candidate sourcing

The Definitive, No Frills Guide to Sourcing

and Nurturing Candidates
Amp up your candidate sourcing and drive results with expert tips
What’s inside

1. Introduction 3

2. First things first: Know what you’re looking for 8

3. 15 places to uncover hidden talent 14

4. Ways to ace your outreach (with real-life examples) 20

5. How Lever Nurture works, step by step 28

6. Tips and best practices 36

7. Measuring your success 42

8. Conclusion 46

2
Introduction

Candidate sourcing is an incredibly tough
job that takes Herculean levels of grit and
resilience. It’s time consuming, replete with
rejection, and full of an impossible amount
of balls just waiting to be dropped.
It’s also a must in any successful recruiting
strategy.
The result: proactively sourcing candidates is more important
than ever.
When it comes to job seeking, 36 percent of the workforce is
“active,” but almost all of the workforce – a grand total of 90
percent – is open to hearing about new opportunities 1. In other
words, if you’re not proactively sourcing, you’re missing out on
54 percent of the talent pool.

Time to fill is rising, CEOs around the world

report skilled talent shortages, and qualified
candidates are relying less on traditional
means, like job boards, to land their next
gig. In fact, many top candidates switch jobs
without ever being “on the market,” and the
ones who do become active job seekers are
snatched up within a matter of days.
To drive results, you need to move beyond one-and-done emails.
In a world where more recruiters are pursuing passive candidates
and talent is being bombarded with generic messaging, any
sourcer who resorts to one-off “Pssst! Wanna job?” transactional
emails is deservedly toast. To earn a response from a top
candidate, you need to be at your most relevant. You need to be
thoughtful and strategic about the cadence of your outreach. You
need to make sure you don’t drop the ball. In other words, you
need to adopt a nurture mindset.

1
LinkedIn 2016 Global Talent Trends Report
3
Nurture, simply put, is the process of developing a relationship with
someone relevant to you, over time, through ongoing communication.

Salespeople nurture their prospects and marketers nurture their leads.

And now, with relationships more important in winning top talent than
ever before, nurture is just as key for recruiters. But while salespeople
The goal of this ebook is twofold.
and marketers have sophisticated automation tools built specifically to
To help you tap into the potential of
manage their “nurture” activities, sourcers and recruiters have been
passive candidates with sourcing
left to fend for themselves.
and nurture best practices; and to
Sourcers and recruiters, you deserve better. That’s why we built Lever provide a comprehensive guide on
Nurture, to help you streamline hundreds of sourcing touchpoints into how to leverage Lever Nurture to
one powerful automated workflow. By making proactive sourcing and supercharge your sourcing results.
nurture campaigns more timely and efficient, Lever Nurture frees you to
focus on what truly matters: building game-changing relationships
with your highest-quality candidates.

