Version two of the popular Perpetual Sourcing web-based sourcing and CRM system was released last month. That might not ordinarily be news, but the enhancements and improvements are the result of a collaboration of Todd Davis, who developed the program, sourcing guru Shally Steckerl, and vendor Intelestream.

“This product is especially unique due to the level of industry expertise found at its core. As a senior recruiter with companies such as Microsoft, Google, Starbucks, and Yahoo, Todd Davis offered his knowledge to help us create his ‘dream solution.’ Shally Steckerl, founder of JobMachine consulting has also played an intricate role in collaborating on this project,” reports Intelestream’s Director of Marketing Stafford McKay. “It’s great to be right in line with the best practices taught by the experts.”

Davis has described Perpetual Sourcing as a pre-ATS applicant tracking system. An apt description for a system designed for the passive candidates found through LinkedIn, Spoke, Hoovers, Jigsaw, and ZoomInfo, all of which the system can automatically assess. It also can help source candidates via the search engines, managing your search strings for you. It also helps with OFCCP and EEOC compliance, by saving search histories, including locations searched, search strings used, and candidates sourced .

Because it is a CRM tool, it also manages contacts with the candidates. It synchronizes with Outlook and has direct email campaign capabilities.

Perpetual Staffing is based on SugarCRM, the commercial open source customer relationship management software that is in use worldwide by customers as varied as GoDaddy and North Carolina State University.

Davis developed Perpetual Sourcing in 2007 and offered it through PerpetualSourcing.com before transitioning the operations earlier this year to Chicago-based CRM consultant Intelestream.

Web 2.0 Candidates Are:

• Faster. Candidates can gain access to more available jobs within minutes on any day.
• Smarter. Access to salary, compensation, and corporate performance data is everywhere.
• More Connected. Social networks help candidates identify insiders at any employer before or after they apply for any position.

Web 2.0 Candidates Are Faster

When job boards came on the scene 10 years ago, they made accessing available job information much easier for candidates. No more digging through the classified section of the Sunday newspaper, crafting up witty cover letters on fluorescent letterhead to get attention and postal mailing resumes. Remember when we’d put our fax numbers on our ads? Come on: how many candidates really had fax machines in their houses? Today, there are “job aggregators” such as indeed.com and simplyhired.com which put all the jobs from multiple job boards into a single search engine that stream directly into any candidate’s personal home page on Google via RSS feeds every day.

I think one of the main reasons that recruiters are after “passive candidates” is that we think we have more time to get them through the interview process, versus “active candidates” who machine-gun apply from job boards to a dozen jobs on any Monday. With the latter, we have to get them setup with an interview within 24 hours and make a hiring decision within two to four days. That’s how fast the market is moving with so much job data available online.

Web 2.0 Candidates Are Smarter

In addition to having access to an ocean of jobs, most candidates tap into salary and compensation data via sites such as payscale.com and/or salary.com. Not to mention that the younger generation of workers aren’t shy about sharing their comp levels in the lunchroom or over beers, unlike our parents’ generation who considered salary discussions to be so taboo they would only share this information with the IRS when filing their annual tax returns.

Many recruiters have candidates show up with a salary report printed from one of these salary sites and demand that their pay be at or above the level on the report. Candidates don’t care if our job descriptions aren’t perfectly matching the ones on those websites; they just see the numbers and get an expectation that’s usually out of line with our compensation levels. Regardless of how you handle this situation in your interview process, employers are under pressure to know how their pay grades compare to other major employers in their markets.

Web 2.0 Candidates Are More Connected

Remember when you would get an applicant resume, see which companies a candidate previously worked for, and then quickly find which of your internal employees had worked with the applicant in the past, in order to get “inside information” to determine if they were a good or bad prospect? (Never mind that 51% of people will comment positively or negatively on someone because of how they liked their personality — and not their actual work performance.)

During the interview process, candidates were lucky to run into a former colleague in the hallways. Or if they get lucky in the interview, they will discover who they might know in common with the interviewing managers and try to discover which “moles” they could find within the prospective company, which would help them do their own due diligence on the employer — not to mention that they will try and gain advocates to help them get the job should their interest grow.

Well, because of the growth of social networks (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Jigsaw, and many more), the minute most candidates apply for any job (and sometimes even before they apply for a job), they can now instantly see who they know at any prospective employer, all the way back to their old high school or college buddies.

This tilts the access of information toward the candidate community — who can now see if there are bad previous bosses or old enemies working within your company, which they may wish to avoid. The candidates’ reasoning will be if your company hires personalities the candidate disliked, it indicates that your culture prefers those types of individuals, which will have an impact on your employer brand whether you get a chance to enter the conversation or not.

This puts a new pressure on employers to create a working culture that will attract these more web savvy candidates. These Web 2.0 candidates don’t believe most of our career sites’ language about having an exciting work environment. They want to find out for themselves (via networking) what it’s really like to work within the sub-cultures within our company, which are driven by management personalities and business cycles which are exciting to certain candidate types, and a turnoff to others.

This was a waste of time.

Not that my soul isn’t worth saving. But it was a waste because I am very firm in my religious beliefs and am not about to change them because of a 90-minute conversation with someone.

It was not an unpleasant conversation. He seemed like a delightful man and we laughed at times as we talked. He was not going to change my mind, but I did respect his commitment. His dedication. He did not let go. Our flight took off at 5:45 in the morning and he was in full swing. He started the conversation before he had his seat belt buckled and he kept it up even as people were deplaning.

He was recruiting.

I was impressed with his zeal. Then again, he is recruiting for a very important cause. It occurred to me that he probably started up these conversations whenever he traveled. He was always looking for recruits, and to put this in recruiting parlance, he is frequently looking for “passive candidates.” He never rests in his search, as there are always openings in his organization. Was he effective? Not with me, but I wonder how many people he has successfully recruited. Lots, I would guess, from the extent of his travels. He has been all around the country and all around the world. He finds people wherever they are. That’s his mission, and that’s what his organization needs.

What’s your mission? Professionally speaking, what are you trying to accomplish? There’s a lot we can learn from Ted. Are you constantly recruiting? Do you strike up conversations with people on planes, in malls, or at events? Are you always trying to meet new people? In the movie “Glengarry Glen Ross” the sales manager says selling is as simple as ABC: Always Be Closing. There are lots of similarities between selling real estate and recruiting, but that’s for another article.

Perhaps we need to create acronyms to remind us how to be successful recruiters. Maybe, if you’ve been finding yourself lax in the networking department, your ABC is “Always be connecting.” If your pipeline is drying up and you’re feeling frustrated, JKL - Just Keep Looking! Or NOP - Never Overlook Possibilities. But don’t compromise your standards. Remember PQR - Persistent Quality Recruiting. But be sure to MNO - Make Numerous Overtures if you’re going to EFGH - Effectively Find Good Hires. OK, I mean, okay, maybe I’m getting carried away, but we do need to remember that candidates don’t always present themselves neatly at our office door. We find them when and where we least expect them.

When I was a human resource generalist for a large organization, I used to say that HR people never take off the HR hat. Whether you are at a meeting, on the phone, or at the holiday party, you are always on duty. Same goes for a recruiter. You never know when or where you are going to find that next great candidate. Ted had no idea about my religious background, my views, or the depth of my belief. That didn’t stop him, and he never lost his good humor as we talked. He did get a little more earnest as we began our final approach because he realized that he had precious little time left to complete his mission.

We can follow his lead. It’s easy to get turned off by a candidate. If we stop recruiting at the first “not interested” from our candidates, we’re going to have a lot of short phone calls. Ted didn’t give up. He made sure to get my business card early in the conversation, so I’ll be very surprised if I don’t hear from him. (Note: before I completed this article I had received e-mails from him.) He sincerely cares about what he’s doing. He’s good at what he does because he has a passion for recruiting. Do you? Do you find yourself getting burned out? Too many candidates, too many openings, or too many rejections?

I remember one time when a friend of mine was returning home from a college-recruiting trip. He did not usually take part in the college visits, as he was primarily an executive recruiter. His focus was management positions. But this trip included a couple of business schools from which his organization hoped to recruit people to be part of the management-trainee program as well as recruiting at other schools. So Mike went along for the whole trip. Now he was on his way back. He was tired, he was cranky (he always said that he didn’t care particularly for campus recruiting because it reminded him of how old he was) and he just wanted to put on his headphones, recline his seat, and close his eyes ’till he landed.

