May 3rd, 2021

Engineers perspective on recruiters outreach

Recruitment

11 min read

Want to hear what engineers say about what is the difference between a good and a bad outreach from recruiters? Follow me to the insights!

Before we go into any details we have to agree on the understanding that to find a great engineer, it is very rare to have them stumble on your job advertisement in a job portal. Of course, it can happen if you are a Stripe-level well-known company, but the engineers' reality is getting tens of cold outreach messages per month. The good ones are being chased and they do not have any need to go looking for new opportunities. As they do not need to fight for a job and have the luxury of picking what company and projects they want to join, you must go with your opportunities to them and try to stand out. How can one stand out in the sea of offers for a passive (a person who is not actively looking for new opportunities) candidate?

Cold outreach

By cold outreach, we are talking about messaging people online via LinkedIn or e-mail to get them to have a conversation with you. It is not to invite them to apply so you could evaluate if they match tech-stack requirements, but you should have already made sure they are suitable skill wised. It is like sharing a movie trailer with action move fans to get them to watch it. You already should be sure that they match the company and the position from the tech stack perspective.

The difficulty with cold outreach is that you have only 1 shot. Once the receiver opens the message, they will either be intrigued or the message will be closed. Therefore as with anything in life - to be successful you need to put some thought into it and have a strategy.

The basic etiquette

Cold outreach is cold because the person is not expecting you to contact them. The cold does not stand for impersonal or a message that leaves you feeling unbothered and cold.

If there is one thing not to overlook, it is that outreach should be personalized. Spell the name right, read the profile to show you took your time making sure who you reach out to, get them excited about what you’re doing is interesting, hard, and challenging. Be honest and clear about what kind of people they would be working with and what they would be actually doing.

What do engineers want from the outreach?

That is the perfect question to start with when you are reaching out to engineers. What you as the recruiter or what the company wants from them is completely secondary. The focus should be showing that you understand or have at least given thought to what the receiver of the outreach wants and what you can offer.

Before doing outreach to software engineers I would make sure that the company has a career page that starts with showing how the company and leadership are setting them up for success. For many experienced engineers, realistic timelines to build software that works and is also maintainable are a high priority. Opportunity to not only do quick and dirty code but to have time to use cutting-edge technology for a result that they can take pride in.

Not to overlook the importance of wanting to work with a skilled engineering manager. One thing is to be a top-notch engineer, but completely other thing is to be a top-notch leader. Show them who would they be working with and add links to sources where they can see the quality of leadership they would be experiencing.

Providing your engineers with a learning culture means most likely also keeping one of their core wishes fulfilled. If being on top of new technology is not part of their mindset, then is it a really great engineer you are chasing?

Understand that the perception of the experience of working for your company matters. Be transparent, honest and make sure that the reality matches the perception you are trying to get across.

Last and the easiest - be upfront about the salary range. I completely agree with the points on the effect on recruitment efficiency here.

Learning from examples

I shared with 15 experienced software engineers a few examples of recruiters' outreaches to map their initial thoughts. 15 engineers from 10 different nationalities shared their thoughts with me (Talk about 100% response rate! Thank you so much for participating!)

The participants are based in 5 different locations: Estonia, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, and Mexico with some of them working in the same company. Altogether 10 companies got represented which included 2 Estonian unicorns, 3 Estonian high-growth well-known startups, 3 Estonian up-and-coming startups, 1 globally known European startup, and 1 European multinational corporation with more than 13 000 employees.

I showed them 3 different outreaches and measured 3 things:

(1) Would they close the outreach without a second thought or would be willing to connect with the recruiter?

(2) What is missing from the specific outreach for them to be interested in having a conversation with the recruiter?

(3) What about the outreach positively catches their attention?

Outreach example A

(1) Focus group determined that a recruiter only has a 7% chance of getting a response from the engineer when sending them a cold outreach like this. This means 1 out of the 15 focus group participants. A strong majority would close an outreach like this without a second thought.

(2) 3 main elements that were missing are brief of the role (tech stack, skills, duties, etc), company name, and the position name. More than half of the respondents especially brought out an additional comment that they do not understand the suggestion to have a phone call and considered this suggestion as off-putting.

I would like to know at least why they think I'm fit for what they are looking for. 

As I receive this kind of message frequently, I ignore messages that start with the recruiter introduction as I’m not attracted to whoever the recruiter is. Instead, I am attracted to the opportunity and therefore like the outreach (to go) straight forward to the point.

A personal touch in the message - so you know that the recruiter spent some time reading your profile - and why we both would benefit from this specific opportunity

(3) Overall there was a very unified view that this approach only works on engineers who are very actively looking for new opportunities and who do not get outreaches too often. Therefore it was described as a very outdated and overused approach and lacking in details, as it did not even answer the main question of why the recruiter thinks that I am a fit for the company and/or position?

