Writing the right message to your prospective candidates on LinkedIn is crucial in getting them interested in your job. 

An InMail is almost always left unanswered when it doesn’t address the candidate and if it’s too standardised.

But writing a good message is more difficult than it looks, and LinkedIn’s own data shows exactly where most recruiters lose. The response rate for InMails under 400 characters runs 22% above average, while InMails over 1,200 characters run 11% below it - LinkedIn Talent Blog. Only 10% of InMails are that short. Nearly half, 46%, are over 800 characters.

Which means the cheapest improvement available to you is not a cleverer opening line. It is deleting half of what you already wrote. Every template below is built to that constraint, and all four come in under 400 characters.

Having the right outreach message templates is a great start to write outreach that converts.

These guidelines can help you write InMails that convert:

• Have the candidate’s perspective in mind while drafting your message, step in their shoes, try to imagine what you would want to receive as a potential candidate
• Include personalisations, have you read about the candidate's top skills or particular interests? Include them in your message (you can also partly automate this)
• Be clear and concise about why you reach out. After you addressed the candidate and their skills and interests, indicate what your role is, who you’re looking for and for what reason.
• Avoid asking many questions or requesting information, keep things simple and effortless for the candidate.
• Provide a call-to-action so the candidate knows how they can respond.

Two more findings from the same LinkedIn dataset are worth building into every template below. InMails sent individually see response rates roughly 15% higher than the same message blasted in bulk, and candidates carrying the Open To Work signal respond 37% more often than everyone else. Bulk sending is not the same result at greater scale, it is a worse result at greater scale. And if you have a shortlist of thirty people, the order you work it in changes your hit rate before you have written a word.

Timing barely registers by comparison. Monday is marginally the best day, Sunday through Thursday all sit within about 1% of average, and only Friday (4% below) and Saturday (8% below) are genuinely bad. So do not agonise over send times. Agonise over length.

What an InMail actually costs you

Before you pick a template, understand the meter running behind it, because it decides whether you can afford to write a good message to fifty people or a forgettable one to five hundred.

Every Recruiter Lite licence includes 30 InMail credits per month, and unused credits accumulate to a hard ceiling of 120, so you cannot bank them indefinitely and sprint at quarter end - LinkedIn Recruiter Help. Recruiter Corporate seats carry 150 a month. The subject line is capped at 200 characters and the body at 1,900, and that 1,900 is a trap rather than a target: it is more than four times the length LinkedIn’s own data says performs best.

Then there is the rule almost nobody uses deliberately. You get the credit back if the candidate accepts, declines or replies within 90 days of you sending it - LinkedIn Recruiter Help. A rejection is a refund. The message that costs you real money is the one that gets ignored, not the one that gets a no.

That inverts the instinct most recruiters have. Writing a message that is easy to decline feels like inviting rejection, and it is, but a decline is free and silence is not. This is the real argument for the low-friction call-to-action in every template below. "A yes or a no are both fine" is not politeness, it is credit management.

Three channels, three different bills

InMail is not your only option, and once you have a template that works, the interesting question stops being what to write and becomes how many people you can put it in front of. The table below is the same message down three different pipes.

The connection invite is the tactic the rest of this article is quietly built on. A short message works as a connection note just as well as it works as an InMail, which means the templates you are about to steal can cost you nothing to send. The trade is reach: LinkedIn does not publish its invitation limit, and its own help page confirms only that limits apply to all members, Premium included, and that a restriction typically lasts a week once you trip it - LinkedIn Help. Treat the specific numbers you read on automation blogs as folklore, and pace yourself.

Email is the third door, and the only one that removes the ceiling outright. The templates below do not depend on being inside LinkedIn at all: they work verbatim as emails. A contact finder such as Apollo.io turns a LinkedIn profile into an email address, at which point your 30 InMails a month stop being the thing that limits your sourcing.

These are some of the proven LinkedIn Recruiter message templates:

Four templates follow: two InMails, one connection invite, one follow-up. The character count is given for each, measured as written and before you fill in the brackets, because that budget is the whole point.

LinkedIn InMail message example 1: software engineers

LinkedIn message examples to software engineers:

Software engineers are amongst the most in demand talent in the market. Any message that seems too standardised or impersonal just will not get many responses.

Your message to a software engineer should at least include a reference to their technology of choice and refer to their top skills.

