Job Posting vs. Searching for Candidates

Posted at October 5, 2009

Job_Posting_Indeed2Posting jobs in an attempt to attract qualified talent has many intrinsic flaws, and I feel that the 2 most significant limitations inherently involved with posting jobs  is that:

  1. Job posting is a passive strategy that affords no control over candidate qualifications
  2. Job ads only attract candidates who are actively looking

In comparison, proactively searching for qualified candidates is an active strategy which offers significant control over candidate qualifications and can be used to specifically target passive and non-job seekers.

In this post I will compare and contrast job posting and candidate search as means of identifying talent, and I hope to open your eyes to a new way of looking at the value/ROI of posting jobs.

Job Posting is a Passive Strategy

One of my favorite analogies for job posting is that it is just like setting a trap. The strategy is to set a trap in a place where you think your quarry might come across it and be ensnared.  This is very much a passive, hope-based strategy, and hope is actually not a strategy.

Job Posting Offers No Control Over Candidate Qualifications

If you are trying to snare a rabbit, you could just as easily end up snaring a raccoon, a skunk, an opossum – or basically any small indigenous animal that wanders by.

This is the same with job posting. If you post a job for a windows system engineer with a minimum of 5 years of experience, MCSE certification, and web hosting industry experience - literally ANYONE can respond, whether they have the appropriate experience, certification, or industry experience or not. As a passive strategy, you simply cannot control who responds – unqualified, underqualified, overqualified, out of area, etc.

This isn’t just my experience and opinion. A recent Atlanta Business Chronicle article cited a study of 501 hiring managers by Robert Half and CareerBuilder, which found that 44 percent of resumes presented to hiring managers are submitted by unqualified applicants. Additionally, the 2009 EDGE Report also found that 47 percent of hiring managers cited under-qualified applicants as their most common hiring challenge. 

Job Posting Attracts Active Job Seekers Only

Not only can you not control who responds to your job posting, the only people who are going to get “snared” by the trap you’ve set are people who are actively looking for a job.

According to data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, here is the breakdown of job seeker status:

Now, unlike many people, I don’t think there is anything intrinsically wrong with active job seekers – they are not all desperate, unemployable people (can you believe people in the recruiting industry actually believe that?). However, the real issue at hand is that with job posting, you are essentially missing the other 86% of the workforce.

That means that when you post a job for an opening you need to fill in the next 2 weeks, you are realistically only tapping into 14% of the available workforce.  On top of that, many people who respond will not actually be qualified for the position.

That’s an issue!

One could argue that some of the people who are “casually looking” might stumble across your ad, but even if all of them did (which is highly unlikely), you are still missing 66% of the available workforce.

Your Ads and Postings are Invisible to Most People

Truly “passive” job seekers and certainly those who are not looking at all don’t even SEE ads for jobs right in front of their face, no matter how “targeted” and well placed your ads are.  Additionally, the reality is that most people tune out ads of any kind – on the Internet, on TV, billboards, etc.

When’s the last time you clicked on an ad or bought something/took action specifically because of a commercial or billboard you saw?

Even for those people who do “see” or “tune in” your ad/job posting – the reality is that most will not take action. Changing a job is a BIG deal – most casual, passive, and practically all inactive job seekers will not likely be inspired to take action and explore leaving their current position because they saw an online job ad. 

SEO Is Not Enough

I agree 100% with Marvin Smith that SEO is not enough. How could it be anyway? For SEO to work, you have to have someone searching for jobs and/or information about your company, and as we’ve already seen, that is going to be the active job seekers and perhaps some of the casual job seekers – which is only a small sample of the available talent, the clear minority.

Resume Search is an Active Strategy

Unlike job posting, which is a passive method of attracting talent (I would argue that it’s not even a method of identifying talent), searching for candidates in Applicant Tracking Systems, recruiting CRM’s, job board resume databases, and LinkedIn is an active method of talent identification. 

Instead of setting a trap and waiting for the right person to stumble across it (aka, “post and pray”), when you create and execute searches to find candidates, you are actively “hunting” for talent – targeting people with specific qualifications and experience, who live in specific areas – regardless of their job search status. 

