
Startup advice: cold recruiting - gdb
https://stripe.com/blog/startup-advice-cold-recruiting
======
Jemaclus
> Always have the ping come from a non-recruiter.

I got an email a few days ago from the CEO of a startup in SF. In the email,
he followed all of the rules in this email, including trying to get face-to-
face chat by offering to get coffee. I'm not really looking for a job but I am
open to new opportunities, so I replied and agreed to get coffee.

The response comes from a recruiter.

What? The CEO sends me an email and then hands my response off to a recruiter?
Or did the recruiter send the email on behalf of the CEO? I'm not even sure
what's going on, but it's incredibly misleading. And then when I respond and
politely decline to proceed further, the recruiter tries to set me up with a
phone call with yet another person that isn't the original CEO.

What part of this makes sense? What happened to the original, informal face-
to-face chat?

You totally blew it, dude. _YOU_ contacted _me_ , not the other way around.
_You_ have the burden of proof of attracting _me_ to your company. _You_
should be the one jumping through hoops, not me.

Would you do this bait-and-switch to your biggest customer? If the answer is
yes, you probably don't need to be CEO. And if not, then why would you treat a
potential team member worse than you would treat your best customer? C'mon. Be
smart about this recruiting thing.

~~~
Ologn
> YOU contacted me, not the other way around. You have the burden of proof of
> attracting me to your company. You should be the one jumping through hoops,
> not me.

Yes.

I get contacted by a headhunter that says they know of a company looking for
engineers. I go on an interview and someone at the company asks me very
officiously, "Why do you want to work for this company?" I respond, "I don't
know that I do want to work here. I have a job. The headhunter called me and
told me there was an opportunity here so I came to check it out". The
interviewer didn't say anything, but their expression was slightly shocked. I
guess I was supposed to launch into a pitch about how it was always my dream
to work at that company.

I think you put your finger on it. They present it to you as the CEO begging
you to come work at the company. Then you start finding out it is a bait and
switch, they want you to play the role of a desperate job seeker, begging some
low-level manager for an opportunity to work at the company.

It's a power thing. We see CEO's here and in the tech news complain that they
can't find good technical talent. Yet every part of the job process is
designed to demonstrate they have the power in the relationship from the
offset. They want references - before you have a job offer often, they want
you to ask a favor from two to three people to sing your praises to them. If
you tell them you won't give them references until it's the last step before a
job offer they look surprised. Or they just hand you a form to fill out, which
will be incomplete if you don't put references. They want you to come
interview for hours in the middle of your work day. Often you get there and
they tell you some important person who has to interview you to get the job is
not there, and you have to come back again. You also have to go through the
indignity of not being candid - if you want the job offer. When they ask you
why you left your last company, that your boss was a jerk is not an acceptable
answer. If they ask you about unit tests at your current job, and you say you
have asked management to allow time for putting in unit tests but they refused
- it becomes your fault that your management told you no. And on and on and
on. That I have to ask for a favor from 2-3 former coworkers or bosses that
they give me a reference every time I apply for a job is probably the most
annoying part.

Who wants to go through all of this? It's why a lot of my jobs are at
companies my friends work for. At least I know the score before I go in.

~~~
x0x0
That's happened to me too. My response is "I don't" and then I shut up.

To overgeneralize, though not by much, SF startups suck ass at recruiting; the
standard assumption is the whole world is chomping at the bit to work there,
and it's a privilege to do so. (Though I do wonder how they get that worldview
to comport with endless bitching about the lack of engineers.)

And you hit the nail on the head with the lack of consideration of recruitees'
time. Take linkedin. I interviewed there a couple years ago when I was living
in sf. They wanted me to come in 10 - 3, so basically an entire day of
vacation (read ~$300-$400 I won't get paid out when I quit.) So I had a
nontrivial amount of skin in the game. I also had to borrow a car to drive
there, since I didn't own one. The interviews went really well, and they where
pushy about continuing -- I was privileged to be able to come in a _second_
day between 10 and 1, ie a second 1/2 day of vacation and go rent a car again!
Fuck that; I bounced. But no doubt they're telling congress they just can't
hire locally and need more h1b allotment.

~~~
bmm6o
I understand that it has to be a good fit both ways and both parties have to
sell themselves to the other, but "I don't" implies you're wasting everyone's
time. Even "I don't, yet" is 100x better, and that's still a really lame
response. If you want to be pitched to, just say so.

------
itafroma
As someone on the receiving end of these emails, the point about demonstrating
some knowledge of who I am or what I've done in the opening of the email is
essential. It's almost guaranteed a reply, even if the opportunity doesn't
seem immediately interesting. It's amazing how virtually none of the
recruiting emails I've received do that.

