Recruiting Email Open Rate

Here’s a screenshot of my bananatags account after I implemented what I’m about to show you.

My cold recruiting email open rate more than doubled when I started doing these 5 things consistently.

Step 1. How To Qualify Prospects Before You Contact Them

I blame it on being hard headed. But I’ve always had a hard time doing things the way you are supposed to. For a while I watched recruiters pray and spray, basically contacting anyone who had a certain keyword on their LI or resume.

I’ll admit I even tried it for awhile.

The results were terrible. And worse, I received some pretty horrifying emails from pissed off developers.

I decided to stop sending mass template recruiting emails. And spend more time writing better messages. In addition I found qualifying the people I’m contacting to be insanely valuable.

Qualify prospects using these 4 techniques.

1. A, B, C… 1, 2, 3

Start viewing candidates with “hiring manager eyes”. It’s easy when you’re recruiting to look at candidates and say to yourself “I don’t really know what the hiring manager wants this candidate looks good enough“.

That conversation ends now.

Do whatever you need to, to mentally get into hiring manager mode. Start searching and sourcing with this perspective in mind. It makes you more critical of the profiles you review.

You will begin filtering a bit harder. This is what we want.

Now. When you add someone to your list, folder, or project.

Rank them. Use 1, 2, 3. Or A, B, C.

I don’t care just make sure you rank them and know which letter / number is high and which is low.

Build your list to 20 to 50 prospects. From here you can manage the list a few ways. I prefer to write those first messages to my lower ranking candidates.

This way you can test responses and subject lines to see how they respond. Before you contact your grade A prospects.

2. Next Steppers

While searching for new prospects. We develop the habit of looking laterally. Meaning recruiters look for people with exact the same experience to make a lateral move to fill a similar role.

What candidate wants that?

Instead of looking for the exact same experience. I encourage you to prospect for what I call “next steppers” a tad junior or less experienced people who your role makes sense to.

Because it’s the appropriate next step in their career path.

3. Filter Freshmen

You probably add prospects to your list who have been in their role for a year or less. And that’s fine. But you might start to notice you’re not having much success there.

Think about it…..

When you took a job you really loved. Were you really considering leaving after a year?

The answer is no. You were still in the honeymoon phase.

OK, now apply this knowledge to your prospecting and start to filter those Freshmen out and look for folks who are in their Junior and Senior year in a given role.

They tend to make prime recruiting targets.

4. Trajectory

Your hiring manager might allude to this once in a while. But most don’t think of this channel to find new prospects.

Trajectory can mean different things. To me it means change. Career change.

You can apply trajectory by recruiting people:

out of public jobs into the private sector

away from large software companies and into startups

away from startups into larger stable software companies

away from banking/healthcare and into software

away from software and into consulting

You get the point.

Find industries or companies where people might hate their job and add these prospects to your list.

Step 2. Head First Into The Deep End

I used to be a chicken when it came to swimming. I was a skinny kid and I struggled to swim (I couldn’t float). Our swim coach ended each class by having us jump into the deep end and swim to the opposite side of the pool.

I still hated swimming, but it made me better.

Jump into the deep end when you are qualifying prospects. Especially when it’s based on their online work, bio, or profile. Start using these 2 techniques.

A. Get deep

Just skimming their bio is what every other recruiter does.

Go the distance.

Look at where they went to school at. And study the types of companies they’ve worked at and the titles they’ve held.

Next if they describe their work take advantage of this writing to learn more about them.

If they do specialized technical or engineering work. You must go beyond just reading buzzwords.

I don’t care if you have to sign up for an online or College course. It’s critical that you understand the terminology and the kind of work your prospects are doing and writing about.

This knowledge alone can set you apart from the masses

B. Read Between The Lines

Reading what people write on their resume is only half of the story. You’re not a chump recruiter.

Start looking for what the prospect is not saying…

Did they describe their role in detail? Did they mention how large their team was?

Why didn’t they describe the typical tasks that everyone else with their title does?

Are they more high level? Or are they a junior developer?

