Sending cold outreach messages to prospective candidates without knowing much about them can waste time, failing to get enough responses. Researching what matters to them will add value to your LinkedIn outreach message. 

This blog will discuss what you should do to succeed in your outreach strategy for social recruiting on LinkedIn.

1. Determine your target candidates

Without determining how your target candidates look, you will struggle to figure out who to reach and how to communicate.

When you understand your prospective candidates, you can work on improving your outreach messages, adding value, and making them more appealing.

2. Search candidates on LinkedIn

You can easily search candidates and find out their details to send a perfect outreach message. Use LinkedIn search to find candidates using keywords related to the industry, companies, skills, designation and location as per your defined criterias of target candidates. When viewing profiles, look for the following to match your requirements:

• About
• Qualification
• Skills
• Work experience

Read ‘About’ section to learn about them and their areas of expertise. Check their experience, current roles and past experiences. Monitor activity on LinkedIn to see what they talk about in their posts.

3. Send invitations to connect

You can send connection requests and gradually nurture your relationship over time. Or add notes to your connection requests to specify what made you reach out to them. Mention things you liked about them and what makes them a fit for your job vacancies. However, be careful of the number of invitations you send in a day. Connecting with too many people at once can lead to account suspension.

4. Use LinkedIn InMail

Sending outreach messages using the LinkedIn InMail feature should be your priority. According to a LinkedIn report, candidates’ response to outreach messages via InMail compared to regular email is three times higher. Again, keep track of the number of InMail messages you send in a day.

5. Use LinkedIn outreach automation tools

Recruiters consider using automation tools to save time spent manually sending outreach messages. Some of the widely used LinkedIn outreach automation tools include LeadConnect and Zopto.

6. Monitor response to your messages

It is important to monitor responses to your messages to know whether you are reaching more people who might be interested in your job opportunities and if your outreach messages are received well. Fewer people responding means you must improve your candidate search or tweak your outreach messages to make them better.

Check if longer or shorter InMails get better response. Which day of the week work for you? And if personalising your InMail and subject line has improved the response rate.

According to a LinkedIn report, shorter InMails get better responses.

Also, Saturdays and Sundays are not the best days to send InMails.​​

7. Find email address

After candidates accept your connection request, visit their profile to find their contact information like phone number and email address. Use them to build your talent pool of qualified candidates.

8. Conduct email outreach

If candidates do not respond to your outreach message, possibly they have missed it or don’t regularly check their inbox. In that case, you may have a good chance to get a reply by sending a similar outreach message to their email address.

9. Follow up

There is still a chance that a top contender who is not actively looking for jobs misses your outreach message on email. In that case, send a follow-up message or a series of messages on LinkedIn and email seeking their reply even if they are not open to new opportunities.

With the following tips, LinkedIn outreach will be an easy process. Find candidates. Introduce your company and pitch your jobs. Besides connecting with candidates on LinkedIn using outreach messages, consider posting jobs on LinkedIn to connect to active job seekers. Use a recruitment software like PyjamaHR that integrates LinkedIn to post and share jobs in a few clicks.