# Recruiter Outreach

A subject line and message aimed at one candidate, with the details that decide whether a passive candidate replies included rather than withheld.

- Version 1.0, updated 18 September 2026
- Works with: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or any capable assistant
- Source: https://www.linkediz.com/prompts/recruiter-outreach

## Use when

- You are messaging a passive candidate who is not looking.
- Your InMail reply rate is under 20% and your credits are finite.
- A hiring manager is doing the outreach and needs it written.

## Variables to replace

- `{{JOB_TITLE}}` — Role you are hiring for. The title as you advertise it.
  Example: Senior Backend Engineer (Go)
- `{{COMPANY}}` — Your company. Name plus the one line you would use to introduce it.
  Example: Cadence — payroll reconciliation software for multi-entity finance teams
- `{{JOB_DESCRIPTION}}` — Job description. Paste the whole thing. The model needs the requirements, not your summary of them.
  Example: Senior Backend Engineer, Go and Postgres, payments domain preferred, hybrid London 2 days, £95–115k, reporting to the VP Engineering.
- `{{CONSTRAINTS}}` — Constraints. Word limits, banned words, compliance rules, anything that makes an otherwise good answer unusable.
  Example: Connection notes under 280 characters. No "quick question", no "circling back". Legal forbids naming customers without written consent.
- `{{PROSPECT_NAME}}` — Prospect name. As it appears on their profile.
  Example: Dana Whitfield
- `{{PROSPECT_ROLE}}` — Prospect job title. Their current title, verbatim.
  Example: Group Finance Director
- `{{PROSPECT_COMPANY}}` — Prospect company. Company name and size, if you have it.
  Example: Northbeam Logistics, ~900 staff, 5 countries
- `{{PROSPECT_PROFILE}}` — Profile and activity. Paste the About section, current role description, and anything they posted or commented on recently.
  Example: "12 years in finance ops, currently consolidating five ERPs into one." Posted last week about the pain of a five-week close after an acquisition.
- `{{PLAN}}` — Your LinkedIn plan. Free, Premium Career, Premium Business, Sales Navigator Core or Advanced, Recruiter Lite or Corporate. It decides what you can actually do.
  Example: Sales Navigator Core

## How to use

1. Put the salary range in {{CONSTRAINTS}} if you have permission. It is the highest-leverage sentence in the message.
2. Take "do not send" for an answer. On 30 credits a month, one wasted credit is 3% of your budget.
3. Keep the "not looking" reply. Half of passive-candidate hires come from a conversation that started six months earlier.

## Do not

- Hiding the company name until they reply. Candidates read it as the role being worse than the message implies, and they are usually right.
- Sending the same message to a whole shortlist. Recruiter InMail is metered; personalisation is the only variable you control.

## Context files this expects

- `RECRUITER.md` — https://www.linkediz.com/ai/files/recruiter
- `OUTREACH.md` — https://www.linkediz.com/ai/files/outreach

## Where this sits

- Previous step: Candidate Research & Shortlist — https://www.linkediz.com/prompts/candidate-research

---

## The prompt

You are writing to a candidate who is not looking for a job. Everything you withhold is a reason for them not to reply.

## The role
{{JOB_TITLE}} at {{COMPANY}}
{{JOB_DESCRIPTION}}
What I may disclose: {{CONSTRAINTS}}

## The candidate
{{PROSPECT_NAME}} — {{PROSPECT_ROLE}} at {{PROSPECT_COMPANY}}
{{PROSPECT_PROFILE}}

## My plan
{{PLAN}}

## LinkedIn reality (do not plan past these)

LinkedIn platform limits that apply on EVERY plan, including the most expensive one:
- Connection invitations: ~100 per week. Applies on every plan including Recruiter Corporate. LinkedIn adjusts it per account based on acceptance rate, so a low-acceptance account gets less, never more.
- InMail credit expiry: 90 days. Unused credits expire. They accrue to at most three times the monthly allowance, and a credit is returned if the recipient replies within 90 days.
- Commercial use limit: Monthly search cap. Free accounts hit a monthly ceiling on profile searches. Every paid tier lifts it, but none of them removes the per-search result cap.
- Profiles per search: 1,000 / 2,500. Regular LinkedIn search stops at 1,000 results; Sales Navigator stops at 2,500, paginated 25 at a time. Both are per search, not per day.

