Outbound Recruiting Strategies to Hire Faster in a Challenging Labor Market
Between a nationwide talent shortage, a growing skills gap, and the lingering effects of prolonged economic uncertainty, right now is one of the hardest times to hire in modern history.
This is especially true if you’re seeking talent in a particularly tough field like tech or nursing. At the same time, employers are looking to keep a lid on recruiting costs and want open positions filled yesterday.
Ten years ago, my team could make a few quick posts to job boards and social media and have applications rolling in. Not anymore. The hiring game has changed, and in order to stay on top we have to constantly iterate new ways to go out and find those diamond-in-the-rough candidates. If you’re still relying primarily on inbound recruiting methods to source talent, it’s time to change your strategy.
Though inbound recruiting requires less ongoing labor and generally costs less, it also significantly limits your ability to reach passive candidates and compete for talent who are interviewing with multiple companies. The solution? Outbound recruiting.
Whether you’re changing gears from a mainly inbound-focused strategy or you want to step up your existing investment into outbound recruiting, these strategies will help you find more qualified candidates for tough-to-fill positions.
Outbound Recruiting vs. Inbound Recruiting
First, let’s review the difference between inbound and outbound recruiting.
Inbound recruiting is a passive strategy. Recruiters build assets or campaigns once, attracting candidates for months or years to come. Inbound recruiting strategies include techniques like brand building and content marketing.
Outbound recruiting, on the other hand, is an active strategy. Recruiters must continuously perform tasks to keep them in contact with their existing leads and find new talent. Email marketing and engaging in online communities are a few of the strategies my team uses to do this.
Whereas inbound recruiting is a long-term approach, outbound recruiting is short-term.
Inbound and outbound recruiting vary in terms of the types of candidates they’re best to attract. Because inbound recruiting focuses on bringing candidates to you, it’s more geared toward reaching professionals who are actively looking for a job. These people are more likely to take action if an interesting job opening or alluring company catches their eye.
Outbound recruiting is better when you want to target tricky-to-reach passive candidates.
Because they’re not taking their own initiative to search for a job, you’re more likely to win them as an applicant when you go to them.
Related: What Is Inbound Recruitment? Why Is It Effective?
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Proven Outbound Recruiting Strategies to Accelerate Your Talent Acquisition
Be proactive
Outbound recruiting, by nature, requires you to be proactive. But you also want to go on the offensive regarding the availability of positions. Don’t wait for a job opening to start looking for great talent. Instead, consider roles that are likely to become available in the near future and start having conversations about them with candidates ASAP.
Job forecasting and succession planning are two good tools to help you anticipate your company or client’s hiring needs in advance.
Go beyond LinkedIn
Don’t get me wrong; LinkedIn is an invaluable recruiting tool. However, many recruiters rely too heavily on it as their only source for identifying candidates. In a time when every other recruiter is also combing the platform for talent, LinkedIn alone isn’t enough.
LinkedIn also comes with limitations. For example, it can’t help you get in touch with candidates who aren’t frequently active on the platform (or on it at all), which many passive candidates are not. The same goes for candidates in fields like the skilled trades.
We recently placed some education call center roles and a fair number of the candidates did not have complete LinkedIn profiles and several didn’t use the platform at all. We managed to connect with them through a networking event. If we’d relied on inbound recruiting strategies alone, we might never have connected.
To reach untapped talent pools, you need to connect with candidates on platforms where they spend time when they’re NOT job searching. This might include other social media platforms like X and TikTok, industry-specific communities like GitHub and Stack Overflow, forums for professional organizations, and even professional directories like ZocDoc.
Turn to technology
I hear a lot of recruiters push back against outbound tactics because they require too much effort. One said to me, “I can’t spend all day sending cold emails.” In the past, this may have been a valid excuse, but it’s not anymore. Technology makes it possible to automate many (or perhaps most) of the time-consuming outbound recruiting tasks like drafting and sending messages.
With new AI-powered tools, for example, you can comb the web for professionals who meet a list of your specifications, draft a message that’s tailored to them based on their resume, send the message, and schedule a follow-up, all with a few quick clicks. With this kind of technology at our fingertips, there’s no reason every recruiter today shouldn’t be using outbound strategies.
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Refine your message
Email templates are a necessary evil when you’re reaching out to dozens of candidates, but that doesn’t mean they have to feel stale. Use personalization tokens, AI tools like Chat GPT, and even manual personalization to customize your message for the recipient. For example, begin your email by referencing the last job you discussed with a candidate or use a subject line customized with job titles they’re likely interested in (i.e., ‘Sales manager position – gauging your interest’). Or, input the candidate’s current position and some details about their background and ask a GenAI tool to draft an outreach message for you. This can help you if you’re not a great writer and you don’t know where to begin.
