Let me restate this a different way. If your main recruiting strategy is built on the presupposition that there are plenty of highly qualified candidates available and actively looking for a job that looks just like the one you have open, frustration will always be the result. This is simply not reality.
This reminds me of the lyrics from an old song, “I really don’t mind the rain, and a smile can hide all the pain, but your down when you’re riding the train, that’s taking the long way.
Using the wrong strategy, doing the wrong things and expecting good results is like finding you’ve not just got on the train taking the long way, but you may very well be on the train going the wrong way.
I would fall woefully short of the mark if I pointed to the "post-and-wait" sourcing strategy as the main source of most hiring frustration. The frustration comes from depending solely or heavily on this strategy instead of using a more diverse set of sourcing tools.
As you might guess, I get a load of push back when I make statements like this, but I think we both know it’s because there are times in life when stating the obvious, and facing the truth isn’t comfortable.
I believe that I’ve heard nearly every plausible counter argument to this statement. I suspect that a few might be going through your mind right now. In order to not be exhaustive, I'll just choose one. The most common.
"Yes, we use advertising to create a candidate pipeline for our open jobs, but we also employ numerous external agencies to generate an additional pipeline of passive candidates. So, I have to disagree, we are not depending completely on a “post-and-wait” strategy that generates only 'active' applicants."
Sounds logical, right? It was, 20-30 years ago, when the vast majority of agency recruiters were in the habit of performing aggressive outbound search engagements. However, these days very few agency recruiters have any experience mounting an effective outbound search. Instead, their business model is based on generating resumes (using mainly advertising, spam email and job posts) and then presenting them to their client base without much more than a cursory phone screen prior to submittal.
Worse, some hire 3-4 of these firms and pit them against each other in a race to fill a position not realizing they're doing themselves a tragic disservice. What you end up with is almost exclusively unvetted active candidates sourced via job ads.
Why, because if I tell an agency, non-verbally, that SPEED is the highest priority, and I do this repeatedly, then I'm training them to deliver “fast” and put “accurate” in the back seat. In order to get FAST, you need ACTIVE candidates. So, what you end up with is paying agency fees for candidates you could have reached yourself if you wrote more creative and compelling job descriptions.
Ok, a quick disclaimer, yes, there are exceptions to this rule. There are boutique agencies that actually source candidates and perform effective outbound recruiting, but they are on the endangered list, and getting harder and harder to find.
Want to end to hiring frustration, stop putting the bulk of your recruiting dollars into advertising that only generates active candidates. And go out and find better sources.
