I really don't think so. I honestly think that people who are actively looking are often times much better, simply because of motivation. They want to be recruited, and they want a new job.

I will tell you that many of the managers I have supported have a heavy bias toward getting what is not available. There is a mystique about pulling the forbidden fruit from a competitor, and I think this is just human nature. Ever watch Desperate Housewives?

The downside of the passive candidate is sometimes an attitude of entitlement, and I think there is a certain psychology that goes along with that whole interaction.

The manager's bias says "this candidate is better because he is happily employed, and therefore a better employee to have." While, on the other hand, the passive candidate is saying "hmm..these guys really want me, so I'm going to exploit this situation and either milk them for all they are worth, or..I'll get a higher offer, then turn around and hand it to my manager for an increase."

Whether you interview the proactive or passive candidate, it is your interview method and team expertise that will get past the bias and mystique, and get to the core of desired values, skills and behaviors.

posted April 10, 2008

Well said Andre.
Sometimes those misplaced employees are the low-hanging fruit that make the job easier;)
Sam-

Remember that the strongest person at one company could be a total miss at another due to office culture. I also know many contractors that are among the most talented in their field but do spend time in between contracts. I hope you would not overlook them because they are temporarily 'active'.



Hope this helps.

I accept invites!

posted April 10, 2008

Sometimes yes but often they lengthen the process and are hard to close. Remember, they are passively looking and many times they are happy. Unless what your client has to offer is stellar then the hill may be steep to climb. Candidates that are openly on the market are motivated and will often eagerly work with you to ensure they get placed.

The one benefit is certainly the kudos you get for bringing a passive candidate, that no one else has recruited, to the game. Clients will appreciate that level of recruiting service and welcome you as a partner.

posted April 10, 2008

In my experience passive candidates in specific skills make excellent candidates. Keep in mind with passive candidates comes a VERY long process. A passive candidate must be closed before the resume is even

I will agree candidates looking are a faster hire. However, passive candidates once hired STAY if the recruiter did their job.

posted April 10, 2008

Yes it is true that very good people lose their jobs, during bad times. However you also need to ask if person A was let go through a lay off and person B was not, don't you think you should ask why? Job boards and agencies are a great avenue to get candidates and quick volume, but they have their limit. So you have your ERPs and passive sourcing which allows you get other candidates who you would not receive otherwise and who may never have needed to use a job board, because opportunities always seem to fall in their lap.

If you want to see the results of passive sourcing, just look at companies like Cisco, Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc... What do you think about those companies and the products they produce? Nobody from these companies can give you numbers of coarse because we all signed NDAs.

posted April 10, 2008

I work primarily with Passive candidates. My example would be the MANY recruitment agencies that pride themselves on bringing in Passive candidates. We mainly work off commission and believe me we eat.

I bring candidates from the competitors and I get them in front of the hiring manager which otherwise would not have seen them because they are not answering EVERY job and they are not posting their resumes every which way.

I think it is nice because I bring a different type of candidate and people like choices and also what they do not have. These candidates are often VERY good at what they do and have PROVEN current abilities as appose to someone who left their job and 6 months later is know looking for work.
A good recruiter will also match the cultural fit and hopefully through the interview process the cultural will come out.
I manage the relationships and build on them so that the close goes smoother. Yes I understand that not every candidate is going to take the job but at least my passive candidate does not have other companies making offers and we talk about counter offers through the entire process.
THAT IS WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO WORK WITH A GOOD RECRUITER!

I am always looking to network connect with me at stephanie at parkerandassociates.biz

posted April 10, 2008

Let's look at this from a value perspective. XYZ company is laying off 16% of their workforce, but 88% is ABC department. They are retaining Tom and Beth in ABC department, because they are the best at what they do.

As a recruiter, I'd be more interested in the "best" than "the rest". There is also loyalty. If you have the "low hanging fruit" coming in for interviews, that means that even if they are employed they are dissatisfied. The passive candidate has more at stake to gain...and lose. So, yes, in that sense they are more optimal.

posted April 10, 2008

Absolutely...You have no competing offers, and you are guarded against a slow moving client. I've lost many deals to 'ghost offers' I was not aware of because a candidate is all over the job boards. If you're client has a long hiring process a passive candidate can kick back at their job and wait it out.

posted April 10, 2008

I believe that there are many myths in recruiting and many times we make the process much harder than it needs to be.

In truth, the best candidate for an open role....is the candidate that fits the role best.

At times, they are happily working in their current positions and need to be nudged (they are, by definition passive). Other times, they are looking for new challenges (sometime voluntarily...other times not..they are, by definition active).

