how to send a cold reach out (solo show)

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What I want to talk to you about today is the cold outreach. And I think I see a lot of people stumble on this. I can't even, I really wish I could show you. I really wish I could take all of the Twitter DMs I get and the LinkedIn DMs I get and show you how not to do it. But I will tell you this, most people send a really, really poor initial DM. And so what I want to do is I want to talk real quick today about how to send a really, really good DM to somebody. First off, you are most likely find your job right now in this market through somebody you know.

And I think for the longest time, if you've been following my content for a few years now, I've always been focused on net new. Always go out, always seek out new people, which I still think you need to do. But you also need to focus on your current network. And so what I would do, like if I were to get laid off tomorrow, I would absolutely just go through my LinkedIn and be like, okay, who do I know in a hiring position? And I'm just going to message them, right? So I would do that first. The next thing what I would do is I would be specific.

Whether you're reaching, whether you're cold DMing somebody or DMing somebody you know, the biggest miss where I see people miss with the biggest miss, the biggest way people miss, the biggest people miss out on this, right? Is they don't go for the ask immediately. Like I don't have time to go back with you, back and forth with you on the DM's. If you saw my DM's, like you'd be like, oh yeah, you're right. You don't have time to go back and forth with me. And I'm not even in like a true recruiter seat, right? Like there are recruiters out there and true recruiters and he's like, they definitely don't have time to go back and forth with you.

So the biggest thing to do is when you message me, give me like, tell me, quick about yourself. Give me the reason why you're DMing me and tell me if you're looking for a job, tell me why you're fit for the job, right? So, let's see, I wanna get to a few comments here before I continue. What's the best way to ask to book a call with something? So my, so yeah, this is exactly what I'm asking about. Cold outreach. How do I send a message to get on a call? All right. So how do I send a message to get on a call? So if you are messaging a hiring manager, let's say, let's say for this example, you found a hiring manager who essentially has a job, they have a job posted, the hiring manager is attached to it, you're messaging the hiring manager, you don't have the hiring manager.

This is what I would say. Hey, Mr. Mrs. hiring manager, wanted to shoot you quick DM, I'm sure you're overwhelmed, right? Show a little bit of empathy. I saw you had a role posted for this type of role. I really honestly, I went ahead and submitted my resume. So one of the things that I have talked to a lot of internal recruiters about, I would always submit your resume now. If you're going to go cold, always submit your resume because what the person's going to tell you in the DM's is say, the first thing they're going to ask is, did you submit your resume, right?

So submit your resume to the job, then mess with the person, be like, hey so and so, wanted to reach out. Saw you had a mid level role posted. I went ahead and submitted my resume to it. I really feel like I'm a fit and here's why. Bang, bang, bang. What I would do is I would go to the nice to have in required skills and I would outline your experiences as it relates to that in as simplest, least the amount of words as you feasibly can and then say, would love to chat with you if you have more time about this. That is what I would do.

Again, I need to know who you are, what this skills you have as it relates to the role available and like what you want from me. Because again, the amount of DM's I get right now that say, hey or just like it's these long, like long texts, like I get these DM's on LinkedIn and they're just, I mean, they're a wall of text and there's no real ask, right? Listen, again, we live, I cannot tell you enough with resumes, with LinkedIn's, with emails, with we live in a text to focus, like text messaging focus world people, our attention spans are shit. You can't send long DM's anymore, right?

So knock it off. Dev Mime is good to see you this morning. Do you think people are too intimidating or just nervous? I think, I think in my opinion, we grew up, we have grown up in a culture where especially like us millennials, where if we were raised to like not, like it depends on your upbringing, I'm very speaking obviously very journalistic years is like don't talk about yourself, don't brag about yourself, don't ask for something because that sounds like needy or something. So I think there's a lot of millennials out there who really have a really awkward like, really awkward time going for the ask, right?

And so I think people are too intimidated and nervous to just go for the ask, right? And I think people are scared of getting turned down, listen, 99% of your job search is getting rejected. I'm just gonna say that again, 99% of your job search is getting rejected, only 1% of your job search is getting the offer accepted, right? So you just need to get used to it. You just, you have to get used to it, right? Let's see here, yes, yes. He has seen my inbox, it is ridiculous. Yes Joe, it's great to see you this morning. Yep, 98% of messages are garbage. I don't know if you, oh, also I do want to sell promote one more time.

I have changed up my email newsletter and I'm trying to make it a networking email newsletter. So what I am doing now is every guest on my show, I am linking their profile, telling you why you should go network with them and reach out to them. So if you suck at networking and want a way to message people because they were on my show and you want to know a little bit about them before you send the DM, go subscribe to my newsletter. I've changed up the format a little bit. Let me know your thoughts would love to have you on the platform. So I want to give a shout there.

