How to contact a candidate on Linkedin ?

In this blogpost, you'll learn the 3 key elements to increase your response rates on LinkedIn.

This is how I recruit, and it's one of the core lessons I impart to all the recruiters I train.

We'll be talking here about the impact of a message, not just a LinkedIn invitation. (If before this, you want to know how to send an invitation on Linkedin, it's here.)

Be Honest.

There's no point in beating around the bush: everyone's time and attention are rare and precious.

90% of people who read your message won't read past the first line.

From there, you'll have 2 choices, and you have to decide which seems the most interesting to you:

1. Losing 90% of the people who took the trouble to open your message, and therefore almost all of the profiles whose attention you managed to capture. If you want to visualize this step, it's like taking all of your efforts, rolling them into a big ball, and throwing them out the window.

2. Trying to recruit with one line. I'm exaggerating, I should rather say "try to recruit with a short sentence".

If you had to write just the first sentence of your message, would you be able to make your target want to respond to you?

And now, you might be wondering if your first sentence should be "I hope you are doing well." I'll let you judge the answer 😉

In order to be able to show your honesty, you must: – Know and understand the position (a job description sent by email is not enough), – Have identified the ins and outs of the position, what it can bring to a candidate, as well as the challenges the candidate may face, – Go straight to the point, without frills. Of course, this doesn't mean not being courteous and polite! But candidates are fine, they thank you.

Be Personal.

Have you taken the time to check the LinkedIn profile (or other) of the person you're contacting?

It seems obvious.

Everyone has been saying it for years now.

Yet few really do it.

Almost all of the candidates I talk to in my recruitment audits say that recruiters don't bother to read their profile before contacting them, and that it would make a real difference if they did.

With the rise of automation tools on LinkedIn, the phenomenon of diminishing quality of the approach is inevitable.

So even if you make A TINY effort, it will still be more than the vast majority won't do. Make this effort, it will be an key differentiating factor in your approach quality.

Be True.

You and I are different. We are all different.

Oscar Wilde said, "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."

Each recruiter primarily represents an employer and carries a brand. This brand can be more or less strong, or even crystallized in an editorial line.

However, if you're not yourself, if you don't express yourself in terms that seem natural to you, the candidate will feel it.

And no one is comfortable in an artificial situation.

Respect the message of your brand, but find your margin of maneuver. Use words that resemble you.

Don't try to make the candidate believe that you are "from their world" if you're not.

This is particularly true for recruiters who address technical profiles (such as developer recruiters, for example).

It is highly recommended for this branch of recruiters to develop a technical veneer. But not to pretend, nor to recruit by keywords.

By "technical veneer," we don't mean the ability to perform the candidate's job, but the ability to understand the concepts being discussed.

And it's even better if you're interested in them.

But never try to recruit on topics you don't understand: it's the best way to lose credibility with a candidate, and therefore impact.

There are many other methods to increase your positive return rates via LinkedIn, but these are a good start, and if you apply them, you will drastically differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Want to learn more and delve into the topic?

I have been training recruiters since 2010, what can I do for your team? Please contact me here: hello@workmetender.com

WorkMeTender is a training company registered in France under the id 117 884 406 78. Our trainings are delivered remotely or onsite, and are built and tailored on your specific needs, in order to maximise their impact and efficiency. Most represented professions amongst people trained : Recruiters, HRBPs, Employer Brand Managers, Hiring Managers.