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 Paul Alfred on June 28, 2011 at 4:35pm: I guess we will have to agree to disagree Jerry... When I tell my clients that the best person is sitting at the competition happy in the Job their at -no client so far has ever said to me "Naaa lets work with the guy on the market ... They want me to get that guy or gal every time and I can bet you my next fee on it. And we have to disagree - that there is such a thing as a "Passive" Candidate and an "Active" Candidate - so far your definition of UnQualified and Qualified candidate does not even begin to describe what "Passive" and "Active" means ... It's a word it's in the dictionary and it has a meaning ... all my Clients can't be stupid. And I don't think I equated the Amount of Passive Candidates in the market to equal to the amount of qualified candidates which proves again we are not speaking from one definition as you have never defined what it means by Passive candidate and until we have a clear definition ( can't have many) it will be pointless to argue ...

Comment by Jerry Albright on June 28, 2011 at 5:14pm: Paul - first - I didn't think we were arguing. Second (and more importantly) I now have no idea what you're talking about in this latest reply.

Qualified/Unqualified has a far greater impact on recruiting than whether we feel someone is Active or Passive. I didn't think I needed to define the terms. I further added when this topic started that I then determined Interested/Not Interested. Those are the areas that concern me far more than how I found him - or when the last time someone else saw his resume was.

But back on your assertion that by simply not disagreeing with your "the best guy for this job is working somewhere else" statement that your clients are somehow confirming it. That's just naive. It's something that I think you've said often enough that you're convinced it is 100% accurate.

The best person for my client MAY OR MAY NOT BE currently doing the same job, right at this very moment, at their competitor.

And on the notion of competitor. Are you telling me that each of your placements (every one in fact) comes from a direct competitor of your client? That's what you're maintaining here.

When you recruit for a bank - are other banks the only place you will directly source from? If not - then you aren't recruiting from a competitor then, are you? So unless you are recruiting only from other banks - your "this is what we do" presentation to your client is not quite accurate anyway.

Is an insurance company a competitor? No. Do they have absolutely, fully qualified tech talent that would make a great match in a bank environment? They most certainly do.

Comment by bill josephson on June 28, 2011 at 5:15pm: My recruiting world experience simulates Paul's. My clients can find the actively looking candidate. They give me a list of companies they'd "love" to see a candidate from, want me to target my efforts accordingly, and then with a department of likely a couple of people want their SUPERstar top performer, or keep looking.

"Passive" to my clients are people they can't find. "Active" to my clients are people they can find. They solely want me to find candidates they can't find. They're on the internet and technically savvy.

I guess my approach would better served to find clients with ineffectual HR departments but wouldn't one believe at this point with the technological resources available that a company not up to speed in 2011 likely won't be around much longer? After all, is it reasonable to assume their competition also isn't technologically savvy, or that they'll be putting the less savvy organization out of business?

Comment by Sandra McCartt on June 28, 2011 at 5:18pm: Bill,

At this point i would rather have the Manhattan myself than find one. :) I don't even care if it is an active manhattan - one that is already made with the ice melting or a passive one - one that you make after i get there when i can tell you how much booze to put in it.

How about this Paul. A passive candidate has not changed jobs in the past five years and doesn't have a current resume. They are not on a job board, have not sent their resume to a recruiter or a company in the last five years. But what are they if they say to you, "Well i have sort of been looking at the net and thinking about a new job but haven't done anything about it. To you that would be passive.

Comment by bill josephson on June 28, 2011 at 5:31pm: If a company can't find them, they're passive/invisible candidates to my clients.

Comment by Paul Alfred on June 28, 2011 at 5:34pm: Yes Sandra , I could use a Manhattan too - Yes to your question as tricky as it may be - he is passive as he is not "actively" looking for a job .... Actively looking means to me: On the market, in the Job boards, spoke to and met a few recruiters, reached out to colleagues in other companies, resume is updated and is out to a few companies - recruiters have interviewed him - clear on the kind of role he wants and busy marketing this candidate ... etc ...