Well, you know what happened. The seat next to Mike was empty until just before the door closed. Mike was anticipating having a little extra elbowroom and then this guy came down the aisle carrying just a briefcase and a trench coat. He looked stressed out. Mike assumed it was due to his almost missing the flight. The man stashed his coat and case overhead and flopped into the seat next to Mike. Mike could sense that he wanted, or perhaps needed, to talk. Fighting every urge to close his eyes and pretend that he was listening to music, Mike removed his headphones and asked, “Rough day?” That was all it took.

His name was Bob and he was out of work. He’d been looking for about six months. He’d had a few leads but nothing had panned out and now he was returning home after a trip that he had hoped would result in an offer, but it didn’t look good. He had made this trip at his own expense to follow up on a lead and a phone interview. He thought that by making the effort and covering the expense of the flight, he might impress the company with his interest in the position and commitment to this opportunity. Bob wasn’t keen on relocating. He would rather stay in the Northeast, but he hadn’t been having any luck so he took a chance on casting his net a little further even if it meant uprooting his family.

But the interviews had gone terribly. The person he’d spoken with on the phone was too busy to spend more than a few minutes with him, he had to start from scratch with every person he met (hadn’t they prepared at all?) and several had no idea why they had been called in to meet with him. It was a frustrating day all around, and right now he didn’t have a particularly high opinion of the company he’d visited. He even said at one point, “I was going to pull my daughter out of the school she loves and away from all her friends for a company like this? Seems like this day was a total waste of time and, unfortunately, money too.”

In the fairy tale version of this story, Bob was perfect for a hard-to-fill position that Mike was working on. No, that didn’t happen, but they did exchange cards and Mike met with him back in New York. Mike didn’t have an opening, but he was very impressed with Bob’s strategic approach to finding a job, his clear analysis of the organizations with which he had met, and his insightful manner of summing up a complex situation, looking at it from all perspectives. Mike referred him to a colleague who was recruiting for someone with Bob’s skills, and he succeeded in securing a position. Mike succeeded as well. Bob always had good things to say about Mike’s company. The recruiter to whom Mike referred Bob has become a more valuable part of Mike’s network, referring several good candidates, a few of whom Mike has hired.

There’s a lot we can learn from Ted, and from Mike. Never stop recruiting, wherever you are, no matter how tired you are, no matter what time of day it is. You never know where that next great candidate will be, or who will lead you to that person. Would you have caught the signals that Mike picked up on? Guy comes on a plane looking stressed, carrying nothing but a trench coat and briefcase, dressed in a suit appropriate for an interview — this might be a guy worth talking with. Maybe it’s just someone who needs to talk, not someone we can hire or refer. It never hurts to hone our networking skills.

To best serve our organizations we need to be constantly on the lookout for talent, and we can never predict where we’re going to find it, or when. Very often candidates will present themselves when we least expect it. By keeping an open mind we increase our likelihood of success. Maybe not immediate success, but somewhere down the line. Gary Player used to say, “The more I practice, the luckier I get.” I tell people, on both sides of the interview table, that the only way to get good at interviewing is to interview. The best way to keep our recruiting antennae honed is to constantly look for signals and indicators, then to test our assumptions. The more we practice the more we’ll succeed.

And don’t close yourself off the next time someone plops down next to you on a plane. It might be your next great hire, or it might be Ted. Either way, you’ve got something to learn and possibly a lot to gain.

You may not save a soul, but you may help someone and you may even fill a job. And for a recruiter, that’s a pretty good day.

Some companies have made hires that way for years. It’s just that those “special” candidates are the boss’s relatives. For the rest of the world, the new site is an experiment in anonymous sourcing. It’s called Scopings and it sort of reminds us of those old computer dating programs. Candidates put in a little bit of information about themselves; employers put in a little more information.

The computer compares the candidates to the job description and suggests possible matches. Then the courting begins.

Only when both of you show enough signs of interest is the cloak of anonymity dropped.

That’s the essence of the site. As might be expected it has bells and whistles to manage the courtship, including the ability to create “rounds,” which are elimination questions. These rounds of questions can be done online or by phone. The downside to the latter is that you have to listen to a bunch of voicemails. The plus is that you get a taste of a candidate’s communication skills without an interview.

Scopings is both a site and a service. Candidates can stumble upon Scopings to register and set up a scope, creating a database that will be owned by Novologies LLC, the Brooklyn company behind the site. (For the moment, Scopings is offering jobs only in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, and Boston.)

Or employers can engage Scopings to handle one or more reqs. In that case, Scopings becomes the candidate entry point for applying, anonymously of course, and let the matching begin.

What we like about the concept is that a candidate who is not actively looking, but may be receptive, can ask the recruiter or hiring manager enough questions about the job and the company culture to know if it is something worth pursuing. That works the other way around, too.

In practice, we wonder how many recruiters will take the time to provide anything but stock answers. It’s seems unlikely that a hiring manager would engage in a Q and A with prospects whose identities (and complete CV) they don’t know. Even today, when every run-of-the mill ATS system has the ability to acknowledge receipt of an application, candidates complain of the recruitment black hole. So expecting a recruiter to respond thoughtfully with a personal note to anonymous candidates has as much chance of happening as a politician making good on their promises.

This would imply that during recessions there are fewer good people actively looking and it’s tougher to get the best passive consider to even discuss your career opportunity. If this is the case, one could conclude that the bulk of the people who are looking during economic downturns tend to be those who are unemployed or marginally employed.

Since this group does not represent the best-of-the-best, you’ll need to rethink your entire sourcing strategy to make sure it’s targeting the people you want to hire. Here’s a short video describing how good people enter the job market. Now here’s a quick test to determine how well you’re doing: if you’re seeing less good people than last year using the same sourcing techniques, stop using them!

However, if you do find a few good people, regardless of how you’re finding them, expect these candidates to have more objections and concerns than usual. And the better the candidate, the more objections the person has. So, if you can’t smoothly and professionally handle objections, you won’t be placing many top performers.

Here are some ideas on how to deal with some common objections. They’re more prevalent with the economy on shaky ground. The theme behind them all is to reveal very little information about your assignment until you have a complete understanding of the candidate’s background. By withholding information, you’ll gain candidate interest. This is the key to applicant control.

Handling Common Early Stage Objections

1. What’s the compensation? When someone asks, don’t tell! Say, “Before I tell you that, I’d like you to think about the best jobs you’ve ever held, those that gave you the most personal satisfaction. Were the reasons they were the best due to the amount of money you were making or due to the work you were doing?” (PAUSE and wait for an answer.) “Now, if the job I’m representing offered you a chance to maximize your personal satisfaction plus offered a competitive compensation, wouldn’t it make sense to at least discuss it for 5-10 minutes?” Most people will say yes.
2. First, tell me about the job. You must never tell the person about the job, even the actual title, until you have conducted a quick work history review. Start the conversation by asking your prospect if she’d be open to discuss an opportunity if it were clearly superior to what she’s doing now. Most people will say yes, then immediately say “Great. Could you please give me a quick overview of your background, and I’ll then give you a quick overview of the job. If it seems mutually interesting we can schedule some time to talk in-depth.” You have applicant control when the person says yes. You lose it if your job is less appealing than the one the person has now. By having the candidate talk first, you can look for potential areas where your job is bigger. If not, you’ll have developed a relationship with the candidate that will allow you to ask for referrals.
3. I’m not interested. If anyone says this, you’ve violated a fundamental law of recruiting – the candidate must tell you about their background before you tell them about the job (see Point 2). To recover from this faux pas, say, “That’s exactly why you should consider this job.” Just the fact that it’s illogical helps gain the person’s attention. Follow up by asking, “Are you aware that you just made a major career decision using minor information?” Describe a few strategic nuggets about your job that make it worthy of a short discussion. Something like your company has just invested in a start-up to exploit a new market opportunity, so growth should skyrocket over the next few years, would be a good example of how to get someone to talk a few minutes. Here’s a YouTube video podcast describing my “Magic Bus Theory of Recruiting” which will provide you some insight on how to better handle the “I’m not interested” objection.
4. I don’t like the company. If your company is struggling, or has received some bad press, you’ll need to conduct some preventive PR to offset the recruiting damage. Describe the impact the person could have in restoring the company’s image. It’s also possible the company’s reputation is based on old info, and a turn-around has begun. In this case, make sure you have some real evidence you can use to offset the negative beliefs. As you begin these damage-control efforts, make sure you understand the candidate’s concern and then ask, “If we can demonstrate that your concerns while true in the past have been rectified, would you be open to explore an opportunity with our company?” Of course, then you have to prove your case, but at least you’re moving the process forward.
5. I don’t have time to talk. Calmly say, “Let me rephrase my question then. If the job opportunity I’m representing is clearly superior to what you’re doing today, would you have some time later today to discuss it on a very exploratory basis?” (This is an example, of the “close upon a concern” solution selling technique.) If the person says “no” to your suggestion, something else is really the issue, not lack of time. It could be you gave away too much information when you initially described your reason for calling.
6. I’m happy where I am. When confronted with a happy camper, say something like, “That’s great. You’re the first person I spoke with this week who actually said that to me. Most people nowadays are just hanging around due to the bad economy. Is this really the situation for you?” Then dialogue with the person a bit to understand if she is really happy, or if it was just a brush-off. Then ask, “Under the possibility that if the situation I’m representing is clearly superior to your current job on (causes of happiness), would you at least be open to explore it for a 5-10 minutes.” Then conduct a mini-work history review as part of the phone screen.

