LinkedIn outreach for recruiters: invite plus InMail with an AI agent

A recruiter can use an AI agent to open conversations with candidates and with hiring managers, then hand every interested person to a human. Start with a connection request for people in your niche, use an InMail only for people you cannot reach otherwise, keep each message to one specific reason, and decide in advance which replies the agent may answer. We publish no InMail result, because we have too few sends to measure.

Recruiting is outreach with an unusual twist: the person you write to has something you want, and often has more offers than time. That changes what a good message looks like. This post covers how to set it up, using only what we can stand behind.

Why is LinkedIn the place for recruiting outreach?

Because the profile is already the pitch from the other side. A candidate's page shows what they did, what they know and where they work, so the first message can start from something real. Recruiters have always known this, which is why inboxes of good candidates are crowded with generic "we have an exciting opportunity" messages.

That crowd is the opening. A message that shows you read the person's work stands out, and an agent can read a thousand profiles and write a distinct first line for each. What it cannot do is decide whether the person is right for the role. That part stays with you.

Who should the agent write to?

There are two audiences, and they need separate campaigns.

• Candidates. People who match a role you are filling or a niche you recruit in, such as backend engineers in a certain city or finance managers with a specific licence.
• Clients. Hiring managers and founders who may need a recruiter. For a staffing agency this is a sales campaign. There is an email template for staffing agency client outreach.

Give each its own persona, goal and list. The recruiting goal templates are a starting point, and the recruiters use case describes the whole setup.

Invite or InMail?

LinkedIn offers two ways to reach someone you are not connected to. A connection request is free and starts a relationship. An InMail is a private message, which normally spends a credit from a paid LinkedIn plan and is free when the recipient has an Open Profile.

With InMail on, the Sellinger LinkedIn agent opens a lead it is not connected to with an InMail, not a connection request. It is free for an Open Profile member, spends one Premium credit otherwise, and falls back to a plain connection request when no credit or daily slot is left. The default is 10 InMails a day per account, with a maximum of 50. The account needs LinkedIn Premium or Sales Navigator. The product page has the details.

For recruiters the credit is the real constraint. Spend InMails on the passive candidates you really want and let invitations do the volume.

What should the first message say?

One concrete thing about the person, one reason you are writing, and one easy question. The InMail the agent writes has a subject under 60 characters and three to five short sentences. It has no calendar link in the first message and never pretends the two of you have spoken before.

Examples of reasons that work for candidates:

• A project they posted about that matches the stack you hire for.
• A move they made that suggests they enjoy the kind of work the role offers.
• A shared niche, with a plain question: "Are you open to hearing about a role like this, or is now not the time?"

Examples for hiring managers:

• A role they have open, mentioned on their company page, with a question about how they are filling it.
• A recent announcement that implies growth.

Skip adjectives such as "exciting", "dynamic" and "rockstar". They are what everyone else writes. For the style that worked on our own account, see observation openers beat questions: an observation about the person's work out-replied a question by 10 to 15 points on our own LinkedIn outbound.

What worked in a recruiting style campaign?

We have no recruiter customer case study, so we cite the closest thing: a referral network that recruited professionals on LinkedIn. Its agents wrote as peers, with a compliment or one question and no pitch. Of 9,808 professionals messaged, 4,392 replied (44.8%), and 3,119 of 9,264 replied with more than a pleasantry (33.7%). Of 1,751 replies that were only "thanks for connecting", the agent turned 1,035 into real conversations by asking one question.

The same study found that the audience mattered more than the wording. Recruiting private bankers and golden visa advisors worked best, and profiles run for individual member firms replied at 27.4% and booked under 1%. The lesson for recruiters is to pick a niche where your offer is plainly relevant. Read the full case study before you copy its approach, because a network of advisors is not a candidate pool.

What must stay with a person?

Decide this before the campaign starts and write it into the agent's rules.

• Pay and offers. The agent should not discuss salary, equity or terms.
• Judging fit. The agent can ask whether the person is open to a move and note the answer. A person decides whether to go further.
• Anything about the person's current employer. Confidential comments and negative remarks should be handled by a human.
• Sensitive replies. A candidate who is upset, or who asks how you found them, deserves a human answer.

Sellinger lets a campaign run in approval mode, where every message waits for a person to approve it, and a person can take over any conversation. Start in approval mode, read the first fifty messages and only then let it send on its own.

What about the rules?

Two sets of rules apply. LinkedIn's, which bans prohibited software and extensions and says nothing that makes any automation risk free, covered in LinkedIn's terms of service and automation. And data protection law, because candidate data is personal data. Collect only what you need, tell people where you got it when they ask and stop when they say stop. Before every send on LinkedIn the platform checks the team's suppression list.

A checklist

• [ ] Candidates and clients have separate campaigns.
• [ ] Invites do the volume, InMails go to a few people who matter.
• [ ] Each message has one concrete reason and one easy question.
• [ ] Pay, offers and fit are written down as human only.
• [ ] I started in approval mode and read the first fifty messages.
• [ ] I know my daily InMail limit and how many credits my plan holds.