The good recruiter is the one who can identify the best candidate by taking looking at all the tangible and intagible factors, sell them on the job and then sell the hiring manager on the candidate.

Our job is not to have a bias one way or the other. Passive does not always equal best.

posted April 10, 2008

Yes, two reason.

- They are NOT unemployed from being fired
- They are easier to pipeline when you do not have an immediate opening since they are not actively interviewing.

posted April 10, 2008

Passive candidates are great from the "exclusive" standpoint. Concerns are the counter offer and many withdraw from the process. The benefits of representing a passive candidates are "exclusivity", the aren't actively interviewing so it's likely you're client will get them if we've made the right match. There is no competition from other recruiters, they aren't plastered on the job boards. I prefer to work with a passive candidates but their are pitfalls, mainly I have many with draw from the process. The perception of many hiring manager is that they are better, I think that can be a myth in many cases. I think candidates who need a job don't make the best decisions and will take the first thing. All candidates should keep in mind the worst time to look for a job is when you need. Interview!, you never know what can happen but be aware of "shoppers."

posted April 10, 2008

I would say that in general passive candidates are sub-optimal when the move would be lateral. I know that if I'm not looking actively, that would mean I am satisfied with my current position in terms of income, security, upward mobility and leadership. To move horizontally, you would have to show me that at least one of these would prove much better at the new company and the remainder would at least hold steady. In such a case, I would be asking "why should I work for you" and assume that you have already picked me as the best option for you. The only way this would not happen is if we were talking about a possible positive vertical move. If we are talking about a vertical move, a passive candidate may be a better option. The best might be to catch a potential candidate just before he/she moves into an active job search.

This is not to say that rejecting candidates from either crowd insures you from missing the best candidate. The best candidate could come from either. We are only talking about what group is most LIKELY to produce the best candidate. I'd say its bad practice to ignore either one.

posted April 10, 2008

Sam,

In general, i think you could make that assumption, but obviously every case is different. I would invite all of you to join our new HR Expert group here on Linkedin - great question for discussion from our large community....

Links:

• http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/85341/3260320FCE8A

posted April 10, 2008

Hi Sam,

From the perspective of a company having the necessity of hiring the best talent available in the job market, a passive candidate is a preferable option that hiring an active candidate. Let see us why:

Active candidates are looking for a new job because they would like to gain access to better job opportunities; they could are desperately looking for a job because they are unemployed, or perhaps, they are unstable professionals that instead of looking for possibilities of engaging in an interesting career development path from a long term perspective, they are switching from a job to another one successively as a strategy of ascending rapidly and without continuity within of a company to get a faster ascending along of the corporate ladder.

Being so, an active job applicant could be then a frustrated person, an obsessive professional, a potentially mediocre employee and in some cases he/she could be the best talent available to fill the vacant job position.

In hiring processes where there is no explicit need of hiring the best talent available and the process must be closed as fast as possible, hiring the relevant talent from a pool of active candidates is in most of the cases the best option possible in hiring the talent having just the right mix of competences, experience, knowledge, attitudes and skills that are suitable to the open job position.

In some instances is an imperative hiring the best talent available due to the critical character of the open job position or to the requirement of hiring a hard to find professional with important skill sets. From this perspective the best candidates are those that are working for prestigious companies in positions with high visibility organizational and don’t have shown yet a visible interest of engaging in a new job, because most of them are satisfied with the professional challenges of the current job position; feel comfortable with their salary and compensation package and have optimistic expectations of engaging in an interesting and successful career development path into this company.

These stellar talents are the professionals that are most hard to be hired because they require from any potential employer of an compensation package even more interesting and ambitious; they are looking for an ideal professional challenge where they can develop their outstanding competences as innovators, leaders and/or world-class managers; they expect to learn and grow according to their talents, engagement and passion with the growth experienced for the company.

In companies where have occurred massive processes of outsourcing, mergers or layoffs these talents if belong to the company yet, are in virtue of their loyalty the most appreciate and desired, and although the process of hiring and recruitment may be much more longer and slow the extra effort surely will be compensated when the company finally hires the best talent possible.

The growing shortage of specialized and managerial talent as a result from the initiation of the retirement of Baby Boomer’s workforce, conjugated with the growth of the energy industry due to the record prices of crude oil and the emergence of powerful economies like China e India is generating a sort of cannibalization of talent where bigger companies appear to be the winners. In such perspective, the tasks of hiring, motivating, retaining and capacitating talent will become in a strategic imperative in insuring company’s competitiveness for the years to come and justify the fact that Human Talent should have a well deserved seat at the corporate table.