I don't know if you all have tuned in to episode this week with Liz, no, was it Liz or was it last week? I think it was Liz this week. So when it comes to, because I ask her like, what's your biggest tip for job seekers? She goes, nobody ever follows up with me in the DM's after submitting to a job. And so I would highly recommend working that into your workflow for sure. Let's see here. Don't forget the app ID. Yeah, what trays the rec number job ID number, if that's a thing for this role include that in the DM so they can be aware of that.

I feel like the job search is speed data. And unfortunately is, Trey. I mean, I think you gotta get really, really, really comfortable and really, really good getting rejected and like, communicating all of your information in like six minutes. I mean, it really is. I listen, there is a huge correlation between the job search and dating, right? Like, I should do a whole entire series about it, right? So again, get comfortable at telling who you are, what you do, what value you can provide in six minutes or less. And as many, as least amount of words as possible in the DM's. Let's see here. Wendy, it's great to see you this morning.

Well, good news. The following generations are even worse with communication. Yeah, exactly. Let's see here. It's good to see you this morning, follow up with huge, actually, it's glad to see you all using YouTube. Even though I wanna drive traffic on LinkedIn, I'm just missing out on too many comments. Yes, big fan of Canika and what she does refers to it as dating as dating a job, yes, 100%. I usually advise I've learned from you this week. I'm actually gonna get a better response to my cold DM's. Yes, I love it. Dev Mummy. If you wanna comment like any specific things you're doing, can you give me like one thing you've changed?

Because I wanna be able to provide value to that, to the community. Any other questions you have, again, at least a matter of words is possible. Go for the ask. Tell that person why you're messaging them. Again, I always tell the story. I was talking with a senior engineering manager. He got laid off as a few months ago. He said he wasn't getting any responses in the DM's. And he changed his format. And he started to go straight to the source, straight to the engineering leader, who was hiring for the role. And basically, sending DM and goes, here's why you should hire me. I have these three main skills.

This is what the job requires. And I have those skills. Let's talk. He's at his response rate shop, like 50%. Right? Again, be specific. Be short in your DM's. But go for the ask, the hiring range of needs. And that goes for the anybody. If you're wanting the network, whether it's a job or not, if you're trying to message somebody, even just a chat with them, the network with them. Be like, I'm just gonna use Garrett, for example. Like, be like Garrett, hey, Garrett, I've always wanted to get my CISSP. We'll love the chat with you for six minutes. On just like two or three steps, I could get on two or three steps on how to get my CISSP.

Right? So what does that do with Garrett? Garrett knows how long I'm gonna talk to him, right? What type of conversation we're about to have so he can prepare in his mind? And he also knows, he only needs to give me two or three tips and we're out. Now, Garrett may message me that and be like, hey Taylor, I don't have time to chat right now. Like, that's fine. Do you think you could fire off like an email with this stuff? So again, the way to really follow up with people and keep on with people is if they message you back and say, hey, I can't chat right now.

Cause like right now, I can't chat right now. Like there's a lot of people who are message me. And like, I don't have the capacity right now. So I always ask them, but how can I help? And so go specific for that. I wanna see, I'm just kinda checking if there's anything else, any other things I'm kinda seeing right now. Oh, also I am, I am creating a recruiter list on Twitter. I'm actively doing that. If you do wanna follow along, go to my profile on Twitter. And it's under the list. It's called retailers recruiters list. I got about six people on there right now.

Definitely need to, I started to add more today. Yeah, Joe, my fellow recruiter friend up here as well. Joe, short specific excuse, recruiters likely don't have time to read a massive paragraph in the DM where you're juggling massive numbers of open records. Again, like I said, huge, right? Huge, huge, huge, huge. Be sure, be specific, right? We don't have time to go back and forth. Building those professional relationships, absolute key, 100%. Deb Mummy comes in. So again, she said that she's had much better success recently reading their profile, find a personal connection. Yes, yes, this is it. If you're trying to message somebody cold, go to their profile and see if you all have anything in common, right?

Like I went to university, South Carolina. Like I can message anybody in the SEC and say, go Cox and like I'll probably get a response back, right? College football is king in the SEC. I can message any hiring manager that went to an SEC school and taught college football with them most likely, right? I highly would have done it work and matches the key point. Yes, 100%. You know, look at, if you go to LinkedIn, some other places, look at there. Here, I'm gonna share my screen real quick here. See here, I'm gonna share my screen. Let's see here. All right, share, oh, present, show screen.

