The Myth of the Passive Candidate

By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

A long time ago in a galaxy far away

My partner and I opened our recruiting firm trying to place IT professionals in New York.  Yes, we did cold call recruiting but in those days, what passed for technology was a telephone. There were no computers, no LinkedIn, not even a fax machine. There was no Monster or CareerBuilder to complain about. It was a simpler time in recruiting.

You recruited candidates or referred active applicants who applied to an ad you ran in the Sunday New York Times . . . but the New York Times was expensive back then in The Stone Ages. At least it seemed that way to all of us.

You could easily spend more than $10 per column line for a classified ad . . . but then again, a new car would cost as little as $3500 back then.

We didn’t have a lot of money despite having our offices paid for for the first year. We made a lot of mistakes but we did one thing very well. We created an argument against active job applicants that exists to this day.

8 Things You Should Do When Starting a Job Search

I remember sitting in the office with Peter as we were trying to create a marketing edge and saying to him, “Let’s tell them that we don’t find the best candidate who read The Times on Sunday. We find the best candidate!” I continued by saying that the applicant we would refer was too busy doing a great job to ever see the ad in The Times. They were the people who firms wanted to hold on to, not get rid of, like the ones who applied to the want ads.”

And so it began. Firms started to think about “passive job applicants” as having the potential to be superior employees to active applicants.

Let’s fast forward to today where recruiters both third party and corporate believe that fable as gospel . . . but is it really true?

If there is anything the last few recessions should have taught you is that excellent people lost their jobs.

That wasn’t fat that was squeezed out of companies. A lot of muscle lost their jobs, too. Just because a line of business was sold, consolidated or closed, doesn’t mean someone is incompetent to do your job. They were just someone who worked for the wrong business unit when the layoffs occurred.

Why does the source of you coming into contact with someone make them a better applicant?

A corporate or third party recruiter proudly exclaims what I did 40 years ago, “I recruited this person! (This means I did not get them from a job board. I reached out to them through my data base or LinkedIn). They’re great (You should interview them and hire them right away so I earn a commission)!” Maybe they think to themselves, “This is a referral from my client of a friend of theirs who they think is terrific!”

How does that make them a better job applicant? After all, they may have their resume on a job board, too but they were referred by a hiring manager or recruited by you.

So since they were referred to you, they are terrific! Had you found the same person on a job board, they are inferior.

Does that make any sense to you ’cause it sure doesn’t make sense to me!

For job hunters, the smart strategy is to list yourself on a job board without your name and instead order one of those long blinded email addresses from the job board service. In addition, make sure your LinkedIn profile is keyword and term/phrase rich in the language of your industry, not the language of your employer.

Doing these two things will help you avoid being impacted by the foolishness of unthinking recruiters and help advantage you in your job search.

 

© The Big Game Hunter, Inc. Asheville, NC  2013. 2015, 2023, 2024

How to Find the Hiring Manager