Latest / Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions / Why the Best Hires Come From LinkedIn InMail Rejections
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, I want to talk about something that every recruiter has experienced but almost nobody tracks systematically: the candidate who responds to your InMail with a polite 'Thanks, but I'm not looking right now.' Luna: Right — the classic brush-off. Most recruiters just move on to the next name on the list. Are you saying we should be circling back? Lucas: Exactly. And I'm not talking about the spray and pray follow-up six months later. I mean a structured, data-informed re-engagement strategy. There's a mid-size SaaS company — they've got about eight hundred employees, let's call them TechFlow for now — they analyzed two years of InMail responses and found something surprising. Luna: I'm guessing the candidates who initially said no but stayed in touch performed better? Lucas: More than that. The candidates who politely declined the initial reach but left a genuinely positive impression — meaning they were courteous, asked a question about the role, or even offered a referral — those people, when they eventually joined, had 40 percent lower voluntary turnover and reached full productivity 23 percent faster than candidates who accepted the first InMail. Luna: That's a huge gap. I wonder if part of it is self-selection — the people who decline politely are often more thoughtful, more confident in their current role, less desperate. They're not just taking any job. Lucas: That's exactly what TechFlow's HR team concluded. They started scoring InMail responses on a three-point scale: positive decline, neutral, or negative. A positive decline got the candidate flagged for a six-month nurture sequence — quarterly check-ins, sharing relevant content, inviting them to webinars. And when a role opened that genuinely matched, the recruiter reached out with a very specific, low-pressure message referencing their earlier conversation. Luna: So it's not just 'are you interested yet?' — it's more like 'we remembered you, and here's something tailored.' That feels respectful rather than annoying. Lucas: Exactly. And the data backs it up. Of the hires that came from positive-decline candidates, the average time from initial contact to hire was eleven months — so it's a long game. But those hires stayed an average of fourteen months longer than hires from cold InMail accepts. For a company where the median tenure is around twenty months, that's enormous. Luna: Hang on — I want to push back a little. Is there a risk that recruiters start reading positivity into responses that are just standard politeness? Especially from candidates who are socially skilled or from cultures where declining directly feels rude? Could this become a bias trap? Lucas: That's a really smart challenge, and yes — if you treat the scoring as objective, you absolutely risk overvaluing candidates who are naturally polished communicators. TechFlow built in a calibration step: once a quarter, the recruiting team reviewed a random sample of scored responses together and discussed edge cases. They found that Asian-American and first-generation immigrant candidates were slightly more likely to be scored 'neutral' when their intent was actually positive — just phrased more directly. Luna: So they adjusted the rubric? Lucas: They did. They added a fourth category: 'positive decline, culturally direct.' And they trained recruiters to look for specific signals — did the candidate ask a question about the role? Did they offer an alternative? Did they thank the recruiter by name? That shifted the focus from tone to substantive engagement. And after that calibration, the retention benefit held across demographic groups. Luna: That's a thoughtful fix. So what does the nurture sequence actually look like in practice? I can imagine it getting spammy fast. Lucas: TechFlow's sequence is surprisingly minimal. Month one: a thank-you note and an invitation to connect on LinkedIn if they haven't already. Month three: share a blog post about a recent product launch or a team milestone — something concrete, not just 'we're hiring.' Month six: a personalized note referencing the earlier conversation and asking if there's any update in their career interests. And then at month nine or when a relevant role opens, a targeted reach-out. Luna: And the open and response rates on those? Lucas: The six-month check-in had a 52 percent response rate — way above the average InMail response rate of about 18 percent. And of those who responded, about a third said they were open to a conversation. That's a high-yield pipeline for very low effort. Luna: That's a really smart application of the data. And it feels like a natural extension of something we've talked about before — talent hoarding, treating every positive interaction as a long-term relationship. Lucas: It is. And you know, this is the kind of granular insight that keeps this show interesting — because it comes from listeners sharing what's working in their own companies. We've had a few people write in saying they tried something similar after hearing our episode on talent hoarding. That kind of feedback genuinely shapes the direction of the show. Luna: Yeah, and it's also why listener support matters. If these conversations have moved your work forward in even a small way, you can help keep the podcast ad-free and independent at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Exactly. No pressure — just a way for people who get value from the show to chip in. And every bit of support lets us dig deeper into these data stories. So — back to the sequence. One thing I love about TechFlow's approach is that they don't just track conversions. They track the quality of the hire over time, which is rare. Luna: How do they define quality? Is it purely retention and time to productivity, or are there other metrics? Lucas: They use a composite score: first-year performance rating from the manager, retention at twelve months, and a 'peer impact' score from a 360-degree feedback tool. The positive-decline hires scored 15 percent higher on the composite than the cold-accept hires. And interestingly, they also scored higher on a question about 'proactive communication' — which makes sense if their initial decline was articulate. Luna: So you're essentially using the candidate's first interaction with the company as a mini work sample. Their ability to handle a polite rejection — or in this case, a polite decline — correlates with on-the-job behavior. Lucas: Exactly. It's not about the rejection itself; it's about how they handle the exchange. Do they treat the recruiter as a human? Do they offer something of value — even just a referral or a thoughtful question? That's a signal of relationship-building skill that's hard to capture in a structured interview. Luna: I can see smaller companies without dedicated recruiting teams struggling to implement this. If you're a founder doing your own hiring, you're barely keeping up with the inbox as it is. Lucas: True. But the principle scales down. A founder can simply tag a candidate as 'warm decline' in their ATS or even a spreadsheet, and set a calendar reminder for three months to send a short LinkedIn message. The tech is secondary to the mindset shift: treat every no as a potential yes down the line. Luna: And I'd add that for startups, the talent pool is smaller, so relationships matter even more. Burning a bridge with a polite decline because you don't follow up is a missed opportunity. Lucas: Exactly. And the cost of that missed opportunity is hard to measure until you actually start tracking it. TechFlow found that the positive-decline pipeline accounted for 22 percent of all hires in year two, up from 8 percent in year one. That's a growing share of their workforce coming from a source they were previously ignoring. Luna: So what's the one takeaway for a recruiter or manager listening right now? Lucas: Start tracking the quality of your InMail responses. Not just whether they reply, but how they reply. Create a simple three-category system: decline but positive, neutral, or negative. And for every positive decline, set a reminder to re-engage in six months. The data suggests that's where your highest-quality long-term hires are hiding. Luna: It almost makes you rethink the whole 'always be closing' mentality in recruiting. Sometimes the best close is a patient follow-up. Lucas: Exactly. And that's a good note to end on. Next episode, I want to talk about why some companies are moving away from the standard 'tell me about yourself' question entirely — and what they're replacing it with.