This is the seventh post in a seven-part series entitled “Outbound Recruiting 101.” It focuses on best practices when reaching out to passive candidates during recruiting. Reaching out to passive candidates is something that almost every fast-growth company does as part of their recruiting efforts. That being said, it can be done respectfully or disrespectfully. We strongly encourage the former. :) Please keep in mind throughout this series of posts that your company’s brand is at stake when you are contacting candidates. Of course, treat the person you’re contacting as you would like to be treated.
Tip #7: Put yourself in the shoes of the person you’re contacting. This is perhaps the most important tip of all. We’ll call it the Golden Rule of Proactive Recruiting. For everyone that you're reaching out to, ask yourself: if I was in the candidate's shoes, would this be how I would want to be contacted? If not, change your approach immediately. Treat the people you're contacting with respect. Don’t use “tricks” to get their attention. And definitely don't take it personally when their responses are less than cordial - they're likely inundated with emails from recruiters everywhere.
The more humanizing the interaction between those recruiting and those being recruited, the better. That’s one of the reasons we built Entelo: to try to make it easier to approach high-quality candidates in the best possible way, for both parties. If you have any suggestions on how we can do this better, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at contact@entelo.com. We really love hearing from our users.
As an added bonus and wrap-up to the Outbound Recruiting blog post series, we’ve added a basic template utilizing the advice we’ve outlined:
Subject: Came across your [specific] repository
Body: Dear [Name],
I came across your repository on Github and was very impressed with [make a specific reference]. Took a deeper dive into your public work and saw a great potential fit between you and [Company], so thought I’d reach out.
[Really short Company blurb- include mentions in the press (TechCrunch!)]. Our stack consists of [insert your stack + anything especially unique about your company].
Best,
[Your Name]
Phone Number + any relevant profile links (i.e. Linkedin)
(Note: We’d recommend that you not use the exact template above. Instead, re-write it in your voice. It’ll be more effective that way.)
Thanks for making it through almost all 3,000 words of this series! We hope it makes a difference in how you recruit and communicate with candidates. At the end of the day, you’re in the role of matchmaker, trying as hard as possible to present a great job opportunity to the person you’re contacting. With proper messaging and the right role, you just may change someone's life for the better. Keep that top of mind and you’ll do just fine. :)
