For professionals, LinkedIn is a platform where they post updates of their work life or share their experiences, insights, etc. However, for recruiters in the human resource industry, LinkedIn is one more giant pool of candidates, both active and passive. LinkedIn InMail (a paid messaging feature of LinkedIn) allows you to reach almost any candidate on LinkedIn. LinkedIn InMail is as basic as any messaging app but is also potentially very effective when used properly — effective enough to close top talent. However, what to do to make the proper use of the InMail? The short answer, of course, is to follow the LinkedIn InMail best practices when implementing your hiring strategies.
Read this article to learn 9 LinkedIn InMail best practices that you should be incorporating while reaching out to candidates on LinkedIn.
What’s LinkedIn InMail?
LinkedIn makes it easier for you to
- Spot the best-fit talent
- Attract them to your job opportunity
- Engage them to get them to apply
- Invite them for an interview
It provides you with a suite of recruiting tools to source candidates. Some of these LinkedIn recruiting tools are free, while others are paid tools. You can start with free ones and later switch to those loaded with advanced features. Additionally, based on your requirements, you can extend your usage limits at will (of course, you have to pay higher costs).
Are you someone who is actively sourcing talent on LinkedIn? If yes, you might already be using one or more of LinkedIn's recruiting tools-
- LinkedIn Recruiter Lite
- LinkedIn Recruiter
- LinkedIn RPS
- LinkedIn Talent Hub
LinkedIn InMail is a messaging tool, which is integrated natively into most of these LinkedIn tools.
How Are LinkedIn InMail Relevant To Recruiters?
LinkedIn InMails can come in handy during multiple stages of talent sourcing. It addresses the common recruiting challenges by making it possible to do the following-
Personalized talent hunting
LinkedIn Recruiter’s InMail messaging feature allows recruiters to tailor personalized messages to candidates or applicants even when you’re not directly connected. You can use templates with variables like {firstName} and {companyName} for bulk InMails to candidates. This helps in effective candidate sourcing, especially, when carrying out high-volume recruiting.
Assist in high-volume hiring
You can send up to 1000 InMails per day through your LinkedIn Recruiter’s project talent pool per month for each recruiter seat that you may have purchased. There are nuances involved.
For instance, the number of InMails is limited to 200 in the first week for new recruiter seats. The default number of InMails with Recruiter Lite is 30 per month, with Recruiter it is 150.
Recruitment collaboration & resource sharing
LinkedIn also allows InMail allocation i.e., how the InMail credits get used by different users (recruiter seats) active under a LinkedIn Recruiter license. This ensures that InMails credit gets optimally utilized. Thus keeping your recruitment cost-per-hire under control.
Analytics & reporting to improve ROI
LinkedIn InMail analytics allow recruiters to track the performance of their candidate outreach campaigns, and optimize the same.
Unfortunately, not every recruiter uses LinkedIn InMails in the best way. Many candidates, often get non-relevant job opportunities in their LinkedIn InMails. The reasons behind this could be multiple-
- Not effectively using the candidate search filters in the recruiter dashboard
- Not properly composing captivating subject lines
- Unoptimized InMail messages
Sometimes, recruiters use the same InMail template for different candidate personas. But this heavily templated shotgun approach does more damage than benefit, as every recruiter has a limited number of monthly InMail credits. With a templated approach, if the messaging in InMails doesn’t resonate with the candidates, it will garner low response rates.
Of course, the credits can be increased by purchasing more InMails. However, LinkedIn InMails are expensive. Thus, the LinkedIn InMail tips we share for recruiters must be incorporated into your candidate outreach strategy to get the best candidate response rate and a good ROI on your LinkedIn recruiting budget.
1. Define Your LinkedIn InMail Candidate Outreach In Terms of KPI and Outcomes
You have access to a billion people on LinkedIn. But it is easy to be lost without a strategy and a clear North Star metric. One of the best LinkedIn InMail best practices is to define recruiting KPIs from the InMails' point of view. Even before you start scouting for talent, you must define the hiring goals and the key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the outreach campaign's outcomes. To define your goals, start by asking a few questions:
- What is the aim of InMails Outreach? Nurturing talent? Inviting for an interview? Candidate-to-applicant conversion?
- Which is your ideal time-to-fill, and cost-per-hire for the role you are hiring?
- What will be your ideal jobseeker persona?
Some of the relevant KPIs that you can track and aim for your InMail outreach campaign-
- A high response rate to InMails
- A high interaction-to-interview conversion rate
- Reducing time-to-hire
- Reduction in cost-per-hire
- Enhancing the overall quality of hires
To delve deeper into the role and relevance of KPIs for your outreach campaign, check out this cheat sheet from Linkedin. Also, do explore our insight on recruitment KPIs.
2. Use Recruiter Spotlights
Once you have the benchmarks set, the next in the list of LinkedIn InMail best practices is to focus on optimizing the outreach strategy for sharp targeting. Of course, everyone uses LinkedIn Recruiter search filter to get a good pool of talent. But on top of that, you can also use LinkedIn Spotlights.
Spotlights is the highlight of LinkedIn Recruiter & Jobs. It helps you speed up your outreach process and its outcomes by refining the search results or applicant list using predefined criteria.
For instance, Spotlights helps you identify candidates who already have a connection at your company, who are open to work, or who have expressed interest or enthusiasm towards your company on LinkedIn.
Besides, you can also limit your targets to active talent on LinkedIn i.e., those who are actively engaging or using the platform. This is important so that your InMails don’t get wasted on inactive accounts.
As per LinkedIn,
- LinkedIn users with an open-to-work filter on LinkedIn are 35% more likely to respond than candidates who haven’t.
- Prospective employees with connections at your company are 46% more likely to accept your InMails.
