Even though companies are laying off employees left and right, it’s still difficult for HR managers and recruiters to fill the few empty positions they do have. Why is that? As Rapleaf CEO Auren Hoffman explains in his blog Summation, it’s all about quantity versus quality. The top performers (what Hoffman calls A-Players) in a department are rarely fired; that misfortune usually falls on the C-Players and some B-Players. But the paradox is that companies of course would prefer to hire A-Players, those being the employees with the highest productivity and efficiency. When a job order is posted, hiring managers will see a high quantity of applicants, but not too many of those applicants are high quality. The noise of all those candidate files can be deafening, making it hard to hear the sweet sounds of great hires.

But, Hoffman writes, this doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a hopeless situation with all A-Players off the market. “Tough times often paint companies into a corner and force them into maintenance mode rather than continuing to innovate. Great players love to innovate and usually NEED to innovate. It’s usually very hard to keep these type of A-players caged-up and thus this presents a big opportunity for recruiting.”