Recruiters can attract top talent by setting up recruitment goals and taking actionable steps toward achieving them. The best practice involves researching candidates and sending out compelling email copies. Don’t forget to personalize your emails and end with a clear call-to-action, so the candidate knows what to do next.
Did you know that most recruiters rely on email outreach to hire new talent?
A 2019 survey found that email outreach is the most popular recruitment channel at 37.2% adoption compared to LinkedIn, phone, and in-person meetings.
While cold email outreach and recruitment go hand in hand, only a few recruiters utilize email channels effectively. A good recruitment email strategy should include a follow-up sequence.
This post explores how to find and hire the best talents as a recruiter.
Read on to discover different actionable tips to implement in your upcoming recruitment campaign.
1. Set up recruitment processes and goals
While automation enables you to blast out emails to numerous prospects, you must first build a list of potential hires. It’s the only way to send highly targeted emails that stand out. Fortunately, automation and scheduling tools will reduce the HR burden.
Some good goals for a recruiter include:
- Hiring the best talent
- Streamlining the recruitment process
- Lowering the hiring costs
Once you’ve established your cold outreach goals, these tips will help you set up your recruitment process:
Use email automation tools to send out emails
Get access to a tool that can help you segment your candidates based on the roles, send batch emails to each group, schedule follow-up emails, and track open rates.
Automation makes sending as many emails as possible to your potential hires easier.
That’s why many software development recruiters prefer to automate the early stages of their recruitment process.
Use scheduling tools to keep track of the interviews
Get access to an excellent appointment scheduling tool like Appointlet. It’ll help you organize, schedule, and manage meetings with potential candidates. You simply share the meeting link in your outreach email and let the candidate choose an ideal time. The software will automatically add the meeting to your calendar once a candidate books it.
With this scheduling tool, you can see all upcoming interviews in one place and make any changes you want. You can also send out timely reminders to the potential hires to prevent no-shows.
2. Research candidates
You can easily find information about your potential candidates through LinkedIn, Facebook, and other available sources.
Look out for the following:
- The candidate’s skills and qualifications
- Their past work experience
- Their career goals
- Their current employment status/position
You only need to focus on relevant information to the job role. This way, you can rest assured that you reach out to the right candidate with an email copy that resonates with them. This works best for specific requests like hiring frontend developers.
Once you identify high-quality candidates, you can use Hunter’s Email Finder or Findymail to locate their email addresses using their name and company name.
3. Write a compelling email copy
Sending impactful emails will increase the number of responses you’ll get from candidates.
Before you begin, ask yourself what you want to achieve.
Setting clear goals for your email copy will help you create an outline to answer the most important questions like:
- Who is this email for?
- What is the purpose of sending the email?
- Does the email require an attachment?
- What writing tone should I use?
- What is the best CTA, and where should I place it?
- How do I start/end the email?
A good email outline will scale your recruitment strategies and still leave room to improve the email copy.
Here’s an example of a good recruitment outline:
Next, you must write relevant, precise, and unique cold emails.
The guidelines below will help you write compelling recruiting emails:
- Keep your email short
- Personalize it for the receiver
- Leverage image personalization
- Avoid slang or jargon
- Don’t forget to follow-up
- Check out these email templates for nurturing top candidates
- Include all information that will help them verify the email and get back to you or simply, include a digital business card
4. Focus on subject lines
Your potential candidate will see the subject line first. So, you need to make it short, on-point and personalized.
Here are tips to help you write subject lines to attract candidates:
Flatter the candidate
Grapevine’s experiment on the effect of flattery in sales emails resulted in a 50% higher click rate and 25% higher response rate! People like compliments, so try to throw in one in your emails.
Here are some excellent examples:
- “(First name), (company name) is impressed with your background!”
- “Looking for software talent, I have found you, (First name).”
- “(First name), your impressive CEO resume caught my interest!”
Do your research
Researching your candidates will help you cater to their interests and keep them engaged from the first time they read your email subject in their inbox.
Using their name and other personal information is an excellent way to start when you’re e-recruiting.