Maybe they’re more of an ops person and less of a developer?

All of this information adds to your knowledge base that you can tap into before you ever contact the prospect.

Step 3. Get In The Right Inbox

It’s easy to send an Inmail. And yes sometimes that Inmail makes it to an inbox. But it doesn’t reach the right inbox.

I started focusing on the right inbox – there are 2.

personal email account (gmail, yahoo, etc)

their work or corporate email account

Step 4. The 2 Most Effective Techniques For Writing Awesome Subject Lines

Once you’re inside of people’s inboxes you stand a fair chance of getting your message read.

But we don’t want a fair chance. We want them to open our message and act.

To get your message opened you need to write great subject lines.

A few (generic) subject lines most recruiters use are:

Name at Company

Name + Title + Current Company

RE: Name + Title + Current Company

Follow Up To Voicemail

Let’s go deeper.

Part A: Tailor your subject line based on things your candidate is interested in.

For example here are some custom subject lines that got my messages opened, and received responses.

The Undermined Developer

Out with The Old via Hoserdude

Dojo Phased Javascript Loading

…..and why you should chat with me

Inventor at Lithium Technologies

There are some people reading this that think it’s impossible to find out what candidates are interested in without talking to them.

It’s not, in fact I built this course to teach you exactly how to find out what your candidates are interested in.

Writing cold emails is simple when you know what your candidates are interested in.

Part B: 5 Reps

What do you mean by reps? And Why?

In the past I would rush to write my subject line without much thought. Crank out a message and hit send.

I stopped doing that too.

My process now is very different. I learn the candidate’s interests, follow my writing framework. And after completing the framework, one of the last things I do is write 5 different subject lines.

One always stands out. I select it and hit send.

Here’s part of my list before I sent this email to you:

SL2: Get more candidates without doing any extra work

SL3: Get more candidates without more sourcing

SL4: How to get more candidates without more searching

SL5: 5 techniques to land more candidates without more work

SL 6: how to get more candidates without

Don’t waste the other 4 you can modify and test these if you’re contacting a batch of similar candidates for the same role.

Step 5. How To Set Yourself Apart From Every Other “Good” Recruiter

Templates or crappy rapidly written messages?

Both.

I used to copy and paste templates and write messages in a matter of minutes and hit send.

I’m not saying it was right. I’m saying I did it.

Remember this graphic?

My open rate was 39% was when I was using templates and quick, poorly written messages.

The secret that allowed me to set myself a part from the pack. Came when I started customizing my cold recruiting emails based on the candidate’s interests and what’s in it for them.

That’s it!

It seems too easy and simple right?

The best strategies are simple. Which is why most people don’t do them. What is easy to do. Is also easy not to do.

Look at the image above and decide which side you want to be on.

I stopped using template recruiting emails that were all about me. And restructured my cold emails to focus on my candidate and their needs/wants.

Check out one of my messages here:

Step 6. The Boomerang Technique

I tend to learn things the hard way. Not using the boomerang technique used to bite me in the butt regularly.

Have you ever been reading through resumes or LinkedIn profiles and realize that you’ve viewed a candidate for a second or third time that you already contacted?

(of course you have it probably happens to you a few times a day)

I used to get annoyed. And would flip to the next result quickly.

One day I stopped to think…. Have I heard back from this candidate yet?

The answer was no.

I stopped searching and went back to my inbox. Looked up the email I had sent in my sent items and hit reply to all.

Then I wrote out a long winded crappy follow up message that would sometimes get opened but rarely a reply.

Delete….

Delete…..

Delete…….

These follow up messages were bad. I’m glad they were deleted by my prospects.

I learned to write short, custom follow up messages. That are read and receive a 50% or better response rate.

I’ve also had good success with writing a new message to the candidate and referencing my previous message. I’m not sure if it’s spam filters or people are just lazy when it comes to emails.

Probably some of both.

By sending that second, third, fourth, “boomerang” email. I was able to get my message read.

To get more candidates without more work what do you need to do?

Double your cold recruiting email open rate.

How can you double your open rate?