Comment by Sandra McCartt on June 28, 2011 at 6:07pm: Yeck Bill , i never drink after a competitor. Crap i don't even drink WITH a competitor. Unless of course i like them and want to know what they are really doing. Devious bitch that i am. :)

Oh Bill, mon cher, if you think that just having a computer makes internal recruiting savvy i know a whole bunch of folks you need to meet. Neither does an ineffectual internal recruiting deparment mean that the company is going out of business. I also know recruiters who are techie dinosaurs who still make a mint.

There are thousands of companies who have nice people working in HR who wear the title recruiter, hang out on facebook and twitter and seven other social sites and couldn't recruit a candidate if they lived next door and were about to starve to death they needed a job so badly. I can promise you that even in their own database there are candidates they can't find. Remember the old "But for "rule.

Maybe we could say , Do you want a candidate who needs a job or one who doesn't need a job. Of course then a lot of my clients would come back and say, "Why the hell would i want to waste my time talking to a candidate who doesn't want or need a job." "Don't send me any tire kickers who just decided because you sweet talked them ,to come over and see what i might be willing to offer them so they can go back and tell their boss that i was trying to hire them to get a raise or get me a phone call from Charlie wanting to know why i was trying to steal his people."

What if the candidate who might make a decision based on opportuntiy on Monday got laid off on Thursday and became active. Would he then make a decision based on need and desperation? What if he didn't tell you that he had been laid off, just said, "Hey Bill, remember that position you called me about last week, i've been thinking about that opportunity i might be interested. Since you don't know he has been laid off you still think he is passive and your charm and skill have lured him in. Hey it works for me. Now Paul might get a little nervous and decide that he was no longer a passive candidate. But again Paul might get him submitted fast before he hit the boards and who would ever know if he had been laid off if he didn't tell anybody and the company had not announced any layoffs just given the person a month to look for a job. Ever heard of outplacement?

I love this kind of mindless shit. :) Is the bar open yet?

Comment by Paul Alfred on June 28, 2011 at 6:11pm: Ok great Jerry now that i know we are not arguing - I love sparring with you ... I will come back to you a little later ...

Comment by Paul Alfred on June 29, 2011 at 7:46am: Ok Jerry ... To answer your questions ... No not every placement come from our Client's Competitors because sometime our clients don't like the folks working at certain specific competitors that includes Banks, Insurance Companies, Pension funds Capital Markets ... etc ... But we always provide them a game plan on the Companies we would look at candidates from and engage from that perspective with the premise clearly stated and one that they 100% buy into that " The best candidates are not on the Market" If we get a "Qualified" candidate that happens to be "on" the market - Great, less work for us but we don't always luck out that way ... This is our approach for each client. Working in this way has mold us into spending a lot more time in the Passive Marketplace ... Also, every call we make to a candidate is one way - we have no calls coming in from candidates about a Job- in to our company for a role we are always calling out to a specific candidate for a specific role where we feel the candidate is qualified - this completely solidifies our premise from A to Z... Look Jerry all of our unique experiences carves out an approach based on experience this was how mine got carved out since 96 ...

Comment by bill josephson on June 29, 2011 at 8:24am: Sandra, it's been years since I presented a candidate to a company they already had access to that they'd overlooked resulting in interview activity for me. Companies I work with have effective HR recruiters technologically savvy with google, boolean searches as well as scouring the Internet. Those are the type of people my clients hire for HR. Or they outsource to a major HR outsourcing group or contract recruiter I'm never able to gain advantage through HR technological incompetence--cause if they were incompetent they wouldn't be there.

Jerry, my daily life is like Paul's. Client gives me a list of companies they'd like someone out of. Sometimes it's industry specific and sometimes technologically specific. If a client needs someone with Oracle, many companies have the technology. But there are times they want someone with Oracle Manufacturing module experience, in which case going to an Investment or Insurance house won't work.

Paul, everything you say applies to my world. Companies want someone else's super stars. Sure, I've heard of companies laying off solely on a project's ending or based on salaries cutting the high enders. The constant is my clients ONLY want people they can't access. Those are typically passive/invisible candidates. Not all invisible candidates are passive, but if not on boards or sending their resumes out my clients usually can't access them. Anyone unemployed and actively looking, forget it. All my clients will have them and admonish me for competing with them on public venues.

Call them "passive" or "active"...it's all about if your client can access them.