Maximising Replies to Scout Messages with RPA, for Recruitment Agencies

Scouting is one of the ways a recruitment agency attracts candidates: you send offer emails directly to candidates registered on a job site.
It narrows the target more tightly than running ads and reaches people actively looking to move, which makes it an efficient way to attract candidates, and it is drawing attention.

The first half of this article explains scouting itself; the second covers RPA, which is indispensable if you want to get the most out of it.

Also worth reading)[The complete guide to marketing for recruitment agencies]

1. The advantages of scouting

Scouting reaches people who are already looking to move, but it has plenty of other advantages too, and the most notable are gathered below.

1.1 You can define the target more precisely than with advertising

Instead of building landing pages and banners and attracting candidates through search or Meta advertising, scouting approaches a target chosen in advance by job history, location, desired terms, desired workplace, preferred way of working and so on. As a result, you can find the candidates who best fit the vacancies you hold.

1.2 You know about the candidate before the meeting, so the meeting is sharper.

Candidates found through scouting tend to come with more information up front than candidates attracted through advertising. With other methods customer support has to ask about career history, address and so on before the meeting, but here the candidate has already registered their job history, location, desired terms, desired workplace and preferred way of working on the job site, so the career adviser can go into the meeting fully prepared

1.3 It is easier to increase the number of candidates

Scouting approaches strong candidates chosen in advance, so it brings in the candidates you are targeting efficiently. That makes it easier to meet the range of hiring requirements your client companies have.

1.4 Standing apart from competitors

Scouting reaches one person at a time, so writing for that individual rather than using a template sets you apart from competitors, and it lifts the reply rate and the number of meetings held.

1.5 You can raise the placement rate

Because the search criteria are narrowed in advance, candidates found through scouting are more likely to match what the client company is asking for, which raises the placement rate (the share of offers accepted).
Scouting is becoming an ever more important method for anyone running a recruitment agency. Choose the target well, and send messages with a thought for what would make a candidate want to open them, and you can reach people advertising struggles to reach.

2. The problems with scouting for recruitment agencies

Scouting is an effective strategy, but it comes with the problems below.

2.1 It takes time and effort

On some platforms someone has to sit on the site watching for new registrations. That means it eats a great deal of time and resource.
On many platforms one reply per hundred messages counts as a good outcome, so
for all the time it takes, it may not increase the number of meetings.

2.2 It can cause offence

Some candidates find scout emails unwelcome.
Where a candidate has already had a flood of scout messages and finds them a nuisance, or is only browsing vacancies with no thought of moving, the reaction can be negative.

2.3 It can damage your brand

If the content is inappropriate, or you send too many, bad word of mouth follows and your brand can be damaged.
Excessive scouting and clumsy approaches harm your reputation with candidates and within the industry, and that works against you.

2.4 Sometimes the candidate cannot apply because they do not meet the essential requirements of the vacancy you sent

You look at a candidate’s history, decide a client’s vacancy is a match, attach it and send the scout message, but once you hear the detail of their history they do not meet the essential criteria, and putting them forward turns out to be difficult.
From the candidate’s side it reads as: you scouted me, I made time, and now I cannot even apply. Sometimes that turns into a complaint.

Given those disadvantages, making scouting work takes careful planning and a sound approach. Respect how candidates feel and what they want, and take care not to damage your brand.

3. Reply rates for scout messages

3.1 What the reply rate is

The reply rate is the share of the scout emails a company sends that get a reply from a candidate.
As a formula:

・Reply rate = replies from candidates ÷ scout emails sent

Researchers in the recruitment industry work with this rate in mind, always looking to lift it and to get more replies.

3.2 The average reply rate

The average reply rate for scout emails is generally put at around 10%, but it varies a great deal by platform, so if you set it as a KPI do not fix one target across the board; work it out platform by platform.

For example, “ Wantedly” averages around 16%, “ BizReach” averages around 7%, and “ doda maps” averages X%, so the spread is wide.
Wantedly in particular is mostly used for employer branding and less often as a scouting tool than other services, so the volume sent is lower and the reply rate tends to be extremely high.

Doda, by contrast, is usually brought in mainly as a scouting tool, so companies send scout emails in volume.
That means registered candidates receive scout emails from several companies, and the reply rate tends to be lower.

4. How do you build an organisation that is good at scouting?

4.1 Get the client-side team on board

In the recruitment industry it is vital that CAs (career advisers) and RAs (recruiting advisers) work together.
That applies to scout emails too.

The RA secures the client’s permission to attach the vacancy, and when the scout message is written or the search is set up on the platform, what the RA knows about the client’s needs is reflected correctly is
That matters a great deal if you want more replies.

4.2 Allow a period to test what works

When scouting is new to the organisation, every single reply swings the mood, and
people keep using whatever message got a reply once, or rewrite the message the moment a few go unanswered.
But if you are running scouting for the long term, you have to examine whether that template really works.
Allow at least two weeks to test it.

