Cold email template First contact
A recruiting email a strong candidate will read
Use it when you are hiring for a specific role and want to reach someone who is not job hunting.
The three emails
Written to Alex Romero, Senior Data Engineer at Harbor Health in Austin, TX. Every name and company here is made up. Text in [brackets] is what you change for each person.
Subject: your talk on late-arriving data
Hi Alex,
[Your Data Council talk on handling late-arriving shipment events was the clearest take on it I have seen.]
We are hiring a staff data engineer at Northwind to own exactly that problem across 4,000 trucks. It is remote in the US, and the range is $190k to $220k plus equity.
Open to a 20 minute chat to see if it is interesting, even if the timing is not right?
Jordan EllisNorthwind Logistics
Subject: Re: your talk on late-arriving data
Hi Alex,
A bit more on the team: [five engineers, a Postgres and Kafka stack, and no on-call rotation for this role]. The full description is here if you want to skim it first: [link].
Jordan
Subject: Re: your talk on late-arriving data
Hi Alex,
I will stop here. If you know someone who would love this problem, I would be grateful for an intro. Thanks for the talk either way.
Jordan
Why it works
- Strong candidates get vague messages every week. Naming their actual work is rare and respectful.
- Pay range and location up front answer the two questions every candidate has.
- The ask allows for "not now", which lowers the bar to reply.
- Follow-up 2 asks for a referral, so even a no can help.
The personal line to swap
The opening line. Mention a talk, an open source project, a blog post or a public repo, and say what you found useful in it.
Specific, true, checkable
- Your pull request that cut dbt build times in half for the Harbor team was a great read.
- Your blog post on testing data pipelines with real fixtures changed how I think about it.
Could be sent to anyone
- Your background looks like a great fit for an exciting opportunity.
How Reach Crew's Writer personalises it
Writer opens each email with something the person published or said in public and links the source beside it. You read every draft, add the pay range and role link if they are not already in your goal, and approve.
Opening from their public work. Source shown beside the draft.
Hi Alex,
Your Data Council talk on handling late-arriving shipment events was the clearest take on it I have seen.
We are hiring a staff data engineer at Northwind to own exactly that problem across 4,000 trucks. It is remote in the US, and the range is $190k to $220k plus equity.
Open to a 20 minute chat to see if it is interesting, even if the timing is not right?
Jordan Ellis
Related templates and terms
- A new role congratulations email that is not a pitch in disguise
- A referral request email that is easy to say yes to
- A first cold email to a VP of Procurement
Glossary:PersonalizationCold emailReply rate