How to leave an effective voicemail for your recruiter

Voicemail can be an awkward experience if you are unprepared or flustered about not getting through to someone. You can often forget to mention your name and the purpose of the call or you can ramble and get off track. Sometimes, you hang up after leaving a message full of fumbling words and you think to yourself, ‘what did I even just say?’. A lot of people fear this so much they just hang up and expect someone to realise their number and return the call.

These are not the right ways to leave a voicemail! But we’re here to help. We understand what recruiters are most likely to respond to. Here are our top tips.

Prepare your voicemail

Don’t pick up the phone expecting to get straight through. Recruiters are constantly on their phones whether it’s to clients or candidates and will often have to get back to people who’ve missed them. This means you should be prepared to leave a voicemail. You can even write it down so that you don’t go off track or forget what to say.

Include the right details

Don’t wait for the beep and say, ‘hey, it’s me, how are you?’. It’s not likely the recruiter will recognise your voice over the phone. And you are leaving a voicemail so there is no need to engage in conversation by asking how they are as there is no one on the other end to answer. Here are the only details you need to include in your voicemail.

• Your name – ‘Hi Manjita, this is Jane Smith.’
• Why you are calling – ‘I’m calling in regard to my interview yesterday’, or ‘I submitted my resume on the 15^th last week.’ You can go into more detail about the reason you are calling such as wanting feedback from an interview or wanting to know if they had come across your resume. It can also be helpful for the recruiter if you mention the job you applied for either by job number as listed on most job ads or by the job title.
• How to reach you – leave the best number to call you back on. State it clearly and steadily (not too quickly). Eg. ‘If you could back to me on 0-4-6-1-6-7-8-9-6-3 that would be much appreciated. Talk soon.’

In addition, one of our consultants has recommended that a short spiel about your experience related to key skills mentioned in the job ad can increase the chances of a callback.  This is mostly relevant during the early stages of your job search. The same consultant suggests if you are notifying a recruiter about a role you’ve applied for to mention the ad portal you used to apply (E.g. Seek, Indeed, Company Website, LinkedIn etc.).

Be professional

Address the recruiter as you would a hiring manager. Avoid using relaxed terms such as ‘mate’ or ‘babe’ which can sometimes roll off the tongue when talking casually. Additionally, make sure you don’t ramble or talk for too long. You only want to notify the person in order for them to call you back and continue the conversation with two people on the line.