You can’t afford to accept these negative responses without a formal rebuttal. This is the only way you’ll be able to find enough candidates to fill your requirements. All good candidates have concerns. It’s the recruiter’s job to ferret them out and address them properly.

While you won’t overcome them all, you’ll probably recover at least 50% of the candidates you would have formerly lost. And if the techniques are done properly you’ll probably wind up with some great candidates for future assignments and plenty of referrals for your current ones.

When filling a job order, most recruiters search through virtual stacks of resumes hoping one stands out, matching most of the skills and experiences listed on the job description. When calling a person, the recruiter attempts to gain this same information by first describing the job and then asking the person to describe his or her background. If there’s a fit, the selling process begins.

If you want to hire more top performers, this is exactly what you shouldn’t be doing.

A little understanding of human nature and solution selling offers some guidance on how to approach passive candidates and quickly get them more interested in what you have to offer. If you follow the instructions closely, you’ll even be able to get two to three great referrals on each call. You’ll want these, especially if you decide you’re not interested in pursuing the candidate.

In the last sentence, pay notice to who decides to move forward or not. It should be the recruiter, not the candidate. If you’re letting your candidates decide if they’re interested in your opportunity, you’re not recruiting, you’re just box-checking and order-taking. Making this decision is the first part of the applicant control process essential to good recruiting.

For the sake of brevity and making a point, let me narrow the passive candidate recruiting process down to two small, but critical, first steps. The first relates to a candidate saying they’re not interested in considering your opportunity, even before you’ve told them anything about it.

The second relates to those who don’t say “no” right away, but instead ask about the comp, title, and location.

I’m sure you would agree that getting past these two pivotal points will dramatically increase the number of top candidates you put into your pipeline.

Being familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs will give you some of the insight you’ll need to address these candidate roadblocks. Abraham Maslow was a mid-20th century psychologist who studied the behavior of high-performing individuals. In a 1943 paper, he suggested that people make fundamental and predictable decisions based on different behavioral needs. These needs range from primitive, e.g., requiring water or food, to being completely fulfilled. He separated these states into five distinct levels and referred to them collectively as a hierarchy of needs.

The first level had to do with satisfying basic human needs including biological, food, and shelter. The second level related to fulfilling security needs like a steady income and healthcare. The third level addressed social needs like friendship, intimacy, and family. The fourth level covered esteem needs including achievement, self-respect, and confidence. Maslow referred to the fifth and highest level as self-actualization, growing and becoming as well-developed as possible. According to Maslow, one could not move to a higher level until the lower-level needs were met.

While Maslow has his distracters, and this is certainly not a complete summary, knowing this basic “needs concept” can be useful when a candidate says “show me the money” or something equivalent. Instead of responding, you might ask the candidate directly where she is on her hierarchy of needs scale.

This probably won’t work in such a direct fashion, but these two comparable questions might:

“Considering your current and past few positions, which one gave you the most sense of personal satisfaction?”

Pause and let the person respond. Then ask whether this satisfaction was due to the type of work or the amount of salary. Phrased properly, this can only be answered with something about the quality of the work, not the money being earned.

Unless the person never had a great job or never did anything worthwhile, the candidate will select a situation that addressed a higher order or self-fulfillment needs. With this as the setup go on to ask:

“Under this basis, wouldn’t it then make sense to talk just five to 10 minutes to determine whether the job I’m working on provides both satisfying work coupled with a competitive compensation?”

Done properly, don’t be surprised if 90% of your candidates agree. Of course, you’ll then need to prove your case, but at least you’ve started conversing on a positive note.

I call this the Maslow advance. When confronted with a recruiter or any cold-call from a salesperson, a person’s normal reaction is to say no or ask questions that allow them to get out of the conversation as rapidly as possible. Good recruiters know this.

To overcome this roadblock you’ll need to use some type of decision-shifting question that allows you to engage with the person in a brief-but-meaningful dialogue. As you begin the discussion, don’t provide much information about the job other than a vague title. The key here is to get the person to tell you first about her background. If you describe the job first, you risk the chance the candidate will respond with a “not interested.”

The reason I call this an advance and not a close has to do with the concept of SPIN Selling. Knowing SPIN Selling will also allow you to overcome the “not interested” hurdle.

SPIN Selling is a sales technique developed by Neil Rackham and thoroughly described in his 1988 book of the same title. SPIN refers to a four-step sales process relating to first understanding the situation (S), determining whether there is a problem (P), figuring out the implication (I) of the problem and situation, and asking a need-payoff (N) question to engage the person in another step.

Rackham refers to this step forward as an advance, as opposed to a close. In larger sales or influencing someone into making an important decision (like changing jobs), obtaining more information in a logical series of steps is the key to ultimate success. Good candidates, especially the passive ones, tend to be reluctant to move quickly, so it’s important to engage with them in a series of conversations and interviews sharing more and more critical career and job information at each step.

Another aspect of SPIN Selling is to avoid asking questions that can be answered by a “no” or “not interested.” So for next time, don’t ask the person if he’s interested in a senior firmware job; instead, ask if he’d be interested in exploring opportunities on a new state-of-the-art project your firm is launching. Then get the person to tell you a little about himself (understand the Situation), find out if the person is fully satisfied in his current role (is there a Problem), find out if there is anything in the short term likely to change this (determine the Implication), and then ask the person if he’d be open to talk for 20-30 minutes to see if one of the opportunities you have open would be more satisfying. Of course, the last question combined the Maslow advance with Rackham’s Need-payoff question.

If you forget to do this, and the candidate says “not interested,” you might want to try the “deer in the highlight” advance and say something like “that’s exactly why we should talk.” (I heard this on one of Brian Tracy’s Nightingale-Conant audio selling programs.) This will get the candidate’s attention.

If he doesn’t hang up, but in the dead silence that follows, suggest to the candidate that he just made a long-term decision with short-term data. Continue by suggesting that if it could be demonstrated that your open position represented a great long-term career move, wouldn’t it make sense to discuss it for five to 10 minutes, even if the title isn’t exactly perfect? At least 50% of people will agree to proceed on this basis.

Now, while Maslow and Rackham can keep you in the game, you won’t make the sale unless your job truly offers a better career move than others the candidate is considering. For this you’ll need to have a thorough understanding of real job needs and future opportunities for the firm you’re representing. In addition, you’ll need to use subsequent phone screen and interviews to probe for gaps and voids in the candidate’s background. In this way, the interview can be seen as the SPI part of SPIN selling, with the N the recruiting part.

For example, at the end of the interview, convert a gap in experience into a test of interest by asking the candidate if she’d be open to meet the hiring manager if the job offered significant learning even if the comp increase was modest.

A series of methodical advances like this is how you can use SPIN Selling techniques and an understanding of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to engage more top performers and make more hires. Recruiting is a form of highly sophisticated consultative selling. Unfortunately, too many recruiters try to use transactional selling techniques and wonder why their candidates aren’t interested.

I was never very good in science class, which is probably why I’m not a doctor today. Yet, I remember vividly the exercise on heated atoms. The experiment started with a flask of water and a Bunsen burner. When the flame from the Bunsen burner was applied to the flask, the atoms would dart all over the place in excitement. The excitement was uncontrollable. The energy remained as long as the heat was applied. As soon as the Bunsen burner was removed, the atoms moved back to a static state. All movement stopped.

This science experiment teaches a lot about recruiting “passive” sales candidates (those not presently looking for a job). All companies want to recruit the top-talent salespeople from other companies. However, that talent is usually locked in pretty tightly. The top salespeople are the best earners of the company, so they probably aren’t looking to leave. What would get them to leave? How do you find these candidates? What would energize passive sales candidates to be excited about another opportunity?

Years ago, my father used to take me deep-sea fishing off the Jersey shore. When we went fluke fishing, we used one kind of bait. When we went blue fishing, we used a different kind of bait. Thus, you need the right bait to attract a particular type of fish. You certainly won’t catch a shark using a worm for bait.

