Job boards could be more effective if they prevented unqualified candidates from ever applying for an open job in the first place. Here’s one idea on how they could do this: kill candidate agents, and limit to three the number of jobs a candidate can apply for daily. Candidates would then be more discriminating ó unclogging the system overnight, and benefiting everyone. Until then, a similar affect can be achieved with some creative planning on your part. In a recent article (The Secrets of Semi-Sourcing Revealed), I made the contention that there were some outstanding people who looked infrequently for new opportunities on the job boards. However, unless they were an employer of choice, most companies had difficulty attracting these people. And even if companies did manage to attract them, they were almost impossible to find in a sea of otherwise unqualified candidates. Semi-active candidates are those people who look for jobs on an infrequent basis. They’re the ones who didn’t get laid off, and are now overworked, under-appreciated, and underpaid. As a result, they are ready to jump ship (en masse) once the job economy recovers. Until then, they’ll stay put. However, after an especially bad day, they will look to see if there is anything better out there. If you can attract them on their bad Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday nights, you have a window of opportunity to hire some great talent. Semi-active candidates don’t follow the same rules as active candidates when looking and applying for jobs. Here are the basic differences:
Since semi-active candidates don’t have time to spare, they only look at the titles of the jobs and the names of the companies on the first or second page of any job board listing. So if your job or title doesn’t stand out, you don’t have a chance. If you get them past this, they’ll then read the ad copy. If the job sounds boring, or lists the traditional must-haves ó skills, requirements, years of experiences, academics, industry background, with a few duties and responsibilities mixed in ó they’ll instantly opt out. If not, they’ll next look at the your website and the detailed job description. If these aren’t as convincing as they could be, nor easy to find and review, it’s over. However, if you manage to get them past these hurdles, you must then make sure you contact these people by 10 a.m. the next morning. This is where the quality of your back-end processing systems and the professionalism of your recruiting team come into play. If you wait three to five days before you call a semi-active candidate, or sound unprofessional even if you call by the 10 a.m. deadline, the window will be shut tight. The good news in all this is that it’s quite easy to find and hire top semi-active candidates ó if you design your recruiting advertising and applicant processing systems around their needs, rather than assuming they look and apply for jobs like active candidates. Here are some ideas you can try out:
When hiring processes are designed to attract semi-active candidates, job boards can be a useful, low-cost means to find some very strong people. However, to be effective, all of the steps described here must be implemented. The process will collapse otherwise. If you’re not talking with these new-found top candidates by 10 a.m. of the morning after they’ve applied, you’ve lost the advantage of this semi-sourcing sweet spot. Don’t wait too long to begin implementing this process. 10 a.m. today is as good a time as any. Once the economy recovers, many of your own semi-active candidates will start looking. This will ratchet up your company’s hiring needs, and quickly stretch your systems and resources to the breaking point. Step 6 (rank sorting resumes) is the only real challenge, and this is where job boards could dramatically help. Until then, you’ll have to rely on your applicant tracking system and some clever fine-tuning (email filtering@adlerconcepts.com for some practical advice, and to sign-up for our next online conference on this topic) to get the best candidates to the top of the list. Then it all depends on what your recruiters say when they call. This is the recruiting sweet spot, and in my opinion the real key to making hiring top people a systematic business process. No matter how good your systems are in identifying top candidates, it takes great recruiters to convert them into outstanding hires. [Note: If you’d like to help make Hiring 2.0 a reality, join the hiring revolution. Our Band of 176 will become the focus group to set the standards for these next generation hiring tools. Our first “Satisfaction with Current Hiring Tools” survey will be sent out shortly to all revolutionaries. We’ll present the results in an online conference in November. This will be your first chance to join the growing number of people who want to dramatically change the way top people are hired. Separately, with ERE support, my national hiring revolution Zero-based Hiring tour has begun. Over the next few months I’ll be in Los Angeles on November 5, New York on November 19, San Francisco on December 11, and Dallas on January 21st. If you or your organization would like to be a city host for one of these events send me an email at info@adlerconcepts.com. We’ll be visiting the rest of the country in 2004 with 12-15 tour stops. I look forward to meeting you in person at one of them. Be heard. Join the revolution. Become a great recruiter.]