Treat these as hard constraints, not guidance. A plan that exceeds them is not an ambitious plan, it is a plan that gets the account restricted.

Per-plan allowances, US list prices, last verified 12 September 2026 by Linkediz:

| Plan | US list price / month | InMail credits / month | Results per search | Saved searches |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Premium Career | $39.99 | 5 | 1,000 | 3 |
| Premium Business | $69.99 | 15 | 1,000 | 3 |
| Sales Navigator Core | $119.99 | 50 | 2,500 | 15 |
| Sales Navigator Advanced | $159.99 | 50 | 2,500 | 15 |
| Sales Navigator Advanced Plus | quote only | 50 | 2,500 | 15 |
| Recruiter Lite | $170 | 30 | 1,000 | 10 |
| Recruiter Corporate | quote only | 150 | 1,000 | 50 |

Notes the numbers do not show:
- Sales Navigator Advanced Plus and Recruiter Corporate carry no published price. LinkedIn quotes them per seat block. Never state a price for those two.
- The InMail allowance does not scale with price. Sales Navigator Core costs three times Premium Career and includes ten times the credits, so per credit the cheap plan is by far the most expensive.
- Unused InMail credits expire after 90 days and accrue to at most three months' worth. A credit comes back if the recipient replies within 90 days, so reply rate, not send volume, is what the allowance rewards.
- The ~100 invitations per week is adjusted per account by acceptance rate. It goes down for accounts that send poorly targeted invitations. It does not go up because a plan was upgraded.

If the user's request requires exceeding any figure above, say so explicitly, state which limit it breaks, and propose the version that fits inside it. Do not quietly scale the plan down and do not quietly exceed it.

## Method
1. Find the specific reason it is this person. Not their title — something they have done. If you cannot find one, say so: a message that could go to fifty people should go to none.
2. Write the subject line under 45 characters. It should name the role and be openable. No "exciting opportunity", no "are you open to a chat".
3. Write the message, under 600 characters:
   - Why them, specifically. One sentence, evidenced.
   - What the role is. The company name, the team, the actual work. Withholding the company name halves the reply rate and gains you nothing.
   - The money. Give the range if you are permitted to. If you are not, say explicitly that you cannot yet and give the reason — that is far better than silence, which candidates read as "below market".
   - The ask, small: a question, not a call. "Worth a conversation?" is a call. "Is the payments side still what you spend most of your time on?" is a question.
4. Handle the "I'm not looking" case in advance: write the reply that keeps a not-looking candidate warm for six months without pestering them.
5. Note what the profile suggests about what would actually move this person, and where that is inference rather than evidence.

## Hard rules
- Do not flatter. "Your background is impressive" is the standard opening and it is why the standard reply rate is low.
- Do not claim the role is a "great fit" — you do not know that yet, and they know you do not.
- Never imply you were referred by someone if you were not.
- Do not use their current employer's problems as leverage.
- No links in the first message.

## Output format

### Why this person
One sentence, with the evidence. Or: "nothing specific found — do not send".

### Subject line
Three options with character counts.

### Message
Text, then (n characters).

### If they say "not looking"
The reply, under 400 characters, that leaves a door open with a named condition.

### What would move this candidate
Your read, marked evidence or inference.

### Credit check
Whether this is worth an InMail on my plan, given the allowance.

---

## Notes

Written to a fixed structure and run through Claude and ChatGPT to confirm each one returns the output format it declares. That is not the same as a measured reply-rate benchmark, and nothing here claims one — if you run these at volume and have numbers, we want them.

---

Linkediz LinkedIn AI Toolkit — v1.0, 18 September 2026
Source and updates: https://www.linkediz.com/prompts/recruiter-outreach
LinkedIn plan limits and prices in this file: https://www.linkediz.com/linkedin-limits