Online search engines and recruiting tools can help you find many qualified candidates with ease, but what they can't guarantee is any candidate you reach out to ever contacting you back. When you're reaching out to a potential hire, especially for high-value engineering positions, you need to communicate in a compelling way to give you an edge over the competition.
Social media and other online tools have made it easy for recruiters to search for and discover engineers whose work experience closely fits their job openings. Unfortunately, it also means that nearly every engineer I know has a fairly low view of recruitment e-mails. Usually this is annoyance at the behavior of third-party recruiters. Common complaints include:
Not knowing when to quit, using the wrong channels, and ignoring a poor fit: It is in recruiter's interests to cast as wide a net for talent as possible; it costs very little to e-mail lots of people about an opportunity, even if few...