Proactive Vs Reactive

As a self-employed army of one, I often find myself sitting in on webinars and think tanks on recruitment far more than I ever did before. It’s like turning the radio on for the dog when you leave the house, it makes me feel like other people are here. It’s also good to get others' anecdotal and data-lead perceptions of the market. JobAdder hosted a State of The Market ANZ & UK the other week. I imagine that would’ve been a coveted post on LinkedIn for any UK recruiter that was up at 3 am to watch the live stream. Thankfully, those good buggers at JA uploaded it to YouTube so you can watch it at your leisure here. They had some awesome insights around jobs created, agency growth, temp and perm trends. What I particularly enjoyed was co-panelist Greg Savage’s views on Proactive Sourcing Vs Job Posting.

Nestled between Macho Man Randy and the late great Lilly (RIP) is my man Greg in order of favourite Savages. Never had the good fortune to meet the man in person but it’s impossible to have recruited in NZ for the past 10 years and not have come across GS. He made some excellent points about why businesses engage with recruitment agencies, to access candidates that they can’t. All your clients have access to the same sourcing channels as you do; LinkedIn, Job Boards, Social Media, etc. They come to you for your network, and I would also add your dedicated time. However, if we look at the data collected below there has been a return to relying on Ads to do the mahi for us.

As we can see there has been a recent return advertising channels as opposed to proactive searching. This is mainly because recruitment by nature is formulaic. There are stages to the process and one step that emphasis is squarely placed on is advertising. Which for the record, makes sense. Supplementing your search with a job post certainly maximizes your reach but it shouldn’t take precedence over personal approaches. I’ve never been a fan of the term ‘head-hunter’ but I’m not in favour of anything that makes our role in the hiring process in any way glamorous. There are pros and cons to both approaches for sure. A candidate coming through an advertising source is certainly more motivated to move however, they are more proactive in their own search and as a result, will have applied to numerous positions. A candidate who has been tapped on the shoulder is more exclusive but as they have not initiated the job search there can be a hesitancy to pull the trigger when it gets down to the business end.

BD and sourcing are either sides of the same coin, they both require a belief and confidence in what you are providing, to the client and candidate. Approaching a candidate because they have experience recruiting within a particular vertical is a tangible reason for that approach. On speaking to them and ascertaining their push factors, if they marry up and your role represents an advancement in their current set of circumstances, aren’t you more confident in that candidate? Ultimately that’s how I feel about proactive searching and you want to know the dirty little secret? Your clients don’t want candidates that are available to the market. They want that candidate that isn’t applying to job boards. I guarantee you that they will feel, even in a small way, slighted that they could’ve chucked up an ad themselves and got the same result.

Sourcing is a slog, there’s no getting around that. It’s a piece of string, you could find the ideal candidate who is willing to come meet you for a chat within the first 5 minutes or, you could be down that rabbit hole for hours. But in a world where the human element is rapidly being removed, from supermarket check-outs to luggage check-ins, the personal approach is essential to our world and the recruitment process. What you do have in your arsenal is a database of bridesmaids, candidates that got close but were pipped to the post. GS made the point that 40% of candidates placed into roles were found to have been within the agency's database. This is why coding candidates and continued use of Recruitments #1 CRM JobAdder is important. Hopefully that wee plug will go a long way in allowing me to use their data.