Once the baited hook was in the water, the fish didn’t usually grab it in a way that allows you to reel them in right away. There was a dance. You had to make sure the fish had eaten all of the bait and was firmly on the hook. Professional fishermen talk about all of the different techniques involved with playing this game well. On any Sunday morning, you can find television shows on ESPN that walk you through the steps on how to select bait and tackle, as well as techniques to bring the fish into the boat.

So, what is the right bait when looking to catch passive sales candidates? How do you motivate them into action? There are two fundamental motivators of salespeople: fear and greed. Very simply, it’s just those two. Thus, the two types of bait for recruiting passive sales candidates are fear and greed. Sales managers use techniques to direct their sales team based on those two motivators every day. Guess what happens when a “greed” technique is used on a salesperson motivated by fear? Nothing! Thus, it is critical for the sales manager to figure out the right motivator for each of his team members.

The wrong bait is also an issue for sales recruiting. Many recruiters rely strictly on the “greed” motivator. “Come to our company, and you can make oodles of money.” That will work with some sales candidates, but certainly not with all.

As sales managers have come to recognize, there is an equally-sized population motivated by fear. I might argue that the “fear” population is larger than the “greed” one. For those folks, the “greed” factor does not motivate them into action. Some of you may be thinking that some salespeople are motivated by both, which is true. However, one of those two is more dominant. One of those two drives them into action.

As you can imagine, I talk to salespeople all the time. Most lament about the goings-on in their companies. So, I ask them if they are looking for another job, and they say no. Then, an event occurs, something that gets their attention, and they call me and say that “today” they have decided to make a change. That event is different for every salesperson, but it always falls into the category of either fear or greed.

To motivate a passive sales candidate into action based on fear, do your homework to effectively use fear as a motivator. The media provides most of the tools you need to do this well. Here are some examples of the fears salespeople have:

Leadership Change

As a whole, salespeople don’t like change. They like their territory and compensation to remain static unless they are getting more. When there is a change in leadership at the top, they get very uneasy about what happens next. Will the territory change? Perhaps the compensation plan will change?

Thus, top salespeople could be open to listening to you about a new opportunity. How do you know when there is a leadership change? The business journal of that city announces promotions/new hires at the management level of companies. A weekly read of this tool gives you new ponds for your fishing expedition. You also may learn that information from an active candidate who cites that as a reason for looking for another job.

Company Acquisition Rumors

For the larger companies, the financial news (print, online, television) broadcasts rumors like this. Whether the company is going to be acquired or is the “acquiree,” there is uncertainty in the sales team. Salespeople don’t like uncertainty. Post-acquisition, there will be changes to the sales team, but who will still have a job and who won’t?

Just like kids who, during the week before Christmas, wonder what is inside the wrapped boxes under the tree, salespeople wonder what their “gift” will be. For some, the uncertainty of the future is just enough to lead them to be receptive to a job exploration.

Company Financial Woes

Again, this information is shared in the financial news media. It is also in the local business journal. Salespeople panic when they hear this kind of news. For one, they wonder if their companies will survive. However, they also connect a few other dots. “If the company isn’t doing well, I bet it will lower the commission rate.” Or, “I bet they cut the size of the sales team. Even if I survive the cut, I’ll have to do twice the work for the same pay.”

Compensation Change

How can you possibly know when there is a compensation-plan change in another company? This information is certainly not shared in the media. When “active” candidates are asked why they are looking at other opportunities, they usually cite compensation-plan changes as one of those reasons. Hearing that should trigger a campaign to find the top performers of that company so you can apply your “Bunsen burner” tactic.

To motivate passive salespeople into action, you need the right bait. With research and technique, you can apply the heat that sends these candidates into a frenzy.

Lack of planning and poor execution are the two most common causes of failure, whether it’s fighting a war, launching any type of business initiative, or reallocating recruiting resources. When business conditions change, appropriate planning and reallocation of effort becomes even more important. When done properly, you’ll be able to anticipate problems before they cause too much damage. From a recruiting perspective, this planning needs to start by understanding the mindset of potential candidates while they contemplate switching jobs as economic conditions worsen.

In a slowing economy, consumers tighten their belts a bit, reduce discretionary spending, eat at home more often, and decide to take fewer investment and career risks. This is a natural reaction to a negative change in economic conditions. Typically, those who have lost their jobs or those in jeopardy of losing theirs get more aggressive hunting for something new. They also become less discriminating as the steady paycheck becomes more important than the future opportunity.

Those who are fully employed, but who are looking, become less active in the job market and wait for conditions to improve. Those with above-average jobs become reluctant to switch, since there will be little else available if the new job doesn’t work out. Under these conditions, the quality of active candidates responding to ads declines, and it takes increasing effort to attract passive candidates. Bear in mind that even if your company is not directly affected by the slowdown, your future candidates will be, since they all read the news.

Under current business conditions (Q1, 2008) here are some ideas you might want to incorporate into your upcoming sourcing and recruiting planning process. When executed properly, they’ll allow you to handle an economic slowdown without compromising candidate quality. Even better, when the economy begins expanding, you’ll be in a position to increase your share of top performers at exactly the right moment.

Sourcing, Recruiting, and Hiring Ideas to Offset the Economic Jitters

1. Convert Jobs into Careers. Top people aren’t about to switch jobs unless they’re convinced the new position offers a dramatic increase in scope, responsibility, impact, and growth. You’ll need to be able to describe this in clear detail and be able to prove your case. As you know, I recommend the use of performance profiles to define real job needs rather than job descriptions. These are even more important in slow economic times. Everyone on the hiring team must not only agree to what the job entails at the project and detail level, but also be able to communicate the importance of the job and the long-term aspects. Candidates will become more concerned and less likely to accept an offer if all of the interviewers aren’t on the same page.
2. Job Branding. When you tie a job to an important project or major business initiative, the job has more perceived value. This is a process called job branding. For example, a call-center job can be made more important when it’s described as the primary interface with a company’s customers. A sales rep position focusing on opening a new territory critical to the company’s business strategy enhances the value of the role. This concept must be incorporated into every job, every ad, and every conversation with your candidates. Collectively, it will go a long way into reducing the risk associated with a job change.
3. Define a Career Path and Prove It. It’s unlikely a top person will accept your offer unless you can convince the person your opportunity has more upside than does the person’s current situation. This means you have to tell the person how he could be promoted or how the job could be expanded. Not only can’t you be evasive here, you must also introduce candidates to others who have taken on these larger roles.
4. Leverage Your Employee Referral Program (ERP). Top performing passive candidates are more likely to value the input of someone they personally know, especially when there’s risk in changing jobs. Ask your employees to sign-up for LinkedIn, link to you, and then proactively build a network of all of the best people they’ve worked with in the past. Since you can see the profiles of these former associates, you can quickly determine who are the best people to target for your critical job openings. Have your employees make a pre-call introducing you, the company, and the importance of the opportunity. Here are some other tips on leveraging LinkedIn for recruiting passive candidates and how to link to me to get an instant network of 250,000 people.
5. Lengthen the Process. Slow down. Top passive prospects will need more time to evaluate the risk of changing jobs. Not only will they need to convince themselves but also their circle of advisors. Use this extra time to present more specific job and career information and get the person to meet more people in your company. As long as everyone’s on the same page, the candidate will become more comfortable with the new team members and the hiring manager. She’ll also view your hiring process as more selective, recognizing that you don’t want to make a hiring mistake either.
6. Move to a Consultative Selling Model Versus a Transactional One. Too many interviewers still think the interview is primarily about assessing competency. When dealing with top performers, this is less important than using the interview to find gaps and voids in the candidate’s background that can be filled by taking your job, if offered. (Here are some articles describing how to use the interview as a recruiting tool.) As long as they’re not too wide, these gaps and voids represent learning and growth opportunities for the candidate. This is how you use the interview as a consultative selling tool. When done properly, the candidate will sell you on why she’s qualified for the job and, in the process, convince herself why it’s a worthy career move.
7. Provide a Safety Net to Minimize Risk. Broaden the use of employment contracts to offset some of the risk with the job change. These need to cover a wider range of positions, including mid-manager and senior staff and offer more coverage. The contract needs to reflect the idea that the person being hired will only be entitled to a payout if the job is eliminated, not if the person is terminated due to sub-par performance.
8. Differentiate Your Jobs and Expand Your Sourcing Efforts. Stop writing boring ads with generic titles filled with skills and experience requirements. This is one sure way to turn off good candidates on the margin. Instead, start writing compelling ads that incorporate some of the job branding and career focus ideas mentioned above. Then, email these compelling ads to everyone in your resume database and send them to your employees, asking them to e-mail them to those in their network. This is a good way to reach top people who are sitting on the fence hoping something better comes along.
9. Increase the Comparative Risk of Not Changing. Use the idea that the decision to stay in a current job can be a bigger risk than changing jobs when first contacting prospects. As part of this, suggest that you’d like to present to the candidate a unique career opportunity that offers both current stretch and long-term growth. Mention that you’d like the chance to prove your case and, as a minimum, include the person in your network for future opportunities. If the opportunity you’re representing is truly a better short- and long-term opportunity than the person’s current role, the person would be hard-pressed not to seriously consider it. During the evaluation process, you might uncover areas of risk in the person’s current job that weren’t initially considered, including company stability and industry growth prospects.
10. Source from Companies and Industries that Are in Worse Shape. A performance profile allows you to shift the sourcing decision from identical jobs from competitors to comparable jobs in other industries. This alone expands the candidate pool. From a passive candidate sourcing standpoint, you need to proactively seek out top people in equivalent jobs in industries that are faring worse than yours. This immediately offsets the risk factor of changing jobs. For example, we recently placed an executive in the construction industry into a comparable job in the alternative energy field. It didn’t take much convincing to demonstrate the positive aspects of our job in a more stable and fast-growing industry.

