How often do cold emails work when hiring?
To those who are in the position to hire, how often do you hire someone who direct outreached to you via email, let alone even respond to them?
I'm trying to game plan some ways to move out of my current sleepy LO role into a fund with more scale and idea velocity. I've spoken to headhunters and been in touch with some of the MMs, but for the SMs, it's been pretty quiet. Would cold-emailing PMs with a pitch even work? I'm guessing 9/10 emails get ignored? What's the best path to get in touch with these SMs who don't always use headhunters and are more obscure in hiring?
9.9/10 ignored
For what reason - pitches not good or would rather hire from within network
i just get too many unsolicited emails, a lot of the others at my pod do too. Don't really check them anymore as a result
There are literally hundreds if not thousands of applications for each job. The odds of getting hired to begin with are already low. Why would I waste my time reviewing your resume when it was already filtered out with the normal process?
Plus there are so many phishing emails as is, no way I’m opening any attachment from an unknown random sender. Many firms send fake phishing emails and if you fall for their trap then you automatically get assigned a bullshit training course which just unnecessarily eats up time. So the risk/reward of finding a great candidate relative to the pain of more training just isn’t worth it. Besides, BD/recruiters should be doing their job and filtering out great candidates for me, I shouldn’t have to waste my time doing their job, my time should be spent making profits.
I generally try to respond to everyone since I've been on the other side of those emails as well. But easier to do since I'm getting 1 email every few months, if someone is at Pershing Square getting 5 emails a month from alumni then they'd be likely to ignore.
Same.
I’ve gotten a job from cold emailing funds and think it boils down to three variables: 1) who gets the email - ir@ or careers@ domains are not monitored by investment staff so you rely on someone else being in the know and then thinking to forward you to the investment team. 2) does the fund have a flexible recruiting policy - you are just out of luck if the fund only recruits from HHs or established pipelines. 3) is there a current need - it doesn’t matter if the right person gets your email and likes your pitch if there isn’t a need for additional talent. So, you really need multiple stars to align on it. I probably had a 5% response rate on my cold emails and the single one that resulted in an interview I converted to an offer.
Cold e-mails are 90% ignored. Cold e-mails that include a pitch and are thoughtful and don't feel like spam are 70-80% ignored. So it totally makes a difference.
As someone before said, if you contact a PM or CIO, they probably get hundreds of emails a day of people selling stuff, so there's just little attention span left to entertain unsolicited outreach.
Whats the best contact point then in your opinion? I feel like even if hit rate is low with PM’s they make the ultimate hiring decision right?
Yeah PM and CIO is a good point of contact. By the way when I said 20-30% response rate, I meant to say that is high and a good thing.
Your expectation should be people are going to ignore you. But you should try hard at it nevertheless. The more you sound differentiated and you are crafting your message and pitch to the specific fund or PM, the better your chances.
We have hired people via cold email and will hire again. That said we also ignore many of them. As said response rate is low, but candidates not in our network how else would they ever show up.
If you submit a thoughtful pitch in your email, I think you have a ~10% of your email turning into a conversation. Of those conversations, probably 50% are not hiring at the moment and just want to network and the other 50% might hire ad hoc.
Update: So I've been cold emailing a lot of different funds and so far I have a 20% response hit rate with 1/3 of those resulting in an intro call and rest telling me they're not hiring. This is a dejecting process I'd have to admit.
These are great stats. Keep it up.
getting dozens of these email and feels lazy unless you are already having a good career at a HF. do not send pitches; in all these years i have not seen a single good pitch sent to me.
Thanks for your input. However, I will not be listening to it.
Why do you ask in the first place? Do you want people to prep your pitch on here as well?
go figure, surely all the top HFs have been waiting for another LO junior.
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