4 Ways to Contact Recruiters for Job Openings

No matter whether you are currently available in the market, I believe that most of us have deeply experienced how tedious it is to apply for jobs.

When actively searching for opportunities, you may call yourself an “active candidate”, as you have been spending a lot of time to apply for positions. However, just because you spend time tailoring your resume, and countlessly hit “Submit” buttons, doesn’t mean that you can certainly gain more possibility in landing an ideal job soon. All you did was basically increasing the base, but with a lot of inefficient efforts being invested. In this case, “passive applicant” should apply to you more appropriately.

How to become an “active applicant”? You may want to reach out to the recruiter who is in charge of the position you are going to apply for. Below are 4 ways you can use to grab their eyes on your profile.

1. Contact Recruiters on LinkedIn

If you applied the position on LinkedIn, and the recruiter has published his/her name on the job posting, it would be much easier. You can simply send the recruiter a connect request, and then further message him/her after request accepted. If you have a premium account, send an InMail would be much faster to get a response.

What if the recruiter didn’t post his/her name on LinkedIn job posting? Or what if you applied on other websites? Perhaps try to get information from the job description itself. For example, if it’s a start-up or mid-sized company, then do some research on LinkedIn, find out who is in charge of HR or recruiting process. If it’s a big corporation, search for the department this opening belongs to, see if any recruiter is specifically working on that department’s recruiting process.

2. Search for Recruiter’s Email

Sometimes it takes time for a recruiter to get back to you on LinkedIn. If it’s the case, contact them via work email would be another wise choice. It would save a lot of time if the recruiter has listed contact information on the job posting. Otherwise, try to find out from his/her other social media.

Actually, here’s a simple way to guess it out – the work email is usually being formatted as [first name].[last name]@[company name].com.

3. Schedule an Informational Interview

This can be used for the situation where the recruiter has replied. If you are really interested in this opportunity, or you want to get some information for other potential openings in that company, then follow up with a personal meeting invitation. Schedule a coffee meeting at the other side’s convenience. Write down all the questions you want to ask. In this way, you’ll make the conversation more informative.

4. Call Them!

Apparently, it’s the quickest way to get in touch with hiring authorities. But I would suggest to use this approach for startups only. The reason is obvious. In larger sized company, HR doesn’t make final hiring decisions. Even though you were able to find that specific recruiter’s phone number (most of the time you wouldn’t), cold call like this wouldn’t make any difference.

However, for small sized companies, finding their phone number is just a 1-second effort (Google!). Although a company’s published number is usually connected to the receptionist, the person who works there might be willing to provide you with their HR’s contact information, or even direct your line to their HR if you were lucky. Plus, small business’s communication structure is quite flexible. Even though you couldn’t talk to their HR or the business owner, leave a message, or give the receptionist a good impression is also very helpful.

Either internal or external recruiters, they are dealing with multiple positions with high volumes of applications each day. Contact recruiters proactively, periodically touch base with them, or at least create chances to have them see your name. It will make your job hunting process more efficient than merely “apply and submit”.