How To Reach Out To A Hiring Manager On LinkedIn: An Optimized, Tech-Savvy Approach

Reaching out to hiring managers directly on LinkedIn can pay huge dividends in your job search by getting your resume noticed and building valuable personal connections.

However, effectively using LinkedIn outreach requires strategy optimization based on response rate data, A/B testing results, and an analytical, metrics-driven approach.

This comprehensive 2500+ word guide brings together actionable insights from recruitment experts with data-backed best practices to help you maximize your success reaching out to hiring managers on LinkedIn.

Why Connect with Hiring Managers on LinkedIn?

Let’s start by reviewing the compelling benefits of direct outreach:

1. Get Your Resume Noticed

Rather than entering the dreaded "resume black hole" of online applications, connecting directly with hiring managers can help ensure your resume is viewed and evaluated.

According to LinkedIn data, InMail messages have significantly higher response rates compared to traditional job applications:

With a carefully crafted personalized InMail, you can expect 25-35% response rates from hiring managers.

Compare this to the depressing 10-15% application success metrics that job seekers face when applying through non-personalized online portals and ATS systems.

Messaging decision makers directly is clearly a superior strategy worth optimizing.

2. Stand Out from the Crowd

When exciting new roles get posted on public sites like LinkedIn and Indeed, they invariably attract hundreds or even thousands of eager applicants.

How can you prevent your resume from getting lost in this deluge?

One proven technique is to bypass the crowds altogether and directly get your credentials in front of the hiring manager instead. This allows you to stand out from the very beginning.

Combined with a stellar resume and cover letter catered to the opportunity, personalized outreach puts you miles ahead of generic applicants from the start.

3. Demonstrate Genuine Interest

Mass applying to dozens or even hundreds of jobs can signal desperation. Conversely, taking the initiative to directly contact decision makers displays proactive motivation and genuine interest in that specific company or role.

These traits – enthusiasm, drive, focus, initiative – can help you prevail over other qualified candidates who seem disconnected or disengaged within the standardized application process.

4. Build Meaningful Rapport

Messaging also facilitates relationship building, allowing you to establish real rapport with the hiring manager before the formal interview process even begins.

This can work wonders when it comes to securing that critical first interview.

According to a 2020 survey, [68% of talent professionals] use LinkedIn to vet candidates and build relationships before contacting them directly. Outreach accelerates this vetting and relationship building process.

Ensuring the hiring manager feels connected to you as a candidate on a personal level gives you a remarkable edge.

5. Gain Insider Perspectives

Communicating directly also provides opportunities to gain insider details about the role, team, and company straight from the horse‘s mouth.

Asking thoughtful questions and listening intently during your correspondence enables you to gather key insights that generic applicants won’t access.

You can then calibrate and refine your resume, cover letter, and interview answers accordingly so they better match the organization‘s actual needs. This information asymmetry is like cheating on a test with the answer key!

Clearly, reaching out to hiring managers directly provides remarkable advantages compared to relying solely on traditional job postings and applications.

But what specific strategies and best practices make for optimized, highly successful outreach? Read on!

Crafting a Compelling Profile

Before personalized outreach can occur, your LinkedIn profile itself must be polished and compelling. Hiring managers will check your profile after receiving your initial InMail, so a bare bones profile can undo stellar outreach.

Here are research-backed tips for an engaging, metrics-driven profile that wows hiring managers:

High Quality Photo

According to [LinkedIn internal data], profile photos drive up to 21x more profile views and 36x more messages.

Yet [nearly 10% of members] still lack a profile photo. Don’t be one of them! Upload a high quality, professionally taken headshot. Data shows clearly this drives substantially more engagement.

Concise, Keyword Optimized Headline

Your headline sits front and center beneath your photo and greatly impacts search visibility and click through rate. Follow these best practices:

Keep under 120 characters
Incorporate power verbs and keywords hiring managers search for
Summarize your specialization(s), niche expertise area(s), certifications, accomplishments, leadership qualifications, etc.

Detailed Work Experience

Expand on your most relevant positions, particularly those that align with the types of roles you plan to pursue.

For each position highlight:

Company name/details
Your formal job title
Employment dates
Key responsibilities and achievements formatted in simple bullet points

Quantify results and accomplishments whenever possible. This data-driven specificity is eye catching for analytical hiring managers.

Ongoing Projects

Supplement your past roles with details on impactful projects you currently lead. Discuss goals, key activities, stakeholders managed, processes improved, etc.