~~~
baddox
Out of curiosity, why do you tend to reply to recruiting emails when they
demonstrate some knowledge of who you are? Although most recruiters _don 't_
do that, it's still fairly well-known (at least around here) that recruiters
_should_ do that at the bare minimum. So it seems to me that a mention of some
fact about my life or work just means their recruiting team is more well-
managed or -staffed. Maybe they tell their recruiters to spend 5 minutes on
each person looking for a GitHub or Twitter account. Unless there's a positive
correlation between the quality of a recruiting team and the desirability of
the job being offered (which I doubt), I don't see why you would reply to
these sorts of recruiting emails.

~~~
itafroma
oddevan and amirmc both point out parts of why I'd afford a reply, but it's
also a signal to me that the person is at least asserting they believe
something about the opportunity, having researched me ahead of time, is worth
my time, even if I don't immediately see it from the initial email. It also
helps me to form a what will hopefully be a useful reply, having at least
partially understood where they're coming from.

Most of the time, I get emails from recruiters for things that are nowhere
close to my areas of expertise or what I've publicly talked about, and they
could've saved both of us the time if they _did_ just spend 5 minutes looking
me up. It boggles my mind sometimes how they thought I'd be interested or even
qualified. I used to reply back to those recruiters as well asking how they
came across me, and usually received nothing back.

So it may just be a gimmicky tactic, but it's one that works, at least with
people like me. I should be so lucky to have every recruiting email
demonstrating some knowledge about me or what I've done.

~~~
baddox
> it's also a signal to me that the person is at least asserting they believe
> something about the opportunity, having researched me ahead of time, is
> worth my time, even if I don't immediately see it from the initial email.

But if they are under instructions to do so, then it's not a reliable signal
of anything except that they are following instructions and those instructions
are slightly more modern than. But now that I'm thinking about it more, I
suppose that is a reasonable positive signal, simply because that means their
recruiters must be spending a lot more time (maybe 5 minutes vs. 1 minute) per
candidate. At the bare minimum, that tells you that they were willing and able
to dedicate more resources to finding candidates.

------
EvanMiller
I occasionally receive emails like these, and I agree with most of this
advice. I will add a couple of personal turn-offs:

* Overtesting. I have received multiple emails from different people at the same company with the exact same subject line ("Hey Evan, let's chat"). I am sure this subject works better than the other ones that they tried, but a little variation would make me feel like I am more than a conversion goal.

* Being vague about the purpose of "chatting". If an engineer emails me and saying he or she "would love to hear more about X", where X is something I've done, it's not immediately apparent that they actually don't give a shit about X unless they can hire me. Don't be bashful, just say your company is hiring. At least when a recruiter (or founder) emails, I know what page we're on.

~~~
gedrap
>>> Don't be bashful, just say your company is hiring.

While I haven't received this (yet), I strongly agree. Everyone knows a guy
who messages you after years of not being in touch, asking how are you doing
and all that crap while we both know he doesn't care and it's just a foreplay
before asking for some favour. I won't say yes just because of that, so let's
stop wasting time and looking silly.

~~~
borski
You are possibly being overly cynical here.

It is completely plausible that the person both cares (genuinely) about how
you have been the past few years, AND is hiring and thinks you'd be a great
fit. These are not mutually exclusive. Not all founders are completely self-
serving.

------
Peroni
Whilst entirely agree with Gregg's approach, I wouldn't use his response rates
as a metric to measure your own response rates. Cold approaches like this tend
to have significantly higher response rates when you are a company like
Stripe.

I would expect that most of the people they are approaching have heard of
Stripe and are familiar with their high calibre team. If the same people are
approached by a company/startup they have never heard of, the response rate
will be very different.

