Hey everyone!

This week I had quite a few different experiences from job seekers messaging me about jobs I am recruiting for and I thought - I bet others would benefit from the advice I shared with those individuals.

Should I Apply?

This week I had two individuals message me directly on LinkedIn and ask if they could send me their resumes. While this is great, it’s a bit of a problem for many of us recruiters.

Now don’t get me wrong. We can take your resume and manually enter it into our ATS (applicant tracking system). But here’s the problem. Most of us have our application process set up to collect the information we need to move you forward in the hiring process. When we manually enter that information it does one of two things:

Your profile will be missing information that could make it easier for others on our teams to find you in the system (because you went around the system); or
It creates quite a bit of back and forth between the recruiter and you to get that information and manually enter it all into the system - basically creating double work for you and me.

Neither of these is advantageous for you as a job seeker.

So I always tell everyone to apply for the job first. This also shows that you can follow instructions. Some of my colleagues, over the years, have found it a bit arrogant when people think they are more important than others and believe they can circumnavigate the process. It’s kind of the equivalent of cutting the line. No one likes a line cutter.

So please, apply for a job if you see it advertised and you are interested.

Messaging Recruiters

Just because I’m telling you to apply for a job, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t message the recruiter working on it. LinkedIn has a cool feature, that many times, will show you the recruiter's profile for each job posting.

After you apply for the opening, go ahead and connect with the recruiter and send them a message. If you’re not searching for jobs on LinkedIn, many times you can look up who the recruiter most likely is and send an email. There are tools like Hunter.io that can help you find email addresses.

Be Appropriate With Your Message

I get a lot of messages about jobs I’m recruiting for - many of them are inappropriate. I’m going to put them into two categories of inappropriateness that I see most often.

Overly Pushy

I appreciate directness in a message, so don’t mistake what I’m about to say as you can’t be direct. You can and in fact, most appreciate that - plus you’ll get better responses. Here I’m talking about being too forward based on your relationship.

If you and I have known each other for years and you ask me to call you on Friday, that is a perfectly acceptable ask. I have many candidates that I’ve worked with over the years in one capacity or another who have stayed in touch with me and I’ll absolutely go out of my way for them. There is a relationship present that has been built over time.

But if you don’t know me and you slide into my DMs and ask me to call you on Friday, that is inappropriate. It’s overly pushy and for many people, it will turn them off. There is no relationship. You don’t know what is happening behind the scenes to know if it even makes sense for the recruiter to call you this week. It’s inappropriate.

And if you do stuff like this it will make it awkward for the other person. And I can tell you no matter what profession you are in or what you are trying to accomplish, when you make other people feel awkward, your prospects of them helping you on anything are severely diminished.

No Ask

The other types of messages I get are long pitches about themselves. Think of it like an extended resume summary, often filled with fluff that anyone could have said and doesn’t help me decide if you are qualified or not. That’s a topic for another day, but that is what they usually look like.

But the real problem, aside from vague statements that sound smart but mean nothing, is that they don’t ask me to do anything at the end of their pitch. I don’t know what they want from me. Did they apply for a job I’m recruiting for? Do they want me to look at their resume? Do they want me to give them advice? I just don’t know because all they did was introduce themself with a long sales pitch and no ask.

What Is An Appropriate Ask

First of all, ask for something at the end of your message. The one I see most often that is appropriate for people who do not have a pre-existing relationship is something like this:

“Hi Cole, I applied for your Controller opening in Riverside, CA yesterday. It looked like a solid fit based on my background. Could you take a quick look at my resume and give me an update?”

I like this because this is a reasonable ask. You applied for a job and you’re asking me to take a look at your resume (which is my job). And many times I can give you an update even if that update is: “I plan on reviewing resumes for this opening on Friday.” But many times what will happen is I will take a quick look at your resume right then and there and if it’s really good (matches what I need it to match), even if I am planning to review everyone on Friday, I will schedule an interview with you now.

So by sending this kind of message, you may end up moving forward before everyone else (provided that you are qualified for the job and your resume shows that).

Should I Follow Up With Recruiters Who Don’t Respond

It’s hard to give you an answer that will work for everyone in every situation. Here’s the thing about recruiting. People recruit, no robots (despite common belief). And as long as people are involved in the process, everyone is going to operate slightly differently based on their personalities and their preferences.

So instead, I’ll tell you what I do and why.

I don’t chase people. I think it’s a waste of time. Why try to force something to happen that isn’t happening when I can go somewhere else and make it happen with less friction? That’s a life philosophy for me.

Will I message a recruiter? Absolutely and I would tell you to do the same. But if you don’t get a response, there’s probably a reason. And don’t assume all those reasons have anything to do with you. Most of the time it doesn’t.

But no one likes that telemarketing company that won’t take you off their list and keeps calling, emailing, or texting you every single day or week.

Send a message and move on. The time you would spend chasing people who haven’t responded to you with follow-up messages could be spent sending messages to new people for new jobs who might respond to you.

It reminds me of when I used to do sales in my younger years. I was taught to keep calling and following up with people. But then one day I realized that one of my colleagues was making way more sales than me so I listened to what he was doing.

Turns out he was calling more new people than I was because he wasn’t chasing people and that led him to meet the people that wanted to work with him and forget about the ones who didn’t. Meanwhile, I was chasing people who either had no interest in working with me or who would take several months before they would warm up enough to me to do business with me.

So if you ask me, no I don’t chase people. If they want me, they will call me. I’ll send a message so I’m on their radar and then the ball is in their court. Meanwhile, I’m moving on to other jobs and companies who are moving faster and who may want to talk to me more.

Did you find this helpful? If so, share the love. Job hunting is tough right now. You could be the difference in someone else’s job search by sharing this on social media or with a friend.

How to Search For Jobs [Applications vs Messaging]