This shows well roundedness and that you pursue impact beyond formal requirements.

Core Skills

Per LinkedIn, recruiters focus heavily on the skills section. Yet [barely more than half] of members list any skills!

Identify 4-6 core competencies crucial for your target roles and ensure these skills are both listed and confirmed by connections via endorsements.

Hiring managers filter heavily based on key technical abilities. With the skills section effectively highlighted, you‘ll surface prominently in their searches.

Now that your profile itself pops, we can discuss approaches to outreach itself.

Optimizing Outreach Strategy

When crafted systematically, data shows personalized outreach delivers substantially higher response rates from hiring managers compared to just applying through online portals.

However, misguided approaches can easily undermine results. You must continually track effectiveness and optimize strategy over time.

Let‘s analyze best practices based on response rate data:

1. Personalize Invites

Though more manual, research shows highly personalized connection requests drive dramatically higher acceptance rates compared to generic invites.

Yet nearly 60% still use default templates!

Reference something unique you admire about their career or company to stand out. Personalized invites show extra effort which hiring managers appreciate.

2. Double Down on InMails

Once connected, avoid LinkedIn’s automated “Introduce Yourself” message. Instead, send a separate customized InMail re-expressing interest in opportunities.

Yes, this means directly messaging hiring managers twice, not just once. But data confirms this Double Down strategy delivers substantially higher response rates:

With double touch points, you reinforce interest, remind hiring managers of previous discussions, and ultimately secure 30%+ more replies.

3. Reply ASAP

Speed matters! Data reveals you drastically boost likelihood of further dialogue when replying to hiring managers within just 1 hour:

Yet average reply times are nearly 10 hours. Set up alerts so you can engage within 60 minutes. This urgency signals motivation and responsiveness they’ll appreciate on the job.

4. Mix Automated and Manual Touches

Balancing personalized messaging with occasional automated updates is optimal for sustaining engagement over the long run:

Reserved, fully manual strategies cap touch points, limiting your visibility. But solely automated campaigns feel impersonal.

Effective engagement blends manual creativity with automated nudges like endorsing new skills. This sustains awareness while conveying genuine, ongoing interest.

Research-Backed Outreach Tactics

Beyond core strategy of when and how often to message, actual content and delivery tactics also impact results. Follow these expert tips:

Speak Their Language

Research [key “manager lingo” phrases] that resonate across roles – growth, alignment, traction, empowerment, bandwidth, move the needle.

Weaving these concepts in, even subtly through adjectives and adverbs, helps establish common ground. This also signals awareness of their reality and priorities based on data.

Open Strong

Data reveals [60% of messages get deleted] without the opening line ever being read. Craft compelling subject lines that convey tangible value:

[Your experience] + “Leveraged to Hit [Their metric] Goal”
“Potential [XX]% Boost to [Metric] in Just 6 Weeks”
“Done-For-You Playbook to Improve [Metric]”

This data and solution focused framing consistently outperforms self-centric language.

Highlight Upside

Avoid simply stating credentials or competencies. Instead discuss how your contributions can advance key company goals. Back statements with stats:

“Across prior roles, developed retention optimization strategies that increased customer lifetime value 32% and recurring contract renewal rates by over 20%”

This showcases real upside tied to metrics hiring managers care about.

Demonstrate Initiative

Data shows highlighting drive and internal motivation resonates strongly with managers. For example:

“After taking on an informal Analytics Ambassador role and building cross-functional data fluency, our division‘s decision velocity improved by 15%.”

Displaying initiative beyond formal requirements indicates the type of high upside potential candidate worth taking a chance on.

Provide Social Proof

While managers appreciate ambition, they remain risk averse. Back your assertions with tangible verification like client or manager testimonials. For example:

“My proactive vendor management approach strengthened relations and, per our Account Rep’s feedback, directly supported retaining our largest client’s business the following year amidst steep pricing pressure.”

This balances initiative with confirmation others in authority support your methods.

Close With Future Vision

Data shows closing messages with an ambitious yet achievable vision for our future partnership receives unusually high responses. This motivates managers to schedule calls to further explore mutually beneficial scenarios you describe.

Tracking and Optimizing Over Time

With your messaging fundamentals strong, continuing to track effectiveness and fine tune your approach is crucial. This optimization mindset is what sets truly data driven marketers and growth hackers apart.

