Why Focus on Passive Candidates?

Dear Hiring Manager/Hiring Company,

Since the advent of the Internet, recruiting is all about job boards (i.e. Audiology Online), resume banks, deep web searches, and various web "spiders," all promising to instantly provide top quality candidates and to abbreviate the placement time line.

The point is: Unemployment in the U.S. is about 10% overall and about 15% of the working population has their resumes posted at any given time, which means that searching resume databases will likely yield two kinds of candidates: (1) the unemployed, read "unemployable," and (2) the 10% who are always fishing for the greener grass. Meanwhile, the 85% happily employed are completely overlooked by the resume database search strategy.

Not to mention the fact that corporate recruiting departments and thousands of other recruiting firms are all "mining" these same resume databases for candidates in an effort to avoid having to actually pick up the phone to talk to a candidate! I know that this is the case because I regularly get the same candidate referred to our office by 4-5 different affiliates, often within minutes of each other and rarely see a uniquely sourced candidate referral.

So where are all the quality candidates who possess those critical competencies and behaviors that really drive value (revenue) to an organization? Answer: they are already employed somewhere else. They are what we call passive candidates and the only way you find them is to directly contact them. That’s what our sales consultants do everyday at Bridgeline. If you want those quality candidates, with the right behaviors and the right competencies who will implement your strategic plan-then call us first before you waste another 5-10K on the “unemployable”-“greener grass” candidates who all your competitors have already interviewed.

We’ll be happy to arrange a private conversation.

Best Regards,

Tom Northey, MSM
COO/Bridgeline Associates