Earlier this week I invited Fordyce readers to tell us how often they got a response — any response at all — to cold-call emails and voicemails you send or leave for candidates and clients.
The results are reported in the accompanying chart. The headline is that emails get a better response rate than do phone messages.
What it says is that almost 40% of those of you who took part in the survey say you get a call back to your phone message less than 25% of the time. Looked at from another angle, hardly anyone is getting anywhere close to half their messages returned.
Email, though. gets better results. Just under 8% of the respondents told us they are getting a response to at least half — and in some cases more than 75% — of their emails.
Our poll is anything but scientific. A properly conducted, random survey of recruiters and response rates might come up with very different results. However, it does track with what I’ve heard anecdotally, and with some surveys about email reply rates.
What prompted our Fordyce poll was a Top Echelon Network poll about same day callback rates. That survey of members of the splits network found few are getting called back the same day they leave a message.