While many of these ideas are applicable regardless of the economic cycle, the emphasis here is to clearly focus on the idea of minimizing risk and emphasizing the long-term opportunity. To pull it off, you’ll need a game plan, trained recruiters, and more involvement by every member of the hiring team. But when things get tough, the people involved need to get tougher to handle them.

• What you must know and do before you pick up the phone
• Passive candidate recruiting metrics and how to track your own performance
• What it takes to get your voice mails returned
• How to get every passive candidate to say “yes” to your offer
• 1st contact – how to breaking through the mental gatekeeper

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Passive candidates are, by definition, people who are not currently looking for a job. Despite this, most people in this category would be willing to discuss a new career opportunity if it offered some significant upside opportunity.

Since people in this category aren’t looking, you need to contact them, usually be phone. Getting them to call you back is far less than certain, and in most cases, those who do call you back aren’t appropriate for the job at hand.

Remember, just because someone is a passive candidate doesn’t mean the person is talented. Even if the person is talented, there are a host of factors that need to be addressed before the person is considered a viable prospect. These include things like location, compensation, and job fit.

However, if you can get past all of this and have found the perfect passive candidate for your job opening, make sure you don’t blow it using unsophisticated recruiting skills. I’ve written previously about the fact that top performers use a multi-factor process when deciding whether to accept one job offer or another. Recruiters and hiring managers can use a similar approach when recruiting these same people.

Too many companies, managers, and recruiters emphasize the wrong things when closing and negotiating offers. If you’re seeing more counter-offers being accepted or candidates rejecting your offers for different reasons, it could be because you’re not using a sufficiently broad multi-factor closing process.

There has been a wave of recent media coverage on recruiting, hiring, and developing top performers that sheds great insight into the idea of using this type of broad-based close.

For example, the lead article in the August 20 Business Week was titled “The Future of Work.” It highlighted the idea that learning, the opportunity to grow, and the quality of life were more important than compensation when younger professionals were comparing jobs.

In the September 17 Wall Street Journal Online, there was a series on how major companies fared this past year in recruiting the best MBAs. One key point showed that more information was less important than more personalization. This reinforces the idea that both recruiters and line managers need to be more involved in order to differentiate themselves and their jobs in order to attract to the best.

The lead story in the October issue of Fortune magazine was “How to Become a Great Leader” and what the world’s best companies are doing to develop their own.

Do you think a top passive candidate would be willing to explore a new opportunity that offered the chance to get on a faster career track with a company that was recognized as a leader in developing talent?

Even if your company is not one of the companies mentioned in these articles, don’t you think that your candidate should evaluate your opportunity from this same benchmark? This is one of the primary factors that the best people consider when comparing opportunities. You might want to use it as part of how you get candidates to look at the complete opportunity your job represents.

Done properly, you’ll be able to position your offer as the best among the rest. You’ll also reduce the potential of a counter-offer in the bargain.

With this in mind, here are the top 10 factors I’d want my candidates to consider when evaluating my opportunity in comparison to others the person is considering:

1. The job fit. It’s important that the primary emphasis of the job taps into the candidate’s real motivating interests. If the fit isn’t right here, nothing else matters.
2. The job stretch. The new job needs to offer immediate stretch. For a manager, this could be a bigger team or a more critical project. For a staff person, this could be working on new technology or learning new skills. For an executive, it might be a chance to be in a new market or handle a new challenge.
3. Opportunity for future learning and growth. The long-term or strategic aspects of the position need to be directly addressed. There is a need to demonstrate that the person will be offered additional opportunities to stay on a faster track as long as the person performs at a high level.
4. The chance to make an impact. The work must be important. People will take lesser roles or offset compensation if they feel they’re part of something bigger.
5. The hiring manager as mentor. This could be the most important factor of all. Working for a mentor and true leader is a critical factor on every top performer’s decision list. Proof is required as well as the hiring manager’s involvement in the recruiting process.
6. The quality of the team. The quality of the person’s future co-workers, and likely new friends, is a critical aspect of on-the-job success and satisfaction. Emphasize this factor during the hiring process.
7. The company’s prospects and strategy. Even if a company is not on one of the “best places” lists, it must still demonstrate it’s a great organization with a strong future. If the job itself can be tied to a major company strategy, it’s even better.
8. The company culture. While everyone can’t be Google, make the comparison. As part of this, address your unusual approaches to work, any non-traditional benefits, and anything that makes you unique in your industry.
9. Work/life balance. You can’t just talk about it, you need to prove that your company endorses it. This could be in the form of testimonials and open discussions. While people will work hard doing work they enjoy, quality of life is an important aspect of the decision-making process.
10. The compensation and benefits. As long as the compensation and benefit package are competitive, you don’t have to overpay. In many cases, compensation becomes a bigger issue when companies haven’t differentiated themselves on the other factors involved in the decision.

If your job is not clearly superior on the first nine factors described above, tell your candidate to walk away from it. Of all of the factors listed, compensation correlates the least with job satisfaction. This is a great closing point. Emphasize it again and again.

Tell your candidates not to accept the job with the highest compensation, but the one that scores the highest on all of the other critical factors. Why not prepare a table that includes all of these factors? Include on the table your job opening, other opportunities the candidate is considering, the person’s current job, and a potential counter-offer.

During the interviewing and recruiting process, collaborate with your candidate on accurately filling in the table. If you’re offering the best career opportunity it will stand out and you’ll certainly be able to increase your close rate as a result. Even the process of completing the table will help you retain candidate interest throughout the process. In fact, use the idea of getting more information as a way to entice reluctant candidates to come back in for another round of interviews.

Recruiting top-performing passive candidates is hard work. Too many recruiters waste their time focusing on the wrong issues. Recognizing how top people make career decisions provides a roadmap on how to make the hard work involved productive and worthwhile.

In today’s competitive search market, it may just take a bit more than a creative voicemail or a tasty phrase in your cold-call in order to entice a passive candidate to entertain a better opportunity.

Within my own very tight market in Hawaii, unemployment is at an all-time low and potential passive candidates deal with a barrage of cold-calls and emails from recruiters looking to fill positions with top talent. A more progressive strategy for finding these candidates could make all the difference in your search.

Creating interest is perhaps the most important goal in obtaining a passive candidate. You may be presenting your opportunity with the same approach that other recruiters or consultants use. It behooves you to take a different approach. It is so easy today for a candidate to delete an email, or hit No. 3 and erase a voicemail, so whatever you say must attract interest and whatever you provide must be eye-catching.

In your goal to create interest, a face-to-face meeting, whether over lunch or coffee, always provides you with the best way to present your opportunity.

