By Milt Jensen
In the competitive world of recruiting it is always a challenge to find the very best talent for your company. There are primarily two classifications of candidates that you will encounter when trying to fill your open positions, “Active and Passive”. The active candidate has already made up his/her mind that they are leaving their present company (or they have been laid off). They are reading the newspaper want ads, they are looking at the on line job boards, and they are networking with colleagues, etc. The active candidate will usually send their resume to not only positions that they qualify but also some positions that are a stretch for their skills and experience. The passive candidate is generally happy in his/her present position, is so busy doing his job that he has no time to look around for the next career move. The passive candidate in the majority of cases becomes the best employee.
You can attract the active candidate by posting on job boards and running news paper ads, but you spend hours sifting through the “Want a Be’s” and may end up with a hand-full of candidates to interview. When you find that good active candidate, you seem on many occasions, to be competing with six other companies to see if you can get them to accept your offer.
The secret to finding some of the best employees is to locate “open minded” passive candidates with the specific skill sets that fits your company. Sounds like a “needle in a hay stack” type task and in many ways it is. Many of the passive candidates will come through networking, leads from current employees, associations/company directories and from quality search firms. When you work with a search firm, whether on a contingency or retained basis, make sure the firm deals in passive candidates.
As a candidate passes through your interview process, it is important to know where the applicant came from. If the candidate is an active candidate meaning you found him/her on a job board, or he sent you his resume through your web site, then the majority of your interview process can be spent in screening his skill set. But if the candidate is passive meaning he/she came as a referral from an employee or through a recruiter, etc. then at least 25% of your interview process should include recruiting the candidate to your company. You need to spend this 25% of your time having the interview team explain the advantages of working for your company and their excitement to have the candidate be part of your team. If the 75% portion of the interview that was used for screening of skills and potential fit for the position shows the candidate is not qualified, then no offer is extended. What you don’t want to happen is to spend the whole day having your people grill the potential candidate to find out that he/she is a prefect fit and then have your offer turned down because the candidate doesn’t see any advantage of joining your company.
Happy recruiting and good luck in finding the passive candidates which will turn into the best employees.
Happy recruiting and good luck in finding the passive candidates which will turn into the best employees.
Milt Jensen is the President of Superior Search Consultants, Inc. which is a a technical recruiting firm that specializes in the recruiting and placement of electrical and other engineers in electronics manufacturing industry.
Check out their website at http://www.super-search.net/
