Let’s face the facts: there are few things engineers loathe more than recruiter spam. It’s part of what drove us to build a hiring platform that puts candidates in the driver’s seat. Talented engineers take Triplebyte Screen assessments to validate their skills and often skip the tech screen for many roles on our platform. To stand out to top talent, your outreach must cut through the noise and get to the point–quickly.

To help recruiters get a higher response rate from their candidate outreach, we analyzed data from hundreds of outbound messages sent on our platform. Our analysis revealed insights into which types of messages engineers are most likely to respond to. Review the findings below and consider whether it might be time to update your messaging!

The Good

This message was sent by a Senior Software Engineer from an early-stage startup with less than 10 employees. It has a 67% response rate to date.

Note the simplicity and clear call to action (CTA). No pressure. No sales pitch. Just an invitation to connect.

The Bad

This message was sent by a recruiter at an A16z-backed Series A Startup. It has a 2.5% response rate to date.

Note the cliché “sales pitch” and prompt to schedule a phone screen. It's impersonal and sounds more like a "help wanted" ad.

The Ugly

This message was sent by a recruiter at a private company with over 5000 employees. It has a <1% response rate to date.

This message exemplifies “TL;DR.” The amount of non-essential information here is TMI for 99% of engineers. 

Our approach

Triplebyte Magnet campaigns take a data-driven approach to candidate sourcing and outreach. We keep emails short and focused. Candidates love the clarity and brevity about why the role is relevant to them and respond around 40% of the time.

Key takeaways 

If you’re going to invest time reaching out to candidates, do so wisely. Put yourself in their busy shoes and consider what makes your opportunity interesting. Highlight that and ask to chat. Keep it simple and relevant.

Do

‍

• Be personal & address the candidate by their name
• Keep it short and professional; be considerate of their time
• Try reaching out as/from an engineer or founder on your team
• Highlight only the key selling points of the opportunity including recent or upcoming fundraise, remote / flex work, benefits/salary/comp. tech stack, growth of company, how the candidate will grow in role, notable customers, teammates, partners or investors
• Have a clear call to action (CTA)

Don’t

‍

• Be too casual
• Ask candidates to fill out an application
• Mention a phone or technical screen (all engineers on Triplebyte will have already taken a technical skills assessment)
• Overuse tech buzzwords and business jargon
• Be vague
• Write a novel no one wants to read
• Forget the CTA 

Is your approach to candidate outreach getting the results you need to compete for the best talent? The average positive response rate to messages sent via Triplebyte is over 25% (LinkedIn is roughly 5%). If you need a jumpstart, feel free to leverage the following sample template:

Free candidate outreach template

You can fill in this template ad-lib style to up-level your outbound recruiting game. 

Request access to the template here.

If you want to make things even easier, check out Triplebyte Magnet. Built to fully automate sourcing and outreach, it gives you an on-demand queue of warm, pre-qualified candidates and eliminates the need for cold outreach in the first place. To set up a customized search, reach out for a free consultation with one of our technical recruiting experts.