4
Meet the experts
For tips on everything
sourcing, we turned to
experts Aline Lerner, Chris
Shaw, James Briggs, Jer
Langhans, and Steve Levy.
Aline Lerner
Aline is the founder and CEO of interviewing.io, an anonymous
technical hiring platform. After spending a few years writing code, Aline
ran hiring at TrialPay and Udacity and also launched her own recruiting
firm, whose clients included Airbnb, Dropbox, Lever, Asana, and more.
Aline's blog about data-driven recruiting has become one of the go-to
sources of information in this space, and her work on the subject has
appeared in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and Fast Company. After
observing some of the systemic issues with the way engineers are hired
firsthand, she decided to try to fix things by launching interviewing.io,
where's she's working on building a community where people are
judged by what they can do, rather than how they look on paper.
5
 Chris Shaw
Chris is the director of talent at Meteor, a web
application development platform that lets
developers around the world build real-time
applications faster than they thought possible. His
career started in the late ‘90s beginning with the
agency world, including his own agency for 8 years.
Chris then moved in-house to recruit engineering
executives at Google and build the sourcing function
at Twitter from the ground up. At a16z-backed startup
Illumio, he built their talent acquisition program
from scratch, seeing them through their $100 million
series C round.
James Briggs
James is Lever’s lead technical sourcer. He focuses
on seeking out and engaging passive engineering
candidates, creating recruiting content, and
developing our company-wide sourcing strategy. Prior
to joining Lever, James supported multiple software
engineering teams as an engineering recruiter at Riot
Games; and, before that, he sourced primarily for
engineering and information security roles at Palantir
Technologies. James holds a master’s degree in
psychology from the University of San Francisco.
6
 Jer Langhans
Jer is the co-founder of Paired Sourcing. He has
over 15 years of sourcing and employer branding
experience at companies like Cisco, Microsoft, EA,
Disney, Starbucks, and Expedia. Most recently, Jer
launched Hired in Seattle and sits on the advisory
boards of startups. He is the former president of the
NW Recruiters Association, and was written up in
Forbes magazine for his talent attraction strategies.
He's blessed with a lovely wife and two amazing
kids. When he's not sourcing up a storm, Jer loves
doing triathlons and boating.
Steve Levy
Steve is an Engineer who crossed over to the dark
side to embrace the roles of sourcer, recruiter, talent
strategist, trainer, and hiring manager therapist
(there's no such thing as a "former engineer"). He
has led recruiting, sourcing and organizational
development at several technology companies with
a focus on startup and turnaround environments. For
some reason, Steve always seems to find his way on
"Top Influencer" lists in HR and Recruiting.
7
First things first: Know what you’re looking for
Jumping straight into a candidate search when a
new role opens up is tempting. It’s the most obvious
first step and can feel like the productive thing to
do – but in the wise words of Elvis Presley, only fools
rush in.
Building a candidate pipeline before you gain a
deep understanding of the role and the candidate
qualities needed will only slow you down in the
long run. You’ll bring in candidates whom the
hiring manager doesn’t think are a fit, eat up your
interviewing team’s time, create a poor, unorganized
interview experience for your candidates...and
chances are decent that the search will end up back
at square one.
So close your internet browser because the one
resource you need (in most cases) is in the building:
your hiring manager.
Your hiring manager knows the role and what’s
needed in a hire better than anyone else, and it’s
crucial to get on the same page as them before
launching into a candidate search.
Here are three ways to work with your
hiring manager to make sure you’re
on track with your sourcing efforts
from the get-go.
8
1. Gather information

Your first order of business is to absorb

as much information as possible that’s
relevant to your upcoming search. Lever’s
1. The search
technical sourcer, James Briggs, suggests
breaking your information-gathering phase Especially if you are new to sourcing for a role, turn to your team
into the following areas: for information on where to find qualified candidates. Even if
you’ve been sourcing for a role for a while, you need to keep your
• The search
knowledge current. Questions to ask:
• Candidate criteria
• From the perspective of someone who’s been deep in this
• Role function
domain for a while, where might you start a search for this?
• The sell
• Where might this community congregate?
• Team member experiences
• What companies are focused on similar products or services?
Here’s what James suggests asking in • Do people in this role go by multiple job titles? What are they?
each area.

9

2. Candidate criteria
Do you value go-getters over
coachability? Prefer process-setters,
or creatives? Sit down with your hiring
manager and discuss the qualifications
you value most, otherwise you simply
won’t be on the same page.
The grid to the right is a simple but
helpful framework that will impact who
you source and who makes it through a
recruiter phone screen. It prompts the
hiring manager to think critically about
the employees they need, and serves
the extra benefit of tempering their
expectations (not everyone candidate
can check every box).
Project/leadership
Base skill set Other
experience
Must-
haves
Nice-to-
haves
To get the juices flowing, ask prompting questions like:
• Tell me about the best [job title] you’ve ever worked with. What
qualities made them so successful?
• Tell me about the most/least successful candidates for this role
so far. Why did/didn’t they succeed?
• What technology proficiencies and specific skills are must-
haves for this role? What can be learned on the job?
Also, don’t forget to ask basic questions like:
• What seniority level is desired? (How do you define seniority?)
• How much does education (degree level, major, school) matter?
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3. Role function 4. The sell

It won’t matter how much of an expert you are on finding candidates The information you gather about the role
if you can’t sell them. Unlike applicants, sourced candidates will help you draw conclusions about what
haven’t expressed any interest in your opportunity – you have to makes a role compelling, but it’s worth
create it. asking directly, too.

The first step in selling is to gather basic information about the role: • How would you sell this role to
someone who’s content where they are,
• What are the functions/responsibilities of the role within the
particularly as it relates to the mission/
scope of the team?
scope of the company?
• What are the functions/responsibilities of the role within the
• What might set this role apart from
company at large?
similar roles in other companies (if
• What is the growth potential for someone in this role applicable)?
over time?

11
5. Team member experiences

In addition to speaking with your hiring manager, conferring with current team members can help you gain a new perspective
and discover other compelling aspects of an opportunity. Ask the interviewing team questions like:

• How would you describe your responsibilities here? What outcomes are you trying to achieve?
• Why did you come here? What keeps you here?
• What are the best/most rewarding parts of your role and team? What are the most challenging?
• How are you looking to grow here?
• How would you sell your role to someone who’s content in theirs? What sets it apart?