For example, “Hi Diane, picture yourself creating [insert a product from their Linkedin profile] at [insert your company name]?”
You can get super creative with your personalization efforts.
Explore your candidate’s LinkedIn profile and activity to collect all the data you need. For example, you can use an Airtable base to easily collect, store, and organize this data.
Intrigue your potential hires
Write intriguing subject lines, but make sure they don’t give it all away.
For example, “Your dream [job title] job at [company name] is open for you!”
Here are some examples of what excellent recruitment subject lines should look like:
- St Louis SEO Consultant is looking for Content Writers
- Product Manager position open at [company name]
- Data Engineer position available in Brooklyn, NY
The above subject lines are short, precise, and loaded with value, which is why they are effective for attracting suitable candidates.
Try to avoid lengthy and misleading sentences.
Don’t be in a rush when writing recruitment subject lines. Take your time and get it right!
5. Personalize your outreach
The more personalized your emails will be, the higher the chances of being read. So, use all the information you’ve collected in your outreach email sequence.
The most common personalization info you will find in most emails includes name and city.
But try to take your email personalization further. For example, you can include the day of the week.
Saying things like “I hope your Monday is going great” can help make your email feel fresh.
You can also take it further by throwing in a compliment and including their company or job title. For example, “I know Deloitte has some of the best auditors in the world.”
You can also get more creative when writing the email body.
For instance, you can mention an app your recipient’s team developed in their free time or a conversation they had on social media.
Here’s an example that works: “I had a fantastic experience using your new app – let’s connect.”
6. Keep your emails short & include CTA
A good recruitment email must be easy to read, offer only relevant information, and tell the reader what to do afterward. Be clear and as straightforward as possible.
Remember to have a clear call-to-action in your emails.
Don’t add more than one CTA, which can confuse the candidates. One clear CTA enables your potential hires to take the next step easily.
The example above is straight to the point and includes a clear CTA, making it easy for candidates to take the next step. It also goes further to provide additional information to help the recruitment process.
7. Create a follow-up sequence
Many emails don’t get any responses after the first try, so it is important to automate the follow-up sequence.
Here are some tips for creating your follow-up sequence:
Add value with each follow-up
Make sure each follow-up provides additional value for your candidates.
Write a catchy opening line.
Start your cold follow-up with something catchy and personalized. You’re more likely to get a response when you do this. Avoid dull and blurry opening lines and take assistance from AI tools like ChatGPT for content creation and writing personalized emails.
Besides nailing the subject line, you must polish your opening line to get the candidate interested in learning more about your offer.
Keep it short
Write short follow-up emails. It should only contain relevant and straight-to-the-point details. Avoid wordy sentences.
It would be best to sound confident in your writing. Words like just, try, think, maybe, or whatever make you sound unconfident.
Instead of “I’ll try to keep you updated throughout the process,” you should write, “I will keep you informed, but I have a question. Will you be available for a ten-minute meeting tomorrow morning?”
Automate bulk follow-up emails
When dealing with a small number of potential hires, you may write each follow-up from scratch. But it’s time-consuming to write hundreds of follow-up emails from scratch. In this case, use cold outreach automation tools. This helps optimize your task management game.
Add a persuasive call-to-action
Let your candidates know what they should do after reading your email. So, end your follow-up email with a clear and irresistible CTA.
Here’s a good example:
Lastly, consider adding phone calls to your follow-up sequence. Using a phone service for business, you can call candidates who’ve shown interest but haven’t replied.
You may be interested in having a landline phone service that can enhance your professional image and simplify the process of connecting with potential candidates.
Wrapping up
You can improve your cold outreach campaign through email automation and personalization. Research your potential hires on LinkedIn and other social media sites for information relevant to the job role. Then, write a compelling email copy to persuade the best talents.
Keep your emails short and clear. Make sure you guide your readers through the next steps to take with a straightforward CTA. Lastly, it’s a good thing to do to save some time and stay personal at the same time.
You can also automate scheduling interviews and sending reminders to the candidates with Appointlet.
Get started with Appointlet today and enjoy seamless scheduling!a
