Some roles pay less than other employers offer for the same title. The company may be smaller than the ones it competes with for hires, or the budget for the role may already be set. Either way, the people you write to can probably earn more elsewhere, so the first message in below-market salary outreach has to say something about pay. Promising “competitive pay” and holding the number for a first call doesn’t change what the role pays.
They’ll still hear the number, on a call you’ve both set time aside for, and react strongly (if not subtly). If the pay rules the role out, you’ve both lost that time.
I recommend you state the pay range up front: put it in your first message, so the candidate sees the number before anyone books a call. Then offer one thing in place of higher pay, which I’ll call the trade. Write first to the people that trade is most likely to suit, and wait for those that still reply.
What does below-market salary outreach say first?
It clearly states the role’s pay. A candidate deciding whether to reply weighs the range against what they earn now. Without the range in the message, they can’t start that comparison.
Before you write, ask your compensation team or the hiring manager whether your role is below market. You won’t need to keep asking after you do this process a few times; it becomes an educated guess.
If it is lower, the first message needs four parts on top of what you’d normally say about the role:
- The range, near the top, where it can’t be missed.
- One sentence comparing your pay with what other employers pay. For example, say the base pay is lower than at larger companies in your field.
- The trade: the one thing the role gives instead of more money, covered in the next section.
- A closing line that makes “no” an easy answer to give.
Cut the phrase “competitive pay” from the message as well.
Being plain about pay borrows an idea from employer branding. On episode 35 of the 10x Recruiting podcast, Kellie McCann, who has worked at Amazon, Walmart, and Robinhood, explains why the best employer brands attract the right people and put off the wrong ones.
In her view, being honest about what the company is really like does that faster than polishing its image. A range in the first message should do the same for one role: people the pay doesn’t suit can rule themselves out before a call.
The rest of a first message, apart from pay, is covered in this guide to writing candidate outreach.
When all you have is a work email.
There’s one exception: don’t put the range in a message to a work email address, because the candidate’s employer may be able to read it. If a work address is all you have, leave the pay and the role details out of that first message.
Say who you are and that you have a role to discuss, and ask for a personal email address or phone number. Then name the range in your first message to that personal address or number.
Agree on the range and the trade before the first send.
Before you contact anyone, settle two things with the hiring manager: the pay range and the one trade you’ll offer. Confirm the range is what they’ll pay, because anyone who replies will expect an offer inside it. Also ask whether they could go above the top of the range, so you know what to say if a candidate asks whether it can move.
Each row below is a trade a below-market role can make, with what to say about it in the message and what the hiring manager has to confirm first:
| The trade | What the message says | What the hiring manager confirms |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | What the hire would own that a larger company gives to someone more senior | The remit, written down, including what the hire won’t own |
| Flexibility | The hours, the location, or the remote setup, stated as the role’s written policy | That the policy applies to this role from the first day |
| Company stage | What working at an earlier-stage company changes about the job, and the form any equity takes | Whether equity is offered and in what form, with no value promised |
| Mission | The specific work and who it serves | A one-line statement of the mission, in words they’d use with a candidate on a call |
Put only one trade in the message. To me, listing all four reads like an apology for the pay, and I’d expect an apology to make the candidate look harder at the number.
If the hiring manager can’t name a trade, don’t send anything yet. Without one, the message gives the candidate a lower number and no reason to take it, so go through the four rows above with the hiring manager. If none fits, keep the role out of outbound until they can offer one.
How the four parts read together.
Here’s how the four parts from the first section might read in a first message. The square brackets are placeholders, and I’ve left out the role’s usual details:
Aim the search at the right people.
The lower pay won’t suit everyone, so decide who gets your first messages. These are the four kinds of profile I’d expect to reply despite it:
- People for whom the role is a step up, because the scope is more than their current title holds.
- People whose history shows they’ve chosen a similar trade before, such as a remote role, a shorter week, or an earlier-stage company.
- People with a visible tie to the mission: the field they’ve worked in, written about, or volunteered for.
- People at employers that pay closer to your range for this work. Your compensation team can tell you which employers those are.
Treat each kind as its own profile group. You’ll write to each group in its own batch and count its replies separately.
Choose which group to write to first.
Start with the groups that fit the trade you picked: step-up candidates when the trade is scope, people who’ve made a similar trade before when it’s flexibility or company stage, and people tied to the mission when it’s the mission. Candidates at lower-paying employers fit any trade, because your range is closer to what they earn now. If a candidate fits two groups, count them in the group that matches your trade, even if they also work at a lower-paying employer.
Write to the remaining groups once you’ve seen how your first groups respond. The people least likely to reply come last of all, and they fit none of the four groups: their title and employer put them at the top of the market for the role, and nothing on their profile suggests your trade would appeal to them.
Put the range and the trade in the search brief.
Write a search brief before the search starts, for the person or tool that will run it. Name the profile groups in it, and add the pay range and the trade in plain words. That way, the person reviewing the search results knows what the role pays before choosing who to contact.
Read who replies, and why.
