When to use it
Best for agencies with a clear specialism, such as engineering, sales, finance, healthcare or operations, where you can recognise a hard-to-fill role on sight.
The steps
- Monitor postings in your specialismCheck careers pages and job boards for roles you place. Pay extra attention to senior roles, roles that have been open for weeks, reposted roles and several postings on the same team. Those usually mean the company is struggling to fill them.
- Qualify the companyCheck size, region and sector. See whether they already use agencies (a quick search of their posts or LinkedIn can tell you). Skip anything outside your sweet spot. A shorter, better list beats a long, weak one.
- Find the decision-makerWork out who owns the hire: usually the hiring manager or the head of that function, sometimes a talent lead. Avoid generic inboxes. If a company has an internal recruiter, note that. You may need to approach them differently.
- Verify the contactConfirm the person's role and check that the email address is valid before you write. Bounces hurt your sending reputation, and one bounce is one wasted lead.
- Write a message around the roleMention the specific role you saw, say what you place in one sentence, and ask one small question. Keep it to a few lines. See the template below.
- Send, then follow upSend on a weekday morning in their time zone. Follow up with something new after three or four days, and again about a week later. Stop when they reply or after your last follow-up.
- Log the resultRecord who you contacted, when, and what happened. Note any reason they gave for a no, plus a date to try again. This feeds your weekly numbers.
What the first message looks like
Lead with the role you noticed, say in one sentence how you fill roles like it, and offer to send a couple of relevant profiles. Nothing else.
Why job postings work as a signal
A job post is the most direct evidence a company has a hiring problem. It’s public, it’s specific, and it comes with a built-in reason to get in touch. Compared with a cold list, you’re reaching out about something they’re already working on.
Not every posting is equally useful, though. These tend to be the best ones:
- Senior or specialist roles. They’re harder to fill, so outside help is more welcome.
- Roles open for several weeks. Patience has probably run thin.
- Repeated postings. The same role reposted suggests the first attempt didn’t land.
- Clusters. Three roles on one team usually mean growth or a gap.
And these are weaker:
- Entry-level roles you don’t place.
- Evergreen postings that are always open.
- Roles at companies with large internal talent teams that rarely use agencies.
A template to adapt
Change the details and the wording so it sounds like you.
Subject: Your senior data engineer role
Hi Priya,
Saw the senior data engineer role on your careers page, and that it’s been open for a few weeks. We place data engineers at Series A to C product companies, mostly with strong Python and Spark.
Would it help if I sent two or three profiles? No obligation either way.
Arjun
A few things this does well: it names the real role, explains what you do in one sentence, and asks something easy to answer. It doesn’t ask for a meeting, claim to be “the best”, or attach anything.
Follow-up that adds something
If there’s no reply after three or four days, send a short second message with something new. For example, a candidate you can describe in a line:
Hi Priya, one more thought. I know a data engineer with a similar stack who’s open to a move. Want me to send their profile over?
If you don’t have a specific profile, you can ask a different question (“Is the role still open?”) or share a relevant insight (“Salary bands for this profile have shifted recently, happy to share what I’m seeing”).
A final gentle message a week later is enough. Our follow-up sequence workflow lays out a full cadence.
When they reply
Reply the same day if you can. If they ask for profiles, ask two quick questions (must-have skills, location or salary range) so you send the right ones, then deliver quickly. If they ask about fees, answer plainly. If they say they already have an agency, see handling hiring manager objections.
Mistakes to avoid
- Contacting a company about a role you can’t fill. It wastes their time and damages your credibility.
- Sending the same message to everyone. Mention the real role. It takes thirty seconds and doubles your reply rate in most cases we’d expect.
- Going after a role the day it’s posted. A little patience helps: a role open for a couple of weeks tends to feel more painful.
- Ignoring existing agency relationships. If they work with an agency, position yourself as a second option for hard roles, not a replacement.
- Forgetting to log. If you don’t write it down, you can’t learn from it.
What to track
For this workflow, watch these in your weekly review:
- Companies contacted from postings
- Replies
- Positive replies
- Calls booked
- Requirements received
If replies are low, work on the message and targeting. If replies are fine but calls aren’t booking, work on how quickly you respond. Measuring outbound results explains each one.
Make it routine
Doing this by hand is possible. A realistic schedule is about two hours a week: an hour to review postings and pick companies, a little time to verify and write, and a quick follow-up pass. The part that tends to slip is consistency. That’s the part worth building a system around.