So what I would do, so I would look at their featured section, right? Look at their featured section and maybe make a comment of something that something I pin, right? If you message me and be like, hey, I saw where you're joining up, where you're joining with Gun IO, or I saw your video talking about your dad, like that will get my attention, right? Or I would look at their activity, right? See if they've made any posts, right? You know, you could message me and be like, hey Taylor, I saw you made a post about benefits yesterday. That's incredibly important to me. We love to talk more about that, right?

Again, so check their activity. Also scroll the way down. Check their interests, right? Check their interests here. Check their companies. Check their groups, right? Just schools. Check everything because all that stuff makes a huge impact. Let's see here, actually research a person is huge. Yeah, I'll never forget when I was at Beiko, last company I worked at. And I was recruiting manager, basically, the guy at one of my first hires on my new team at the time, he researched my LinkedIn profile and asked me some really, really good questions. I mean, I'll never forget, I mean, it's been three or four years at this point.

I'll never forget how that came across. He researched my profile and asked like three questions, specifically related to my LinkedIn profile, whether it's me being at Beiko for a long time, or going to South Carolina, or Gary Vaynerchuk, or something or other. One of my interests, I'll never forget, it blew me away and it appeared in that guy, just because I could tell he actually cared. Let's see here, Tayak comes in and reach out to recent connection to previous conferences. Again, we've talked about this recently on the show. If you open up your connections on LinkedIn, it's reverse, is it chronological, reverse chronological in that the people who you've connected with recently are like the most recent people you've connected with, if that makes sense.

So if you went to a conference, go to your connections on LinkedIn, the most recent connections are the ones you met at that conference. Let's see here, when he comes in, it has to be regalanced to see, you're not just looking to love it or I agree. Yeah, yeah. So I have a tendency to do this when they love it, or I agree, or yes, or let's go, right? Like if you're gonna network with people, like put some thoughtful comments in there, right? Again, I've kind of gone away from this, but I wanna remind people, networking right now in today's world is liking and commenting on people's statuses.

It just is, that's not working. Like I'll never forget, Link Instagram had some bug last week, or no last month or something, and I couldn't DM people. And literally I freaked out and I realized, how much I use the DM feature on Instagram to keep up with people, whether it's a clap emoji or a hundred emoji, or like commenting on somebody's like picture with their family. Like I use the DM feature on Instagram, like crazy to keep up with people. That's the same way I linked in. The only way you can keep up with an insane amount of people to help you on your job search is commenting, liking, networking with people on LinkedIn.

Like, it's truly, truly. Uh, uh, uh, uh, Jayman Holmgren, uh, CTO of, uh, infinite red out west. He posted, uh, like last month or so, he was like, I really wanna get better at LinkedIn. How do I get better at LinkedIn? I said, and I tweeted on him, I said delete every single other social media off your phone other than LinkedIn, right? And then your habit will eventually go to LinkedIn. Also, join Discord, join Slacks, join the friendzone.llwell, right? Like we have a free tier, like join that, right? So again, like just be involved, like like your community is built online, which will funnel to the job search.

Yeah, don't pretend, Kent, it's good to see a big dog, authenticity, authenticity matters. Seth, appreciate you big dog. It's great to see you as always. Hope you're doing well. My friend need to catch up here very, very soon. Cool. All right. That was enough from the gap in, is there any of those, any of those have any comments? Again, be sure, be specific, be genuine, try to find something you can connect with in the DMs. Go for the Ask immediately. Like I would prefer people to go also follow up, three, four, five times, right? Like, literally I haven't heard from one person recently. I had to follow up with this guy three times before I got a response.

It happens. I don't care. People are busy. People only got time to get back to you immediately, right? Three, four, five times, six times. Like that's the type of follow up that you kind of have to have right now. So again, it was great to see you all today. Thank you all for tuning on YouTube. I appreciate it. As always, subscribe on YouTube, right? I think I'm supposed to say that. If you like this on LinkedIn and you feel like you can get value, if your network can get value, feel free to reshare this. We'll love that. Again, as always, if you want to be kept up in the loop, text live to 615-235-550 or launching the friend zone on Monday.

Hope to see you there. Techdads group recreated my email newsletter so you can connect with my network easier. And yeah, I think that's it. Let's see here. Seth, play the long game. I put a counter, I love this. I love this. 100% play the long game. Set reminders, use your calendar, accordingly, sweet. I love it. All right. I appreciate y'all. Y'all have a great weekend. Happy Friday. We'll see y'all back on Monday. Who's Monday's guest? Hold on real quick. Monday's guest. Emily Freeman, the great Emily Freeman, has come on the show Monday. So can't wait to interview her. Y'all have a good one. Take it easy, peace.

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