Let’s look at some creative ways to get that meeting and create interest:

1. Assemble opportunity portfolios. This is a creative way that I use to cold-contact a passive candidate. It consists of a folder or portfolio that is personally addressed to the contact. Inside the portfolio is a snapshot of the opportunity for which I am contacting them and an invitation to lunch or coffee. I hand-write this invitation. A lot of passive candidates receive regular solicitation on the phone for a potential opportunity, and while this is a time-tested and proven way of contacting candidates, it also can be very uncomfortable for some. A portfolio or folder is a great way to market to these candidates.
2. Email your opportunity on a video clip. Shoot a video explaining why you are contacting them and personally address them in this video. Something like: “Hello, Mike, my name is Joe Smith, and I am sending you this email because I would like the opportunity to speak with you about an opportunity with a different company. Please accept my invitation in confidence over lunch or coffee. Thank you.” This is a basic and simple invitation, but it is effective in opening up lines of communication.
3. Update your selling skills. I took a course a couple of years ago (”Professional Selling Skills” by the company Achieve Global), and since recruiting and sales share a parallel, it may be helpful to give your selling skills a boost. I enjoyed this course in particular because it focuses on helping your customer and gets you involved in open- and closed-probe question interactions and provides more of a consultative approach. Like a professional athlete, it is important to practice and continually work hard to improve your game so that you will get better at it.
4. Find an attention getter. If you’re old enough, you remember a 1977 movie called Smokey and the Bandit. Jackie Gleason’s character is Sheriff Buford T. Justice, and in the opening scenes of the movie he walks up behind a car thief, kicks him in the butt, and says, “That was an attention getter.” I’m not suggesting that you kick your potential candidate, but like Sheriff Justice you must do something unexpected and painless to get their attention! My attention-getter is opportunity portfolios with a handwritten note. Yours can be anything really, as long as it is creative, different, and allows you to make initial contact.
5. Remember that privacy is paramount. A majority of passive candidates will listen to what you have to say about an opportunity, but privacy should direct your actions. A lot of passive candidates are uncomfortable about engaging for the simple fact that it may not be a comfortable time and place. Know how to contact them without putting them in a situation that may initially make them feel concerned about confidentiality. If you show concern for their confidentiality, initially it will put a potential candidate at ease and will also help open up the lines of communication.
6. Know the value of importance. Have you ever heard about the rule of psychological reciprocity? The rule states that if you give a person credit for his or her intelligence, they are mentally and morally bound to give you credit for yours. I like to credit them for their present and past achievements and how that is important in my opportunity.

Be different than what your competitors are doing. If you aren’t following the same model as everyone else, candidates will notice you.

Do you know that recruiting is one of the least efficient processes in an organization? Transaction costs (cost per hire) are large and there is almost no effort being made to connect that cost with delivering value (quality of hire).

At conference after conference, I hear the same old measures being touted proudly: cost per hire, time to fill, number of interviews to offer, and so forth. It seems like no one is measuring the effects of our recruiting activities. Senior executives are asking what value we are delivering to them, and sadly, few of us have any answers.

Recruiting is one of the few functions that has not examined in-depth what it does and how it could begin to do things differently. As long as we find people in a timeframe our hiring managers accept, we think we are doing a good job. There are no standards, few expectations, and no real improvement targets for the majority of corporate recruiters.

Maybe we should just blow the whole thing up and start over. There is no time left for evolutionary tweaks.

Many recruiters feel that there are too many things they cannot control, so they just do what is historically accepted. Yes, they do have to deal with a lot, including fickle hiring managers, rigid compensation schemes, corporate culture, and geography. But so do managers in other functions.

Manufacturing managers have had to learn the discipline of keeping costs at rock bottom while improving quality and increasing output. They do this against a backdrop of highly variable customer demand, supplier uncertainties, and the impact of national and international disasters.

Finance has transformed itself over the past decade, reducing the cost and time it takes to close the books each quarter, enforcing better cost-accounting measures, and moving everything to the computer.

For decades, recruiters have been using the same techniques for finding, enticing, assessing, and hiring people. All of these steps are based on a number of assumptions.

I have identified more than a dozen commonly held assumptions, but I think these five are the most dangerous:

1. Only passive candidates are the best.
2. It’s not possible to keep people as candidates for more than a short time.
3. Most candidates want to apply with a resume and don’t like online screening or profilers.
4. Each candidate will have to be interviewed in person.
5. There is no way to show a direct correlation between the sourcing and interview process, and the eventual performance of the candidate.

I contend that all of these assumptions are either plain wrong or need to be challenged for their relevance in an information- and Internet-based world. Let’s look at each one.

• Assumption #1: Passive candidates are the best. Everyone is at least a semi-active potential candidate. Sure, they may not be hitting the job boards, but if offered a new and more challenging or better-paying opportunity, most would be interested in learning more. I have never understood why we believe that a person not actively looking for a new job is “better” than one who is looking. Those who are looking may well be the ones with initiative and curiosity. They also may be the ones who have the foresight to explore new careers or move to a more stable organization. A truly passive candidate probably lacks the initiative to look for another job or is so completely happy that they are never going to leave. Whether a person is an active or a passive candidate should make no difference at all. What should always matter is whether they have the skills and qualifications to perform effectively for your organization, and whether they fit our culture and share our passion. People who are lured away by money or titles may not be the ones you really want.
• Assumption #2: It is not possible to keep people as candidates for more than a short time. While we can get into long (and often legally oriented) discussions about what a candidate is, I use a simple one: anyone who expresses an interest in working for our organization and who has the basic qualifications and skills for some function within our organization. Your goal is to build a talent pool of interested, qualified people to tap instantly when a position is open. People who have expressed an interest in you and meet minimum requirements are like jewels. As our economy picks up and talent becomes scarcer again, you will be very glad to have these people in your network. Most people like to be kept in the loop and informed about potential openings, even when nothing is available at the moment. Simple communication tools and a collaborative attitude can keep most people interested in your organization for a long time. Nothing is worse than the bounce-back email and the black hole where most people end up. Talent pools are distinctively different than resume databases, and offer more value to both the candidate and the organization.
• Assumption #3: Most candidates want to apply with a resume and don’t like online screening. Did you enjoy writing your resume? This assumption that people like to write resumes is just plain wrong and most of us don’t have a current resume at all. Even if they do, they often have not included the things you really want to know anyway. There are better ways to get information about a candidate, including online forms and questionnaires. The data collection can be done in creative and iterative ways that make it much less painful to the candidate and yet gives you the information you need. I will discuss many new approaches to this next week.
• Assumption #4: Each candidate has to be interviewed in person. Interviews are very poor predictors of success or performance. A good behavioral interview may improve the prediction by a bit but still not raise it much above chance. While it is in human nature to want to meet and like a person we are going to work with, this meeting should not be equated with skill or ability assessment. There are hundreds of excellent, legal, affordable tests available for more accurately screening candidates. These tools, combined with a website also designed as a screening tool, can greatly improve your ability to select candidates who have the capability, the motivation, and the skills to perform. It is possible to entirely skip the interview and get better-quality candidates than you do today.
• Assumption #5: There is no way to show a direct correlation between the sourcing and interview process and the eventual performance of the candidate. If this is really true, we should all start circulating our resumes for new positions. We will have to begin showing how what we do adds to the output of our organizations, or our functions will be outsourced to those who can. Recruiters have put too much focus on measuring activity, and not any on measuring outcomes. In the end, how a candidate performs and how much they contribute are the only criteria that matter. Quality can be measured in a dozen ways: how quickly a new employee can perform the job, how much capacity she has to take on new functions, how many sales dollars she brought in, or how much money she saved us. These can be tracked against source, qualifications, and recruiter.

Assumptions are dangerous because they limit thinking and creativity. They shackle us into channels that may once have worked well but are not as good today.

We need to blow up our current processes and rethink what we do just as if recruiting had just been invented. With a fresh view, we may open possibilities we have never dreamed of.

Here’s the link to our Recruiting Challenges 2006 survey. This is one you’ll want to take. Participants will learn where they stand among their peers in both performance and compensation. Last week, ideas were presented as to what you needed to do to find more strong, active candidates. The key: Be different. Ads must have an engaging title and a compelling employee-value proposition. Ads that are just like everyone else’s or can’t be found are non-starters. If you want to hire top people, your ads must offer career opportunities, not just another job. These ads are just as important if you want to attract and hire top passive candidates. These top people will read your online posting to see if the job you’re offering is worth evaluating. So, if it isn’t anything special, the great recruiting and sourcing techniques described below will prove valueless. Let’s get real. I’m leading a search right now for a Fortune 500 group vice president of marketing for a consumer products company.

Without working too hard, I found 65 possible passive candidates on ZoomInfo, 27 on LinkedIn, and another 30 using a few Internet data-mining techniques Shally Steckerl taught me. It will take me approximately 31 hours (at 15 minutes each, on average) to call these 122 people and then recruit and qualify those I connect with. If history is any guide, 15-20 of these people will have been worth calling (meaning the person is a good person who is either very interested or knows someone who could be very interested), and from these, one to two people will wind up as candidates I’ll present to my client. This is a lot of work for such meager results.

