Outbound recruitment - The art of cold contact

While we’d all love to have a stream of great applicants for every role, the reality is that for some positions you’ll need to reach out to people to get them to apply.  

Often they’ll have no idea who you are - so to get a response you’ll need a good message.  Something that grabs their attention, holds it and makes them take action.  

But how?

While it’s not an exact science, there are tried and tested techniques you can use to get more people to respond to your cold emails (or LinkedIn InMails).  You’ll find the best ones, along with examples, in the articles below.

As you go through them you’ll find some common themes.  None more important than understanding who you’re contacting.  What interests them?  What are their career goals?  What frustrations do they have in their current job?  And what can you offer them?

I’m sure you’ll find the articles helpful and practical.  Just remember to keep track of your results so you know what’s working!

- Rob

P.S.  If you’re enjoying the Inside Job, please help spread the word by recommending it to your network on LinkedIn along with this link: https://www.idealrole.com/newsletter.

👋 8 Simple steps to getting responses from passive candidates

When you’re reaching out to a candidate you’ve never spoken to before, you need to make sure you grab their attention and give them a good reason to get in touch with you.  

While this requires you to invest time in your message, it’s time well spent.  Because if more people respond to your emails, you won’t need to send as many of them.

So before you send your next cold email, take a look at these 8 steps for improving your response rate:

1. Everything starts with the subject line - it’s what people use to decide whether to open your email.
2. Personalise your message.
3. Make it short and to the point.
4. Don’t apologise - if you have a great job to offer you could be doing them a favour.
5. What’s in it for me? - focus on why the candidate might want your job.
6. Close with a specific call to action*.
7. Follow up after 3 - 5 days.
8. What would make you respond?

* A call to action, or CTA, is an invitation for the person to take some desired action.  

In an email, this might be “would you have time for a call this week?”.  Common examples from websites are “buy now”, “learn more” or “apply now”.

🥶 Cold outreach basics: Foundational guidelines to engage passive talent

When you’re reaching out to a lot of passive candidates it’s easy to forget that with each message you’re reaching out to a person.  And people can be unpredictable, react differently to things and have very different interests and needs.  

All of which you need to take into account when crafting your cold emails.  To make a connection with the person you’re sending your email to, you need to:

• Understand your audience
• Use your own voice - don’t be too formal or professional
• Lead with an engaging subject line
• Introduce yourself
• Make a connection
• Be concise
• Be clear
• Answer the “why me” question
• Leave an action item (call to action)
• Follow up

📨 Improve your cold email reply rates: 10 proven formulas that work

For years copywriters have used scientific principles of persuasion and influence to invent a number of writing techniques that draw readers into their content.

These formulas work - and can stop people and compel them to read your cold email.

Selecting the best formula to use will depend on who you are sending it to and what they’re looking for in a job.

The ten formulas in the article are all explained and there are example emails to show how to use them.  It may be written for sales but can easily be adapted for recruitment.

📈 What 290 cold emails teach us about sales & marketing in 2019

What does the data say about the best cold emails?

In this article, the author asked sales and marketing professionals to share their best cold email templates and examples.  And then crunched the numbers to learn what makes cold emails effective and how to get better response rates.

From analysing the 290 cold emails they received, they found:

• The definition of “good” is subjective.
• Personalised emails are harder, but tend to pay off with higher engagement.
• The best combination was sending personalised emails to smaller audiences.
• But, some people still got good results from automated emails.
• While you should follow best practices, you can still get good results trying new things.
• It’s still early days for video and other multimedia in cold email - most people aren’t using them.

📼📝 The cold email masterclass

If you want to go deep into cold emails, this masterclass is for you!  

The content is well researched and based on reviews of hundreds of cold email campaigns.  It draws on proven formulas, along with lessons from marketing, such as conversion rate optimisation and copywriting.

The 8 lessons include videos and articles that will show you how to turn theory into practice - so you can start getting results with the cold email best practices.  The lessons cover:

1. How to write a good email
2. Writing subject lines, opening lines and body copy
3. Expediting the sales outreach process
4. Personalisation
5. Building a quality check process
6. Follow up emails
7. Analyse, optimise and scale
8. Expert sessions - interviews with cold email experts

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That’s all for now. Let me know if you have any questions - you can get in touch here.