It's still a fantastic approach and arguably the best approach regardless of
how well or little known your company is.

~~~
lzecon
Totally agree. Reputation is the most important factor in response rates. Not
to say this isn't a good approach to cold emails, but expecting anyone but the
CEO of Stripe to get a 90% response rate using this template is kidding
themselves. It's frustrating for recruiters because this is obviously
something they have little control over, but pretty much the most important
factor in their job success.

------
jcurbo
I was just on the receiving end of one of these, but it didn't quite work the
same way. The email started out mentioning posts of mine on HN (met the first
criteria, proof-of-work) and how their company was using that technology,
which was effective and hooked me into reading the email and not immediately
deleting it; but then went into a paragraph describing their company (didn't
meet the second, describing what your company does). It did come from their
CEO (so, met the third). Up to now, not too bad, although it was a little long
and so starts to violate the guideline about length.

The difference came at the end of the email, where instead of outreaching for
me directly, the CEO was looking for my help in filling two engineering
positions they have. It wasn't couched as "we're interested in you and
possibly someone else if you know anyone," it was "I'm looking for your help
in filling these positions." I had a slight negative reaction to this - why
should I help you with your recruiting, when I'm not involved in what you're
doing? (I should point out that I'm not really the target audience for the
type of person they're looking for, either) I wish this company all the best,
but I don't feel like I need to help with their recruiting. I haven't replied
back to the guy and probably won't do anything else with it. (although he'll
see this post, which I'm obviously ok with)

The other wrinkle was (and this is really minor), in the 'proof-of-work'
section, he mentioned seeing a post of mine about OCaml. This threw me for a
minute, as I haven't written anything on HN specifically about OCaml and I'm
not even an OCaml programmer or involved in that community. Closest I could
find was a post I made about type theory, on a story about OCaml, where I said
"well, this isn't OCaml, but..." It probably impacted my overall feeling about
the cold email in a negative way.

edit: I will say that I did get a cold email once from a Google recruiter, and
he pretty much followed Stripe's guide. He got a positive response from me,
including a good follow-up phone conversation. I wasn't willing to move to
California though so that ended things pretty quickly, but I did appreciate
the guy's effort.

~~~
raving-richard
I would be replying to the first email you mention, with something along the
lines of: "Sure, I'd love to help you! My rates are $x per hour, and I
currently have $y hours free in the next week you can buy if you're still
interested."

Or something along those lines. Don't work for for-profit companies for free
(and for not-for-profits, look at how much the top people are getting paid).

------
edw519
Hey gdb,

I have made thousands of posts on Hacker News, Twitter, and my own blog. Every
time someone emails me about one of my posts and tells me about how it
affected them or reminded them of something, it makes my day. So thank you!

I'm not interested in working for anyone I don't already know. But no worries,
I'm an easy person to get to know and with all this great technology, you
don't even have to meet me in real life. I don't have time for coffee, but I'd
welcome the opportunity to talk about our common interests and build (another)
new friendship on-line. Who knows where that can lead us.

I encourage you to get to know me and others like me. I discourage you from
using quick tips and tricks and showing others how to do the same. I embrace
sincerity and reject !sincerity.

Thanks for the insightful post. Looking forward to talking to you on-line
again soon.

\- edw519

~~~
gdb
Hey edw519,

Thanks for the thoughtful reply!

This certainly isn't intended to promote insincerity: the most important point
is a proof-of-work. People tend to be pretty discerning, and can tell if
you're just fishing for a throwaway comment because a blog post told you, or
if you have something genuinely thoughtful to say. The purpose of these emails
generally is pretty transparent, and it's certainly fine if people simply
don't reply.

I certainly agree with you that very often, "looking for a job" isn't a binary
thing for people — they like getting to know other people in tech with a view
to there being any of a number of ways to work together over time. These
emails are often a good way to kick that off while being pretty upfront about
your intent.

\- gdb :)

~~~
beat
This makes me think of the book _How to Win Friends and Influence People_. It
can almost be boiled down to two points:

1\. People are more interested in themselves than anything else. 2\. People
can detect insincerity very easily.

So the trick to "win friends and influence people" is, basically, _be
sincerely interested in other people_.

------
gwbas1c
The best cold emails are ones with a tone that assumes that I'm a busy
professional.

The worst are the ones that present themselves as a golden, once-in-a-
lifetime, opportunity.

------
nbarry
_> Don't explain what your company does. ... Google would never send someone
an email saying "I work at Google, a search company in Mountain View which is
organizing the world's information"._

The Google comparison is a poor one, since Google is extraordinarily well
known, and most start-ups aren't. And even they _do_ describe the team each
position is on, at least on its job postings.

If I were getting enough cold emails that I wanted to filter some of them out,
I'd be likely to avoid emails that made me do work to research what a company
does. A brief sentence about what they do, and why the recruiter/CEO/etc.
thinks I'm a good match, would go a long way toward getting that coffee date.

~~~
gdb
There's definitely a tradeoff there — the flip side is that after reading a
bunch of company descriptions, they all start to blend together. So
counterintuitively, a full description can cause your email to be ignored. In
my mind, it's all about creating a (genuine!) connection with the person, and
being cautious about consuming their time.