This is by no means an exhaustive list of questions, and every sourcer can bring new ideas to the table. For another take on how
to run a sourcing intake meeting, check out recruiting consultant Steve Levy’s SlideShare: No, It’s not in the Job Description:
Sourcing, Dating, and the Intake Meeting.

12
2. Do a mini-source jam
Once you have a full understanding of the
role and type of candidate you’re looking for,
do a sniff test with your hiring manager. Take
the opportunity to review both good and bad
examples of candidates. Go through a few
resumes together (if you have any) and profiles
on LinkedIn and other websites you use. That
way, you’ll make sure that your interpretation
of a desirable candidate translates correctly.
Discussing why a real person may or may not be
a fit may yield further insights.
3. Calibrate
When and how frequently you check in with a hiring
manager is up to you. It can be helpful to sync after the first
two or three interviews to get their input on positives of the
candidates you’ve brought in thus far, as well as what needs
to be improved. The more feedback you get, the more you
will be able to hone your searches and screens to adjust for
the characteristics of your most successful candidates.
In all, the more time you invest in working with your team,
the more you’ll know the role, and the more effective your
sourcing efforts will be.
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15 places to uncover hidden talent

After you know what you’re looking for, it’s 1. Bit.ly

time to start sourcing candidates. If your
mind goes straight to LinkedIn, you’re not
alone. LinkedIn is the largest professional
network in the world and it will always be
an essential tool in your sourcing toolbox.
Anyone who’s ever shortened or customized a link
through Bit.ly also has a profile on the site. Source from
Bit.ly profiles to find information like names, links to other
social media profiles, and links to the content they share.

But have you ever thought about sourcing

on Amazon? Quora? People have profiles
and information all over the web, and it’s
a sourcer’s job to think outside the box to
2. Facebook Search
find them. Differentiating the places you
Facebook Search makes finding the information you need
source opens up new candidate pools,
simple. It’s a semantic search engine, meaning you can
gives you unique candidate insights, and
type your query into the search bar in plain English and it
is often less competitive than the popular
will deliver back accurate results.
go-to resources.

Here are 15 sourcing resources and

strategies from Paired Sourcing Co-Founder
Jer Langhans to get you started.

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3. Boolean searches 4. Google Play Store

A Boolean search operates with AND, OR, and NOT logic. Rarely are emails as easy to find as they are in the
Here are four ways you can use Boolean for sourcing: Google Play Store. Every app in the store includes
an email, which usually belongs the developer who
A. Run a geo-targeted search for a zip code range and built the app.
area code

5. Dribbble

B. Search for resume files and specify by company Dribbble is a website for designers to showcase their
work and current projects. Naturally, it’s a fitting
place to source designers.
C. Find PowerPoint decks with contact information

6. GitHub

D. Track down speaker lists from recent years Engineers share, code, and contribute to open
source projects on GitHub. It’s a great place to not
only find technical talent, but get more details on the
work they’re passionate about.

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 Shrink your sourcing workload
with Lever’s Chrome extension

The more time you spend manually logging

candidate information into a spreadsheet or
ATS and toggling back and forth between screens,
the less time you have to spend on the activities
that deliver real value – like identifying talent
and filling your pipeline.

Lever’s Chrome extension enables you to source

more efficiently than ever before. No more
manual spreadsheet entry or switching between
screens. We’ve built sourcing directly into our
ATS so that anyone at your company can
quickly import candidate profiles from the
web, directly into Lever.

To learn more about how our Chrome

extension supports both sourcing and
referrals, read our datasheet, here.
16
7. Quora
Browsing the answers to professional questions on Going after talent at specific companies? With
Quora, like “What’s the best way to optimize my website
for SEO?” is a clever way to find subject matter experts.
8. Amazon
Amazon book reviews can also lead to promising
candidates. A person who leaves a review on JavaScript,
for example, might know a thing or two about the topic.
9. YouTube
YouTube is yet another place to find subject matter
experts. They’ll post their own videos, or be featured in
YouTube videos in the domains for which they’re experts.
10. Foursquare
Foursquare, you can browse through potential
candidates who’ve checked in at the companies you
want to source from.
11. Facebook Places
Just like Foursquare, you can search for people who
have checked in at certain locations.
12. Google Alerts
Show your dream candidates you really care by setting
up a Google Alert for their name. You’ll be one of
the first to know any time they’re mentioned online,
letting you follow up with a meaningful message that
should increase your chances of getting a response.
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13. Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow is a forum for programmers and developers to ask Pro tip for Gmail users:

