A common mistake I use to make on LinkedIn was not keeping InMail and invitations personal. In other words the recipients thought I had sent them another message along the lines of Viagra spam.

The LinkedIn InMail tool does a good job of allowing you to create targeted, meaningful messages and save them as templates for tracking and future use. The following list will help you craft messages that get results. 

I commonly get over 35% response rates on messages I send.

1. Write a compelling subject line.
2. Don’t assume too much. I’ve even written something like, “Forgive me if I’m missing the mark here…”  Be a little bit vulnerable.
3. Ask for help. LinkedIn is a community of professionals who like good karma and are willing to help because they know somewhere along the line the favor will be returned. Plant and harvest later or elsewhere.
4. Identify the connection you have with the person(s) and reference it in the opening lines of your message.
5. Be casual and personable, but not gimmicky.
6. Tell them where, when, and what — the what being the most important thing your organization is trying to achieve with this position. In other words, the key performance objective.
7. Promote your employee value propositionor the best one or two things about a career with your company.
8. Don’t include the job description or tell them too much. Include just enough to appeal enough to their interest or willingness to help in order to create a dialogue.
9. Ask for a brief dialog over email, chat, or an old-fashioned phone call.
10. Ask for referrals if the opportunity is not right for them.
11. Ask for a direct connection and offer to help them in any way at any time.

Here’s a sample InMail message containing these elements…

Subject Line: (Specify the industry) Career Connections

1. Tell  them why you’re contacting them and ask for help: I reviewed your profile today and found we share some commonalities in the(industry). Forgive me if I’m off target here, but I thought you might be able to help.
2. Specify the position, location, and the key performance objective:We’re looking for a (insert position/skill set) in (insert location) — ideally someone with experience in (type of work/processes/technology) and who can (paint a picture using the most important position performance objective — or the most important thing one could achieve in the position and how it will make a difference).
3. Promote your USP: The best thing about working for us is that you (insert the best thing and make it personal).
4. Ask for a dialog: Let me know if you have interest and we can talk live.
5. Ask for referrals: If the timing or fit is not right, please let me know who you recommend.  
6. Ask for a direct connect: Also, please connect with me directly (insert email address). Perhaps I can be of help to you in the future. 

Other tips for continued LinkedIn Recruiter sourcing success:

• Save your message as a template and track its results in LinkedIn Recruiter Reports.
• Connect directly with those who reply to your message, even if the opportunity is not right for them. By connecting you may be able to be of help to them in the future.
• Look through their connections for those who have similar skill sets and ask for an introduction.
• Save your search and go back later and see which of the top potentials did not respond. Perhaps they have not visited LinkedIn in a while or maybe they’ve been on vacation. In this case, call for them directly at the company where they work.

Thirty-five percent may not sound like much, but keep in mind targeted postal mail (the bumf through the front door) only gets a 4% rate of response.

I watched the iconic Tony Byrne 30 Steps Video over 10 years ago and just found my notes from all those days ago.

I love how back then it was a “Placement Process” and not recruiting process.

We are in this business to make placements!

30 steps in the Placement Process

1. Take a COMPLETE job order
2. Make a Recruiting Plan
3. File Search
4. Name Gathering
5. Candidate Contact
6. Candidate Profile
7. Presentation of Candidate to Employer
8. Set-up First Interview
9. First Interview – Prep Candidate
10. Confirm Appointment with Candidate and Employer (Prep Employer)
11. Debrief Candidate
12. Debrief Employer
13. Set Second Interview
14. Reference Check
15. Second Interview, Prep Candidate (Trial Closing)
16. Second Interview, Prep Employer (Trial Closing)
17. Confirm Second Interview with Employer and Candidate
18. Debrief Candidate (Closing)
19. Debrief Employer (Closing)
20. Closing/Negotiating
21. Offer/Acceptance/Start Date
22. Resignation Prep
23. Resignation Debrief
24. CELEBRATE!!
25. Billing Prep
26. Fill out Billing Information
27. Stay in Touch with Candidate
28. Confirm that the Candidate has Started
29. Stay in Touch with Candidate and Employer
30. Get the Check
    

Whilst being very "old school" I still use the steps today.