Once the first batches go out, keep each group’s replies separate, so you can see which groups the message is reaching. Watch for one kind of reply in particular: a candidate asking what the role pays when the message already names it. If several candidates ask that, the range isn’t standing out, so fix where it sits in the message before you change anything else.
Compare groups on equal terms.
The counts only help if the comparison is fair. A group you’ve sent more messages to will usually have more replies, because more people have seen the message. Before you decide one group responds better than another, check that each has had the same number of messages naming the range.
Even then, small gaps don’t tell you much. In the first batches, two groups might differ by two or three requests for a call, and a gap that small could come down to who happened to be job hunting that week. Keep sending until one group is clearly ahead before you move more of your outreach toward it.
Candidates you first reached at a work address need one adjustment. That first message didn’t name the range, so a reply to it tells you nothing about how people react to the pay. Count them from the message you sent to their personal address, the first one that named the range.
Ask each candidate what made them reply.
Someone who reads the range and still asks for a call hasn’t been put off by the number, but you don’t yet know why they replied. The trade may have drawn them, or the range may be more than they earn now. Ask them on the first call what made them reply, and note the answer against their group.
Where Metaview fits in below-market outreach.
Metaview can help with three parts of this work: building the profile groups, sending each group its own sequence, and keeping a record of the first calls. Each of these still depends on you putting the range in the brief or the message.
Sort candidates into profile groups.
Metaview’s artificial intelligence (AI) agent for finding candidates, AI Sourcing, can help you build the profile groups. It works from a plain-language description of the role and the groups, and it explains why it returned each candidate. You can use that explanation to put each candidate in a group before anyone writes to them.
Send each group its own sequence.
Automating the sending helps only if the message gives candidates what they need to decide, which here means the range. Siadhal Magos, Metaview’s co-founder and chief executive officer, made the point about screening in a Metaview blog post, and it holds for outreach too:
There’s no point designing an incredibly efficient hiring system that candidates hate using.”
For the sending, Metaview Outreach runs automated email sequences that a recruiter creates and reviews, with personalization for each candidate. You can run each profile group as its own sequence to the personal addresses you have, all carrying the same range.
Hand the search and the writing to one agent.
fillmore, Metaview’s autonomous outbound recruiting agent, covers both: it researches prospective candidates, builds target lists, and writes personalized outreach. Recruiters review the pipeline it builds.
fillmore starts from a role or a hiring brief. If you give it a brief, that’s where you’d write the range and the trade.
Keep a record of the first calls.
Metaview’s Notetaker captures every spoken word on the first call, if both the candidate and the recruiter consent to recording. When a candidate turns the role down over pay, you can then show the hiring manager the candidate’s own words about the range.
How to tell the range is reaching the right people.
Once a few first calls are behind you, look for these four patterns in the counts and first calls of each group you’ve written to:
| What you see | What I’d look at |
|---|---|
| Candidates write back to ask what the role pays | Whether the range sits near the top of the message, or below a paragraph about the company |
| Candidates turn the role down over pay on the first call | Whether the range in the message is the one the hiring manager will offer, and whether those candidates read it. If both are true, take the range back to the hiring manager and your compensation team. |
| Replies from people whose current title sits below the level you need | Expect some of these, because step-up candidates are one of your groups. Keep the ones whose experience meets the level the role needs, even if their title doesn’t. If most fall short of that level, check whether the trade makes the role sound junior, or whether the range is the only thing drawing them. |
| No replies at all from one profile group | Whether the trade means anything to that group. Before you judge that, check that the messages were delivered and that the group has had as many as the others. |
I’d expect a message that names the pay to get fewer replies than your usual outreach, so don’t read that as a sign the message is failing. Everyone who asked for a call after a message that named the range had the chance to rule the role out on pay. Follow up with them first: book a call with each one who meets the level the role needs before you write to the next group.
Name the pay first, and see who still replies.
See how a recruiter builds a Metaview Outreach email sequence for one profile group.
Frequently asked.
Won’t naming a lower range hurt how candidates see the company?
It can, if the sentence comparing your pay with other employers reads as an apology or names a competitor. Keep it to one factual line, and describe the higher-paying employers by type, such as larger companies in your field.
What if the hiring manager won’t let the range go in outreach?
Ask what worries them: the number itself, or who might see it once it’s written down. If it’s the number, I’d take that as a sign to review the range with your compensation team before outbound starts. If it’s exposure, propose sending the range only to candidates’ personal addresses, and keep the role to referrals and inbound applicants until the hiring manager agrees to that.
What do I say when a candidate asks what the equity is worth?
Tell them who can answer it and at which point in the process, and don’t estimate it yourself. If you guess at its value in writing, the candidate can hold you to that guess at the offer.
What if a candidate asks whether the range can move?
Tell them only what the hiring manager confirmed before the first send. If the hiring manager said there’s no room above the range, say it won’t move, and point back to the trade the message offered.
What if there’s no pay benchmark for the role?
Ask the hiring manager what they compared the role with when they called it below market, and base your comparison with other employers on that. Don’t try to work out a market rate from your replies, because a handful of them can’t establish one.
