The Mercury Method

Sourcing & nurturing candidates

Prepared by Nicole Seo

For Propel

8 March 2021

Introduction

Hi! My name’s Nicole.

I’m an ex-engineer / ex-PM turned recruiting specialist. I now run a boutique recruiting consultancy for startups called Mercury Constant.

Agenda

Setting up your systems

Sourcing candidates

Nurturing candidates

Setting up your systems

The first step in creating a sustainable outbound motion is to set up an “outreach stack”, or a set of tools that will allow you to reach out to passive candidates quickly and efficiently.

Let’s start by understanding what the outreach process entails.

Outbound motion

Step 1: Source passive candidates

Find candidates who aren’t actively on the market

Step 2: Find emails

Attempt to find the candidate’s personal email address

Step 3: Reach out to candidates

Use an automated drip campaign with multiple follow ups

Step 4: Integrate with ATS

Move candidates who enter your process to your ATS

Relevant tools

Step 1: Source passive candidates

LinkedIn Recruiter, Google boolean search, sourcing platforms

Step 2: Find emails

Gem, ContactOut, Hiretual/HireEZ

Step 3: Reach out to candidates

Gem, Lever Nurture, Interseller

Step 4: Integrate with ATS

Lever, Greenhouse

Sourcing tools

Step 1: Source passive candidates

Find candidates who aren’t actively on the market

Email-finding tools

Step 2: Find emails

Attempt to find the candidate’s personal email address

Nurture tools

Step 3: Reach out to candidates

Use an automated drip campaign with multiple follow ups

Greenhouse users

Step 1: Source passive candidates

Google boolean search

Step 2: Find emails

Gem

Step 3: Reach out to candidates

Gem

Step 4: Integrate with ATS

Greenhouse

Lever users

Step 1: Source passive candidates

Google boolean search

Step 2: Find emails

Hiretual/HireEZ or ContactOut

Step 3: Reach out to candidates

Lever

Step 4: Integrate with ATS

Lever

Sourcing candidates

Google boolean search is the most flexible and affordable way to source candidates—and anyone on your team can learn how to do it!

Boolean search strings

"engineering manager" "(san francisco" OR "SF bay area” OR “SF)" AND "(data" OR "platform" OR "api)" -intitle:"profiles" -inurl:"dir/ " site:www.linkedin.com/in/ OR site:www.linkedin.com/pub/

"consultant" "(new york" OR "greater new york city area)" AND "(deloitte" OR "ey" OR "mckinsey" OR "accenture)" AND "(healthcare" OR "health plans" OR "payers)" -intitle:"profiles" -inurl:"dir/ " site:www.linkedin.com/in/ OR site:www.linkedin.com/pub/

"infrastructure engineer" "(new york" OR "greater new york city area)" AND "(kubernetes" OR "k8)" AND "(azure" OR "aws)" -intitle:"profiles" -inurl:"dir/ " site:linkedin.com/in/ OR site:linkedin.com/pub/

"technical customer success manager" "(new york" OR "greater nyc area)" AND "(data" OR "technical" OR "saas" OR "b2b" OR "enterprise)" -intitle:"profiles" -inurl:"dir/ " site:www.linkedin.com/in/ OR site:www.linkedin.com/pub/

Reading boolean strings

"engineering manager" "(san francisco" OR "SF bay area” OR “SF)" AND "(data" OR "platform" OR "api)" -intitle:"profiles" -inurl:"dir/ " site:www.linkedin.com/in/ OR site:www.linkedin.com/pub/

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Role title

Location group

Concatenator

Keyword group

Standard LI search parameters

​

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Reading boolean strings

"infrastructure engineer" OR “devops engineer” "(new york" OR "greater new york city area” OR “NYC)" AND "(kubernetes" OR "k8)" AND "(azure" OR "aws)" -intitle:"profiles" -inurl:"dir/ " site:linkedin.com/in/ OR site:linkedin.com/pub/

Reading boolean strings

"infrastructure engineer" OR “devops engineer” "(new york" OR "greater new york city area” OR “NYC)" AND "(kubernetes" OR "k8)" AND "(azure" OR "aws)" -intitle:"profiles" -inurl:"dir/ " site:linkedin.com/in/ OR site:linkedin.com/pub/

=

NYC-based infra or devops engineer with experience in Kubernetes and AWS

Reading boolean strings

"consultant" "(new york" OR "greater new york city area” OR “NYC)" AND "(deloitte" OR "ey" OR "mckinsey" OR "accenture)" AND "(healthcare" OR "health plans" OR "payers)" -intitle:"profiles" -inurl:"dir/ " site:www.linkedin.com/in/ OR site:www.linkedin.com/pub/

Reading boolean strings

"consultant" "(new york" OR "greater new york city area” OR “NYC)" AND "(deloitte" OR "ey" OR "mckinsey" OR "accenture)" AND "(healthcare" OR "health plans" OR "payers)" -intitle:"profiles" -inurl:"dir/ " site:www.linkedin.com/in/ OR site:www.linkedin.com/pub/

=

NYC-based consultants from Deloitte, EY, McKinsey, or Accenture who have healthcare experience

Learning how to boolean search

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Recruit’em

www.recruitin.net

Using Recruit’em

Job title field

• Only search for one "level" at a time. e.g. "staff software engineer OR principal software engineer" instead of "staff software engineer OR junior engineer"
• Use the wildcard * to broaden your search. e.g. "staff * designer OR principal * designer" to find product designers, UX designers, UX/UI designers, etc.

