I recently posted a recruiting question to my LinkedIn network and would like to share with the StaffBytes community. The question was “When sending emails cold to potential candidates, what is the best or most effective “subject” line you have used?” If you are a member on LinkedIn, jump in on the discussion! Go to my LinkedIn page here‚ and look under my questions.
In my‚ opinion, not enough emphasis and strategy is placed on‚ subject lines in emails - so I wanted to‚ pull together‚ knowledge from‚ others‚ in‚ the recruiting industry and find out what‚ has‚ been used and‚ what has worked.‚ Here are some of the suggested subject lines:
Hoping to network with you
A confidential career appraisal and access upper quartile job opportunities in your industry
Salary survey for (a specific industry)
Job Title + ‘Please Respond’
Challenging career opportunities with xyz ltd.
Interesting career opportunities with xyz ltd.
Message from “firm name”
Geoff, your old resume‚
Geoff, Recruiter calling
Name followed by the name-of-someone-they-know suggested we connect
Can we setup a time to talk?
Would you be available for a phone interview?
Career Opportunities at ______________
Would you be interested in opportunities at __________?
Your Resume Online - ________ Opportunities
Hi _______ - Interest in _____________
Hi _______ - _____________ is hiring
Excellent Opportunity at XXX (Direct to a personal account)
You’re professional expertise is requested (professional organization)‚
Introductions or Phone discussion requested (work account)‚
Help a friend find a new position and earn a referral bonus (any account)
Recruiter seeking numerical astrophysics Ph.D. for XXXXX
You are the answer to my client’s prayers
Someone also‚ presented‚ four great articles on the topic of “email subject lines” to check out as well:
Not finding what you are looking for on the web using the major search engines such as Google? In this short video, I briefly outline 11 other search engines to use other than the top three which are Google, Yahoo and MSN Live (in that order).
*For full screen, please hit the square button in the bottom right hand corner of the media player.
Another alternative to reaching candidates today, beyond phone, email and in-person meetings is text messaging. Most resumes today give multiple ways to contact candidates, along with providing cell phone numbers. The vast majority of cell phones today are advanced and have text messaging capabilites - so why not take advantage as a recruiter or sourcer?
I found a site I liked recently called Joopz, where you can set-up an account for free and send and receive text messages all online at no cost. The interface is very easy to use and displays all messages outgoing and incoming, along with other nice features. Here is an example of a recent outgoing test text for this post:
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You get notified online when you get‚ a reply:
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Texting affords recruiters and sourcers a great way to further reach out and communicate with potential job seekers and candidates. There are links to other free text messaging services online here.
Sponsored by SmashFly Technologies, Provider of WildFire, The First Job Marketing Platform
Interested in recruiting and sourcing from companies that are just in the Web 2.0 space? Check out GO2Web20.net. This site claims to be the “The Complete Web 2.0 Directory” with‚ 1,807 companies currently listed along with‚ information on what‚ each company does and links to their sites. This is a great place to identify both small “under the radar” start-up companies to potentially pluck great talent from, and also show large “well known” companies that have already emerged on the scene.
There is a great blog attached to the site as well, Go2Web2.blogspot, which talks about the latest companies in this space and gives recruiters and sourcers many avenues to explore.
Sponsored by SmashFly Technologies, Provider of WildFire, The First Job Marketing Platform
Let’s face it, most IT Recruiters do NOT come from technical backgrounds.‚ Most of us come from some type of sales or marketing background.‚ Sometimes we need a little help when it comes to having a discussion with a candidate who is talking tech talk.‚ This comes into play when we need to tech screen candidates before we submit them to our clients.‚
I’ve found a few different websites that list technical interview questions for different skill sets, but one stuck out to me because it seemed very easy to understand and navigate through.‚ The website DevBistro is a site that serves several different functions: a place for recruiters and employers to post jobs for a fee, search resumes, a place to read tech articles and learn about technology, and a place where technical interview questions and answers have been complied.‚
These questions have been taken from multiple sources such as a website called TechInterviews (which I find is difficult to navigate through and some of the links don’t seem to work), and some have even been submitted by candidates who have been asked these questions by specific employers.
On this particular site, they have a number of different tech categories listed, and each one includes multiple questions and answers about the technology.‚ A lot of the questions and answers are written in a way that a recruiter would understand if the candidate is answering the question wrong or not.‚ For the questions that don’t have answers with them, those questions could be asked by the recruiter and then the answers could be reviewed by someone who you feel is an expert with that technology who could properly grade the answers given.
Recruiters can also learn from looking at the interview questions and answers.‚ We aren’t going to understand everything, but it could always be helpful in becoming more confident when a candidate is talking technical with you.
Recently, an article was brought to my attention that had been written a few years back.‚ However, it still pertains to the world of recruiting today.‚ The article is called “Heading off the Headhunters“, and it discusses how employers are trying to protect their employees from being pilfered by recruiters.‚
Even though this article was written during the “Dot Com” era in 1999, I feel as if IT Recruiters are going through a similar situation now.‚ In a lot of markets, there are fewer candidates readily available, so we are forced to come up with creative methods to find those perfect candidates.‚ If you weren’t already aware of some of the techniques discussed in this article that employers are trying to avoid, now you have learned some new tricks.‚
Dialing different desk numbers through a phone directory, paying for hard copies of employee directories, and doing some thorough web searches for employees of specific companies are methods that employers are well aware of.‚ I don’t think any company can really prevent recruiters from getting to their employees, one way or another.‚ A few years ago, I had the VP of HR from a company call me directly and tell me to stop emailing her employees from a directory that I had obtained legally.‚ Ironically, there was a pretty high rate of response from the employees that I did contact, and it was a great way for me to find some passive candidates and get referrals.
