You found the perfect candidate and you are getting ready to email them. Are you fully prepared to write a message that you are confident will get a response? While a lot of people feel like you can just simply email someone about a job and get a response… it is not as easy as you’d think. Your message needs to be clear and concise while also giving the candidate a reason to respond.
Here are 5 ways you can increase your email open & response rate:
1. Location
This one is probably the simplest, but saves the most time. If you are recruiting a position in New York City it’s probably safe to assume a candidate from Annapolis, MD will not be interested. (Unless they are a true road warrior). You can save a lot of time by including a quick sentence that simply reads “this is a position we are hiring for our office in New York City.” You can save yourself the headaches of qualifying candidates who, while they may be the perfect technical fit, just are geographically not the candidate for you.
2. Attach a job description
If you attempt to explain the details of the job in the body of the email you are going to lose your audience to boredom. You want to keep the email short, and a simple “I have attached the job description for you to review” is much better than 4 paragraphs explaining the job. Which leads us to point 3……
3. Keep it simple
Chances are if you are sending an email you do not have the candidates full attention. They start reading it but have a million other things going on in their head. Keep it simple. An introduction email is not supposed to qualify the candidate. It is simply there to pique their interest in the position. The email should be short enough to get through without any distractions but include intriguing enough information to prompt a response. Which leads us to point 4…..
4. Include intriguing information
Is your company growing? Did they just receive a large round of funding? Whatever it may be you should include information that will make this candidate want to learn more. Unfortunately the majority of us do not work for Apple or Google, so as a result our company logo will not be the catalyst that prompts the response. For example, my company offers 3 weeks of training for all engineers. This is something I add in my emails and more times than not that comes up in conversation with candidates. But not from me, instead the candidate brings it up because it intrigued them in my initial email.
5. Customize the email
Truth be told, a lot of my emails tend to be a carbon copy of each other. I always make sure to personalize the intro, but the body usually doesn’t change. And to this day I get a good enough response rate to feel like I am doing something right. However if I see something on the persons profile that I think matches what my company is doing, I try and add that to the email. For example if I see they just received a specific certification that is applicable to the job I will add that to my email.
Do you have any tips on how to get your intro emails read? Let me know!