questions and get their questions answered. Like GitHub, it’s a promising
place to source engineers.
You’ve found somebody’s profile,
examples of their work, passions, and
14. Meetup.com
interests, but what happens when there’s
no email or obvious way to get ahold
People with similar interests and passions come together through Meetups,
of them? Rapportive is a browser add-on
making it the perfect place to find aficionados of all sorts. Meetups happen
that integrates with Gmail and is owned
in person, but you can also browse members of different groups online.
by LinkedIn. Email addresses often
fall under one of a handful of common
15. Your own ATS structures, like firstname@domain.com,
firstinitial_lastname@domain.com, and
Your own applicant tracking system is full of candidates who’ve already so on. Rapportive lets you guess at a
heard of your company, and many who’ve actively applied. It should be person’s email address in Gmail. When
one of the first places you kick off any candidate search. Keep track of why you enter the correct one into the “To”
you archive people (compensation, timing, wrong role, role filled, etc.) so field, Rapportive will populate with
you can reach out with messaging that will be the most relevant to the information drawn from LinkedIn (like
candidate. It also helps to have an ATS, like Lever, that’s fully searchable. photo and job title). When that happens,
Not every ATS is, which makes locating specific candidates a headache. success! You’ve found a real address.

Find more on Jer’s sourcing hacks on SlideShare, here.

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 Prioritize high-value candidates
with a dedicated “New Lead”
pipeline in Lever

Sourced candidates almost always warrant

different communication from traditional
applicants. Applicants enter your ATS
hoping to interview, but sourced candidates
need to be nurtured. They need fast action,
personalized email communication,
persuasive phone screens, and maybe even
an early touch from the hiring manager.

With Lever, sourced candidates live in a

separate “New Lead” pipeline, so you’ll
never drop the ball on high-priority
candidates again. Use the pipeline to see
how many candidates you have in each
stage, schedule nurture campaigns (more
on that coming up), and see your last
communication with each candidate.
19
Ways to ace your outreach (with real-life examples)

Like so many facets of Step 1. Write down what makes your opportunity compelling
recruiting (screening,
interviewing, Every person is motivated by something when considering an opportunity. The key to
evaluating, etc.) there’s effective outreach is touching upon the right motivations for each candidate. Of course,
no one right way to perfectly mapping your outreach to every person’s motivations is far-fetched, but there
write an outreach email, are fundamental characteristics of a job opportunity that any given person might care
but there are things about strongly.
you can do to increase
James breaks those characteristics into the following five areas. Touching on some
your odds of getting a
combination of these in your initial outreach and follow ups will increase your chances of
response.
catching your recipient’s attention.
Here’s a five-step
• Product/service and impact: What product(s) or service(s) your company provides
approach to get your
(and to whom), as well as the overall impact (and the scale of that impact) that is made.
communication
• Technology and/or problem set: The set of technologies (if applicable) leveraged by a
juices flowing.
role/team/company, as well as the problems being solved.
• Culture & company specifics: Your company’s culture (values, philosophies, work
environment, etc.) and general details (i.e. profitability, investors, size, growth rate,
funding etc.).
• Role scope and responsibility: The overall scope of responsibilities of an individual
in a given role (contributions, projects, leadership, etc.).

20
• Individual development Before you start actually writing an email, make a grid (like the one below) and write
and role potential: down the pros, or strengths of your company and role in each of the six areas. In the
The combination of “Application” row, indicate whether each focus area relates to either your company, the
professional growth specific role, or the team the role falls within (or some combination of the three).
(responsibility and/or
It can also be helpful to note the weaknesses of your opportunity, or characteristics that
“upward mobility”) and
could be perceived as “negatives” (particularly in comparison to similar opportunities
personal development
elsewhere). Doing this will educate you on where you stand versus your competition, and
possible over time.
help you be authentic and transparent with candidates.

Individual
Product/ Technology Culture &
Role Scope & development Compensation
Focus Area service & &/or company
responsibility & role
impact problem set specifics
potential

Company, Company,
Application Company Role Role Role
Team, Role Team

Strengths/
Positives

Weaknesses/
Negatives

21
Step 2: Distill your Step 3. Personalize
messaging
Are you more likely to open an email that says flattering things about you, or one that talks
Next, take the about a company you’ve never heard of before? We bet it’s the former.
information you’ve
And yet, the overwhelming majority of cold outreach is impersonal. A recent study by
written down and interviewing.io Founder and CEO Aline Lerner shows that in a sample of 8,000 recruiting
distill the positives messages sent to engineers, 87 percent were effectively templatized form letters.2
into one or two concise
sentences that hit on Writing a personal message
each focus area. Think to a total stranger is no easy
critically about what feat. For inspiration, think
the most important back to Jer’s candidate
and/or valuable details sources from the previous
are, based on your section, like Twitter, Amazon,
and Quora. Not only are
opportunity and
they helpful ways to identify
target population.
talent, but they can yield extra
information about a person’s
interests and quirks as well.