Here’s an example:

Your LinkedIn Recruiter template message to software engineers could look something like this (329 characters):

Hi [first name],

I saw your engineering work on [platform], in particular your [top 3 matching skills]. 

Would be great to connect and hear what you want from your next career step. 

We’re hiring a [job position name], which can be done from [location].

Want to talk? A one-line reply is enough and I’ll follow up.

[your name]

Note what this template does not do. It does not explain the funding round, list the tech stack, or describe the culture. Every one of those is a reason the candidate might reply and ask, and none of them is worth spending your 400 characters on. The job of the first message is to earn a reply, not to close a hire.

LinkedIn InMail message example 2: business roles

People in business roles, like sales managers, are generally communicative people. They are practical and quick in their communication. 

Longer and more detailed is not necessarily better. Short and concise messages can be much more effective than long messages in general, and especially with business minded people.

The additional advantage is that you can use short messages also as connection invites instead of InMails, so you save your InMail credits for the profiles you cannot reach any other way.

A message could look something like this:

Your LinkedIn Recruiter template message to sales managers could look something like this (377 characters):

Hi [first name], 

I might be the hundredth recruiter reaching out, but I’ll try anyway: I’ve seen your [top 3 matching skills] work and it’s exactly what we’re short of.

We’re a team of ten, and the one person we’re missing is a [job position name] to own the number and write the playbook rather than inherit one.

Worth ten minutes? A yes or a no are both fine.

[your name]

At 377 characters this one is close to the line, so keep your substitutions short: "[top 3 matching skills]" is 23 characters and whatever you replace it with should be too. The hook here is the admission in the first line. Every commercial hire on LinkedIn knows they are being worked, and a recruiter who says so out loud is doing something the other ninety-nine did not. The second thing it does is offer scope rather than a company description, because a strong salesperson chooses between problems, not between employers.

LinkedIn connection invite: the free version

If your InMail credits are the constraint, this is where to start. The connection note is capped at 300 characters, which is tighter than the InMail sweet spot and therefore forces the discipline on you. It also costs nothing, and an accepted invite gives you a normal message thread with no credit meter at all.

A connection invite template (211 characters):

Hi [first name], I’m hiring a [job position name] at [company] and your [top skill] work is why I’m inviting you rather than mass-connecting. No pitch, I’d just like to be in touch for when you’re ready to look.

The final clause is doing the work. You are not asking for a call, a CV or a decision, so there is nothing to decline, and the acceptance rate on an invite that asks for nothing is far better than one that opens with a job. The cost is patience: you are buying a channel now and using it later. That suits pipeline building for a role you will open next quarter, and it does not suit a req that is already three weeks late.

The follow-up nobody sends

Most recruiters send one message and move on, which is the largest gap in the average outreach process. A second InMail costs a second credit and cannot be justified on a 30-a-month allowance, so send your follow-up as a connection invite or an email instead. That is the practical reason the channel arithmetic above matters.

A follow-up template (234 characters):

Hi [first name],

Following up once, then I’ll leave you alone. The [job position name] role is still open, [location], and [one specific fact about the team].

If the timing is wrong, saying so is genuinely useful to me.

[your name]

Keep the promise in the first line. "Following up once, then I’ll leave you alone" only works if it is true, and the recruiters who burn this line are the reason candidates mute the channel. The last line matters for the same reason the credit rule does: you are explicitly making "no" an acceptable answer, which is the cheapest reply you can receive and the only one that costs you nothing.

What to actually do with these

Take one template, cut it to under 400 characters, and send it individually rather than in bulk. That single change is worth more than any wording you will find in this article: InMails under 400 characters outperform the average by 22%, and individually sent ones beat bulk by roughly 15%, and neither requires you to be a better writer.

Then work out which channel you are actually constrained by. If 30 InMails a month is enough for your req load, none of the rest matters. If it is not, the connection invite is free and the email route is cheap, and the same 400 characters work down all three.

The other fork: HeroHunt.ai instead of a better template

If you would rather not run that arithmetic by hand at all, tools like HeroHunt.ai source candidates and handle the outreach sequence directly, which sidesteps the credit meter rather than optimising against it. Whether you want a better template or a different process is a genuine fork, and worth knowing which one you are shopping for.

InMail credit rules, character limits and response-rate figures verified against LinkedIn’s own Recruiter Help and Talent Blog pages in July 2026. Apollo pricing verified against Apollo’s pricing page the same month. Both change regularly, so confirm before you buy.