How InMail Response Rates Compare Across Industries and Talent Pools

To help recruiters better connect with candidates, we recently showed you which InMails tend to get the best response rates. For instance, the shortest InMails get responses at a rate that’s 22% higher than the global average. The actionable takeaway for recruiters hoping to improve their response rates? Write shorter InMails.

But even if you craft the best, most optimized InMails in the world, some folks will still be harder to reach than others, just as some companies will have an easier time getting responses. Put simply, your industry and your target candidate make a big impact on your response rates. 

Let’s say you’re looking to hire HR professionals, while your recruiter friend is looking to fill roles in the accounting department. 

Pop quiz: Which one of you should expect a higher response rate?

What if you’re hiring for the same roles, but you're at a hospitality company, while your recruiter friend is at a tech company? These are important questions (take a guess, then find the answers below). 

Seeing how InMail benchmarks compare across industries and functions can give you a better perspective to judge your own performance. It can also help you set and manage expectations — especially if you’re being hounded by an impatient hiring manager. Read on for a closer look at how InMail response rates compare across industries (of the senders) and functions (of the recipients). 

Which industries get better InMail response rates?

Let’s answer half of the pop quiz question above: if you’re in the accommodations sector (which includes hotel, travel, and recreation companies), you should expect to see a relatively higher response rate to your InMails. 

Interestingly, nearly all of these industries are based around in-person roles whose day-to-day doesn’t lend itself easily to remote work. In fact, according to LinkedIn data from April 2022, the U.S. industries with the lowest percentage of paid remote job postings were retail (1.4%), accommodation (2.8%), and construction (3.1%) — all of which are represented above. 

It’s an encouraging sign that the hospitality sector is finding especially responsive candidates. After being devastated by the pandemic, many companies in this space have struggled to hire enough staff to meet rising demand. Retail was similarly hit hard by the early pandemic, only to come roaring back with a high demand for new in-person hires. 

The high response rates here may indicate that these companies are more aggressively recruiting a broader range of candidates who find their career opportunities enticing.

Which industries get lower InMail response rates?

Conversely, some of the industries with the most remote opportunities are also seeing lower response rates.

As of April 2022, the U.S. sector with the greatest percentage of paid remote job postings was technology, information, and media, where 41% of all jobs posted were remote. Behind that was administrative and support services (25%), which includes companies in tax preparation, waste management, and consumer credit reporting. 

While those remote job stats just cited are US-based, and the InMail insights shared in this story are global, this may still suggest a potential correlation between more remote jobs and lower response rates. 

This might simply be due to the fact that remote-friendly companies are now free to cast a much wider net, and may be taking more chances on candidates who aren’t prepared to respond.

On the other hand, it could be that all remote companies are now competing over the same talent pool — meaning top candidates may be especially inundated by InMails and less likely to respond.  

Which functions have better InMail response rates?

Up to this point, we’ve looked at response rates by the industries of the recruiters sending the InMails. 

Now, we’ll flip that on its head and consider the recipients, grouping them into functions by role. These functions roughly map to departments you might find in a large organization: HR, engineering, business development, sales, and others  

Notably, the single most responsive function was the one where most recruiters themselves sit: Folks in human resources responded to InMails at a rate 26% higher than the overall average.

These candidates might be recruiters themselves, given that demand for recruiting roles has skyrocketed in the past year. They might even know that simply responding to the InMail is a kindness to the talent professional on the other end, since any response within 90 days lets the recruiter earn back an InMail credit, even if the response is a polite “no, thank you.” 

Fittingly, the next most responsive functions were program/project managers and communications professionals, both of whom responded to InMails about 20% more than average. More than most, folks in these functions understand the value of being timely, organized, and communicative. 

Which functions have lower InMail response rates?

While IT and BizDev folks tended to be more responsive, their colleagues in engineering and sales were a little more reticent — at least in terms of InMails.

There is one thing that clearly separates engineering and sales from their more-responsive counterparts: sky-high demand. The top three most in-demand jobs on LinkedIn are software engineer, JavaScript developer, and salesperson, in that order. 

Engineering and sales receive more InMails than any other functions, so it only makes sense that their response rate would be somewhat lower than average. 

Final thoughts

These benchmarks might not leave you with simple tactics to improve your response rate, like the ones in our previous look at InMail insights — but they will help you see how you stack up and better understand different response rates across talent pools or teams. 

If you’re having a harder time getting responses from workers in sales roles, you can rest assured that you’re not alone. On the other hand, if you’re struggling to hear back from folks in HR, that could be a red flag and it’s probably worth reconsidering your approach. The good news: it’s probably something you can improve. 

Methodology

This analysis was based on tens of millions of InMails sent by corporate recruiters around the world between May 2021 and April 2022. Members included active users with relatively complete profiles. Staffing firms were excluded from this analysis. InMail responses include any response received within 30 days. Industries are determined by the company of the recruiter sending the InMail, while functions are determined by the role of the member receiving the InMail.

This story was in collaboration with LinkedIn Insights Analysts Joseph Soroñgon and Lahari Singireddy.

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