~~~
nbarry
Hmm, good point. Maybe there's a sweet spot there where you give enough detail
to explain what your company does and what you're looking for from the person
you're reaching out to, but don't go too long. Like, maybe 1-2 sentences max.
"Our company is seeking to disrupt X industry through disintermediation, and I
thought you looked like the badass engineer who could help us take our user
interface to the next level."

------
7Figures2Commas
I think this is a pretty good approach to cold emails for a company like
Stripe. If your company doesn't have the name recognition of a Stripe,
however, the "if you're up for it, I'd love to grab coffee next week to chat"
close in an introductory email is probably going to be a lot harder to pull
off with most candidates because you almost certainly won't be able to
establish that the value of the meeting might reasonably be higher than the
cost of the recipient's time.

This is why in-person networking is so important for most startups. To make
the most of it, _everybody_ in the organization should understand that
networking is an opportunity (to meet potential customers, partners and
employees) and they should be prepared to articulate a compelling description
of what the company does. It's a gentle version of "always be closing."

Unfortunately, you don't need to go to many events to discover that a lot of
startup founders and employees aren't effective at communicating what their
companies do and why the person they're talking to should be interested in
learning more. And then they wonder why they have a hard time attracting
talent.

------
pyb
The technique also works for job-hunters writing to companies. Your cold
emails should always mention something specific and personal about the
recipient.

------
fecak
From a job seeker approach, I'd think the 'opposite' of this is also effective
(and what I'd suggest). Particularly the proof of work inclusion, which shows
employers and hiring managers that you took some care in the contact. If
someone emailed gdb and included much of this same information, I'd hope that
they'd likely get an interview.

Hey gdb, I just read your blog post about Open Source Retreat and love how
Stripe is supporting the community. I'm a senior engineer with KNOWN COMPANY
on the KNOWN PRODUCT team. Would you be interested in getting together for a
cup of coffee to talk about what it's like to work for Stripe?

~~~
raving-richard
I'm in the job market right now, but being in a country other than the one I'm
looking for a job in, it means that I can't do what you suggest.

But, this is something I really want to do. I wouldn't go in asking for a job,
but just a "I want to know what you do and how you do it (and what sort of
jobs exist at your place)". I suspect it's great for networking as well, if
they do have a job come up, they might think of me...

~~~
fecak
The only part that you can't do is the cup of coffee. That doesn't mean you
can't start a dialogue. Many people got their jobs through this kind of
initial contact and some common interest, often in an open source project.

The best approach, as you mention, probably doesn't include asking for a job
right away. Build some interest first.

------
aaronbrethorst
The last two recruiting-related occurrences that have gotten past the
Spam+Delete stage for me:

* A Facebook recruiter does a copy-paste on an email to an unknown number of iOS developers (including me). This is rapidly determined on Twitter, and the poor person is summarily mocked. A fairly senior FB person reaches out to me personally, apologizes, and asks if I'd be interested in chatting with them. I say "sure," of course. Personal engagement is worth a lot. A recruiter who copy-pastes an email to me and hundreds or thousands of others is worth less than nothing to me.

* An Apple recruiter reached out to me a couple months ago and asked if I'd be interested in an engineering position on their camera/photo team. I declined since I have absolutely no interest in relocating from Seattle to the South Bay, but he obviously had done some research on me to know that—were I to join any team at Apple—this would be my first choice. I was impressed, and replied to give my regrets that I have no interest in living down there.

I get calls and Linkedin invites from recruiters several times per week. At
this point, I just reject any phone call I get from unrecognized numbers, and
delete any email I get from Linkedin. These people are obviously trying to
play a numbers game, which will simply never work with me.

------
lumens
"Always have the ping come from a non-recruiter," is a great point, and key to
pushing your response rates over the top.

Before starting [https://www.mightyspring.com](https://www.mightyspring.com),
which reduces the need for this tactical dance all together, I was a full-time
technical recruiter. Often I found that if it was especially important to get
ahold of a particular person, I could increase my chances by removing my email
signature (which contained my title). Same logic, of course.

Traditional recruiting (cold calls/emails) has jumped the shark. Signal-to-
noise ratios are poor, causing prospective recruits to assume messages are
spam/trash.