- Those who follow your company page are 81% more likely to respond.
3. Compose The InMail Message and Optimise It For Engagement
Personalized 1-to-1 InMails work 15% better than bulk InMails. So, add the following to LinkedIn InMails best practices-
- Keep your InMails short.
- Include a precise subject line; preferably something amusingly quirky.
- Maintain a formal yet friendly conversational tone.
- Include only the necessary job details.
Subject lines need to be short and catchy because most candidates will view your messages on their mobile phones. Catchy subject lines are important if you want to lure in a talent who is happily working at an organization. To catch their attention you need something punchy in nature. For example, “On A Paid Leave, Paris Or Maldives?” could be a much better start than “Python developer role at soonicorn.”
4. Be Mindful of InMail Campaign Timings
A right message at the wrong time loses its magic. Therefore, one of the key LinkedIn InMail best practices for recruiters is to find the most appropriate time to text prospects. The timings can differ from industry to industry and across job roles and geographies.
If you are seeking to hire candidates from a global talent pool, you must consider the time zones before sending InMails. Refrain from texting candidates on Fridays and Saturdays. LinkedIn findings reveal that InMails sent on Saturday get 8% fewer responses, and those sent on Friday receive 4% fewer responses than the average of all Emails.
The best time of the week to send InMails is between Sunday and Thursday for a better response rate and engagement. When seeking candidates from industries having low response rates, prefer sending InMails on Sundays to help your message stand out as the InMail traffic is minimal on a Sunday.
5. Integrated Approach To InMail Outreach
InMail is an amazing channel, yet it is always better to stick with a more concerted and integrated approach to hiring. The outcomes can be better if you target the same candidate over a phone call, email, job advertisement, or sponsored InMails. Alongside the LinkedIn Inmail best practices, this could do wonders.
Enforce your message via a job email or cold call to target your candidates before the rest of the network steals your candidate.
A few things you must note while making a recruitment call are as follows:
- Be direct about your job offer.
- Appreciation doesn’t hurt. Make sure to study the candidate's profile and highlight their achievements while on the call.
- Hype them up, ask about their career objectives, and match your job offer to the same.
- Ask the prospect what would it take to get them on board…to cross-validate if the role you are offering checks all the boxes.
By the way, for concerted recruitment efforts, you will need a powerful ATS. Also, you would need to understand the importance of integrated talent management. So, feel free to read the respective insights.
6. Make It Easier For The Candidate To Respond
We talked before about keeping the message succinct and crisp but adding a CTA to encourage the candidate to take the next step can further improve their response rates.
To encourage the candidates to apply and instantiate the application process, add a simple call-to-action, such as sharing your calendar availability to schedule a call or an application form.
Send reminder texts, but be polite and respect their boundaries under all circumstances.
On average, 65% of replies to InMails arrive within a day, and 90% in the first week. The numbers for emails are a meagre 4%. Hence, embrace LinkedIn InMail best practices and keep hiring the best candidates.
7. Track Your Outcomes, Compare It With Industry Standards, and Continuously Improve It
An obvious LinkedIn InMail best practice is to track your activities and map them to the outcomes.
- Tracking responses is useful for measuring the effectiveness of messages. By analyzing the response rates and other metrics, you can know what works best and what aspects of your InMail outreach strategy need improvement. This analysis can lead to a significant increase in candidate engagement.
- With InMail Reports, you can gauge which template is performing the best, or which audience is responding the best. You can collaborate with your team, strategize, and collaborate. Besides, you can also benchmark your performance against the industry standards.
- Lastly, it is important to improve your InMail metrics because you earn an InMail credit back if your message receives a response within 90 days. Response rates matter in the case of LinkedIn outreach, as the more responses on a given number of InMail credits, the higher the efficiency and return on investment you deliver.
8. Build Your Recruiter Brand On LinkedIn To Make The Best Impression Via InMails
While InMails grants you a one-on-one chance to make the first impression on your prospect, they also leave the onus on you as a recruiter to get them interested. When a recruiter InMails a candidate, the candidate's first instinct is to know more about the person and the company sending the offer. As a result, they research your profile and your organization’s LinkedIn page and latest activities.
Here are a few tips to ensure that they are hooked and vested to know more about the opportunity and your organization once they land on your company profile page-
- Actively invest in your employer brand i.e., communicate your company values, mission, and cultural aspects on your LinkedIn company page to stand out to the prospects.
- Regularly share posts around employee experience, client experience, work-life balance, innovative projects, and star partners.
- Optimize your LinkedIn page to give them enough motivation to visit your website to further explore your organization.
Your organization's LinkedIn page can no longer be an optional priority for you if you’re using the LinkedIn recruiter tool to hire talent. It’s a key ingredient to your employer brand. A vibrant and happening presence on LinkedIn for your company page is another top LinkedIn InMails best practices for recruiters.
9. Import Your Candidate Pool To Skima AI And Save Your InMail Investments
Skima AI is a resume intelligence tool that helps you parse candidates’ CVs and resumes at scale and identify the best-fit talent for your role. Suppose you’re using LinkedIn jobs for recruiting, you can import all your applicants to the Skima AI dashboard, and then let our AI Matching Score feature do the magic to help you find the best candidates. What after you have spotted the right talent? You can automate the entire hiring workflow using a range of integrations that we provide. Thus saving on two key fronts-
- You save recruitment hours for your hiring team by channelling their energies only toward high-quality candidates.
- Improve your cost-per-hire by avoiding investment in InMails credits, and rather leveraging Skima AI’s integrated communication tool. It’s not an alternative tool for InMail, but rather an alternative approach to communicating with candidates who are a great fit for your organization.
Try Skima AI now.
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Happy Recruiting!
