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Comment by komali2 | Hacker News Reader

>Google HR uses the TextExpander program, which populates email templates with salutations, job description links and questions. All we have to do is press two keys (mine are semicolon followed by the letter “C”). There’s also space for fill-in-the-blanks: one for the candidate’s name (“Hey Mark”) and another at the end for the day of the week (“Enjoy your Thursday!”), so the message is personal.

This step should have been 100% automated and I don't understand why it wasn't. As a recruiter this shit was my least favorite part of the job. The next step - the candidate calls - was my favorite part.

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Automated emails are pretty shit, and easy to spot. They also tend to turn off most people, making recruiting more difficult.

Yep. Any time I see a recruiter try to automate initial contact using a tool like Jobdiva or some such, it's an instant disqualification. Most of the time it's just plain shotgunned out and I never hear anything beyond the initial email. I had one recruiter, after doing that, call me and inquire -- I told him no, and explained to him that I don't do business with those who willingly use spamming tools.

I get why it's frustrating, but one way or the other the job has to get filled. When I was a recruiter I'd blast out emails as well, but only to candidates I actually thought were qualified.

Knowing that of 20 people the recruiter knows that are a good fit, only 2 might be available, what would your preferred method be of them going about their job?

Telling people why you think they are qualified might help, at least they will know it's not some random e-mail blast sent to the whole address book. Telling why you think your job is going to be better than their current job is the best though. Also, while trying to answer that question, you may find out that there is no point in e-mailing them in the first place.

Don't use a blast. It lacks the personalization. If it looks like a form letter, I assume you did keyword matching (which is the case 90+% of the time) and you're just playing a recruiter game of Glengarry Glen Ross.

Be upfront and honest is another one. I see lots of recruiters try and be sneaky and play phishing games. There's a reason why my current employer isn't listed by name on my resume. Plenty of times recruiters have contacted me, promising a job, but it's only to grill me about my current position to find other people there they can hit up, or contacts within HR, etc. Or it's just a plain ol' resume-sending event and they want nothing more than me to bulk up their database.

With that upfront and honesty in place, be willing to provide key information to the candidate upon initial contact -- it'll save you and them a lot of time. I want, as a minimum (and usually no more), the client, the location (may need specifics depending upon the city, for example "Dallas" isn't very descriptive as Dallas is huge), and the employment type/term.

It’s just as it says: the personal touch.

But it sounds like the "personal touch" was done the same way for every email, and therefore was such that it could have been automated. Not very "personal" of a personal touch...

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