2
Aline Lerner’s Blog, What I learned from reading 8,000 recruiting messages 22
Step 4: Tie it all
together Jer doesn’t make his recipients dig to find out the main call to action, he
cuts right to the chase with the colloquial “TL;DR.”
Still have writer’s
block? We asked our
panelists to share
real-life examples
of high-performing
Hey, - hope this email isn't breaking up your afternoon flow…
sourcing emails.
TL;DR Would you be interested in exploring a Senior Developer opportunity with us at ?
≠
We run on Rails and need a powerhouse with Ruby. We have a strong belief in TDD and would like an
engineer who writes testable code/architecture. We are looking for someone who regularly explores
code caching strategies and is accustomed to improving code performance. If that's not enough,
how about getting exposure to Capistrano/chef deployments along with mid-tier level with
database table optimization & performance considerations. Lastly, getting to play with front-end UI
(CSS/HTML) and elasticsearch, rspec, and/or jquery. Hopefully, some of this will strike a chord with
your experience/passion. :)

is passionate about fixing broken, dated or ineffective processes using pioneering

technology and experiences. The company is backed by advisors, mentors and investors who
believe that a small company can make a difference.

PS. If you don't find yourself a fit and/or the timing isn't right, feel free to reply & let's sync up on any
possible networking referrals you could toss our way?
Thanks,
Jer Langhans

23
 Hi ,
It seems it’s a bit of a small world!! We’re
We re currently at Projective
W Projec
Projectiv LES and based on your history it looks
like you wou
would
uld
ld have b been
be
een here forr a wh
while at . We’re looking
We ree lo office space now but we
ooking for offi
overlapped with
w the team here
heeere for a good six month
monthshs oor so.
This email from Aline’s crazy
It’s also craz you’ve
azzyy that you
you’’ve working
ve been wo orkkkin
kingg on space to what we’re doing
, which iss in a related spa
at . Where is explicitly
e pliiciitly fashion focused,
exp focused is going for the broader market
study is personalization at and we’re bubuilding
u
uilding cross-vertical
a cr
ross-vertica
ross sales
verticaal sa lees platform that will bbe the Square & Shopify for B2B.
its finest. All with a touch original
I wrote thee orriginal iOS appss and
a our engineering
enggineering team is now five strong, but we’re looking
to double do down
own on iOS with some sensenior
ni talent andnd on the surface it looks like you could be a great
of humor, too. fit. I don’t have much time to code ananymore because I need to focus on being an effective CEO
through scaling
caling the sales & marketing half of the company and repeating quotes from Ben
Horowitz’s blog.
Your [thoughts on] leadership vs hacking [were] also encouraging, especially your bias towards
teaching / education. All the other engineers on the team have expressed a desire to learn iOS and
we’re making Friday afternoon education a formal part of our company to encourage our team to
grow and stay psyched on the things they’re interested in.
Would love to m coffee later this week if you’re free.
meet for coffe
Thanks,

CEO,

24
 De acuerdo con “Visual Networking Index”
ndex” de ...

...in Mexico, IP video will be 85% of alll IP traffic in 2018, up from 66% in 2013;
...total Internet video traffic (businesss and consumer combined
combined) will be 82% of all Internet traffic in
2018, up from 64% in 2013;
Steve’s email incorporates ...Ultra HD Video-On- Demand will be 5.2% of IP VOD traffic in 2018, up from 0.0% in 2013 (353.3%
CAGR).
the recipients’ native
I’m not assuming anything about your happiness at work but I am assuming that as someone who
language and uses deep seems to like technology, you might be interested in how the exploding use of video has forever
hanged the structure and lan
changed landscape of how Educational institutions teach and interact; how
expertise in the space nterprises develop their emp
Enterprises employees and culture; and how Media & Entertainment companies
ream and monetize content
stream content...
to make his opportunity
and how
...and open-so
open-source video platform is poised to be thee superhighway in Mexico o on
highly compelling. hich the above growth trave
which fica contratación - y en este
travels. Por supuesto , el crecimiento significa
omento , significa ingeniero
momento ingenieros de ventas.
o I’d enjoy connecting with yyou here and answering your questions
So ns about and Mex
Mexico.
elp them any way I can (I hav
One more thing - if anyone you know needs career assistance, I’ll help have a
very large professional network). Even from New York. Really.
If you have any questions, please let me know. Thank you very much for reading all the way to the end.
Steve