I hope you also find this article interesting.‚ As recruiters, we need to continue to come up with ways to find these hard-to-find passive candidates, especially as employers tighten security to keep us out.
With more and more candidates leaving work email addresses in their resumes,‚ I discovered a great sourcing strategy by accident. When sending‚ emails to several candidates in my database earlier this year‚ over the holidays, I was surprised to receive ALOT of leads to pursue.
After sending out emails to candidates, I received the following messages as the “Out of Office AutoReply”:
Example 1:
I will be on personal vacation from‚ July‚ 3 through‚ July 4‚ and will return to the Herndon office on‚ July 5. I will have limited access to email and voicemail. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact —– at (—)— —-.
Example 2:
Thank you for your email. I will be on vacation March‚ 15-19 without access to email. In my abscence, pls contact the following individuals:
Gets you thinking doesn’t it? In these two emails, I have colleagues and managers of candidates along with direct dial extensions and some titles. You can work the email address patterns from there too. I have tons of these types of emails to go through every time a holiday comes up, whether it be Memorial Day, Thanksgiving or Christmas. Try for yourself and see where it takes you.
When sourcing for new candidates, I find that using multiple sites can yield far greater results than if you used each‚ site seperately. Let me give you an example. When using LinkedIn, the only way you can reach out to candidates‚ in your network is if‚ they are 1st connections (where you can see their email address),‚ through InMail (if you‚ have an upgraded LinkedIn Business account AND if you have some to use),‚ or through Introductions (which any user of LinkedIn knows can‚ be very hit and miss). By using Jigsaw‚ with LinkedIn,‚ you can increase your communication with these candidates. Let me show you:
Once in LinkedIn, find a profile in your search of a candidate you want to contact (an example of mine is below). Let’s say they are not a 1st connection,‚ you‚ don’t have InMail’s to use, you don’t want to use “introductions”, there is no email in the profile (ignore mine please), and you don’t know how to get in touch with them.
Note what company they work for (General Lead in this case) and go into Jigsaw seperately.
Once in Jigsaw, look up the company name‚ of the candidate (General Lead for the example) and get‚ one of the‚ business cards (using their point system which is either free or fee depending on what you use).
From here, you have the email string that is used by that company. You can‚ leverage this knowledge when coming across other candidates in your searches for General Lead. You will know that the email string for this company is (”first initial last name AT generallead.com”).‚ You can bypass the LinkedIn communication features for this company next time you need to. For larger organizations, such as Fortune 500 companies, you may have to get a few Jigsaw business card examples, as they use multiple email strings. For telephone sourcers, you can see the phone string for that company as well.‚ Dial extensions up and down from the last few digits to get to different seats in an office building from there.
If you are a technical recruiter seeking out IT professionals, ITtoolbox is the place to go.‚ ITtoolbox is a website similar to MySpace or LinkedIn but is specifically catered to those in the IT industry.‚ There are 1.2 million people who are members, and there are four main areas to the site: Blogs, Groups, Wiki, and Peers. Below, I will give some information on each area. First, before you start jump into the site, you can sign up and build your own profile on the site, including a photo if you’d like.‚ After you’re signed up, you are able to interact in all of the areas of the website.
Blogs - The blogs on this site relate to every IT topic that you can imagine.‚ You can search blogs by topic, and you can also sort them by factors like most recent and most popular.‚ If you feel like you have something to share with the ITtoolbox community, you too can start your own blog on the site.‚
Groups - The groups section is a place where members can go to ask questions and receive advice from other members. The groups are also sorted by topic.‚ If you join one of these groups, you can interact with the other members of it to discuss things related to a particular technical specialty.‚ I would say that this area has the same idea as Yahoo!‚ Groups and Google Groups.
Wiki - Due to the popularity of Wikipedia, almost everyone is now familiar with the term Wiki.‚ ITtoolbox has its own Wiki for their members to contribute to.‚ It works the same way as Wikipedia, where users of the site can write and edit entries for specific topics if they have knowledge of the topic (and hopefully it’s accurate information!).‚ In this area, you can find answers to many of your simple and complex questions related to the IT industry and technology.
Peers - Since you just built your ITtoolbox profile, you are now able to connect with your peers on the site.‚ The search functions are similar to those on LinkedIn: you can search by someone’s name, employer, expertise/skills, or display name.‚ After you have a profile on the site, you can also do a search for people who have a similar background as yours. You can make connections with your peers on the site, too.‚
Navigating this website is a bit confusing for a first time user because there are so many links and different areas to look at, but it seems like it gets much easier to click through once you get the hang of it.‚ Recruiters can use this site to learn more about the technologies that their consultants and employees work with, and it is a good alternative to LinkedIn to connect to those in the IT industry.
A company called Red 5 Studios got themselves in the news in the summer of 2006 when they put together an extremely creative recruiting campaign to attract top talent for their company. I read the article in The Wall Street Journal at the time and wanted to share with my readers. I learned alot and so can you.
Check out the link here which explains what they did step-by-step.
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