I hope this helps you.
Octavio

posted April 10, 2008

I don't think so. I associate passive looking with disinterest or lack of motivation. Waiting for something great to come along...or just can't make up your mind?
If a candidate isn't sure he wants to leave, it's a problem for recruiter or company seeking people. If a candidate isn't sure he wants to stay(which is in turn the same person), I would expect he's not terribly productive at his current position. I think you have to decide one way or the other.

posted April 10, 2008

Not necessarily.

There are good and bad passive candidates and good and bad active candidates. The difference between passive and active candidates is not their performance, but the decision making process and criteria they use when making decisions that impact their careers.

For example, passive candidates tend to value long term career development and company strategy more than short term projects, location or compensation while many active candidates tend to focus on short term factors such as landing a new job and salary.

posted April 10, 2008

I see that many respondents in the recruitment function seem to favor passive guys primarily because they are not promiscuous in the job market, and hence might actually show-up for the job if recruited, unlike the active seekers who might be no-shows (which is actually a big problem where I live and work, but that is another issue). Then there are other aspects of tenure stability, etc.

While being a passive guy might/not reflect on their current capability or future performance, it still is a half-view. The other (and rather more important) half-view is from the hiring managers who must work with them.

As a hiring line manager, I would very much prefer someone who not only has the right skills and experience for the job, but also a great desire to be in that role. Everything else being equal, I don't think I would be motivated to hire someone who is "not really interested" or "just checking out" - I mean it is ok for a recruiter to bring me a passive guy, but once his / her candidature is accepted for further steps in the hiring process, the fact that he or she was a passive guy once ceases to be an issue of any reasonable consequence. If it is being made apparent at every stage of the hiring process that the guy is a 'passive guy' by way of unreasonable demands for role or compensation or the attitude in general, I am sure most of us have far more important things to do at job than to wastefully massage the ego of an uninterested soul - if that is his level of motivation now, heavens forbid what will happen when he is actually onboard. I would be made to feel every single day that it was HE who did a favor to us by joining us !

I think there is a certain amount of socially accepted aura associated with a person having "detached interest" that seems to drive the view that passive candidate makes for a better candidate. Like every good theory, it has its good anecdotal value, and its limitations. As long as we are able to rise above them, it doesn't really matter. What does matter though is the attitude of the candiate and how well he performs in the job.

posted April 10, 2008

In reality, there cannot be a standard judgement on this... It really depends on three elements, time, cost and skills. Active candidates would be a good option from a time and cost perspective. But the challenge is that there is probably a higher potential for a wrong hire as there is greater pressure on most recruiting organizations from a time element ( risk assumes greater proportions where there is a initial perception about the candidate's caliber) for closure.

Whether a passive candidate would be optimal truly depends on the nature of the position & the organization rather than the candidate himself. It may work well in organizations which boast of near-precise forecasting capabilities and the advantage here is that you can really balance out the time and cost element also giving ample time for evaluating and analyze competencies and behavioral patterns.

posted April 11, 2008

Each comes with their own unique characteristics. My very best marketing hire was very active. However, often times they are too aggressive to fill their income gap and will talk themselves and the company into something that is not best for either party. I have also found that 99% of so called passive candidates are not all that passive, especially in today's internet exposed and networked world. The world is full of free agents who are fully employed and loyal- - at the moment.

posted April 11, 2008

I don't think passive candidates always make better candidates. Passive candidates are not eager to find a new position and therefore not as committed to the interview process. Since they are not actively in the market, they typically have the "take it or leave it" attitude towards the opportunity presented to them. Also, my experience has been that passive candidates are more prone to accept a counter offer from the current employer.

My preference is an active, but confidential candidate.

Tanya Edmonds, The Trinity Group

posted April 11, 2008

Hi Sam,

I concur with some of the other feedback and offer that good candidates are good candidates regardless of if they are active or passive. I feel safe in saying that all of us have been considered “active job seekers” at one time or another.

I agree that generally, I find that the best people are more often than not, already employed, but not always.

What is more important is finding the right candidate for the right position at the right time. This is not really a commentary on sourcing or talent supply chain etc. What I really mean is that even for the same exact role, there are times that you will need a different type of person. A department in crisis may need people with an ability to think creatively, make decisions quickly, be flexible, etc. That same department 3-5 years later may need people that are subject matter experts that are better at synthesizing best practices in a deliberate manner for implementation over a intermediate timeframe.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Mike

posted April 11, 2008

I agree with Brian Flippinger. It is not a recruiter's job to have biases one way or the other. I see a terrible lot of inefficient recruiting methods out there which makes me doubt the "no good candidates" line one hears so much. Job apps these days take way too much time, time off the current position or family or whatever. A photocopy was a much faster way from the point of view of a candidate.

posted April 11, 2008

Sam,

This is not a yes/no question and has a lot of bearing on the industry and position you are looking to fill.

