I’m not in a good mood right now. I'm pissed to put it bluntly.

I finished reading through 1017 cold emails and InMails sent by recruiters to a technical candidate.

The recruiters were junior and senior technical recruiters (at staffing agencies and corporate recruiters at tech companies) located all across the US.

I’m more disappointed in recruiters than I have ever been. (Especially the ones I know personally)

I looked for interesting subject lines that made me want to open and read the message. And after 1017 messages only a handful stood out as being truly unique and interesting.

What I found inside was even worse. More about that in next week’s post. (sign up here to get it sent to your inbox)

I started to notice was a pattern in the subject lines:

• Hello from Company Name
• Job Title & Location
• random word or phrase (“follow up”, “time on calendar”, “thoughts”, “checking in”, “reaching out”, “quick question”, “are you available”)
• Referral Bonus + Job Title
• Lead/leadership/architect/guru role at ABC Company
• Company Name + Job Title
• Greeting from Recruiter Name @ Company
• Tech buzzword + Opportunity

Just reading through the list grosses me out. How are any of these remotely interesting to candidates?

Look at the list again:

• Hello from Company Name
• Job Title & Location
• random word or phrase (“follow up”, “time on calendar”, “thoughts”, “checking in”, “reaching out”, “quick question”, “are you available”)
• Referral Bonus for Job Title
• Lead/leadership/architect/guru role at ABC Company
• Company Name + Job Title
• Greeting from Recruiter Name @ Company
• Tech buzzword + Opportunity

What’s wrong with these subject lines?

You might be thinking ….”nothing I use a lot of those same subject lines”

That’s the first problem. Everyone is saying the same boring thing.

Have you ever talked to a person and felt like they were just using a line on you?

What did you do next?

Tune them out?…. or walk away?

What did you do after several other people tried the exact same routine?

….didn’t respond

..you ignored them…

tuned similar people out. ….

DELETE the message? Or setup a rule to route all similar messages to your inboxes trash folder.

The Second Problem:

The subject lines don’t speak to a candidate at all.

Everything in these subject lines is all about YOU. Your company, the location of a job, or the job title.

• Hello from Company Name
• Job Title & Location
• random word or phrase (“follow up”, “time on calendar”, “thoughts”, “checking in”, “reaching out”, “quick question”, “are you available”)
• Referral Bonus for Job Title
• Lead/leadership/architect/guru role at ABC Company
• Company Name + Job Title
• Greeting from Recruiter Name @ Company
• Tech buzzword + Opportunity

Newsflash: the passive candidate you contact doesn’t care about YOU or your company. (click to tweet)

Let me address the recruiter hate on the web….

Recruiters aren’t the only ones who use WEAK subject lines in recruiting emails. Some of the crap messages above were sent by startup Founders, CEOs, and Co-Founders.

Alright, I’m calming down now….. How can we fix this?

 It’s impossible to recover from a crappy first message to a candidate.

1. Stop using generic pick up lines on potential candidates.
2. Learn to write interesting subject lines.

OK, I won’t send generic subject lines any more…. but how can I write better subject lines?

It takes a bit of practice to get good at writing interesting subject lines but it’s really simple. Include topics that are interesting to candidates. (what’s in it for them)

Have you ever thought “What’s in this for me?” or “what do they want?” while reading a message?

Your candidates think the same way while reading your messages.

Step 1. Purpose of your message

To start a conversation.

I’m not going to elaborate any further because that is the only move you have at this point.

Step 2. Find your candidate’s interests

How can I find out what my candidates are interested in?

I thought you’d never ask. I created this short course to help you find exactly what your candidates are interested in.

Once you know what a candidate’s interests are you can quickly come up with a few ideas for messages.

Step 3. Create your message

Next week’s post will talk more about what to include or not include in your messages. For now you’re on your own.

Step 4. Draft your first subject line

Once I have a concise interesting message I write a first draft subject line based on my message content.

For example:

Let’s say I am recruiting a developer who blogs and who has an interest in devops and wordpress.

I could just use something generic like:

SL: Developer Name at Company

But that’s too easy…. they probably get that all of the time.

How about this SL?  “tech talk on (blog post subject)”

Step 5. Create 4+ versions of your subject line

Rewrite this draft SL a few different ways. And email it to yourself to see if it’s interesting enough to get you to open it.

SL 1 title of their blog

SL 2 title of one of their recent blog posts

SL 3 how to speed up page load times on wordpress

SL 4 aws or azure?

SL 5 what’s the best... puppet or?

Step 5. Select a subject line and send your message

If you are still sending InMails, read this.

I know what you are thinking. “this sounds like a lot of work…..”

Initially it might add a few extra minutes to your contact process, but with some practice you can whip these up quickly.

You don’t get a second chance after you send a crappy first message to a candidate. Ask yourself if the extra time investment is worth it?

All of this work is not in vain. If you are recruiting for a few similar roles you can split test the subject lines and see which one gets a higher response and open rate.

Hint: Keep using the one that performs.

- - -  

Out of all 1017 emails my favorite subject line: “what’s missing from your current position”. Besides being somewhat generic, the subject line was far better than the message. 

That's the kicker. If your subject line is awesome, but your message stinks... so will your response rate.

More from the author: Clinton Buelter is the founder of ColdEmailForRecruiters. He’s a tech recruiter turned entrepreneur. With more than six years of recruiting experience, starting at a staffing agency and working his way into technical recruitment for software companies like VMware and Glassdoor.

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(Photo by Peyri)