candidate-outreach

name: candidate-outreach
description: Craft and send personalized recruitment messages to passive candidates. Use when sourcing talent from LinkedIn, GitHub, or other platforms.
license: MIT
compatibility: claude-code, cursor, cline, windsurf
metadata:
industry: hr-software
segment: applicant-tracking
function: talent-acquisition
value_driver: revenue
complexity: low
source_systems: linkedin, github, greenhouse, ashby
allowed-tools: Read, Write, Edit, WebFetch

Summary

This skill generates personalized, high-converting outreach messages to passive candidates. It researches the candidate's background, finds relevant connection points, and crafts messages that stand out from generic recruiter spam.

Inputs

Outputs

Workflow

1. Research Candidate

From LinkedIn:
- Current role and company
- Previous experience
- Education and skills
- Posts and articles
- Mutual connections
- Recent activity

From GitHub:
- Popular repositories
- Recent contributions
- Languages and technologies
- Open source involvement

2. Find Connection Points

PERSONALIZATION HIERARCHY (best to worst):
1. Mutual connection ("Sarah mentioned you...")
2. Their content ("Loved your post on...")
3. Shared experience ("Fellow [school] alum...")
4. Their work ("Your project X is impressive...")
5. Company news ("Congrats on the Series B...")
6. Role relevance ("Your [skill] expertise...")

3. Craft Message

Structure:
1. Personalized hook (why them specifically)
2. Brief company/role intro (1-2 sentences)
3. What's in it for them
4. Soft call to action
5. Easy opt-out

Length:
- LinkedIn InMail: 100-150 words
- Email: 150-200 words
- Twitter DM: Under 280 characters

4. A/B Variants

Generate 2-3 variants testing:
- Subject lines
- Opening hooks
- Call-to-action phrasing
- Tone (professional vs casual)

5. Sequence Planning

Message Templates

Initial Outreach (LinkedIn)

Hi [First Name],

[Personalized hook - reference their work/post/project]

I'm reaching out because we're building [brief description] at [Company],
and your experience with [specific skill/project] caught my attention.

We're looking for a [Role] to [key responsibility]. The team includes
[notable person/background], and we just [recent achievement].

Would you be open to a quick call to learn more? No pressure either way.

[Your name]

P.S. [Optional: mutual connection, relevant link, or conversation starter]

Follow-up #1 (Email)

Subject: Re: [Original subject]

Hi [First Name],

Wanted to follow up on my note from last week.

I came across [relevant article/resource] and thought you might find it
interesting given your work on [their project].

[Company] is [brief value prop]. We're solving [problem] for [customers].

If you're not looking right now, I completely understand. But if you know
anyone who might be interested, I'd appreciate a referral.

Best,
[Your name]

Breakup Message

Subject: Closing the loop

Hi [First Name],

I've reached out a few times about the [Role] opportunity at [Company].
I'll assume the timing isn't right.

If that changes, feel free to reach out. I'd still love to connect.

Wishing you continued success at [Current Company].

[Your name]

Personalization Examples

Generic (Bad):

"I came across your profile and thought you'd be a great fit for our role."

Personalized (Good):

"Your talk at ReactConf on state management was excellent—we're dealing with
similar complexity at scale. Would love to chat about how you'd approach our
real-time collaboration challenges."

Generic (Bad):

"We're a fast-growing startup looking for talented engineers."

Personalized (Good):

"We just closed our Series B to build AI tools for recruiters (yes, ironic
that I'm recruiting you). Your work on the recommendation engine at Spotify
is exactly what we need."

Example Usage

User: Write outreach for Jane Doe, Staff Engineer at Google, for our Senior Backend role

Agent: I've researched Jane's profile and crafted this outreach:

**Personalization points found:**
- Recent blog post on distributed systems
- Speaker at KubeCon 2024
- Open source contributor to Envoy
- Mutual connection: Mike (our CTO)

**LinkedIn InMail:**

Subject: Your KubeCon talk + a question

Hi Jane,

Your KubeCon talk on service mesh performance was one of the best I've seen—
especially the latency optimization section. We're running into similar
challenges at [Company] as we scale to 10M requests/sec.

Mike Chen (I think you worked together at Stripe?) suggested I reach out.
We're building [product] and looking for a Staff Engineer to lead our
infrastructure team.

The role: own our Kubernetes platform, scale distributed systems,
mentor 5 engineers. Comp: $350-450k total.

Open to a 20-min call next week?

[Your name]

**A/B Variant (more casual):**

Subject: Fellow Envoy contributor here 👋

Hi Jane,

Saw your Envoy PRs on connection pooling—nice work on the memory
optimization. We're heavy Envoy users at [Company] and running into
an interesting challenge you might have thoughts on...

[continues]

**Recommended send time:** Tuesday 10am PST
**Follow-up scheduled:** Friday if no response

Integration Points

• Upstream: Sourcing lists, LinkedIn Recruiter, GitHub search
• Downstream: ATS candidate creation, interview-scheduler
• Tracking: Open rates, response rates, conversion to interview