25
Step 5: Follow up
Salespeople would never be successful if
they sent one email and threw in the towel
if they didn’t hear back. The same goes for
recruiters. Calling it a day after the first email
is essentially a waste of all the time and
effort you put into finding a candidate in the
first place. Send follow ups to increase your
sourcing returns.
Our panelists recommend sending two to
three follow up emails in the weeks following
the initial outreach, plus a series of check-ins
about six months down the line. These emails
should be short, friendly reminders, rather
than being packed with new information or
repeating what’s already been said.
Here’s how Meteor Director of Talent Chris
Shaw suggests structuring a series of least respond positively or neutrally. Sometimes, they’ll offer up
follow up emails.
Follow up one:
Send: One week after initial email
What: Chris’s first follow up is a simple reminder. He’ll use a phrase
like, “Hey, bumping this up in case it got lost in the shuffle.”
Follow up two:
Send: Two weeks after initial email
What: In Chris’s second email, he likes to try some flattery, but also
give people an out by saying something like, “I can't help but ping
you again – we just think you’re too perfect a fit to not message
again. I'm guessing the timing is off here, but worst case maybe we
can figure out a better time down the road to reconnect.”
Follow up three:
Send: Three or four weeks after initial email
What: In his last email, Chris will shake up his subject line with
something like “One last try,” which will often get someone to at
a referral.
26
Six-month follow up:

Just because a person isn’t ready to move when you first reach out, doesn’t mean they never will be. How long you wait before
you initiate a second round of outreach will likely vary based your knowledge of how often people in the industry and role
you’re sourcing for change jobs, but Chris opts for six months – long enough for circumstances to change, but not so long that
a person will have completely forgotten about you.

Remember, there is no “right” way to write outreach messages. The best thing you can do is track what works and doesn’t
work for you.

27
How Lever Nurture works, step by step

Imagine moving your sourced candidates,

in bulk, into email flows with ready-made,
personalizable templates; automating
manual tasks so you never drop the ball;
You can do all of that and more with Lever
and having 24/7 engagement metrics that
Nurture workflows. Here’s how to create one.
help you assess opens, clicks, and
responses across all touchpoints.

28
Step 1:

From the Lead Tab in

Lever, select the option
to create a new workflow.
Note that once you build
a workflow, it’ll be ready
for you the next time you
need it, which is a huge
time-saver!

29
Step 2:

Next, you’ll be prompted

to fill out your workflow
with email cadence (how
far apart you send your
emails), sender (you
can “send for” another
person, but more on
that later), and email
templates.

30
Step 3:

Select the candidates

you want to place in the
workflow and fill in your
placeholder text. Your
templates will save you
time, but this is where
you can add a personal
flair. And have you
ever sent an email with
an embarrassing “Hi
{NAME}” still in the text?
Lever Nurture won’t send
your email if any field is
still blank.

31
Step 4:

Get notified! Sourcers

are well accustomed to
not hearing anything
back, but it can still
be disheartening.
We’ll notify you when
a candidate is highly
engaged with your
emails to shed some
light on what can feel
like a black hole.

32
Want to know every
time someone opens
an email? There’s data
for that, too. Drill deep
into the performance of
your emails with detailed
reports around open
and click rates, and
even which messages
ultimately result in the
most hires.

33
Step 5:

Reply and snooze, archive,

or advance in one fell swoop.
If a candidate responds
positively, great! We’ll
automatically progress
them to the ‘Responded’
stage for next steps. From
there, send them a reply or
advance them to the next
stage of your process as you
would with any candidate. If
they respond neutrally and
you think they’ll be good to
circle back with down the
line, email them back and
“snooze” them for a later
date. You’ll get a reminder,
including any notes you
leave for context, when
the time comes.
34
Step 6:

Start a workflow directly

from the Lever Chrome
extension.

Whether you’re recruiting

for a particular function on
an ongoing basis or you’ve
depleted your candidate
list without landing a hire,
the next time you start
sourcing, Lever’s Chrome
extension awaits.

