A Sneak Peek: The Definitive Guide for Email Outreach

Gem's Definitive Guide For Email Outreach is backed by both our own data and by expert opinion on best and most effective practices.

To say that the field of talent acquisition is undergoing a transformation is an understatement. For one, there's a shift happening at the strategic level: Rather than awaiting inbound applications from active candidates, talent teams have turned their focus to capturing the interest and attentions of passive prospects. This approach—shaped by a market that's seeing a growing shortage of talent, with more open positions than there are qualified and interested candidates to fill them—is proving fruitful. 31% of hires are actively sourced, and sourced candidates are hired at more than twice the rate at which inbound applicants are hired.

In the second place, technologies now exist that allow talent teams to measure and analyze the impacts of their efforts, using that data to refine future outreach campaigns. Once-antiquated recruiting processes now look a lot like marketing teams’ practices, driven by rigorous attention to metrics such as email open rates, click-through rates, and response rates. Forward-thinking teams have already implemented this technology, and are discovering vital insights into prospect interest and engagement.

At Gem, we’re witnessing these transitions firsthand. The shifts—both strategic and technological—are necessary responses to an increasingly candidate-driven market. But as teams wake up to the possibilities inherent in both the new breed of prospective candidate and in advancing technologies, prospect response rates across talent acquisition surveys remain low: Only 29% of recruiters see response rates greater than 50%. Your average prospect, of course, receives as many as 121 emails a day. And your top prospects? They’re receiving outreach messages by the hour.

That’s a lot of noise to cut through.

If it’s up to us at Gem, every talent team will soon be internally equipped to discover its own best practices and start standing out in prospects’ inboxes. But we also recognize that it takes time to experiment and rigorously evaluate your sourcing and recruiting efforts. So in the meantime, we want to help you understand what kinds of messages are statistically more likely to resonate with, and encourage responses from, your prospects.

That’s why we’re working on a report—The Definitive Guide For Email Outreach—that’ll be ready for your eyes in just a couple of weeks. It’s full of insights for successful talent outreach, backed by both our own data and by expert opinion on best and most effective practices. What are the characteristics of a “sticky” recruiting message? What drives prospects to click into—and then respond to—certain messages over others? The answers to these questions can serve as a starting place as you undertake the journey of discovering which methods drive prospect engagement for you.

As the guide goes live, we’ll be spending the next few weeks digging deeper into what we’ve discovered while compiling it. Forthcoming topics include best practices for subject lines, personalization, employee value propositions, breakup emails, and more.

So keep an eye out on this space. We hope to keep the conversation about outreach going here, during this exciting moment for the talent acquisition industry.

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