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Your Real Competition Isn’t Who You Think It Is
Open rates in 2025 and who you're really up against!
It’s not just Hays or Robert Walters you’re up against.
It’s spam, newsletters, sales teams, internal comms, and every Slack ping fighting for every second of their attention.
Microsoft’s Work Trend Index says the average employee gets:
117 emails per day
153 Teams messages on top
🥶 Cold calls? iPhones silence unknown numbers. Most people I know don’t answer unknown numbers, and the filters are getting smarter.
So if you’re not hearing back, maybe it’s not your message.
Maybe it’s the noise around it.
Floats focus
Scott & Shaun caught up last week in person, which is a rare occasion. When they do, they like to talk about the future of recruitment and AI.
Check it out below.👇
TL;DR 📝
Why “I, me, we” language kills replies
How flipping to “you, your” lifts responses
Simple ways to sound more human (without overthinking it)
Real-world plays recruiters are using right now
Open rates in 2025
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Most cold emails still start with:
“I hope you’re well, I wanted to reach out because I specialise in…”
It screams, me, we, me…
Replies go up when the message is about them.
“Your team’s scaling fast — would a Python dev help?” → +40% replies
“How’s hiring for your payments team going?” beats “I have a candidate”
A quick voice note or mention of their LinkedIn post makes it feel real
The more it’s in their world, the more likely they’ll reply.
“You posted a engineering role last week for the core banking transformation. How are you finding the calibre of candidates coming through?”
What We’re Seeing in the Wild
LinkedIn first > email. Same words, better channel. Replies jump 3-5x.
Voice notes build rapport. A quick one after a message or a video to introduce yourself will allow you to remain human.
SMS/WhatsApp works with warm contacts. Past clients or placements respond faster here than to cold emails.
Our Tool Tip
If you spend lots of time flicking between tabs, Anori is great to centralise your apps and have one single source of truth when you start your day.
Check out how Nick Benham is opening doors and placing people through floats.
A Thought to Leave You With 🤔
Sometimes shorter is better, as you can see below.
If your cold message is as long as this newsletter, you’re most likely not going to get a response.
One Ask 🙏
f you’re getting value from this, pass it on to someone who’d appreciate it.
It’s free, packed with what we’ve learnt about tech, sales, and recruitment — plus the occasional dodgy meme and questionable grammar.