Thanks so much for the kind words on the article. I really consider the content to be in alignment with the 50 plus other articles I have done for ERE. I try to insert a bit of reality and insight into situations that reflect attitudes at times so bizarre; so extreme that one wonders if the recruiting population has simply lost their sense. Sadly, so many of them are the ?thought leaders.? (Kind of makes you wonder who is leading the leaders.)

Sadly, if you take an industry that has no bar for entry, the ability to simply write whatever supports your agenda or program of the month you are selling, these are the results. Very unfortunate indeed.

I hope we keep an eye on the thought leaders and hold them accountable. Some days, they really frighten me.

Howard Adamsky

However, I am left to scratch my head about what Howard is recommending: Is is to hire only board candidates, or to take it one step further, only those that apply to your job online? In my experience, isn’t this what most internal recruiters want to hear anyway (i.e. positive reinforcement)?

At the end of the day, is that the best strategy? If you want to look at what global CEOs’ are saying about this, the latest Mckinsey Quarterly has a survey that indicates that most CEOs’ believe that the internal talent pool is now driving stock price (i.e. firm value) more than innovation itself. Think about that for a minute.

This isn’t to say that there are not good board candidates here and there, but if you know that you’re better off pulling the VP, Marketing from the organizations that are beating you on a daily basis . . . do you think those individuals are on a board? Or do you think that they’d take the time to fill out a Google career profile if they’re working for Yahoo? Is there level of business acumen so low that they’d rather have a resume out there for the world to see . . . instead of partnering with an exec recruiter that will maintain their confidentiality?

I’m still scratching my head . . .

One thing to consider, however, is that passive candidates aren’t a one-shot deal and then ignored for all of eternity.

Let’s say that I’m a recruiter in the pulp and paper industry. Let’s take that one step further and say that every week, I take 10 minutes to dash off a ‘Highlights in the Pulp and Paper Industry’ ezine that gets sent out automatically to all who have requested it.

Every week, I’ll be demonstrating my knowledge about the industry to passive candidates (ie, folks who aren’t yet looking for a position). Every week, I’ll be branding myself as the recruiter who can walk the walk, talk the talk, and *truly understand* how the industry works.

Now…when the time comes that my readers *do* consider looking for a new position…whom is the recruiter they will approach? Someone off of a job database…or the recruiter who, week after week, has been branding herself as the one in the know?

Hmmm?

Passive candidates should be turned into customers for your industry knowledge….because eventually, the chances are they’ll further evolve into active candidates for your positions.

Enjoy,

Barbara Ling
Become The Recruiter of Choice with
Comprehensive Recruiter eSeminars
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Food for Thought
By Paul Hawkinson, Editor
The Fordyce Letter (www.fordyceletter.com)

