“Post and Pray” is not a recruiting strategy. Here’s what to do instead…



First there were newspaper ads, then company career sites, job search engines and aggregators. This technology has allowed companies to get more eyes than ever before on their job postings, but many eyes does not equal qualified eyes.

The principle is the same in marketing, real estate, etc. It doesn’t matter how many people see your message if they are not your target market.

In today’s fast-moving, complex employment market, employers can no longer wait for top tier talent to come knocking on their door. As positions become increasingly technical and the demand for highly skilled and diverse talent increases, recruiting and recruiters must change with the times.

Proactive candidate sourcing is more important now than ever. As companies get leaner, key positions become more vital. Now receiving a standard two weeks’ notice from a key employee can throw an entire department into chaos.

Managers and recruiters may think, with everything on their plates now, “How can anyone possibly have time for proactive recruiting?” Actually, it’s faster, cheaper and easier. Here are five reasons to stop relying on job postings and get proactive about finding candidates.

Better quality of hire. When the pressure to fill a role immediately is removed, there is now time to take a deeper dive with candidates to ensure they can both do the job and fit the organization. Dr. Brad Smart, author of the book, “Topgrading,” calculated that the average cost of a mis-hire can be six times base salary for a sales rep, 15 times base salary for a manager and as much as 27 times base salary for an executive. A little extra time on the front end can save a lot of money on the back end.

Faster time to hire. Once a talent pool is filled with passive candidates, when a position is opened, there are existing relationships established with people prequalified and waiting for the right role at the right time. This pool can be filled with internal employee referrals as well as external candidate referrals. Just because a role may not be right for one of your top picks doesn’t mean that person may not know and recommend the ideal candidate.

More diversity of candidates. Often, attracting more diversity into our organizations takes time and effort. And diversity is not just age, race and gender. Diversity can be in the skill sets, educational background, communication styles, points of view, etc., — something different that is not currently there in the group. And people and perspectives that are different are often not found in the same way we’ve always done things.

Competitive advantage. In today’s volatile, uncertain and ever-changing market, talent and creativity can mean the difference between staying competitive and becoming extinct. And a superstar workforce attracts more superstars, building upon the existing base of high performers.

Less waste. Rather than sorting through hundreds of unqualified resumes and interviewing dozens of ill-suited candidates, building a proactive candidate pool allows more flexibility to both fill positions and to promote from within. And by also looking strategically at the current talent within your organization, you eliminate the waste that comes from underutilized people.

Whether you are a manager building your own potential candidate networks, an internal recruiter proactively connecting to talent through colleges and professional organizations or outsourcing your talent search to an experienced headhunter, it is the organizations that find and retain the best talent that win.

Dixie Agostino is founder and CEO of Switchgear Search & Recruiting