For example, a recent report stated that 85% of all IT professionals are active candidates. However, if you look at engineering, finance, marketing and scientific professionals this statistic is much lower.

Recruiters should have a strong network of both active and passive candidates and be presenting the best candidate for an opening.

Benefits of recruiting passive candidates can be lower cost (as they are often unaware of their market), loyalty and less competition.

However, passive candidates and especially those who have been passive for a long period of time may not have the same skills, knowledge, interviewing skills and other characteristics that make some of the active candidates so attractive to companies.

It really all depends upon the situation, candidate, industry and need.

posted April 11, 2008

Better for who? People are answering this question from more than one side.

Although there are exceptions, ceteris paribus a candidate working successfully for a competitor is more likely to fit the skill set for your client than anyone else. Whether this negates all the talk of the "surprise fit" being more of a stayer and more successful long term varies case by case.

Any talk of "active", (often unemployed) candidates being "better" can only be from a selfish recruiter's point of view rather than their client. Our job is to match candidates with employers so that both are happy, then we get our fee. If candidates are accepting other offers then we haven't done our job 100% right because we didn't find the best possible opportunity for the candidate.

If the passive candidate isn't motivated enough, again that's our job! If they're not motivated then don't let them interview.

posted April 12, 2008

Hi Sam,

I've had the experience of chasing a passive candidate. The push factor was missing and the pull factor not strong enough. The candidate developed cold feet at the very last minute.

I would say, keep passive candidates on your radar, be in touch with them till they are more comfortable with the thought of a move, but for an immediate job opening they would be tough to capture.

That said, passive candidates would perhaps stay for a longer time, once hired.

Best
Lubna

posted April 12, 2008

Hi Sam,

I think a lot of people who answered this question actually misconstrued what a passive candidate truly is. Everyone in the recruiting universe has become so accustomed to hoping on a job board and waiting for replies to their postings. Recruiters have become more administrative in their duties than actually selling. It takes years to build up a good database of candidates that are an email or phone call away. A true passive candidate is one that you know what their background is, what would be the ideal job and what it would take for them to move. Not someone who is not eager to leave a job, but rather someone you had forged some sort of initial interest with and promised to deliver in the future.

Many HR people and managers within a company would rather see a passive candidate than someone from monster or any other board. Granted we all make placements form them, but the quality of our work comes form our ability to find the candidate that no other firm has. So I would agree that a passive candidate is the best candidate given the specific job.

John

John O also suggests this expert on this topic:

• Jeff S

posted April 13, 2008

Of course, the assumption is that those people remaining at a company were kept as "the best," while those let go are "the rest." This may be true and if so, then those remaining may indeed be the best. However, to assume because someone is still at a company (layoffs aside) automatically makes him or her a more attractive candidate seems pretty risky and presumptive if the recruiter doesn't do due diligence. Sometimes (many times, in my experience of working with those candidates who are actively seeking a new job), people stay at companies because leaving is more difficult than staying. These long-timers aren't necessarily the best candidates for anything other than hanging on.

posted April 14, 2008

I have hired terrific people who are actively looking. People seek new work for so many reasons that sticking just with passive lookers is limiting yourself. I have hired people in non profits and dot coms and with customer service groups and had active seekers work out.

posted April 16, 2008

Sam,

Interesting question but I would like to reframe it.

What would it take to make the BEST candidate actively seek the position you have available?

This takes the issue you face - active vs. passive - and all of the good points on either side of it, and makes them less relevant.

Think of it as a marketing issue.

What will it take to get the best possible person interested in this job...so interested that they would leave a perfectly good job immediately to join your firm???

If you can answer this question, you really can let the best candidates come to you.

I know, I know. You're wondering if this is realistic. I can almost feel the heads shaking as I type these words.

In truth, outstanding marketing professionals do this kind of thing everyday. Take a look at the cars we drive. Do we really NEED to drive a car that can go from 0 to 60 in 4 seconds? No. But good marketing convinces us that we WANT one. How about our home? Does a family of four NEED to live in a 10,000 square foot house? No. But good marketing has convinced us that (in the New York suburbs in particular), it is a status symbol to have one of these homes. So we WANT one.

Good marketing might be able to help make many highly qualified passive candidates interested in your position. So interested that they might apply even if not directly and personally "headhunted". So interested that they would leave a perfectly good, comfortable position to join you.

The question then becomes: Can you make your position and your company attractive enough to motivate THE BEST people to join your firm?

Regards,

Dave

Links:

• http://www.DLorenzo.com

posted April 16, 2008