Unsolicited Hiring Tips

We get several emails a week from candidates or recruiters who want to know if we have a position for them.

Since we have never had an open position advertised on our website or LinkedIn, in all cases this is someone coming in completely cold. Which is totally fine, in fact I think if done well it shows initiative.

We do try and get back to people, but honestly, most of the time I want to shake them and say “HELP US HELP YOU!”.

We’ve had emails with varying levels of detail included, the worst (that aren’t very clearly just a bot collecting info) are people who say something like;

Hello, I’m a developer, do you have a remote job

I haven’t copied and pasted that, but I could have.

We often help our clients hire full-time roles, so even we aren’t hiring, there is a pretty good chance we might know someone who is, and if we can help, we want to!

So, to match your unsolicited email, here are three unsolicited tips to help us help you!

Be more specific about what you want

Let us know the role you are actually interested in, full time Ruby development? part time Dev Ops? I know you aren’t emailing about a specific job we’ve mentioned, but in lieu of that you need to tell us the role or shape you would help fill.

Let us know who you are

You really have to link to a website or profile (Github, LinkedIn, whatever), something we can skim and say “ah, they are x shaped, I know someone who wants an x shaped person”.

Honestly, this also helps verify you aren’t an automated bot sent to harvest job roles for recruitment companies.

Let us know where you are

Even in the world of remote work, there are legal or logistic reasons why the country you’re living in matters. It can make things a non-starter, so letting us know again means we are in a better position to help.

Don’t worry about too much information

I appreciate people like to keep emails brief to not take up too much time, but without providing the above information you’re making me, as the reader do more work because I don’t know enough to help you.

If you catch me at a quiet time, I will probably reply and ask for some more information, but generally speaking when I’m in my emails I’m dealing with a lot, so more than likely I will archive your email or respond with a “nope, sorry”.

(I’m actually writing this blog post so at least I have something quick I can share with people to help them in future outreach).

Everything I’ve asked for above you can show in a few sentences.

Here is an email that would almost certainly get a response from me;

Hello,

I’m Toby, I’m a senior Rails developer based in the UK. I’m available for a few days of contracting a month.

I didn’t see any opinion positions on your website but I think I could add value to your team. Here is my website and LinkedIn.

If you feel I could be of use to you or any companies you work with, let me know.

Thanks Toby

Want to work with us?

The best thing to do would be to follow tosbourn ltd on LinkedIn, we would almost certainly post about any jobs there first and foremost. We also share jobs our clients and friends need filled as well.