How to cold-email engineers

is even such a thing possible?

I’m relatively new to the software industry and so I’m just getting used to constantly being hounded by recruiters. Even as a new software engineer, I probably receive 1-2 employment inquiries a week.

The bad cold-email

Here’s a recent solicitation that I received from a recruiter.

Hi Ryan,
I was wondering if you could help me out. I’m working with a very exciting company in the San Francisco Bay Area who are aggressively hiring for their team. Below are some exciting bullet points:
- Funded by the same investors behind Google and Twitter

The list went on. And then ended with this:

Would you know anyone interested in learning more?

Was the recruiter really asking me if I knew someone that was interested in a job? Was he essentially asking me to do the recruiting? Or was he slyly asking if I was interested? I guess I’ll never know because I was too confused to even respond.

I won’t bore you other examples of bad cold-emails, I’m sure everyone has tons.

The good cold-email

Hey Ryan-
I’m {name}, the founder of {startup} — {info about investors} — and are now looking to grow our small engineering team.

{1 sentence about startup} The stuff you’ve been doing with Sharethrough and Balanced is interesting — and I feel like you could be a good fit with our team and product.

I’d love to find a few minutes to chat soon — is there a good time for a quick phone call in the next couple days?

The email was 5 sentences. The email was from a key player at the company. The email’s tone was informal and resembled a conversation — it almost felt rude not to respond.

Another good cold email

Hey Ryan,
My name is Rob, responsible for engineering here at Sharethrough. Checked out your stubhub gem and your beats, good stuff! We have a lot of different, interesting things going on here from Rails to Scala to DevOps to our data pipeline.
Be great to have a chat, let me know if you’re interested!

This email converted — it actually led to me accepting an offer for my current job at Sharethrough. Again, this email was very concise and was from a key player at the company (VP of engineering). Additionally, the emailer did his research — sick beats? someone actually clicked on my soundcloud link on my website?

Engineers in the valley are getting so many cold-emails for job opportunities these days, you must stand out if you want to get responses. Emails from recruiters don’t work. Generic template emails don’t work. If you’re trying to hire, you need to step your game up.

1. keep it short, 5 sentences max
2. cold-emails need to come from significant players at your company
3. do your research and keep it informal, the more the email resembles a conversation, the more likely the engineer is going to respond