The ABCs of our business

We?ve all heard about ?A? players as the desired target in recruiting. They?re those elusive ?passive candidates? who are currently employed and happily climbing their employer?s corporate ladder with little or no thought to making a change.
Those ?B? and ?C? players can find their own jobs (probably never to be a true career) through Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs and the like. The fact that they?ve chosen to put their resumes out there for all to see is perceived by many that they are second class citizens . . . over-the-hillers, wishful thinkers, window shoppers, tire kickers, wannabes and God knows what else. No ?A? players there ? right?
But ?A? companies will supposedly only hire ?A? players and they?re unwilling to pay our fees for any B?s and C?s as though they are only worth immediate relegation to the candidate toxic dump site like this was a black hole from which they can never recover.
That?s the current ?conventional wisdom? for many in our business. But if that were true, why do most of the ?A? companies prohibit referrals of anyone whose resume resides in cyberspace? Could it be that public domain candidates aren?t all ?B? and ?C? caliber? Does having a resume on the Internet inevitably mean a lower offer from an ?A? employer? Are they permanently tainted and tarnished?
I?ve been in this business for well over four decades and always thought I was able to spot a ?walking fee check? or a ?water walker.? But for whom? What is an ?A? player? For some, it may be a verifiable progressively successful record of increasing profits. Or decreasing costs. A true ?impact? candidate! But we?ve all seen people who have failed in one company only to become a superstar for another one.
Truth is, for most pragmatic recruiting practitioners, any company anxious for a quick hire, willing to pay you a full fee for an exclusive and competitively salaried position is an ?A? company. And guess what . . . they are almost always more interested in skills than window dressing. They are more likely to be evaluated by a real hirer rather than being screened out by some HR flunky. They don?t have to be a Fortune or Forbes-listed firm because, frankly, those will nit-pick you to death with one-sided contracts and bureaucratic claptrap and, in my opinion, are anything but ?A? firms.
I can fondly remember my first placement when I placed a ?D? player with a ?D? company. I was given a desk, a phone, some Yellow Pages and the application form of a janitor who, because he had completed a correspondence drawing course found on the back of a matchbook cover, wanted a job as a draftsman. My training consisted of convincing walk-in traffic to sign a contract obligating them to a hefty self-paid fee before I would work with them.
Because I didn’t know any better, I placed the ?custodian/draftsman? within a week with a company needing a janitor. They promised to give him some part-time drafting if the need arose. He paid his fee (in long, drawn out installments) and retired from that same company as the V.P. of Engineering with a string of patents as long as your arm.
When you try to categorize candidates and companies with the ABC?s, you are making a fundamental mistake. I?ve seen true ?A? players rejected for the flimsiest of reasons . . too little hair, the wrong color eyes, too tall, too skinny, too qualified and you name it. Personal biases (yours and your client?s) will always influence your decision about the ABC?s.
I can?t tell you how many placements I made without ever having met the candidate. When I was subsequently introduced to them (and the people who hired them), I hate to admit that had I personally interviewed them, I would not have referred them in the first place. As Dr. Phil says, ?It was a changing day in my life.?
It?s hard to admit your best chance for a placement may be to send a ?B? candidate to a client requesting an ?A? player. Remember, employers always request an ?A? player. It?s your job, as a professional, to re-alphabetize the process.

I’ve been on both sides of the recruiting fence (agency and corporate) and I’ve worked for the job boards as well. One of the most frustrating things I’ve heard in my experience is, ‘We are only interested in passive candidates’. When I hear that, it tells me 1 of 3 things.
1). The opening is new, and you have time to be choosey (foolish in my opinion but I?ll bet we talk in 90 days from now when you’re pulling your hair out).
2). The recruiter/hiring manager doesn?t have the budget to spend on the recruiting tools that they need.
3). The recruiter/hiring manager is of the belief (like Howard mentioned) that active candidates only bring headaches because you get too many of them. (In my experience, quality comes from filtered quantity, it?s the recruiter?s job to sift through the pile and find the best fit).

Think about this, if 83% of the American population is on-line, and there are over 1 billion searches on Google each day (a 1/3 of that traffic is from America), employment/job searches make up 1 of the top 3 searches done each day. Unless a candidate has an unlisted number, lives in a cave, and does their work on a stone tablet with a chisel and a hammer, there is a pretty good chance that they?ll be reached or at least be tempted to take a peek at what?s out there once in a while.

Listen, I am a firm believer that you are only fooling yourself if you think you can get your job done (as a recruiter) by only using 1 or 2 of the many tools provided. The fact of the matter is that recruiting takes effort, and A LOT OF IT! If you want great candidates, beef up your corporate career page (make sure you spell check your jobs and your titles make sense – to the rest of us!) as this is the first impression your applicants will get, start working your employees for referrals (in fact work everyone you talk to for a referral), post your jobs to the major job boards, start digging through the resume databases, then go pick up a phone and start calling (voices recruit not emails), tap the passive market by calling into your competitors (I don’t understand corporations that say ‘we don’t do that’… does that mean your sales team won’t compete with your competitors for sales then?), finally… don’t be afraid to call a professional recruiter (it?s like calling in Barry Bonds when your softball team is down 2 runs). By the way, when you do tap that professional recruiter, they are the ones that should really be focusing on that passive market for you if you can?t.

What the author fails to admit is ..
There are commodity positions and there are specialty positions (let’s say mission critical or in my industry Life Critical).

Take my industry for instance health care. Educated, experienced and licensed professionals do not grow on trees nor can they be cloned, nor can h1b visas be dished out to solve the problem as in more technical industries…Thank God! Trust me, when your under the knife, you’ll want someone that can communicate and was educated under strict, controlled medical standards.You can fix poor software code, unlikely you can fix a botched heart transplant. Onward.

As health care utilization increases (and it is) and a labor pool stagnates or diminishes(and it is)? Where do you go? There is A FIXED NUMBER OF CANDIDATES IN ANY GIVEN MARKET!