First, it seems like an automated message which means the recruiter hasn’t seen my profile. Second, there is no mention of technology or company for which the recruiter is contacting me.

*A

Outreach example B

(1) The focus group determined that a recruiter has a 54% chance of getting a response from the engineer when sending them a cold outreach like this. This would generate success with half of the audience. If talking about cold outreach success rate in the growth team, this would already be a great number. In the recruitment world, a 54% response rate means you blew your chance with 46% of pure talented IT professionals and that can't be considered too big of an achievement. 

(2) The respondents were mostly classifying this outreach as too vague, lacking in detail, and too much mystery. If there is no opportunity to say the name of the company, then at least the skill, tech stack, position, salary, perks, and benefits should be shared. 50% of the respondents were bothered by the NDA. Also, the ones who showed their interest brought out, that the decision to respond is strongly connected to how many outreaches they have received that particular month.

I usually don’t read more on secret startups. Unless they disclose it, it is usually a recruitment agency trying their trick to hire someone.

The NDA part sounds even more obscure. So no real catch there.

(3) Outreach would work great on engineers who have a special interest in startups. The difference between the response between this and the first cold outreach example was that people who are open to being part of a starting company were at least interested to have a conversation to keep themselves updated on what is happening in the recruitment field. 

A bit more detail than the previous one. A bit more explanation about the company, even though the "disrupting the market" part is generic.

B

Outreach example C

(1) The most successful outreach got an impressive result of a 93% chance of getting a response. This means 14 of the 15-member focus group participants would reply to the recruiter and move into having a conversation about this particular opportunity. Only 1 developer decided that they would skip this opportunity, as they do not like full remote jobs. 

(2) The focus group called this a great approach and had a difficult time finding any faults. A few suggestions on how to make it better were:

It has almost everything but a link to a blog post about the company's culture and values would be nice to have.

It could include what got them interested in my profile, my current work or previous work, domain, or technology. But overall it's a good outreach.

(3) As the focus group got very excited over this outreach, they mainly described it as a perfect source of all the make or break information one could ask for.

It has pretty much everything you need before thinking to jump in a call or a chat. The company name, what they do, links, and I think the deal-breaker, which many companies don't like to be open about, the salary range.

It provides most of the information I need to make a decision on whether to pursue this opportunity. In general, It seems like the recruiter actually put effort into the outreach.

The position name, company name, sharing the job post, what the company is about, if the role is permanent, salary range - it is the perfect outreach

Even though it’s long it’s straightforward and able to skip many parts and still understand what they do and what they want from me.

This outreach is perfect a nice blend between a job post and a human outreach, things are very clear.

This template help ensures you’re providing all the information I need to be successful and comfortable during the initial contact.

C

Key learnings to note for recruiters

When asked from software engineers about specific elements and how important those are for them in a recruiter's cold outreach, we got 3 main classifications.

  1. Must-haves to stand a chance:

    • Brief of the role and position name

    • A brief overview of what the company does

    • Company name

    • Link to the role description

  2. Things to use that make your outreach stand out:

    • A salary range

    • Info about the company culture

    • Perks and benefits

    • Tech stack and that the company offers the opportunity to use cutting edge tools and technology

  3. Things that will make you a winner in the competition for talent

    • The team would be working with a skilled engineering manager

    • The company works with realistic timelines or any other similar detail regarding the work culture.

The most shocking find was that the number of cold outreaches that engineers receive per month is way higher than my initial thought of a few. Secondly, looking through the usual outreaches, it was a sad realization to see mostly 4 sentence messages without any mention of the position, company, or location. Even if you send out automated messages (which most engineers, at least those who I know, ignore on purpose) you could still make it more detailed regarding the position and the experience your company is offering. Thirdly, the simple yet often overlooked aspect of recruitment is that employment is supposed to be a mutually beneficial relationship. The best way to start that relationship from the recruiters' side is to communicate your offering already early on and equip the other individual with information that they could be successful and comfortable for the first hoped conversation.

Reading recommendation from Megan Garber at The Atlantic "Imagine Getting 30 Job Offers a Month (It Isn't as Awesome as You Might Think)" and Paddy Carver "An Open Letter To Recruiters". It has been 7 years, it really is time to show progress and change!

A very educational post on Medium by Caroline Chavier with tips on how to actually hire world-class engineers "The Subtle Art of Hiring World-Class Engineers". Simple solutions to implement from Jonathan Kidder, the top-ranked technical talent sourcing recruiter, "How to Write a Better Recruiting Cold Email". And "The Payoff of Including Pay Information in Job Postings" from Leslie Stevens-Huffman.