The moment you source a

candidate, you can place
them into a workflow and
customize your messaging
right from within the
To see Lever Nurture in action, request a demo and we’ll follow up right away.
Chrome extension –
without ever leaving the
site you’re sourcing from.
35
Tips and best practices

How long should your

messages be? When
should you send them?
How soon should
you follow up? Every
Subject lines
company and offer is
unique, so nothing All your work will be for naught (or close to naught) without an effective subject line. Your
will be more helpful in subject line should always be relevant. “People should know what they’re getting into
finding answers to your when they open an email,” says Jer, “Anything less will mislead them, and you don’t want
sourcing questions to start with that tension.” Something catchy may get people to open your email, but if it
than running your own doesn’t jive with the content inside, responses likely won’t be positive.
tests, but we did some
Jer also notes that a subject line that works well for one company or position may not
research and asked
work as well for the next. When Jer worked at Starbucks, for example, he wrote very
our experts for tips
straightforward headlines like “Supply chain opportunity in Seattle at HQ,” because any
and best practices
email that came from an @starbucks.com domain had a high chance of getting opened,
to get you started.
and he didn’t want his recruiting email getting mistaken for a marketing one. At smaller
companies, he’ll get more creative.

Ultimately, if you’re wondering about the efficacy of a subject line tactic – like using
“Quick question,” or including a person’s name – the best way to find out is to A/B test it.

36
Length Time and day

While there’s no correct length, The best time to reach out to candidates will vary based on who you
it’s a good rule of thumb to keep speak with.
your messages as short and sweet
Chris will generally send his first email on a Sunday evening, when top
as possible. According to Chris,
performers might be trying to get ahead of their work for the week, or a
you can usually touch upon all of
Monday morning, when he’s betting that job dissatisfaction for people
the essentials – personalization,
who are unhappy in their current roles is particularly high. He also
something compelling about the
suggests testing sends between 7:00 - 9:00 AM, when people are on their
opportunity, and a call to action in
commute to work.
about five to 10 sentences.
Jer takes a different approach. He cautions against Mondays because
And here’s Jer’s (very literal) rule
people are typically busy and not paying much mind to anything but
of thumb: If it takes you more than
essential emails. The sweet spot, he says, is Tuesday through Thursday
two flicks of your thumb to read a
during business hours. He acknowledges that reaching people outside of
message on your cell phone, then
business hours might get people to open an email, but says it doesn’t do
it’s too long.
much to elicit a positive response.

37
A study of InMail response rates by LinkedIn found a few interesting nuggets. First, InMail messages sent on Saturdays are
16 percent less likely to get a response compared to those sent earlier in the work week. And second, you’re about 12 percent
more likely to get a response between 9:00 and 10:00 AM on a Thursday than on a Friday afternoon.3

Aside from the unanimous advice not to send emails on a Friday afternoon, there’s once again no definitive answer to this
question. In fact, varying the time and day you send emails can be a good strategy in itself. “Different times appeal to different
types of people,” says Chris, “For example, morning people might check their email early in the day. Others might catch up on
emails during lunch or after hours. That’s why you vary send times.”

3
The Recruiter’s Guide to Writing Effective LinkedIn InMails
38
 “Send for” with Lever
Nurture

The more that hiring managers and influential

people in your company can be involved in the
recruiting process, the better – from the initial
screen to the onsite interview. But they’re busy
people and often don’t have time to source
candidates themselves. Sending the initial
outreach for a hiring manager is an effective
way to leverage their influence and kickstart
the conversation, without consuming their
time – and you can with Lever Nurture. After
you ask for a person’s permission to do so
once, you’re all set. And throughout a multi-
touchpoint Lever Nurture workflow, you can
send messages for different members of the
team – the hiring manager, the recruiter, a
peer even. Diversifying the voices from Whatever you do, try to avoid sending from an impersonal
your company may increase the chances address like “info@domain.co.” A candidate won’t feel
of a response. compelled to respond if they think they’re the target of a
bulk emailing campaign.
39
Outreach etiquette FAQ
Should I mention compensation?
Unless you recruit for a company that can pay top
market salaries, Chris points out that there’s little
upside to opening with salary information. When
you put a salary range, you’re likely to attract
people who don’t make that money currently and
who might be more junior than you want. On the
other hand, you risk losing people who make more
than what you’re offering. “Get a person excited
and interested in what you’re doing first,” says
Chris. “The money should be the last thing you
talk about.”
How formal should I be?
If your employer brand doesn’t dictate much about
tone one way or the other, it may be more effective to
err on the side of informality. Aline’s study shows that
informal emails, can actually outperform more formal
ones. In fact, an informal email from a recruiter that
strikes the right tone can get more responses than a
relatively more formal email from a hiring manager.
See a comparison, below.
40
Recruiter: Hiring manager:

Aline’s advice? If you can’t go personalized, at least go

enthusiastic.