4.3 Put a dedicated researcher on scouting

Once you have more than 15 CAs, consider putting a researcher on scouting full time.
Handling scouting on top of CA work is very hard.
Overtime runs high in the recruitment industry, and scouting is one of the places it breeds.
Split the work that can be split, and build an environment where people can concentrate.

Rather than a researcher, bringing in the RPA described below sometimes works out better value, so think carefully about which of the two suits your organisation.

5. How to increase replies to scout messages

5.1 Write what the candidate wants to know

A scout email has to carry the information the candidate wants to know.

A very large, well-known agency can send a scout email that is thin on information & says only what any company could say, and candidates will often still reply.
For everyone outside that small group, though, you will not get a reply unless you think hard about how the candidate feels.

Rather than saying what any company could say, write from the candidate’s point of view: what do they want to know, and what would put their mind at rest?

For example, where you are targeting younger candidates, many assume an agency will push them into a job they did not choose,
so lower the bar to a meeting by saying in the message that a meeting alone is fine and that they need not go through a paper sift.

With senior candidates, telling them your record on raising salaries, the CA’s own background and what kind of vacancies you can put forward builds trust and makes a reply more likely.

If you do not know what the candidate wants to hear, attach the vacancy you are most confident about and send that.

5.2 Understand how the candidate feels

To write a scout email that carries what the candidate needs, as above, you have to understand how they feel.

Understand the worries each of the targets in the figure carries, and write with them in mind.

5.3 Know what each platform is like

There are several scouting platforms, including Mynavi, Recruit and Doda, and
each has a different profile of registered candidates (age band, salary, job type and so on).

A different profile means a very different case to make and a very different tone, so
review regularly whether your target is really present on that platform in numbers, whether a better scouting platform exists, and whether the case you make fits the platform.

Platform	Profile of registered candidates
Mynavi	With its share of the graduate market behind it, many are early-career candidates moving job for the first time
RAN	Covers every field; many in the 3 to 4 million yen salary band
Doda Maps	The profile is no different from RAN, and many are under 30 and work in sales, retail or services
Doda X	Many registrants are on the business side, earning 8 to 12 million yen
Green	Over 50% IT and web people; around 70% aged 25 to 39
Recruit Direct Scout	Many senior people in the 7 to 12 million yen salary band

5.4 Change the time you send

Now that changing jobs is routine, most candidates look while still in work.
That often leaves them little time on their phone.

If replies will not rise, your message may be buried by the time the candidate picks up their phone, so make it land as new at the moments they are likely to be looking, such as the lunch break, the morning and evening commute, or after dinner when they check their email, by adjusting the time you send.

5.5 Say why you scouted them

Candidates are alert to why you sent the message and whether you really read their history.
If the reason is unclear and it is obvious you did not read it, they close the message straight away and
move on to a scout email from another company.

Mention at the top of the scout email which parts of their experience appealed to you and why you decided to reach out, and show that you have properly looked at them before sending.

5.6 Change how you run your scouting

If manual scouting has hit its limit, or reply numbers have stalled, use RPA.
We cover RPA in detail below, but when a CA or a researcher sends scouts by hand, even 100 emails a day is hard going.
Shift your focus from raising the reply rate to raising the number of replies, and consider RPA so you can reach as many targets as possible.

6. What is scouting RPA?

6.1 What is RPA?

RPA stands for robotic process automation: software robots that automate the routine tasks and work people do. It is one of the technologies that has drawn most attention in business in recent years.

RPA can carry out routine tasks and manual work in place of a person.
Automating routine work with RPA lightens the load on staff and raises productivity.
It also keeps human error to a minimum, so the work is more accurate, and it cuts labour costs, so you can expect savings.

Freeing staff from routine work lets them spend time on the strategic and creative work that people should be doing.

6.2 RPA in scouting

RPA improves efficiency and cuts labour costs, and the recruitment industry is putting it to use as well.
In recruitment it is mainly used for sending scouts, which is routine and prone to human error.

Where career advisers are the ones sending scouts, RPA gives them more time for candidates,、
and where researchers do the scouting, you can increase the number of career advisers and recruiting advisers and aim for higher revenue.

7. Types of scouting RPA and what they do

7.1 Types of scouting RPA

These four scouting RPA products are the ones most used in recruitment agency work.

• Standard Factory
• Westy Consulting
• Open Associates

Most of these systems cost around 100,000 yen a month.

7.2 What scouting RPA can do

There are several scouting RPA products, as above,
but there is little difference in the features you can use.

Scouting RPA generally comes with the following features.

• Automatic scout sending
• Customisable scout templates
• Control over send times
• Runs 365 days a year
• Send history

8. Use scouting RPA to maximise replies

We hope that was useful.

To sum up the ways to increase scout replies:
・Change the template
・Change how you send
They divide broadly into those two.

RPA is essential if you want to change how you send and increase replies.
Consider bringing in RPA to increase the number of interviews as well.