Hey Recruiter - a Freelance and Contractor methodology for pipelining leads on LinkedIn

For finding freelance gigs I’ve so far relied on:

• Upwork
• Referrals
• Recruiters via LinkedIn

I haven’t had any bad experiences with recruiters in London yet. But the way they get in touch through LinkedIn leads to a pretty poor experience since it feels very much like a mailing shot.

I’ve strung together a bunch of tools to setup a little pipeline in search of my next potential gig.

The setup is:

• Reply to LinkedIn messages semi-automatically via a TamperMonkey script
• The LinkedIn message contains a link to a mailing list signup.
• When recruiters input their email, the email address is run through the Clearbit API to grab first name and last name, company website and company name.
• When I’m available, I send out an email to my collected emails using Yesware
• The email I send out contains a Calendly link to give interested recruiters choices when they want to do 5/10 minute phone calls. This lets me continue working full time without interruptions.
• Rather than using my personal phone, I use a VoIP provider to give me a phone number to make calls from my computer or an app on my phone.
• Further email contact with recruiters happens within GMail using my GMail setup.

The LinkedIn Template has the following structure:

Hey ${FirstName}, thanks for reaching out!

You might find the following information useful:

I'm currently engaged in a project till ${Expected End Date}.

My portfolio and CV is available here: ${ Private Portfolio URL }, in particular, a case study of a client that I worked with is available here: ${ Case Study URL }

When this role ends, I'll be sending out an email to my network where I'm happy to schedule phone calls. You can sign up here: ${ Sign Up URL}

I don't check LinkedIn that often, but I appreciate you taking the time messaging me.

Best Regards,

Henry

The first name can be grabbed by accessing their name within the DOM and splitting it:

var nameText = document.getElementsByClassName("msg-entity-lockup__entity-title truncate hoverable-link-text")[0].innerText
var firstName = nameText.split(' ')[0]

Once they sign up using the Sign Up URL their email is sent to Clearbit for resolving information from that email.

The ‘schema’ for the responses so far is:

id, created_at, company_domain, company_name, email, job_title, message, name

Other Notes

Clearbit’s pricing is a bit unclear, you get 200 form submissions free, but 50 Clearbit Enrichment API calls free, but if your form uses Clearbit Enrichment, you’re only getting 50 form fields a day. Pricing starts at $99 but I only really need 100-200 a month max, and I expect that to reduce as a clear through most recruiters and assemble a decent spreadsheet of emails.

I had a look into automating the LinkedIn Messaging using Puppeteer, I quickly ran into an issue with Puppeteer not being able to target a selector. So messaging is semi-automatic for now, and definitely always will be, there’s no way I’d ever break LinkedIn’s Terms of Service.

Free idea for LinkedIn

Note to LinkedIn: I’m sure that you’re fairly aware that most people don’t like having lots of recruiters sliding into their DMs. Given that most people aren’t actively looking for work most of the time, they don’t really want to be solicited.

So here’s a free idea, take the hack I’ve made and turn it into a feature:

• Individuals can have set when they’re available/unavailable for job hunting
• Recruiters (both agencies and in-house of companies) can signup to a list that the individual manages (perhaps letting them swipe through profiles)
• When the individual is ready they can setup calls and messaging through a sort of Kanban board that lets them organise a job search.

Hopefully this will lead to a better, more efficient job search experience.

Thanks for reading! If you have any comments, questions or feedback please get in contact. Have a nice Sunday.

I'm Henry Moulton, a software design and development freelancer living in London, UK.

My portfolio will be online soon.