Three ways startup recruiters can improve their messaging

August 12, 2024

This is a message I received from a tech recruiter recently and I interpreted it as “I’m presenting a rocket ship startup where you’ll make a lot of money if you join. Don’t just take my word for it, Sequoia (big name) is an investor”.

Ok so someone is taking the time out of their day to send you a golden opportunity. Why complain?

Because 1) it’s most likely an automated email and 2) it comes off as a snake oil sales pitch. I’m not necessarily complaining—I just think these emails can be way more effective.

If you’re a software engineer in tech, then these type of emails are very familiar and 95% of them miss the mark.

So what went wrong?

Before we get into what I would change. Let’s explore what’s not landing well with the current format.

1. Immediately selling

Recruiters are going to tell you what you want to hear. Everyone says their company has outstanding talent and is experiencing hockey-rocket-stick growth 🚀🚀🚀. I subconsciously filter this type of content out, so the first 100 words are pure noise.

Here’s a story that will help elaborate: I have a very close friend who left a A16Z backed fintech startup recently. He left because half the leadership was filled with clowns and the company just didn’t have the growth required to justify its immense valuation. He said a lot of the top talent was leaving as well.

Guess which company reached out to me on LinkedIn shortly after he left? Exactly that one—claiming they have an unbeatable product with incredible talent.

2. Nothing unique or memorable

Recruiters spend so much time explaining how well the company is doing that half the time you don’t even know what they actually do. How are you different than other companies in the same space?

3. Including position level information

Sometimes I see a subject line lead with “Senior SWE Opportunity @ …“. This will immediately disqualify the company if I’m a staff engineer. I don’t want to pursue something that I perceive as a downgrade.

Note: I realize this isn’t entirely on the recruiter since the job listing could be made by the CTO at the startup.

How we can improve

Offer something in return for people’s time.

For engineers I suggest nerd sniping them with interesting technical blog posts. Your message shouldn’t be “I’m here to sell you”. It should be, “Here’s some interesting stuff—are you interested?“.

1. How are you solving a problem in a better way?

Ultimately what is the company trying to do. What differentiates it? When the founders pitched to investors, what was the story? Are you able to communicate all of this in a line or two? I’m not sure why, but so many messages miss this. This is fundamental!

Instead of telling me who your investors are, tell me why they decided to fund you in the first place.

Example: We’re a food tech startup that’s developed a patented process to create chocolate without any lead in it.

2. Who are the founders?

The founders set the culture. They are who keep you going when things get tough. Prospects should respect and more importantly feel inspired by their future leadership.

Everyone knows startup = less pay and more work. Amazing founders are part of what adds balance to the difference. I’ve written about working with people we admire before. How many people would drop everything to work for the next Steve Jobs?

Ok but imagine leading an email with that line: “Come work for the next Steve Jobs”.

You need to present information (showing instead of telling) and trust the reader to make the correct deductions (wow these are great founders!).

Before I joined my current startup, I looked up online to see what information I could find about the founders. I came across our CEO’s blog and really enjoyed going through all the content. This really helped sell me on joining because I saw opinions I shared and high quality thinking being communicated clearly.

Serious founders have written work or video work or podcasts that they can share with prospects. Include references to this material in your outreach.

3. Present the team

This is where the majority of nerd sniping can take place. What awesome stuff is the team doing that will make someone want to join?

Are there any technical blog posts written by a team member that you can link? Great people get really excited about working with other great people.

I remember in college I came across a Facebook engineering blog post called The Full Stack, Part I. The post really opened my eyes on how to think about building internet scale applications. I’m sure someone realized posting this type of content would help recruit other engineers. And, of course this strategy wasn’t unique to Facebook— arguably Google did this incredibly well with all the iconic papers they published and memegen’d Jeff Dean jokes.

Again this isn’t something recruiters can control. If the team isn’t doing cool stuff, then there is nothing to share.

Effective recruiting is only possible with a great company

All three of my suggestions are dependent on the company itself. A recruiter can’t do much if the idea, the founders, and the team are all lackluster. Recruiters spend hundreds of hours trying to attract talent. Given their experience they probably know what works best with the hand (the company) they’re dealt.

I wrote all of this only to realize that if a recruiting message on LinkedIn sounds lame. It’s not because the recruiter is bad at their job. It’s because the company has nothing to offer.