LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks for Staffing & Recruiting (2026)

Key Takeaways

In staffing and recruiting, the average LinkedIn connection acceptance rate is 36.5%. Replies to the connection note average 6.6%, and replies to a message after the connection is accepted average 18.9%. Those numbers come from 423,792 connection requests sent by 462 staffing and recruiting accounts between May 2025 and April 2026. All three run above the cross-industry averages of 28.5%, 3.0% and 10.4%.

Staffing & Recruiting vs. the platform average

Metric	Staffing & Recruiting	All industries	Difference	Rank
Connection acceptance	36.5%	28.5%	+8.0 pts	1st of 38
Connection-note reply	6.6%	3.0%	+3.6 pts	1st of 38
Message reply after acceptance	18.9%	10.4%	+8.5 pts	1st of 38

Across the 38 industries with at least 50 sending accounts, acceptance runs from 21.8% (telecommunications) to 36.5% (staffing & recruiting). Note replies run from 1.8% to 6.6%, and message replies from 7.2% to 18.9%.

What the numbers say about recruiter outreach

Staffing and recruiting is first of 38 on all three measures. Acceptance of 36.5%, note replies of 6.6% and message replies of 18.9% are each the highest of any industry with at least 50 sending accounts, and each is roughly double or better the cross-industry figure on notes and messages. No other industry in the set leads on more than one measure.

Four industries in the full appendix post higher numbers on one measure or another: broadcast media, civil engineering, writing and editing, and leisure and travel. Every one of them reports on fewer than 30 accounts, which is below the threshold at which these figures are stable enough to publish. Among industries measured on a real sample, staffing has no competition anywhere.

The widest gap is on the connection note. At 6.6%, recruiters get more than double the platform average of 3.0%. That gap matters more than it used to, because the note is the part of LinkedIn outreach losing its effect: platform-wide, note replies fell from 3.5% in May 2025 to 2.2% in April 2026, a 37% relative decline, while acceptance held roughly steady. The report does not break that decline out by industry, so whether staffing held up better than average is not something this data answers.

One caveat on reading 18.9% as a target. That rate is measured on connections already accepted, so it is not 18.9% of everyone contacted. Multiply it through and roughly 6.9 in every 100 people who receive a request from a recruiter reply to a follow-up message. That is still the best end-to-end conversion in the dataset by a clear margin, and it is a smaller number than 18.9% makes it sound.

If your numbers sit below these

The dataset says where an account sits, not why. From what we see in campaigns, three gaps come up most often in this sector, and they point at different problems.

Acceptance under 28.5%. That is below the average for every industry, not only this one, and this sector sets the highest bar in the set. Acceptance gets decided from the profile and the note preview before anything else is read, so a number this low tends to point at who is being targeted.

Acceptance between 28.5% and 36.5%. Above the platform, below the sector. Staffing’s advantage comes from recipients working out quickly that a message is about a job. Where that is not legible in the first line of the note, an account tends to get platform-average behaviour in a sector that pays better than platform average.

Message replies well under 18.9% while acceptance is at or above 36.5%. The connection lands and the follow-up does not. This is usually a gap between what the note implied and what the first message actually asks for.

Further reading:

• Improving your LinkedIn Sales Navigator targeting
• Personalising the message request without tripping limits
• The LinkedIn message follow-up formula
• LinkedIn recruitment tactics
• How to automate sourcing 500+ candidates per week on LinkedIn
• Effective LinkedIn message templates for recruiters

Frequently asked questions

What is a good connection acceptance rate in staffing and recruiting?

36.5% is the industry average and the highest of any reported industry, so that is the number to beat. A recruiter running at 30% is above the 28.5% cross-industry average and below par for the sector, which is a distinction most benchmark advice misses. Under 25% suggests a targeting problem rather than a copy problem.

Should recruiters include a connection note?

Yes. Recruiters average 6.6% note replies against a platform average of 3.0%, the highest rate of the 38 reported industries. One caveat on the wider trend: note replies across all industries fell 37% between May 2025 and April 2026, from 3.5% to 2.2%, while acceptance stayed flat. That decline is reported platform-wide only, so whether staffing held up better than average is not something this dataset answers.

How does staffing and recruiting compare with other industries?

It ranks first of 38 on all three measures, the only industry in the set to lead on more than one. End to end about 6.9 in every 100 recipients reply to a follow-up, against roughly 3.0 across all industries.

How this data was collected

Staffing & Recruiting is reported from 462 accounts and 423,792 connection requests sent between May 2025 and April 2026, drawn from the LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks 2026 dataset of 13.2 million requests across 13,302 accounts. That report carries the full methodology, along with the breakdowns by sender seniority, company size and month that are not repeated here.

Two things to hold in mind while reading any of these figures. The industry is the sender’s, taken from their company profile, not the recipient’s. And only industries with at least 50 sending accounts are reported at all: below that, a single unusual account moves the average by several points, which is why some of the most extreme numbers in the full appendix are not published here.

Related industry benchmarks

• Venture Capital & Private Equity, 34.9% acceptance and 11.0% message replies
• Events Services, 31.5% acceptance and 13.8% message replies
• Human Resources, 30.5% acceptance and 9.7% message replies
• All industry benchmarks

Grade your own outreach against these numbers

Enter your own acceptance and reply rates and grade your outreach against the staffing and recruiting benchmark, plus see where you sit among all 38 reported industries. No signup.

Ready to improve & scale your LinkedIn outreach? Sign up for a 7-day free trial and put our LinkedIn automation tool to the test!

Data updated 19 August 2026. Refreshed quarterly against the source report.