On the other hand, if I call the best 20 candidates from all of the lists based on their titles and companies, get 75% to call me back, and get two or three prequalified referrals from each one, I can do this work in less than a day. Better yet, if I’m really good at getting these referrals, I should wind up with four or five very interested and highly qualified candidates. It will take another two days to process these referrals. So, in 75% of the time, I’m able to get more than three times as many top candidates. This is a 400% increase in productivity! And, that’s the secret to hiring more passive candidates: Be great at getting highly qualified referrals. You can prove this for yourself. Start tracking these metrics: number of cold calls per day, percentage of returned calls, number of people open to considering your opportunity, and the number of good referrals per call. Now, track the same metrics for these referrals. If you prequalify the referrals, you’ll discover that working the referred list is three to five times more productive than working the cold list. I’ve written about leaving voice mails and networking in previous ERE articles. Here are some highlights and other ideas you can use to improve your performance in recruiting passive candidates.

• You must know the job. You can’t be a good salesperson unless you know the product you’re representing. This is just as important for recruiters. The best recruiters know their jobs, sometimes even better than their clients. Reread Part 2 in this series for more on how to prepare performance profiles that describe what the person taking the job must do to be successful, not the skills the person must have. Knowing the job gives the recruiter the confidence to make the cold call to passive candidates and be able to quickly screen the person. Knowing the job is also the prerequisite to converting the cold recruiting call into a networking call.
• Recruit first and network second. You’ll get more returned calls and better referrals if you recruit the person directly and screen the person before describing the job. People will be more willing to give you names if they consider you to be a professional who knows real job needs and can conduct a solid interview by asking meaningful questions. People like to talk about themselves. So, to get more referrals, you need to let the person talk about himself, and then if he is not a perfect fit, get referrals.
• Don’t lose your leverage. You must get the candidate to talk first. When you ask the person if he would be open to explore a situation if it were clearly superior, don’t tell the person about the job when he says “yes.” Instead, conduct a quick phone screen. You have leverage when the person says “yes” to your offer, but if the job is beneath the person, you lose this leverage and the chance to get referrals.
• Create an opportunity gap to determine fit. When interviewing, first conduct a work history review and then ask about one or two major accomplishments. Dig deep. Look for areas in which the job you’re representing offers job stretch. Consider the size of the budget, the team, the challenges, the impact that could be made, and the importance of the job. If the job offers enough stretch, it should be easy to recruit the person. If the stretch is too much or not enough, you’ll have to switch the call into a networking call. Top people need at least 15-20% job stretch and growth before they’ll consider moving. We’ll discuss in detail how to determine this in next week’s article, but the principle here is that to increase your odds of recruiting a top person, the candidate must internalize and own the gap between her current job and the one you’re representing. You don’t do this by selling and talking; you do this by asking meaningful questions that entice the candidate into telling you why she’s a good fit.
• Gracefully say “no.” To get names, you must offer proof that the person is not qualified. If the gap is too great, say that you’re impressed with the person, but she would need another few years before being considered for this type of position. Then, provide some specific examples, like the budget is double, the team is bigger, the project is more complex, or something you gleaned from your phone screen and knowledge of the job. If the job isn’t big enough, just say the job seems too much like a lateral move, or it doesn’t offer enough stretch.
• Ask for the names of people at prior companies. If you’ve developed a professional relationship and engaged with the person for at least 10 minutes as described above, you’re now ready to get some referrals. Recruiters who don’t get many referrals usually mess up steps 1 through 5, so review this if that’s the case. The best way to get names is to first give a short, compelling summary of the job and then just ask for specific titles and names of outstanding performers at prior companies. Use questions like these to start the discussion: Who was your best boss, who would you like to work with again, who would you like to hire if you could, who would you refer for your employee referral program, and who is the best person you know who won’t move? Even ask for names of people who aren’t looking, but who might know some other top people who also aren’t looking. Say that your objective is to build an outstanding network of top people, not just to find a candidate for your open position.
• Prequalify everyone. Once you get a few names, find out why the person is considered a top employee. Ask about awards or recognition received, if the person has been promoted, what the person’s track record is like, and something about her experience or academic background that makes the person unique. In the future, you’ll only network with these top people. You know you’re at maximum efficiency if you limit your calls to prequalified top people who are either potential candidates themselves or know a potential candidate personally. This is what you should strive for.

Recruiting top passive candidates is less about getting their names and more about knowing the job, getting the candidate to talk first, conducting an in-depth phone screen, and then getting referrals. Cold calling people you don’t know doesn’t take courage; it takes confidence that you know what you’re doing, and knowledge that you have a great job to offer. Collectively, this all starts when you took the assignment. There are no shortcuts or magic bullets here. If you’re making lots of fruitless phone calls, getting few returned calls, getting even fewer top referrals, and getting frustrated with your lack of progress, the solution is right on this page. It’s not about cold calling, it’s about networking.

How these ideas can be used to recruit passive candidates will become clearer by the end of this article. In fact, if too many of your voice mails aren’t being returned, you’ll be able to use this concept to get a 75% call-back return rate. To get better at recruiting passive candidates, you first need to assess yourself (or your team, if you’re a recruiting manager) against some best practices. You might find my earlier ERE article, “The 10 Commandments of Recruiting Passive Candidates,” to be a useful benchmark. From my experience, you don’t need to be fearless to make cold calls ó you just need to be better prepared. From a performance management standpoint, there are five basic metrics you need to track to see how well you’re doing recruiting passive candidates. Daily tracking is part of this, since it allows you to quickly determine how well your changes are working. For our purposes, passive candidates are people who are not actively looking for work ó so you need to call them.

1. Number of cold calls made per day. Whether you’re using a list developed using ZoomInfo, competitive intelligence, or some Shally Steckerl Internet data-mining technique, you should be able to leave 30-50 calls per day. Try to limit these calls only to worthy people based on their names, companies, and titles. Worthy people are those who are either potential candidates for your open position or those who personally know someone who would be.
2. Percent returned calls. This is a critical metric. Calling people who don’t call you back is a waste of time, so you’ll need to shoot for at least 50-60% call-backs ó and 75% if you’re really good at leaving messages. Later in this article, I’ll provide some ideas on how to improve your results in this area. Read the first paragraph again and substitute the word “job” for the word “article” for a quick hint on how to get started here.
3. Percent yeses. When the person returns your call, you must get them to say yes to your offer. Here’s my standard offer which will guarantee 90% “yes” responses: “Would you be open to explore a situation if it was significantly better than what you’re doing today?” If you’re getting less than 75% “yes” responses, you need to re-work your pitch.
4. Percent worthy candidates. Remember that a worthy person is one who is either a top-flight candidate who is interested in your job or knows someone who is. I suggest you minimize your calls to people you’re not sure are worthy. This means you must limit the number of calls you make directly from the initial cold list. To work a cold list, just call the best 15-20 people based on their titles and companies. Once you find a few good people in this initial group, don’t call anyone else on the list. Just recruit and/or get referrals from this initial group. The key is to get pre-qualified, strong referrals from the initial people called. This way, all subsequent calls will only be to worthy people.
5. Number of worthy referrals per call. The secret of passive candidate recruiting is getting great referrals of more worthy people. If you’re good at networking, (here’s one of my favorite networking articles) you’ll be able to obtain 2-3 worthy referrals from every worthy cold call. Getting names from unworthy people is a waste of time.

You can quickly see how important these metrics are. If you’re only getting 20-30% call-backs, and you’re making them to unworthy people and getting bad referrals, you’ll spend lots of time spinning your wheels. So when recruiters complain that the cold lists they’re working from aren’t any good, first track how they are doing on these five measures. You’ll probably discover that the list is not the problem. Since the biggest yield loss is not getting calls returned, here are some ideas on how to improve your efforts in this area. The key theme to all of them is the need to generate personal interest in your open opportunity by directly appealing to the potential candidate’s self-interest. If you’ve read the other articles linked above, you know that I suggest you don’t tell the person you’re calling much about the job, even after he or she expresses interest. Instead, have the person describe his or her background to you first. If you tell the person too much about your open position, you’ll lose the chance to get worthy referrals if the person finds out too early that the job isn’t a good fit.

Voice Mail Techniques Goal: Establish Credibility and Create Interest The Direct Recruit

You’ll get better results if you recruit the person directly rather than be evasive. Say, for example, “I’d like to discuss a senior-level position in marketing with you.” People are more likely to call back if there’s something in it for them personally. Be vague about the title. “Senior level” or “executive level” work well.

I’m the Expert

Build up your reputation as someone worth knowing. “I’m not sure if you’ve heard my name before, but I’m recognized as a leading recruiter in the Java space. During a recent meeting at the ______ conference, your name was mentioned twice to me as someone I need to connect with regarding a search for a senior-level developer.” People are more likely to call back if they can network with someone who is well-networked. Even if the current job is not a perfect fit, something in the future might be, so establish yourself as an important person to know.