In recent years issues with the RPO model have been well documented. It’s not so much the model itself because the theory is sound, on paper. It’s the execution of the model and competition driving cost-saving promises which can’t be met unless corners are cut or high volumes of lesser-experienced RPO recruiters are hired to fulfill demand. Whether it’s an RPO model or simply an in-house direct recruiter model, the same conundrum exists.


There exists a tipping point (in terms of volume of hires per recruiter) where optimal volume of hire and value add cross paths, after which a negative linear correlation between the two exists. As the number of hires per recruiter increases, the level of value-add decreases. This is fine for high-volume recruiting for junior or low-skilled positions but when it’s mid to senior-level hiring, the tipping point is a serious issue that RPO hasn’t yet addressed.


As an in-house headhunter I would work on around 30 to 40 roles per year when my recruiter colleagues would be working on 100+ roles. The roles that I worked on were carefully selected as being the 40 most senior, niche, or confidential (where it was replacement for someone still in post) roles.


Whilst researching the market I’ve been shocked to discover that this role is still very rare across all industries. I’m not speaking about the corporate recruiters who send the occasional Inmail or dabble in some headhunting techniques. I mean true in-house headhunters who act exactly like a senior search firm 100% of the time working on delivering executive search documents with complete target company org charts, market intelligence, and short lists of the best candidates in the market.


This role, pure headhunting, and the need for it to exist as part of our internal recruiting efforts is what I refer to as Recruitment Value Insourcing— bringing the most value-add recruiting assignments in-house and recognizing the same divide the external market acknowledges in its approaches to contingency and executive search respectively. As we all know, in the external market generally speaking contingency hiring is suited to higher volume and more transactional-based hiring, whereas executive search is reserved for more senior, niche, hard-to-fill, and highly confidential roles. So why doesn’t this distinction exist in the RPO world, or indeed in the in-house market?


For clarity, Recruitment Value Insourcing is about ring-fencing the most senior, niche, hard-to-fill and confidential roles and giving these roles to a skilled internal headhunter who can build out market maps and target company org charts from scratch, cold-headhunt call a long list and create a short list from the best candidates in the market. They will work on no more than 15 to 20 roles per year and when not actively recruiting, can be working with the senior leadership team to put together pipelines of target talent in the market.


Internal recruitment divisions have struggled for years to articulate their value to the internal budget holders and translate it into something tangible. If there wasn’t a struggle, we wouldn’t have in-house recruiters having to deliver 100+ roles per year and drowning in paperwork and process. CEOs all over the world talk about how talent is their most valuable asset, so why do HR departments continue to have to fight for every dollar of budget, year over year having to do more with less (external economic challenges aside)? RPO firms came along as the cost solution but promises of such low margins of cost and then new competition in the RPO world has left the value proposition being lost or at best diluted by the focus on cost.


Recruitment Value Insourcing is not to replace RPO but rather to recognize that RPO is not the all-encompassing recruitment solution it often promises to be. It’s flawed in its blanket solution approach. If RPO focused on what it’s good at (below senior level), it may not have suffered the criticism of recent times.  Contingency recruiters will never be as effective as headhunters for senior roles and vice versa, and RPOs under their current guise will never deliver the best senior hires. Recruitment Value Insourcing can plug this gap and co-exist with the RPO model.


We don’t have to look far to find successful models to replicate. The external recruitment market has made the distinction clear for many years, and the good ones do it extremely well. Senior external headhunters, generally speaking, get paid much larger base salaries (than contingency recruiters) and focus on identifying each and every potential candidate in the market for a given assignment. Contingency recruiters get paid much smaller base salaries and are better suited to volume recruiting. Also, contingency recruiters may get away with presenting the best candidate currently on the market (responding to job ads) rather than having to conduct the intense market map that a headhunter may have to undertake. So if we wouldn’t hire a contingent recruiter to work on a role that required an executive search approach, why are we not refining the RPO model or how we approach senior and niche roles internally and adopting a Recruitment Value Insourcing model?


 

Since the emergence of social media as a recruiting tool, I have heard a number of people comment and read articles that suggest recruiters now need to think like marketers. This is very true, but please tell me something new! 

Whether you are working in an in-house recruitment or agency role, without doubt much of what you do and have done for ever requires good old fashioned marketing principles. I remember one of the toughest things I had to learn when entering the recruitment industry was how to write a compelling ad that stood out from the crowd and represented my client with pride. Marketing is it not?