It's not that these people aren't interested in new opportunities — they are!
— but only opportunities that match their specific, mostly unspoken, criteria.
As someone on the sending side of a cold email, you're generally not privy to
this criteria.

People should have a truly safe way to tell the world, "I want to hear about
opportunities from Stripe", without risking their current job in any way. We
make this possible at Mighty Spring and call it "Passive Job Search".

~~~
rogerbinns
> ... but only opportunities that match their specific, mostly unspoken,
> criteria. As someone on the sending side of a cold email, you're generally
> not privy to this criteria

You are thinking about the above average recruiters. My resume and linkedin
have a clear "note to recruiters" at the top where I try to articulate the
criteria and explain why. For example I say small companies/startups. Yet 95%
of the recruiter emails I get show they haven't looked at the note at all.
Fortunately having such a note makes it easy for me determine if the recruiter
has done any work.

------
bobbles
I wonder if anyone has gone as far as to simply offer the person a consulting
fee for coming and talking to them for an hour.

eg. I know you're busy, but we'd be willing to pay you a consulting rate of
x/hr to discuss how your experience may help us achieve what we are aiming
for.

Still going to be orders of magnitude cheaper than going through a recruiter,
and potential recruits have something invested in making sure the meeting is
worthwhile.

------
AndrewKemendo
I feel like this post is generally on track, but it still falls into the same
problem that come with all questions about recruiting: People trying to hire
quality people quickly/easily.

Arguably, hiring is the most important thing that you can do, with firing
being a close runner up. This should be the thing that the CEO is most engaged
with, especially if the CEO is doing his job as "culture minister." Now this
doesn't mean that a CEO is the only person who talks to a new hire, but it
does mean that the CEO should be the lead face that interacts with the
possible hire from first contact.

This also doesn't mean that the CEO is only doing recruiting. Ideally the
recruiting team would offer to the CEO a top ten list of candidates for a
position and then the CEO makes the decision to contact and woo the possible
hire until he/she is confident that this person is a good fit and has the
skills necessary.

Nothing is more important than the people in your company, so treat them that
way and you don't have to fuck around with A/B testing emails.

~~~
gdb
You're right: there are no shortcuts in hiring. No matter what blog posts on
the internet you read, hiring is hard work, and requires a great deal of
attention and thought. The bullets I describe are mostly principles to focus
your thinking if you're choosing to do cold outreach — it's generally better
if you can just hire from within your network though.

------
chris_vannoy
Better yet, don't send cold recruiting email. Know who you're recruiting and
build a relationship so they know who you are.

It's a corollary to what patio11 said elsewhere
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7917255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7917255)),
but more than that, if you build a relationship ahead of time, all of the
sudden you don't have to do all the bullshit interview stuff that comes later.

You already know what the candidate's like. You already know their technical
skill level.

Then it just becomes about fit.

No whiteboards, no brain teasers, no bullshit.

------
Ologn
They say engineers receive a lot of these emails, but one of the main
differentiators is unmentioned - they are coming from Stripe, not an outside
recruiter. I get lots of headhunter emails, but only a few from recruiters
working at the company. This is often preferable for a number of reasons.

The proof of work is important. I get lots of automated emails from
headhunters, for jobs or contracts which have nothing to do with my skillset,
that are low paying three month contracts halfway across the US.

It is fine if the email comes from a recruiter, as long as they're internal to
the company.

------
incision
I'm inclined to be extremely mistrustful of messages like this.

As best I can tell, the majority of contacts I've had along this pattern came
from someone's clever 'growth hacker'. It makes sense, a more typical message
is going straight to the trash while a feigned recruitment has a decent chance
of getting me to visit your website.

Though, I think my typical work makes me a big target for this - social proof
is paramount in the public sector and listing a marquee agency as a customer
is a key to the city.

~~~
gdb
Wow. Really unfortunate that people end up doing that. I think the most
important part about cold outreach of any sort is to be sincere (cf
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7917277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7917277)).

------
silverbax88
I love Stripe. Huge fan.

But if I get an email from someone, anyone, at a company who wants to 'grab
lunch' and talk about me working for company XYZ, I'll pass.

I mean, he says this is what has been the most effective for them, so I can't
argue that point.

But the reality is I personally wouldn't ever take anyone up on this.

Actually, now that I think about it, I would probably only respond if it was
an email actually from the dev manager or exec who wanted to talk to me about
working on his team.

~~~
gdb
Thanks for the kind words!