Ask any corporate healthcare recruiter in the heat of the battle…providers are trying to grow, trying to meet staffing ratios, turning patients away and having to make ethical and moral ‘patient care decisions’ every day, directly related to staffing! Tell them Passive Candidates Are A Myth!

Howard..God forbid you ever need skilled patient care someday…I think you’ll be singing a different song. It is important that candidates have tenure, skills, and history. If you can find the best talent in an active pool..great! But if you can not…where do you go?

All the best!

Philip Foti
President
1800MedJobs.com

Passive Candidates are bad for multiple openings of the same skillset due in a short time.

I imagine most recruiters use the best tools when they can, assuming they understand their timetable and where the best talent lies.

GREAT article! I am glad ERE reprinted this as it is very timely with the turn in the market place. Your title is absolutely correct – the ‘passive candidate’ is a myth. Sort of like the ‘hidden job market’.

I have always maintained that trying to chase the so-called passive candidate is a waste of time. You put it very cogently – you never really have candidate control!

And in a tight labor market, what you wind up with is a bidding war. If the candidate was satisfied with the job they have, you will have to pay more to get them to leave.

Best regards,

Ted Daywalt
President
VetJobs

Back in the Stone Ages when some of us didn’t want top invest in an advertising budget, we would tell our clients that we didn’t just try to find the best person who happened to read an ad on Sunday, but the best person available. Sound familiar?

Now, it’s the best person referred to you, the best person with a personal commercial on ZoomInfo or Hoovers or who happened to have a message on an online forum . . . or who responded to an email into our data base.

And once you have that passive applicant interviewing with your client and they decide to put their r?sum? on a board and interview with others, do they suddenly become inept.

One person?s passive maybe another’s active ad response or Infogist search query response.

With that said, many corporate recruiters are far too busy to do the sort of cold calling necessary to unearth an (allegedly) passive applicant. After all, with 6-8 interviews per day plus reporting requirements, meetings with managers, communicating with search firms and other responsibilities, when are they supposed to do this?

Now for the most logical part of the argument, the best person is the one that the manager selects, regardless of source. To reject someone because they decided to be aggressive with their career instead of being a wimp, taking what their employer or manager gives them, because their division is struggling through no fault of theirs, impacting their career options or because they decided that changing jobs was financially beneficial (a job changer who gets a $10000 raise effectively earns more than $56000 with job changes and more than $75000 if they change positions for a second time in 3 years.

So, since the primary attributes that make someone a great employee are skills competence, character, self-confidence (maybe charisma, even) and chemistry–attributes that translate into personal leadership, the source of these attributes should not be at issue. That the person has them is the only determinant of excellence.

And given the number of hires done from active applicants it should go without saying that companies seem to be consistently disagreeing with this myth.

Respectfully,

The author states: But they represent what will almost surely be a minority of the candidates who most organizations will hire for four fundamental reasons (there are actually 37 reasons, but I only have time to list four):

I would ask any HR Manager what % of hires are referrals? CareerxRoads does an annual source of hire survey and Internal Referrals representing around 25% of all hires which is roughly EQUAL to ALL sources from the Internet.

90% of the referrals I gather are of passive candidates! or at least in the sense that they didn’t apply to my organization via the web nor did they call me or even know of our opportunity.

My reality in healthcare recruitment, when you have a limited supply of candidates, especially the highly specialized ones? Well you just can’t draw water from a rock! And if in most surveys I’ve read ACTIVES only represent 10-30% of a candidate population, you’d be a fool not to have an aggressive plan to pursue the passives.
Basically, I humbly disagree with the premise of this article at least in the context of my industry, healthcare!

Its a good article and shows what you get when working with active candidates. It also outlines what you need to do to compensate for the poor quality it attracts.

Working with passive candidates alleviates this problem altogether.

The best talent is always at least open to learning about new opportunities. They are simply more discriminating as to those opportunties which they elect to entertain.

So from my perspective, it is a matter of degrees. Some are more active in seeking new opportunity then others. As you stated, anyone who is truly passive (e.g. not interested at all) is likely not someone you are looking to hire.

EXACTLY……

Youve hit the nail SLAP BANG in the middle, square on the head.

Well said.

Eamonn

Your ending sentence hit it right on the head:

‘Our job is to source them, qualify them, and get them hired. Do this well and you will be a star’ (and your candidates and clients will benefit and be happy with you and your results.)