Follow this process to continually uplevel your outreach impact:

Track Outbound Messages

Use Excel or Google Sheets to log all your outbound messages with details like date, recipient name/position, subject line used, meeting secured Y/N, etc. Over time this forms a searchable history detailing your activity and response rates.

Tag Messages in InMail

When sending InMails, save yourself lookups later on by using the subject line format:

“[MM-DD] – [Last name] – [Purpose of message]”

The initial timestamp gives context on when messages were sent if locating past communications.

Review Weekly Response Rate Trends

With your outbound message history populated, review weekly response rates. Calculate using the formula:

(Total Meetings Secured) / (Messages Sent) = Response Rate %

Look at high level trends as well as response rates by recipient seniority, department, message type, etc. to inform ongoing optimization.

A/B Test Messaging

Try slightly different outreach approaches and subject lines across a sample of ~10 messages per variant to identify what content and wording works best.

For example, test:

Feature vs benefit focused subject lines
Direct asks ("meet for coffee") vs softer asks ("connect sometime")
Referencing common connections vs no mention
And anything else with potential upside

Continually A/B testing your messaging and delivery is invaluable for increasing replies.

Refine and Scale What Works

Double down on the messaging variants, framing, content types, and compositional details that yield consistently higher response rates in testing. Then scale this across all your outbound outreach.

Rinse and repeat as needed. Small optimizations compound over the dozens to hundreds of messages sent during an active job search.

Maximize Visibility

Beyond direct communication, maximizing discoverability on the platform itself is also important to surface relevant opportunities.

Consider these visibility boosting tactics:

Fill 100% of Profile

Profiles with just a few sections complete tend to get deprioritized by LinkedIn’s search algorithms. Max out all section character limits to ensure full presence.

Follow Target Companies

Stay tapped into key organizations’ Updates feeds. Liking and sharing company posts expands your footprint.

Showcase Niche Skills

Beyond core technical abilities, highlight niche supplementary skills that decision makers covet like Tableau, R, MATLAB, Photoshop, etc. Tools like [Unearthapp] identify such niche yet highly desirable skills.

Join Industry Groups

Groups extend your reach and connections. Post thoughtful responses toQuestions showing off expertise.

Publish Long-Form Posts

Build authority through publishing long-form posts. Insert relevant keywords to get discovered by those hunting for your capabilities.

Prioritize Side Projects

Showcase Leadership experience from volunteer work, side projects, student group roles and more. Transferable skills from unpaid roles resonate strongly.

Combined, these steps compound your professional presence and likelihood of being discovered by great hiring managers.

Executive Insights on Outreach

Beyond data-driven observations, insights from talent leaders add further context on what works when engaging hiring managers:

"We notice when applicants mention impacts from past projects that tie directly to open priorities on our roadmap. This shows they focused on aligning their message after researching our team’s needs instead of just blasting generic qualifications."

Felix Sargent, Director of Engineering at StyleSeat

"I respond best to candidates that display emotional intelligence and awareness of unspoken norms. Highlighting cultural contribution matters just as much to me as technical skills when considering a 20+ year partnership together in the office."

Sarah Chang, VP of Marketing at AWeber

"Fitting a complex background into overly formulaic applicant tracking systems is difficult. I appreciate when candidates show the ambition to directly contact me, share a vision for how they’ll uniquely contribute, and inspire me to create a role for them."

Michael Schneider, Founder/CEO at Vetd

The common thread is showcasing ambition through proactive, aligned messaging resonates strongly. Take time to research needs, contribute value, and meaningfully inspire.

Review Key Takeaways

Let’s recap the comprehensive insights covered into key takeaways:

Stand Out From the Crowd: Personalized outreach differs from the masses passively applying online
Build Real Connections: Messaging hiring managers facilitates relationship building pre-interview
Showcase Ambition: Taking initiative displays motivation and interest beyond qualifications
Maximize Response Rates: Personalize invites, Double Down with InMails, and reply ASAP
Track and Optimize: Continuously monitor effectiveness, run A/B tests, refine what works
Get Discovered: Increase visibility with 100% profile completeness, niche skills, writing articles etc.

Now put these tips into practice! Follow the data-backed blueprint outlined here to craft optimized hiring manager outreach that pay dividends throughout your job search and career advancement.

The more insights you can gather, the more perspectives you can adopt, and the more tests you run, the more efficient your outreach will become over time. View the process as an ever improving cycle, tap into the analytical side of your brain, and put these best practices to work in reaching your dream role!