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Startup advice: cold recruiting

stripe.com

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Re: Startup advice: cold recruiting

#31

Post by danielweber »

patio11 wrote: post #24
gdb wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point it wouldn't be cold!

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…

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

Re: Startup advice: cold recruiting

#32

Post by amirmc »

baddox wrote: post #29
itafroma wrote: post #7

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.

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 re…

I suspect it's somewhat like spam filtering. So many recruiters don't do this that it's an easy way to differentiate yourself and get through (as the recruiter). When everyone starts doing this -- having mined info from all your public profiles and auto-generated an optimised mail -- then it all becomes noise again. The cycle behind anew.

Re: Startup advice: cold recruiting

#33

Post by 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.

Re: Startup advice: cold recruiting

#34

Post by oddevan »

baddox wrote: post #29
itafroma wrote: post #7

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.

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 re…

I would imagine it has to do with the level of respect afforded. If I suspect that someone is just cold-emailing everyone who fits [x] query, then I'm going to treat that email with as much time as they gave it (in other words, enough time to file and ignore it). On the other hand, if it's obvious that someone spent even 5 minutes looking at my GitHub or my blog, then I can certainly give them at least 5 minutes in return (a quick "not interested" or "can you tell me some more").

Re: Startup advice: cold recruiting

#36

Post by 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.

Re: Startup advice: cold recruiting

#37

Post by mason55 »

opendais wrote: post #5
gdb wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%.

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.

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

Re: Startup advice: cold recruiting

#38

Post by lgmspb »

Swizec wrote: post #9
gdb wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%.

To be honest, I'd be far more inclined to reply to an email from Stripe (a company I recognise/like) than most other cold mail. Also the advice about including a specific actionable time to make the next step is golden. Telling people exactly what you want converts best in most scenarios.

Yeah, that is true. I believe company name may play a HUGE role in the response rate.

Re: Startup advice: cold recruiting

#39

Post by pkinsky »

jonny_eh wrote: post #13
itafroma wrote: post #7

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.

Indeed. Anyone who even mentions an open-source project that I've created automatically gets a personal reply.

This is true. Even the recruiter who emailed me to tell me that an SBT skeleton project I cloned for convenience was 'very interesting' got a personal reply.

Re: Startup advice: cold recruiting

#40

Post by 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.

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