41
Measuring your success

Sourcing is a tough endeavor

and there’s no precise way to 1. Know your conversion rates
do it right, but through careful
analysis, meticulous testing, Are there places where my recruiting process is too lenient? Too
and constant calibration, you strict? Am I making good use of my team’s time?
can improve your results. The key to answering these questions and optimizing your process
is to track your conversion rates throughout every stage of your
Here are three ways to measure
sourcing funnel.
your efforts and identify ways
to take your sourcing game to
the next level.

42
Here are six related metrics to track:
• Candidates sourced to positive
response rate
• Positive response to phone screen
rate
• Phone screen to interview rate
• Interviews to offers extended rate
• Offers extended to hires rate
• Candidates sourced to hired
(How many sourced candidates
it takes to reach one hire) How do you extract meaning from the numbers? Instead of looking for
particular percentages at each stage – because conversion rates will always
All of these metrics, and more, vary across role, industry, time of year, and countless other factors – Chris
are tracked 24/7 in Lever. recommends watching out for big dropoffs in the process. “If 90 percent of
candidates get through the phone screen to an interview and only 10 percent
of interviewees receive an offer, that tells me the phone screen stage wasn’t
done right,” says Chris. Similarly, if you receive 50 positive responses and
only three get through the phone screen, it indicates something’s going
wrong at the initial research phase. Moral of the story: Keep a close eye on
your conversion rates. They’re key to spotting (and improving) inefficiencies
in your process.

43
 2. Keep tabs on your
sources of hire

You won’t know your best sources of hire

– and therefore where to invest more of
your sourcing time – unless you track
them. To most effectively measure your
best sources of hire, beware of simply
tracking which sources have led to the
highest number of hires. If most of your
candidates come from one website
currently it would make sense that most
of your sourced hires come from that
website as well – that doesn’t make it
the smartest place to spend your time.
Instead, track which source has the
best candidate-to-hire conversion
rate. With this information in hand,
you can adjust the time and
resources you invest in various
sources appropriately.
44
 3. Trade in time to hire for pipeline speed

Time to hire is one of the most common ways for recruiting teams to measure their efficiency. The faster a company makes a
hire, the better (provided you keep an eye on quality). But while time to hire is an effective measure of success for traditional
“applicant” candidates who enter your pipeline ready to interview, it’s much less helpful for sourced candidates. A sourcer or
recruiter can be in touch with a sourced candidate for weeks, even months before they’re ready to interview. A more effective
metric is pipeline speed, the time it takes to hire a candidate from the first interview, all the way through to offer acceptance.
This way, you only track for speed once a candidate is truly engaged.

45
Spread your sourcing wings

You know how to kick off a candidate search to maximize efficiency, how to search for talent in creative places, how to craft effective
outreach, and how to measure your efforts to boost success. Now, it’s time to go out and apply these practices in the real world!

If you’re a sourcer who’s never dropped a ball or forgotten to send a follow up, then you are superhuman. For the mere mortals,
we understand that when you’re tracking literally hundreds of touchpoints across different stages in the process every hour of
every day, things are bound to slip through the cracks.
46
We’d love to show you how Lever Nurture can help.

To see how Lever Nurture will speed up every nook and cranny of your sourcing strategy, request a demo and we’ll be in touch!

Or, email sales@lever.co, call +1.415.458.2731, or visit https://lever.co.

About Lever
Founded in 2012 and headquartered in San Francisco, Lever helps companies scale and share hiring through effortless
collaboration. We’ve designed our software to be modern, clean, data-driven and hiring manager-friendly.

Lever supports over a thousand companies around the world from startup to enterprise in proactively sourcing, nurturing and hiring
the right talent. Among the factors that make Lever different from traditional ATS products:

ATS and CRM in one

As well as including all the functionality you’d expect in an applicant tracking system, Lever offers comprehensive tools to help you
source and nurture passive talent until they’re ready to become candidates.

Built for collaboration

Half the recruiting battle is keeping everybody on the same page. Lever helps hiring managers and recruiters stay in touch through
multiple features like @ mentions, job following and two-way email sync.

Intuitive reporting
Lever provides powerful analytics to help you assess and improve the way you recruit. Use our interactive dashboards to strategize
with your hiring managers and drill down quickly to the insights that matter.

© Lever 2016. All Rights Reserved.