One of the most common traps hiring managers and recruiters fall into when sourcing potential candidates is not following up with them and assuming they aren’t interested.
At GeneCoda, we make a minimum of three attempts to reach a potential prospect, using different contact methods, including their email, phone, text, and social media.
If a prospect does not respond to your initial attempt to contact them, it’s helpful to consider that they may not have received your message. On email in particular, consider that the spam filter could have quarantined the message sent or that the account is not one they check often.
In this case, attempting to ascertain their interest via both work and home email addresses can be helpful. Phone calls placed to work numbers can also be more effective contact methods, as you can be reasonably sure of getting a message through to a prospect even when leaving them a voice mail.
If you possess or can locate a confirmed mobile number, it’s even more helpful to send a brief follow-up text message. For example:
“Peter, Don Alexander here at GC. I’m on (phone number, repeat phone number) and just wanted to ensure you saw the email I sent on (insert date) concerning a search we’re conducting for (insert role) as this may be of interest to you or others in your network. Can you give me a call or drop me a note to let me know you received this message?”
Social media and LinkedIn InMails can also be good methods for reaching out and following up with sourced candidates.
Also, consider the timing and pace of your follow-up. Generally, we’ll send an email first and give the prospective candidate a few days to respond before trying a different method.
If it seems a match may exist given profile information we’ve obtained from LinkedIn, a company website, or other sources, we try to ascertain why the prospect isn’t interested. This can help identify trends that may be important for our clients and us.
Finally, consider that top talent in specialized sectors like Life Sciences are already getting inundated with recruitment messages, so they may simply be overwhelmed or desensitized to your pitch.
In the end, one message to a prospective candidate is rarely enough. Considering that you’ve already put time and energy into sourcing potential prospects, it’s worth following up more thoroughly to get a response. Sending them a single, generic message is often not going to work.
As a recruiter or hiring manager, you should always look for new ways to stir passive candidates into action. To stand out from the crowd, you’ll have to craft an engaging message with a subject line that leaves candidates eager to learn more, and you may have to wave the flag more than once or twice to get their attention.
If you’d like some help with this and to understand how you can overcome some of these issues, please contact us.