By Dr. John Sullivan, Head and Professor of Human Resource Management College of Business,
San Francisco State UniversityClick here to email Dr. John Sullivan
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Click here to go to Dr. Sullivan's Index Page
By Dr. John Sullivan, Head and Professor of Human Resource Management College of Business,
San Francisco State UniversityClick here to email Dr. John Sullivan
Click here to see the rest of our web site.
Click here to go to Dr. Sullivan's Index Page
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Click here to go to Dr. Sullivan's Index Page
When recruiters ask managers to describe their "perfect candidate"
to recruit they usually describe them something like this:
In short, the perfect candidate is a successful person that is very good at their job and who is CURRENTLY employed. They are also likely to be well paid and content (happy) in their job. I call these candidates "Content/Employed Performers" (CEP's). They are sometimes also referred to as "passive" job seekers.
When you look at the strategies that recruiters use to find their "perfect" person you usually learn that the typical recruiter's strategy attracts the exact opposite of what managers really want. Instead of attracting "employed performers" they are actually attracting "unemployed / malcontents" (UM's). I call that the recruiters paradox. Unemployed/malcontents are the easiest people to recruit but they are the exact opposite of what managers want!
A typical web site or newspaper ad only attracts candidates that are "actively" searching for a job. These active searchers are often "unemployed" or "employed but they are malcontent's" (those that can't influence their managers enough to make their current jobs worth staying at)! Unemployed people are easy to find (in fact they will often find you) but they are not the kind of people you really want to recruit. You want successful people that are currently employed because people that are in high demand are almost always employed.
These days it is not uncommon for recruiters to complain about the "shortage" of good workers. There in fact is no real shortage of good workers. The number of superior candidates hasn't changed at all (Where did they all go? They didn't all die did they?). Certainly there is the appearance of a shortage but there is a simple explanation for it. During times of high unemployment, some of the content/ employed performers that would normally be employed are excessed (laid-off) into the active job seeker pool. When a significant percentage of the "performers" are unemployed (and thus active job seekers) a standard web site will now attract some "good" candidates. However when boom times come nearly all of the good performers get hired again and they revert back to being "passive job seekers" again. When only poor performers respond to ads or web sites you get the "appearance of a shortage". But all that has really changed is that there are now no top performers that will respond to recruiting tools designed for the active job seeker. The traditional recruiting tools no longer work because they were never designed to attract the passive employed person!
Surprisingly, the people that managers really want (employed top performers) are also relatively easy to find (but hard to recruit). They are highly successful performers employed at major benchmark firms. Everyone who is any good in their field knows their names. The primary problem with these Content/ Employed Performers is that they are NOT likely to be looking for a job and they are hard to shift into the job seeking mode.
Typically The Very Best Content/ Employed Performers Are Hard To Recruit Because:
- They are reluctant to go through the "pain" of updating their resume.
- They don't visit web career/job boards or read want ads.
- They will not return recruiter phone calls.
- They are hard to convince that they need a new job.
- They are usually well paid, happy and their current company has them on some sort of a retention program.
- When they do begin looking they have so many choices that they are hard to sell on your firm.
- They are generally only in the job market for a few days before an offer is made.
- They often have higher job demands then more "desperate" job seekers do.
- They turn down offers at a high rate because their current employer will almost certainly match any offer you make.
It's easy to see why recruiters focus on the "active" job seeker. They are easy to recruit and the "fill the requisitions" mentality as well as the reward structure of most firms push recruiters to take the easy road. Putting "butts in chairs" is certainly easier than hiring "Michael Jordan types".
However if you believe, as I do, that "championships are won with seasoned top performers" then you must consider shifting your recruiting approach toward the harder to recruit content/ employed performer.
Finding content/employed performers and convincing them to become active job seekers requires a three part strategy of
- name gathering
- relationship recruiting and
- "WOWing" them.
When you are seeking the very best candidates you must assume that because they are excellent at what they do, that they are currently working. Happy, employed top performers almost universally do not have (or need) updated resumes.
As a result... anyone that sends you an updated resume is very likely to be unemployed or a malcontent and thus is NOT an ideal candidate!
Requiring (or waiting for) an updated resume almost assures that you will not get the very best candidates!
Most recruiters make having an updated resume a pre-condition to add someone to their candidate list. This is a serious mistake. Leading firms like Cisco have found that you can easily recruit candidates without resumes by using tools like "profilers" (automated software that prompts candidates to answer questions about their skills and experience). World Class recruiters go a step further and put a high value on just capturing the names of the best in the field as a first step in building a recruiting relationship. Finding the names of the best in a field is the first step toward World Class recruiting!
At any one time less than 25% of all people have updated resumes and among top performers the number is often half of that. "Michael Jordan" doesn't have a resume and it would be an insult to ask him for one. The very best don't have resumes because:
- They are too busy and never seem to find the time.
- It would hurt their image (and ego) if people thought they had to prepare a resume or actively look for a job!
- They let their ideas and their work sell themselves in their professional life so it is a strange behavior for them to list job duties in a resume format.
So it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that if you rely on having an updated resume as a precondition to become a candidate you will exclude over 80% of the best candidates before you even start! Keep reminding yourself that the best performers are happy in their job and thus would have no reason to update their resume. Unemployed/ malcontents are the ones with updated resumes. If you learn to avoid resumes…you will improve the quality of your target candidate pool. (Think about it. You are a top performer... and your resume hasn't been updated in the last year, has it?)
Because there are no "hidden stars" in business or technical fields. With hard work, a working knowledge of technology and some "out of the box" marketing tools you can build a database of the "names" of the top people you really should be targeting.
Identifying names is NOT a HR task. It needs to be done by managers and teams in each department, with HR acting as a coach. This is because relationship building with candidates requires the exchange of advanced ideas and knowledge that no HR person could reasonably be expected to acquire in this fast changing world.