In recruiting as much as sales, the cold call enjoys near-mythic status. It’s almost a macho thing — you aren’t a real man (or real woman) until you master the cold call.

It’s easy to admire the hustle. A sales prospect, a job candidate … don’t just sit passively, waiting for him to come to you. Pick up the phone and close him!

So it’s 2022 … does cold-calling job candidates still work?

Nope. In fact, in recruitment as well as sales, cold calling is on its last legs. Generations of go-getters who valorized it need to let it go.

Why? Because robocalls and free-cruise pitches have effectively killed the phone.

Add to that big data that puts everyone’s phone number in the hands of list brokers; plus built-in call screening functionality. New out of the box, contemporary iPhones have built-in caller ID that now identifies many cold callers as “Scam Likely.” Who wouldn’t want to pick up a call from their good friend Scam Likely?

The result — the phone call is oversaturated and effectively dead. According to a 2020 study by Pew Research, eight out of ten Americans don’t answer calls from numbers they don’t recognize.

Cold-calling purists can scream about that all they want; that’s just the facts on the ground. Too many cold calls killed the golden goose.

What about leaving a voicemail? Only 14% of the Pew survey respondents said they ignored voicemails as well, but the results varied by gender, age, and ethnicity. They also didn’t take into account the percentage of voicemail boxes that are not set up or perpetually full.

So if cold-calling job prospects is useless, what’s a recruiter to do? Sit back with hands folded and hope the right candidate walks in the door unprompted?

Let’s reframe the question. Cold-calling job prospects may be dead, but cold-outreach is not dead. You just need to use modes of outreach that haven’t been beaten into the ground. Here are some cold-outreach techniques to try instead of cold calling:

-Text Messages. If the phone has been unseated, text has assumed the throne. According to SMS Comparison, 98% of text messages get read and 95% of them get replied to within three minutes.

-Emails. The average American receives 126 emails a day according to a report by the Radicati Group. This might seem like even more oversaturation than the phone, but the numbers are actually on the side of the emailers. According to Statista, 82% of employees check their email at least once when they are not working. With a surgical subject line, you actually have a great chance of getting your message to the job prospect. Consider using a “throwaway” email address for your cold outreach in case it gets flagged as spam.

-Social Media Direct Messages. Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram also have popular direct messaging (DM) features. More screening devices are in place to filter spammers, but for the time being it’s still a high-leverage mode of communication.