I'm not sure I fully follow your comment — what's the distinction you're
drawing between managers/execs wanting to talk about their team, and someone
wanting to talk about working at the company? Is it the specificity of them
wanting you for their particular team?

~~~
silverbax88
Because who you specifically work for matters the most. And getting contacted
by another dev just reeks of them being put up to it by the company.

I don't want to work for a company that makes it's developers go out and have
lunch as a headhunter. I know I wouldn't want to have to reach out to people I
didn't know and 'have lunch' with them just to see if they would be good
people to work with.

------
hglaser
"As an experiment, we've decided to try out a startup advice column to share
what we've learned along the way."

This sounds really useful. I would love a way to subscribe to these advice
posts (RSS, Twitter, email are all fine) without subscribing to the rest of
the Stripe blog!

~~~
gdb
Yep, I hear you. If this is successful, we'll likely break out a separate
blog-alike for them.

------
natural219
This is excellently written, and honestly, goes way beyond recruiting. This
sums up pretty much everything I've learned about sending emails, and I think
applies uniformly across industries / types of work.

------
nedwin
Hackpad is a good starting point for tracking but if you really want to know
how well you're converting, and automate a follow up email, I recommend you
try out ToutApp.com.

Super simple, super effective for this kind of thing.

------
joshguthrie
As a developer, I like the point where the recruiter is not trying to bait us
with bullshit ("The Facebook of Uber for Porn"). Any mail containing a "our
company does X" gets send to the trash.

------
thinkerer
I dont know. I personally felt it was better to at least give the person an
idea of my background and what I am up to.

It solves the issue of finding someone whos vision is aligned to yours.

A random note for coffee doesnt work that well for me tbh.

~~~
gedrap
It doesn't say that it's over of conversation, we either meet right now or
forget. Feel free to continue conversation online, it's just call to action,
showing initiative. It's easier to respond to initiative, rather than
initiate. And it's easier to convince someone to accept an offer face-to-face
rather by messaging. We are social creatures after all.

------
Zepplock
Hello Greg, I would love to receive one of your "cold" emails ;)

~~~
gdb
At this point it wouldn't be cold!

~~~
patio11
If I can circle this, star it, and shout it from the rooftops: if you meet
someone at a meetup/conference/random coffeehouse or you Internet-meet them in
HN comments or a blog discussion or whatever _follow that up with an email_.
Even if you don't have anything to ask for, just say "Hey, it was great to
meet you. We should keep in touch." Then _actually keep in touch_. Then, the
next time you _do_ need something, it isn't a bolt out of the blue when you
show up in their inbox. (This is, naturally, reciprocal, and you should tell
people that.)

This is Every Sales Occupation Ever 101, but engineers seem to have a cultural
block against doing it, as if sending an acquaintance "Hey, saw your startup
just raised a round / you got a new job / you had a baby. Congratulations!" is
anti-social behavior if there is ever the possibility that that relationship
would result in money changing hands in the future.

~~~
danielweber
You make it sound easy. It probably is easy. But it still seems hard.

~~~
jonny_eh
It's hard in the same way asking a girl on a date is hard.

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siliconc0w
" (Unfortunately, this doesn't mean you should send people a crafted hash.)"

New idea for a recruiting cryptocurrency - prove you're serious by hashing my
profile a couple billion times.

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janthoene
Would be somewhat ironic if this template raises the bar on cold recruiting
emails and at the same time suffers a decline in response rates, given that
everyone around HN ends up using it.

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lgmspb
Thanks for the post, really usefull. But what is the general response rate to
this kind of emails, does anyone has any stats?

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gdb
I've gotten about a 80-90% response rate to the template I show in the post.
With a more naive template, it was often more like 10-20%.

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opendais
That is pretty impressive. I guess more people respond to cold email/calling
than I would have thought.

Personally, I always click spam on that kind of thing unless I've shown
somewhere that I'm actively searching.

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mason55
Remember that his emails are coming from Stripe. If you're recruiting for
generic unknown startup expect your response rates to be lower.

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opendais
I don't do recruiting and I don't work for a startup. ;)

But this is true.

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petercooper
Ultimately it boils down to "be human" or, failing that, "sound human" :-)

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Akujin
There's pretty much no chance I'm gonna go out of my way to meet you in my
spare time for coffee when I don't even know the minimum salary for this
potential position unless I'm actually actively looking for a job.

If you're gonna be fishing for developers you need better bait than that.