Here’s an example. I put the following request into Chat GPT:
Draft an outbound recruiting message to approach a candidate about a regional sales manager position. Customize the message based on the following candidate details:
-5 years experience
-SaaS expertise
-Current position of district sales manager
Here’s what the tool came back with:
Hi [Candidate’s Name],
I hope this message finds you well! I came across your profile and was impressed by your extensive experience in SaaS sales and your proven track record as a District Sales Manager over the past few years.
We’re currently seeking a Regional Sales Manager to join [Company Name], a rapidly growing organization in the [industry] space. This role would allow you to leverage your 5+ years of experience while stepping into a leadership position where you’d oversee multiple districts and drive strategic growth across the region.
What sets this opportunity apart is our focus on [unique aspect of the company, e.g., cutting-edge technology, collaborative culture, or rapid market expansion]. We’re looking for someone with your expertise to help us continue scaling our success.
Would you be open to a brief conversation to learn more? I’d be happy to share additional details and answer any questions you might have.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Best regards,
[Your Name]
I’d consider that a pretty good start.
Not only are customized emails much more likely to be opened, but they also contribute to the positive rapport built on every solid recruiter-candidate relationship.
Related: Best Recruiting Messages to Enhance Your Candidate Outreach
Tap into your ATS
If you use an ATS, it’s probably overflowing with candidates you’ve talked to through the years and acquired through various recruiting campaigns, both inbound and outbound. Many of these leads will be outdated–but not all of them.
Revisit the talent in your ATS and make contact to find out where candidates are today. Some who passed on a position with you years ago may be open to speaking with you again. Candidates who lacked experience in the past may have built up valuable experience in the time since you last talked.
Scan your phone book
You might not realize you have a gold mine of recruiting information in the palm of your hand: the phone book in your smartphone. If you’re like most people, it contains hundreds of contacts you’ve accumulated through conferences, networking events, and social interactions.
Once a month, scan through your phone book and touch base with the people you haven’t spoken to in a while. Even if it’s someone you know from a non-professional setting, you never know when one of your own connections will be the perfect fit for a role.
You can use this same strategy with your address book on Gmail and other email platforms.
Make it exclusive
Outbound recruiting sometimes gets a bit of a bad rap for being spammy, and this isn’t entirely off base. Overeager recruiters sometimes conduct mass outreach to candidates with impersonal messages that feel invasive, turning off polished professionals.
Counteract this canned approach by invoking exclusivity. For example, make it clear in your messaging that a candidate is one of only a handful of applicants who met the qualifications to be considered. Couple that with some personalization to show this isn’t just a template message and you have something a candidate might actually consider.
Exclusivity can be a welcome departure from the all-too-standard form emails, making top talent feel valued and piquing their interest.
Target freelancers
Freelancing has exploded in popularity, but it’s not for everyone. Directories on sites like Upwork are filled with talented people, some of whom might have decided self-employment isn’t for them or who are only using the platform as a side hustle. The great thing is that their qualifications and work samples are usually in their freelance portfolio, which means many of your screening duties are taken care of.
Browse freelance directories for qualified freelancers and make contact to see if they’re open to the possibility of full-time employment for the right position. You may even be able to work out some sort of hybrid role that meets both of your needs.
Related: How to Find a Freelancer That’s Right for Your Business
Leverage colleagues
Outbound recruiting isn’t a solo sport. It should be a team effort involving recruiting staff, department managers, and other colleagues. Get employees on board to help identify talent using referral programs, bonuses, contests, and other sourcing events.
Related: How to Make Your Employee Referral Program a Powerful Recruitment Tool
Collaborate strategically
Likewise, outside organizations can boost your outbound recruiting efforts, and helping one another can benefit you both. My team has had great success forging partnerships with some of the local colleges and trade schools in our area. We team up for events, support each other’s initiatives, engage with one another’s brands on social media, and share referrals. This not only helps us derive more ROI from our individual efforts, but expands our reach and helps reduce costs.
Use your metrics
As passionate recruiters, we’re constantly looking for ways to improve our game, but we don’t always need to reinvent the wheel. The Pareto principle often applies to your recruiting efforts: 20% of the output delivers 80% of the results.
Analyze your recruiting metrics to find out which strategies are achieving the highest ROI, and then do more of them. To be able to do this, you must first have a system for tracking and analyzing recruiting KPIs. Here are two good posts that will help:
Outbound recruiting requires more consistent effort, but it’s what may make the difference between landing an accepted offer and spending another long night in the office scouring for more candidates in the tight labor market we’re living through.
