Identify the goals of your email
While emailing is generally used by recruiters during a first contact (after a search in a CV database or in response to an application, for example), it can also be used to decline several applications for the same position. Here, we will discuss emailing only.
Before writing your email, you will need to consider all the consequences that your email may have in the candidate's mind: Will he or she be intrigued by the position? Will they find you sympathetic, or on the contrary, unpleasant? Will they want to learn more about your company? If they do, what will they find? Is your message consistent with your company's values and culture? If he or she does not live in Luxembourg, will he or she want to discover this country?
All these questions are essential for your preliminary reflection and therefore for your writing.
Some recruiters think that emailing is an excellent way to contact candidates quickly and without wasting time. We will see that an emailing written "in a hurry" can have serious consequences on your communication and your future reputation among talents, which will turn your original time saving into a considerable waste of time to make up for the damage caused.
Your guideline, your objective, must be above all to create a positive, welcoming exchange in order to make the people you contact want to respond to you.
How to achieve that?
1. Targeting:
Just like a marketing emailing, a recruitment emailing must focus on a relevant target in order to personalize it as much as possible. It is important to spend time on the selection of CVs, so that it is the most adapted to your job offer. Quality should always come before quantity. By proposing a job offer to a poorly targeted candidate, or by writing a message that is not adapted, the risk is to scare away the best candidates or to attract the least relevant ones. The goal of this approach is to initiate a recruitment process, starting with a selection of ideal candidates and keeping them until the end. If, right from the start, you select the least relevant candidates, you will waste your time, and the candidates' time.
The risk is therefore to give a bad image of your company, which will potentially push the profiles to turn to your competitors, or even, to speak about your company in a negative way to their entourage.
2. The content:
There are two elements that considerably increase the opening rate of an email. Firstly, the subject of the email should be concise, clear and, if possible, slightly intriguing in order to make your reader want to open your email and discover its content. Secondly, personalization should also be implemented, even on a small scale. Depending on the profiles you are looking for, you can afford to use a less formal (yet professional) style.
Here are our examples:
- {First name}, how would you like to join our team?
- {First name}, become our future Java developer!
If you prefer a more classical style, you can opt for the following propositions:
- Job offer: Java developer
- Job offer in Luxembourg city
Once your object is found, let's move on to the last part: the body of the email.
In an approach mail, it is essential to include a short description of yourself (your position) and the company. This can be done in the introduction.
Once again, personalization and precision will have an important role to play. For example, you can continue your email by specifying what motivated you to write to this person, where did you find the candidate's CV and why you are writing to him or her.
You can then quickly devote a few lines to the job description, its location, one or two main missions, the team you are recruiting for... The goal is to make people want to join, not to reveal everything.
We recommend that you be concise in your writing: a maximum of ten lines will be sufficient, and will save everyone's time.
If your goal is to propose an interview or a call, there are two possibilities: you can indicate the technical details (with whom will the interview take place, in what format, on what platform if it's a video conference...) as well as several proposals of dates and times (or better, a link to your calendar so that he can choose his availability like Calendly), or you can simply ask that person a question about his/her availability and propose him/her to come back to you.
Finally, don't forget to include your contact information in order to be contacted quickly: your first name, last name, email address, phone number, and why not your LinkedIn profile.
3. Authenticity
Show the person that you had time to look at their profile (for real) by holding on to an important element in their CV (a certification, a project, a specific skill, a diploma...) It is necessary to keep it simple and transparent in the content and the way of writing.
To help you, we have prepared a few examples, don't hesitate to use them as inspiration!
Example 1:
Job offer: Java Developer
Hello {First name},
I am Jérémy, recruitment manager at XYZ, a company based in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and specialized in website design since 2012.
I'm taking the liberty to contact you because your profile and especially your development skills have caught my full attention.
As a growing company, our team is currently looking for a senior Java developer, who could evolve on missions of management, analysis and development of our future projects, up to the production with customers.
I would like to schedule a short phone interview with you to discuss further about your career path as well as the position and missions. Would you be available during one of these slots?
On 20/11 at 10am or 5pm.
On 23/11 at 2pm.
I remain at your disposal for any question and wish you a good day.
Sincerely yours,
Jérémy
Recruitment Officer, XYZ
+35262123456789
jeremy@xyz.com
Find me on LinkedIn
Example 2:
{First name}, become our future Java developer!
Hello {First name},
How would you like to join a fast-growing web design company based in the center of Luxembourg?
Indeed, the XYZ team is currently looking for his next web development specialist, with a good command of the JAVA environment in general.
If you want to know more about the offer and its missions, please do not hesitate to answer me by email so that we can arrange a phone interview.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely,
Jérémy
Recruitment Officer, XYZ
+35262123456789
jeremy@xyz.com
Find me on LinkedIn
