Active & Passive Candidates - What Are They?

There are no such things as active or passive candidates in the recruitment market, there are only good candidates and the rest. OK, I know that at any one time there are people out there who are actively scouring the market for a new job, and many more who are not. But the point is that this is a candidate perspective, not a recruiter one. Where recruiters can go wrong is in looking for sources of new candidates who are not looking for a new role or may be unavailable to their competitors, i.e 'passive candidates', but can still be delivered to them as if they were 'active'.

I can understand the problem. I worked for an exec-level job board where much of our early growth came from companies looking to us as a different candidate pool. They and all their competitors used the same job boards and came up with the same candidates for the same jobs, for which of course they were all in competition. If we were successful for one agency, it was not long before the competition turned up in force. Good for us, but the same problem for the recruiter.

But looking for active or passive candidates is missing the point. And it's lazy recruiting practice. Recruiters get paid to find the right candidate. Sometimes it will be possible to find the right candidates from a job posting, as at any one time some, but by no means all of the most eligible candidates will be looking to change jobs. But to be consistently identifying the best available candidates means getting of your butt and approaching the people your client would want you to be talking to. You cannot expect a 'passive' candidate to come to you. To find the right candidate you need more than one string to your sourcing bow, and with the wealth of information online there has never been an easier time to do this. Recruiters - get out there and engage!

Comment by bill josephson on June 27, 2011 at 10:24am: Jerry, I appreciate your comments. I know by your previous posts you understand the lay of the recruiting land.

Just want to say that that's what my clients require me to do, or they don't need me. I fight obsolescense incessantly. If I find companies the same candidates they find they don't require my services. The jobs I'm given to work on are difficult. They don't need me for the easier ones. Between technology, accessing cheap labor here and abroad, and an abysmal Corporate America jobs environment where no matter what you're told you can't be certain of hiring urgency, and whether or not Corporate HR is looking to actually fill positions or candidate cover themselves with Hiring Authorities ensuring their own job security. Any questions asked, "Hey, I sent him 10 qualified candidate resumes and HE/SHE hasn't responded" taking the onus off the HR rep.

So are they there to fill jobs, or to just cover each position they receive with candidates regardless of whether a hiring process initiates so they keep their own job? Wish I always knew. And Managers often don't give you the straight scoop either. So easy to waste one's time in my world.

Comment by Jerry Albright on June 27, 2011 at 10:28am: Well - for what's it's worth - I could use some help finding an "active/available/unemployed/interested" SQL DBA for a client in Lansing, MI. They need a full time person as well as a contractor. They do not care where the person comes from and are not working to prove I am not entitled to a fee for my service.

Comment by bill josephson on June 27, 2011 at 10:39am: They have no corporate HR person scouring the job boards following leads, doing google, or Boolean searches on the Internet? Have they exhausted the local Lansing market where the other SQL shops are? Have they given you a list of places the person could come from, and where to stay away from cause that company has been covered?

Those are the type of conversations I encounter.

Comment by Francis Duval on June 27, 2011 at 11:09am: "Who wouldn't take the time to get the numbers checked out ?" I could not say it in a better way Alan !

I did head hunting for 5 years, i'm now in a corporate recruiter position for the last 3 years and i can tell you for sure there is no one who is not looking for an opportunity ! In the last 8 years, no one ever told me he (or she) dosen't want to even listen, every one of us thinks the grass is greener on the other side (truly or not). After you have the "fish" on, it is to the recruiter to decide to sell it on the market not, this is what our job is all about.

Lets see it that way, there is employed and unemployed candidats... :)

English is not my first language, i apologise if i have made mistakes...

Comment by Ian Harvey on June 28, 2011 at 10:44am: Wow! Firstly thank you to all of you who have taken the time to contribute to the debate. Having started the thread, I feel under some sort of obligation to come back with a few thoughts of my own.

Jerry - your definition of the market is absolutely the recruiter perspective, only relevance to the role and interest in the role count. Recruiters are paid to find the best available candidate (recognising that the truly best candidate might not be available).

Pam - absolutely spot on about timing being critical, and that you are obligated to use use every available means (within economic reason) to contact candidates that your client would want you to be talking to.

Brian - your classification of the market might be right, but it seems to be definition 'after the event'. Until you pick up the phone and talk to someone, how can you tell which group they fall into? To that extent it is largely irrelevant to try to define whether a candidate is active/passive/part active/part passive because the only way to find out is by asking the direct question 'Are you interested in this role?'; and sometimes the answer will be yes and sometimes no without there being any discernible change to the candidates level of activity/passivity in the market.

