"Passive" vs. "Active" Candidates Revisited

I was reading an Adler article this morning and saw a reader comment post in response. The article talked about the recovery and predicted candidate behavior in the coming few months, cautioning companies to focus their efforts on "passive candidate" recruiting rather than chasing active candidates. One of the readers objected to the idea that there weren't many good candidates in the "active" pool.

The whole binary of active vs. passive is sort of a misnomer; there are varying degrees of job search or new opportunity receptiveness out there, and it can vary by day, week, month or whatever. People aren't either "on" or "off". And yes there are some good people who are unemployed, or very active, for whatever reason.

However, to varying degrees, highly active candidates are by definition less desirable than passive candidates. It doesn't mean that the active person hasn't been a good employee or performer in the past, it simply means that when a person is active, their behavior is more problematic for recruiters and hiring organizations.

Active candidates tend to be less selective about pursuing opportunities, they look at everything. They tend to give positive responses about their interest in relocation, travel, lower salaries, lower titles, etc, when their objectives are really more selective than they are saying. They want to keep doors open, they want to get in front of hiring managers to try and talk their way into better roles, etc. Which is frustrating for recruiters and hiring managers who are looking for someone for a particular role.

Passive candidates tend to be very selective and more specific about what they want. If you are active, and want to be viewed as a premium candidate, try and resist the temptation to cast a broad net and be specific and somewhat selective about the opportunities you pursue. Your behavior will be noticeable to the hiring people with whom you are dealing, and may get you more serious consideration for the kind of role you really want.

10 Signs Your Interview Went Well

10-Signs-Your-Interview-Went-Well

The Costs of Serial Interviewing

One challenge effecting companies, recruiters and candidates is what I call serial interviewing.

When a company gets highly interested in a candidate, usually after a couple telephone interviews and maybe one round of face-to-face discussions, but long before the deal is done, they frequently let other prospects slide to the back-burner. It's often not by design, but if the subsequent interviews take a while to get scheduled, and the negotiations take a while, then the recruiter and other candidates can get left in limbo.

Doing so can be tempting, because interviewing numerous candidates and bringing several in for face-to-face interviews can be time-consuming and expensive, but if the main candidates falls through, you often find that the pipeline has run dry, other candidates have accepted other offers and the process has to be ramped up again, which in the long run, can end up being being even more costly.

I encourage employers to take a parallel approach and keep a pipeline of prospects going, until someone has accepted the position and is firmly moving towards the start date. Not doing so is the surest way to having a position stay open for months as one hot prospect is chased, and then disappears, and then another, and another. If you have several in work concurrently, the odds of someone landing in the role in reasonable time frame are much improved.

Due Diligence or Buyer's Remorse

I spoke to a high end tech sales pro the other day. In the market again after joining a firm less than a year ago. Nice raise, rapidly growing young firm, great opportunity, etc, except, that it wasn't. Turns out the firm's website, marketing, PR etc were all baloney and they had practically no sales, no staff, and no future. (firm isn't an ROI client).

In a lot of cases today, there seems to be an ever-widening gap between firms' PR and marketing vs. reality. The whole field of advertising claims seems to have evolved mostly into an art in phraseology. While there are many legitimate quality companies around, it can be difficult to distinguish those from the pretenders.

Ford has advertised for years that the F-150 is the number one pickup in America. Turns out that Chevrolet Silverado/GMC Sierra actually has outsold the F-150 the whole time, but since it's under 2 different nameplates, they are considered separate trucks.

Mutual funds are notorius for touting fund value growth percentages based on some specific period of outstanding performance. Closer scrutiny often reveals that many had a short period of stellar growth which they extrapolate, but that they actually performed poorly overall.

Another interesting arena is the explosion in awards competitions. Anyone tried to keep track of the number of movie industry awards competitions these days? If you want a little positive PR, sponsor a new award competition and name yourself the winner. I'm thinking of nominating ROI Recruiting for the best IT recruiting firm in Pawleys Island with a staff of less than 10. Since the population here is only a few hundred people, I hope we win, or at least come in the top 3.

As a recruiter, I look primarily to the employees for the inside scoop on companies. Regardless of the claims of revenue growth, employee quality and experience, you can usually get the best intel by talking to the present and former employees. When the employees start voting with their feet, it's time to take a serious look at what's going on. A serious drain on talent not only impacts a company's revenue and performance directly, but also usually means the PR and Marketing effort and expense needs to accelerate to mitigate the growing negative buzz in the community. Recruiting expenses will often rise dramatically as the company loses great people faster than they can find them. You can fool the people for a while....

As a candidate, make sure you tap into the community at large when scoping out a new opportunity. Don't just read the website; talk to people who have worked for the company, or clients or vendors who have worked with them, to find out the real scoop. And make sure you find your own contacts to speak with, not just those the company refers to you. These are like candidate references; you have got to figure the candidate is going to provide references from those that he/she feels will put them in the most positive light. Companies are no different, so dig a little deeper. The time spent will be well worth it.