Spec a candidate, get a reply

Every role leaves people behind. You ran the search, sent the client three to five CVs, and they hired one. Or they went quiet and hired no one. Either way you’re holding vetted candidates who trust you, know what they want, and expect to hear from you. Leave them a few weeks and another agency will call them, or they’ll find something on their own.

A spec is how you put them to work. It’s a short email to a company you don’t work with yet, introducing one strong candidate without naming them, with a client-safe CV attached. You aren’t asking for a meeting about your services. You’re offering a specific person for a problem the company probably has, which is a far easier thing to say yes to.

The stakes run both ways. A good spec can open an account that lasts for years, and it gives a candidate you rate a second shot. A careless one, sent to a careers inbox or without the candidate’s say-so, costs you their trust and tells the market you send CVs blind. The difference comes down to who you pick, what you write, and whether the candidate is in on it.

What recruiters told us

Recruiters told us that winning clients, and getting answers from them, now hurts more than finding candidates. A common move is to take a strong CV and send it to companies likely to want it. In a niche market every agency is calling the same people, so the profile itself isn’t your edge. Your edge is what isn’t on the profile.

Why it works: you know the person

Candidates want a recruiter who knows them, and hiring managers want an opinion they can trust. Neither is short of CVs. What a hiring manager can’t get from a job board is someone who has met the candidate and will put their name to a view: this person would move for the right team lead, not for money; they’ve done the work you need, not just used the words.

That view is built from what you pick up over calls and over years. Why they started looking. What would make them say no. What “senior” meant at their last company, and whether it means the same at this one. Which skills are real and which are on the CV because they’re in demand. When a skill is hot, CVs overstate it, so one candidate you’ve read in depth and spoken to is worth more than ten you haven’t.

Anyone can find the profile. Only you know why this person would move, and what it would take.

From our conversations with recruiters

It’s also why Hamrr doesn’t source candidates. The value sits with the people you already know, so that’s where it starts.

Who to send it to

Start with the candidate, not a company list. Ask where they’d like to work and where they wouldn’t, which companies they’ve already applied to, and whether another agency has sent their CV anywhere. That last question saves you an argument over who introduced them. Then build a short list, five to ten companies, from four places.

Then find the person who’d manage them. Not the careers inbox, and not HR unless HR runs the hiring. Reaching a CTO or a hiring manager is harder than finding the company, so give it the extra twenty minutes: check who posted the job, who leads the team on LinkedIn, and who has talked about the team in public. Timing helps too. A funding round, a new team lead or a run of job posts are all reasons your email lands this month rather than next year.

What to write

A hiring manager will give a spec a few seconds. Lead with one result from the candidate’s last job, with a number if you have one: “cut failed payments by a third”, or “grew the data team from two people to nine”. One result says more than a list of skills, and it’s the line they’ll repeat to whoever signs off the hire.

Then say why here. One sentence that shows you know the company: “they want to be closer to the product than a consultancy allows”, or “they’ve run the migration you’re about to start”. If you can’t write that sentence, the company probably shouldn’t be on the list.

For niche roles, describe the work, not just the title. Clients define the same job differently: a “forward deployed engineer” means pre-sales engineering at one company and owning delivery at another. Say which one your candidate is. Then finish with a small ask. “Worth a quick call?” is easier to say yes to than “Can I send over my terms?”, and it gets you on the phone, where your read on the candidate counts most.

The spec email

Five short lines: the result, the reason, the attachment and the ask.

Hi [Name],

I’m working with a [job title] who [one result, with a number]. They’re looking at a few companies like [Company], and [why they’d fit here].

Their CV is attached, with contact details taken out.

Worth a quick call this week?

[Your name]

Permission, then the follow-up

Get the candidate’s OK for each company, by name, before anything goes out. A candidate who finds their CV went somewhere they didn’t agree to stops trusting you, and they’re right to. Note the company and the date against the candidate, so you know who introduced them if the question ever comes up.

Make the CV client-safe before it leaves your outbox: take out the name, phone, email, address and profile links, and anything else that gives them away, like a photo or a small current employer. How to make a CV client-safe.

Then give it time. From the hiring side, a candidate who matches every requirement gets a fast answer, and a partial match gets left a few days while they weigh it. That pause is deliberate, so a quiet day isn’t a no. If you’ve heard nothing after a few working days, follow up once, by phone if you can: “I sent you a payments engineer on Tuesday. Worth five minutes?” If there’s still nothing, move on and tell the candidate where it stands. They’ll forgive a no. Silence is harder to forgive.

Agree your terms before you share anything that identifies the candidate. A name sent before terms is an introduction you may never get paid for.

Questions