Location or keywords field

• This should be your primary field used. Put location strings first, then keyword strings.
• Locations should include different abbreviations for the city, e.g. "new york OR greater NYC area"
• Try to avoid using more than 1 location group and 2 keyword groups
• Include past companies in this field if you’d like to target specific companies

Using Recruit’em

Keywords to exclude field

• This formatting is out of date, so don't use this field. Instead, add "AND -[keyword]" to your string to exclude certain keywords.

Education field

• I don't use this field so haven't validated its usefulness

Current Employer field

• Broken. Do not use. Put current employer in the Location or keywords field instead.

Tip: Track and evolve your strings!

Nurturing candidates

Once you’ve found passive candidates you’re interested in, here comes the hard part—reaching out to them. The key here is personalization. Putting in a little extra effort goes a long way in getting candidates to respond to you.

Nurture basics

What are they?

Structure

Cadence

Target

Senders

Send times

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Nurtures are drip campaigns sent to passive candidates (i.e. recruiting emails!)

3–4 touchpoints

3–4 days apart

Candidate’s personal email, work email, or InMail (in order of preference)

Hiring manager, company leader

1. Mon – Thu: 8pm
2. Sat – Sun: 8am, 3pm
3. Mon – Fri: 6am

Anatomy of a nurture email

Subject line

1st Paragraph

2nd Paragraph

Closing

Post-script

Open to connecting?, Your work at XXX, Love your work in XXX!

Flattery, make the candidate feel seen/heard, introduce why you are reaching out

Context about you/your company and why they should care

Call to action: Let me know if you’d be interested in chatting!

Use to append reading material that the candidate might be interested in

Sample nurture

Example

Hi {{CANDIDATE_FIRST_NAME}},

I was really impressed by the description of your work at {{COMPANY}}. It sounds like you’ve tackled some interesting problems and made a huge impact—congratulations on launching {{FEATURE}}! I was wondering if you would be open to chatting about an opportunity to work together… I’m looking for talented {{ROLE}} to join my team as an early hire, and your experience building complex features for a B2B product made me think you’d be a great fit for the role.

For some context, I’m {{NAME}}, a {{ROLE}} at {{COMPANY}}. We’ve raised {{FUNDING}} to help us accomplish our mission to {{MISSION STATEMENT}}, and we’re rapidly growing our team. I think you could make a huge impact as a {{ROLE}} on our team, and I’d love to chat with you about the opportunity!

Let me know if you’d be open to connecting. Hope to hear from you soon!

Cheers,

{{NAME}}

P.S. You can read more about our company values here!

Work nurture

Modified example

Hi {{CANDIDATE_FIRST_NAME}},

First off, I’m so sorry to be emailing you at work—I couldn’t find a personal address but couldn’t help reaching out. I was really impressed by the description of your work at {{COMPANY}}. It sounds like you’ve tackled some interesting problems and made a huge impact—congratulations on launching {{FEATURE}}! It gave me the sense that you might be interested in some of the problems we’re tackling here at {{COMPANY}}, so I thought I’d reach out to see if you’d be open to connecting.

For some context, I’m {{NAME}}, a {{ROLE}} at {{COMPANY}}. We’ve raised {{FUNDING}} to help us accomplish our mission to {{MISSION STATEMENT}}. I’d love to find some time to chat and get your perspective on what we’re doing.

Let me know if you’d be open to connecting. Hope to hear from you soon!

Cheers,

{{NAME}}

Personalization areas

Current/past work

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I was really impressed by the work you’re doing at XXX—building the FE for a dashboard product is no easy feat, and I’m sure you’re tackling some interesting challenges!

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Career trajectory

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I was really impressed by your progression at XXX—I noticed that you were promoted 3 times in 3 years while you were there, which I’m sure speaks volumes about your work!

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Recommendations

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I was struck by the recommendation that Phil left you on LinkedIn—it’s clear that you’re a great leader as both an IC and a manager, which must make you a huge asset to your team.

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About me/bio

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I was struck by your passion for the People Ops space—I can tell by your LinkedIn bio that you take pride in bringing a huge amount of empathy to your work, which I think is great!

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Performance benchmarks

Open rates

Response rates

Positive response rates

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Sourcing rate

Writing rate

85–95%

20–30% (engineering), 30–50+% (non-engineering)

5–15% (engineering), 10–20% (non-engineering)

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20–30 profiles/hour

10–15 emails/hour

Thank You!

Reach out to nicole@mercuryconstant.com with any questions!