Personalize your messages.

The body of your emails needs to include more than just your candidate’s name to be considered personal or unique. If you’re reaching out to younger candidates for entry-level positions, consider mentioning the college they attended. For later-stage employees, mention their current or previous employers and relevant skills.

If you want to catch a prospect’s attention, include outside interests of theirs or causes they care about. This may sound like a manual and time-consuming task, but it doesn’t have to be with the proper tool. Fetcher can help you curate your initial outreach sequences by automatically plugging in the names, desired roles, past positions, and more for each candidate.

"Through Fetcher’s email outreach tools, potential candidates are touched in a way that makes them feel like they’ve been noticed by somebody senior, as opposed to the recruiter." - Danica Remy, Vice Chair, Network for Good

Be concise.

Everyone has shorter attention spans these days and the average person only spends 12 seconds reading an email. Data from Fetcher shows that candidates are most likely to express interest from initial outreach emails between 100-200 words in length, and interest decreases the longer the email.

Brevity is also beneficial in subject lines; with open rates for subject lines of less than 10 words performing better than those with 11+ words. Simple subject lines that include the name of the role and your company catch attention and increase interest.

Include calls-to-action.

Always finish your outreach emails with a Call to Action (CTA). Should the candidate respond to you directly to schedule a screening call? Or do you want them to complete an application through your career page? Your CTA should let the candidate know specifically what you’re asking them to do. This is the goal behind sending the email so don’t just end with, “Let me know if you’re interested!” Outline what the next steps are and how to take them.

Make your emails mobile-friendly.

41% of emails are opened on mobile devices, vs 39% on desktops. That means brevity is key. Get straight to your point. And if you’re using branded content like graphics in the email, make sure it translates to a mobile screen correctly. If not, it may turn a candidate off as it shows you’re not paying attention to detail.

Switch up your sender.

In-demand candidates like engineers and C-suite executives are frequently inundated with outreach from recruiters. Try sending an initial email from someone else on your team. Fetcher clients find that candidates are much more likely to respond if they feel noticed by someone in their field (so, an engineering candidate is more likely to respond to the hiring manager on the engineering team, etc.) or by a company executive than a recruiter. That’s why Fetcher makes it easy to send outreach on behalf of anyone in your organization!

Be consistent.

Aim to send follow-up emails two and four days after the initial email. With busy schedules, many people might forget to respond to the initial email or lose it in their inboxes.

Our data shows that roughly half of candidates contacted will be interested after a first email. Although interest does decrease with each follow-up email, interest rates are still as high as 30% at the third touchpoint. That means that, even when following up a second and third time, one in three of those candidates is interested!

“Sales outreach and recruiting outreach share a philosophy. Sales tools are selling a product, whether it’s tangible or intangible. With recruiting tools like Fetcher, they’re helping you sell a company, at the end of the day.” - Clifton Jadoo, Director of Engineering & Product Recruitment at Foursquare

Tips for a Successful First Outreach

Use your first email to candidates to explain why you are contacting them and what you are asking of them. Ideas for what to include:

• Who you are, what your role is and why you are reaching out about the position

• Information about the company - what problem does this company address and how? Linking to news articles, press, and social media pages is a great way to share additional info while keeping the message concise.

• Information about the role and what impact it would have on the company

• A soft call to action – "would you be open to a call?”

Feel free to customize it further to fit your unique voice and employer brand.

About Fetcher

Our mission is to help you engage talent that will transform your business aspirations into reality. Great talent is hard to find - that's why we offer a talent sourcing platform that not only gets your brand in front of the right candidates but also gives you a competitive edge in talent acquisition.

Begin building a relationship with your next great hire today and let Fetcher handle the rest. Get started for free.