Bill Josephson - it sounds like you live in a tough world! It might not be helpful but this is a good post on this blog which I would recommend. It may be the lay of your land, but competing with your client sounds like madness to me. Might I also immodestly refer you to another of my own posts.

I think I can safely say that I have never spoken to a good candidate who wasn't acutely aware of their career development path. Even if they were currently deliriously happy, most of those would be able to point pretty accurately to a point in the future when their current assignment would end and when they would be looking for a new challenge. Going back to Pam's point, strangely enough, the more conversations I have, the better my timing has become!

Francis - your experience mirrors my own (and your English is fine!). I have only had one person in some 25 years of headhunting tell me he didn't have the time or inclination to talk to me. As long as you present professionally, you can develop a sensible conversation with a candidate and find out their short/medium term career aspirations and intentions, which may indeed involve having interest in the role you are pitching to them.

Which leads on to Sandra and Bill Schultz's comments: there may not be such a thing as an active or passive candidate but there sure as hell are active and passive recruiters, and that's pretty much the point of the blog in the first place.

Comment by bill josephson on June 28, 2011 at 10:52am: The reality of recruiting is you're almost always competing with your client's HR department, isn't it?

If not, what are your client's internal recruiters actually doing?

Comment by Jerry Albright on June 28, 2011 at 11:45am: This may or may not be in line with the original theme here - but I just can't picture trying to make a living with feeling there was some sort of adversarial relationship with the internal efforts of my clients.

I have a candidate interviewing Friday with a client. The candidate let me know he had sent his resume to them directly (replied to an ad) but had not heard anything. I called my client and let him know I had someone with X, Y and Z......then proceeded to tell him who the guy was. I was "transparent" enough to let him know the resume was "in there somewhere" but he had not heard anything. I didn't just cross my fingers and "hope" the resume wouldn't pop up somehow later in the process. I jumped right into it.

Sure enough - the resume had been received but was trapped in the elusive "ATS Black Hole". Had it not been for me he would have been overlooked.

Did the client jump to the "Well - look here! We already have him. Sorry!" tactic that seems to be so common place? Nope. He said "Looks like we missed him. And it looks like he's a good fit. I'll get him right to the manager." And this person is an internal/evil/HR/Corporate type.......right? Nope. He's an HR ally at a very good client. They're not all out to get us.

With so many opportunities right now - we MUST choose wisely. This is no time to work with clients who would rather see us starve than be "forced" to pay a fee.

Comment by bill josephson on June 28, 2011 at 11:58am: Jerry, I wouldn't call it an adversarial relationship. It's a competitive relationship. We're both looking for candidates. They aren't out to get me, they're out to beat me. The candidates are hard to find. They aren't 100% confident in finding the person themselves. The manager wants the best person, not the best person looking for a job. I'm the phone recruiter. Corporate HR is digging on the Internet. They're savvy.

These are the majority of positions I'm given. The easy ones they're confident of filling, I never hear about or they don't consider candidates from me.

Comment by Paul Alfred on June 28, 2011 at 12:34pm: Bill I think you and I are the only ones on this blog response who lives in a world where we are actually competing with our client's internal Recruitment Teams for the same resources- in the last 5 years I have seen this shift. I would love for it to be back in the Wild wild west days of 96 ... I would love to get Jerry's clients we need an SQL DBA please - I will exchange that for SAP IT Security in a second ... I could play golf Monday to Friday from half day and not just on Fridays... But us mere mortals are not in Jerry's world where everyone's on the market ...

Comment by bill josephson on June 28, 2011 at 1:48pm: Paul, Bingo. We live in the same recruiting world. It's highly competitive. Predicated on speed getting to the qualified candidate corporate HR can't access before they find a qualified candidate they can access. I'm given an opprtunity. In this awful jobs climate for different reasons, I'm often grateful for the chance.

The assignments are either extremely difficult or impossible, and I don't know which it is till I've invested some time in the recruiting process. Is Corporate HR asking for candidates for their managers with reqs to actually fill the positions, or do they solely want candidate coverage ensuring their own job security so no one points the finger at them for being ineffectual? I don't know till I embark on the recruiting process.

Paul, give me 2000 again. Give me 1995. Give me 1985. But please take 2001-2011. Fewer corporate sector jobs than back in 2000 with 30 million more in population, offshore outsourcing, H1B Visas, L1 Visas, Internet technology, downsizing causing market gluts with candidates, tighter HR/Recruiting budgets, reluctance using 3rd party recruiters, etc...

Jerry said my world is tough. Damn right. Nasty. Unforgiving. More risk, less reward. When my boss hired me in 1980 he said not to worry, "recruiting gets easier over time as you gain more experience." Paul, it's been 30 years. Let me know when I've gained enough experience so the job becomes easier.

Please?