The Name and Info Dropper

Mention someone or something important that the candidate will recognize. “I was just talking to the CFO at ___ regarding an interesting take on the new Sarbanes-Oxley ruling. This came up as part of a search I’m conducting for a senior-level financial executive for a Fortune 200 company.” Knowing important people and current issues gives you more credibility.

Confidential Referral

On ZoomInfo, you’ll find candidates’ former companies. Mention this in your voicemail. “I was just talking with a marketing director at (prior company) and your name was brought up in the conversation as someone I need to call regarding a search I’m leading for a senior-level manager.” When the person calls back and presses for the name, mention that you automatically treat the names of people who provide names to you as confidential, and you’ll do the same for this person.

Direct Referral

If you have permission, just mention the person’s name. This will yield close to 90% call-backs if the referring person is credible. Since more than 50% of your calls will be like this, you should be able to get your overall call-back yield over 75%. “Karen Jones says, ‘hi,’ and insisted I call you on a search I’m conducting for a senior-level person in ERP systems design.”

The Creative Pesterer

Keep on calling and leaving messages at different times with fun messages. Eventually, the person will either answer the phone or call you back just to get rid of you. “I don’t want to bother you too much, but I know you’ll buy me dinner once you hear about a search I’m leading for a senior management position in engineering.”

The Follow-Up

Use this as part of an email or direct mail campaign. Using ZoomInfo’s Job Cast and other tools, you can find email addresses for many people on your initial cold list. Send them a compelling summary of the job and mention that you will follow up with them in a few days directly on the phone. If you have their regular mail addresses, you might want to send a real letter.

This list is limited only by your imagination. Hopefully, these will get you started. Send me some of your favorites at lou@adlerconcepts.com, and we’ll discuss them in an upcoming free conference call. The Internet has made the process of finding names of passive candidates quite easy. But this is only the first step in getting them into your network and possibly hired into your company. Look at the names as the start of the process, not the end. Don’t call each person blindly on the list hoping one will say yes. This is both time consuming and unprofessional. Instead, use the five metrics discussed above to track your progress in improving your performance. First, get a baseline of where you are today. Then put a plan together to improve your end-to-end performance by 100-200% over the next 90 days. This is a huge jump in productivity, and it’s easy to achieve especially if your call-back rates are in the 25-30% range. Recruiting passive candidates takes skill, professionalism, and ambition. It’s worth it if you want to get the reputation of being one of the top recruiters in your company. If you’re a recruiting manager, take your best recruiters and put them through a crash course on recruiting passive candidates. Then give them your toughest search assignments. If you follow the techniques described above, you’ll have a few candidates for each assignment before the week is out.

1. You must know the job and why it’s exceptional. Top passive candidates who don’t know you will not speak to you for more than two or three minutes, nor give you any top referrals unless you know the job. Top passive people aren’t looking, so to get them to look, you must offer instant credibility with a job that offers significant upside potential. I suggest using a performance profile to define the real job. It describes the major challenges and problems required for job success. Recruiters who know the job this way are more confident when calling, and they can use the screening process to create an opportunity gap. This is the difference between the person’s current job and the new job.
2. You must become a partner with your hiring-manager clients. If your hiring managers won’t put in the extra effort, if they won’t spend more time conducting exploratory interviews, and if they won’t fight for a little extra compensation, your success at recruiting top passive candidates will be limited. That’s why being a partner rather than a vendor in the process is critical. (See articles on becoming a partner.) Recruiters who are partners have more influence. Managers will then interview candidates who meet most of the requirements of the performance profile, even if they don’t have all of the requirements listed on the job description. Bridging this gap is the key to hiring more passive candidates. Becoming a partner starts by preparing a performance profile, developing a mutual agreement, committing to put in the extra effort required to recruit passive candidate, and then delivering top people.
3. You must limit the number of calls to “unworthy” candidates. An unworthy candidate is someone who isn’t competent or doesn’t know any good people. A worthy candidate is someone who is a potential finalist or someone who personally knows a top person who could be a finalist. Since each cold-call to an unknown person takes at least 15 minutes (to call, engage, screen, recruit, and get referrals), it takes a lot of time to develop a short list of three or four well-qualified and interested passive candidates. Spending these 15 minutes with an unworthy person is a waste of time.
4. You must know how to work a cold list. Whether you use ZoomInfo or a Shally Steckerl data-mining technique to find names of potential candidates (my two personal favorites), these are all cold leads, so you don’t know if they’re worthy or not. When calling these types of lists, it’s best to limit your initial calling to the best 10 to 15 people based on titles and companies. Your goal is to call these people and separate them into two pools: worthy and unworthy. Then, only network with people from the worthy list. My experience indicates that for every 10 worthy people you call, you’ll get one finalist and six great referrals. This takes about three hours. If you call a random list of cold names, it takes 30 to 40 calls to get one finalist and no referrals.
5. You must recruit the person directly before getting names. To maximize results, recruit the person directly when you call someone for the first time, rather than using an indirect networking approach. People will be more interested and more likely to call back when there is something in it for themselves. To get them excited, leave a voice mail that clearly indicates you’re leading a recruiting effort for a senior-level position in the person’s field. When you get the person on the phone, ask her if she would be open to explore a situation if it were clearly superior to what she is doing today. Most people will say yes if you sound credible, confident, and professional. Our statistics show that you’ll get two to three times the number of calls back, in addition to in-depth career conversations when the person you’re calling believes the opportunity you’re representing is a potential new career move for him or her.
6. You must engage with the person for at least 10 minutes to establish your professionalism. When the person says that he would be open to explore a situation if it were clearly better, you must not tell him anything about the job. This is a critical moment. You must get him to tell you about his background first. You have leverage (candidate control) when the person says yes. Don’t lose it by telling him about the job. If the job is uninteresting to him, you’ve lost the candidate and the chance to get referrals. Try this to get the candidate to talk first: “Great. Why not give me a two-minute overview of your background; then, I’ll give you a quick two-minute overview of the opportunity. If it seems mutually interesting, we can schedule some time later to talk in-depth.” It takes about six to eight minutes to conduct a quick work history review. During this time, you’re determining if the person is worthy and a potential finalist. Equally important: You’re developing rapport with the candidate and demonstrating your professionalism.
7. You must not take “no” for an answer. An “I’m not interested” response, or some facsimile thereof, when you first call someone does not mean the person is not interested in exploring another situation. It means the person does not want to talk to you. This is big difference. People don’t make long-term career decisions moments after they get a call from someone they don’t know. That’s why the questions you ask and how you leave voice mails are so important. A “no” is okay if the person has the correct information to make a reasoned decision. The recruiter’s primary job is to persist and set the stage for the candidate to obtain the necessary information to make a wise long-term career decision. This starts by not taking “no” for an answer.
8. You must have rebuttals for every major concern. It’s even better if you anticipate these concerns and objections before they’re brought up. While most people won’t say “no” to the “Would you be willing to explore a situation if it was clearly better than what you’re doing today?” question, you must have a response when the person does says “no.” One of my favorite responses is, “That’s exactly why we need to talk.” This is an attention-getting mechanism. Follow up with a discussion of why spending a few minutes to talk about a potential long-term career move is worth it. Most people will agree to go forward as long as you persist and can provide some logical rationale to continue.
9. You must proactively network only with worthy candidates to get more worthy candidates. This is what effective networking is all about. Most top people won’t give you more names unless you recruit them first. If the person is great, but not a perfect fit for your open position, you must then convert the recruiting call to a networking call. If the person is overqualified, ask her to tell you about other great people she worked with at prior companies. Say you want to continue networking with these people, but you only want to talk to top performers who know other top performers. Done properly, 75% of these people will give you the names of other great people.
10. You must maintain applicant control. Don’t give up your leverage if the person turns out to be a potential candidate. Top people will stay engaged and ultimately accept offers without a big compensation increase if the job offers great potential. That’s why creating an opportunity gap during the first screening call is so important and why the candidate must talk first. Look for areas of possible job growth as you ask about the person’s background. Then suggest that in the next round of interviews, the candidate will learn if there’s enough job stretch to consider moving.

That’s it. But, if you skip a step or do the steps out of order, you will be less effective. Establishing credibility with hiring managers and candidates alike is the key to hiring top passive candidates. It all starts by preparing a performance profile and then picking up the phone and calling someone you don’t know and asking, “Would you be open to explore a situation if it was significantly better than what you’re doing now?”

As a result, it is best to remember that we will ultimately be judged by the greater part of what we have accomplished as opposed to the alternative fragment where we have fallen short. The objective of recruiting, as in life, is to do the best you can and move on. Despite what you or anyone else might think, the future of western civilization will not depend on a given metric, the fleeting approval of an otherwise hysterical hiring manager, or on closing on