Resume Search Affords Significant Control

When it comes to searching for candidates, I’m focusing specifically on resume search, because searching for resumes offers significant intrinsic advantages over non-resume candidate searches. Resumes (including complete LinkedIn profiles) are “deep” sources of data which enable sourcers and recruiters with a high degree of control over critical candidate variables, including skills/experience, industry, location, education, and to a lesser but still significant extent, desired opportunity and compensation. 

Sourcers and recruiters who are adept at leveraging deep human capital data (resumes and detailed social network profiles) create queries that control critical candidate qualification variables, allowing them to quickly identify people with highly specific experience, who live in specific locations who are likely to be interested in the role and compensation offered by the position the recruiter is working on. 

Resume Search Can Target Passive and Non Job Seekers

Unlike job posting and SEO which require some action on the part of candidates (actively looking at ads or running keyword searches) and are quite literally invisible to those who are not taking any action to look for a new job (the majority of all people), when you actively search for candidates, you can target people who are not actively looking.

How can you search for resumes of passive and non job seekers? Quite easily. 

Ready for a paradigm shift?

If someone responds to a job posting you posted recently and they enter their information into your ATS/recruiting CRM – they are most likely actively seeking a new job, although there is a chance you could also be collecting a casual job seeker.

Statistically, many people who respond to job postings are not actually qualified for the position they applied for. If they are not a match for any current openings, it is likely they will find a position with another company with a position they are actually qualified for.

But you still have their resume in your ATS.

Alternatively, their resume may still be posted in an online resume database somewhere (many people either don’t or forget to take them down after they take a new job). In fact, my own research has shown that approximately 75% of all resumes on the job boards are over 30 days old. So if you think that all of the resumes stored in online resume databases are of active job seekers, you are quite wrong. Statistically, the majority are likely to be not looking or passively looking. 

In about 3 months to 2 years’ time, those active job seekers turn into people who are likely to either to be not looking at all for a new position, or who may be satisfied with the new position they took, but open to better opportunities (passively looking).

Unlike job posting, when you are searching for resumes, you can actually specifically target people who are not likely to be actively looking.

An Alternative View of Job Posting

While most people see the primary value of job posting as a method of trying to attract the right person at the right time – I see it quite differently. 

If I post a job, I am not expecting results – experience and statistics show that most people who respond are not qualified for the position. Certainly, there have been times when the right person has responded to a job posting at the right time, but as an intrinsically passive strategy with no ”built-in” ability to control the experience and qualification of respondents, to rely on job posting would be folly. After posting a position, I will not wait and hope that the right people find my position. I am going to take control of the process and go out and actually FIND the right people.

So if the main value of posting jobs isn’t finding the right person at the right time, what could it be?

Another way to look at the value of job posting is that it can essentially become a method of cultivating your ATS/CRM into a wine cellar of sorts. All of those active job seekers who respond to your ads but who are not qualified (or simply not selected) for the specific position they applied to today may in fact be well qualified for other positions you have in the future. 

Active candidates who enter your ATS/CRM today (or post their resume online) become tomorrow’s casual, passive, and non-job seekers.
   

ATS Search Capability is Critical

In order to capitalize on your database of casual, passive, and non-job seekers – you need to have an appropriately capable candidate search interface coupled with the ability to run precise queries, enabling you to quickly target and access candidates of ANY job search status.

An ATS with poor/limited candidate search capability is like having a well stocked wine cellar that you can’t access because you don’t have the key to the door.  Or even if you had the key – you had no way of finding the exact bottle you were looking for.

Final Thoughts

Job posting is part of a balanced “diet” of recruiting methods, and it can produce results. I would never recommend to NOT post jobs – that would be ridiculous. However, if posting jobs is your primary method of trying to find the right candidates at the right time, I believe you are at a competitive disadvantage.

I would argue that the value of posting jobs does not primarily lie in the ability to find and attract the right candidate at the right time.  Job posting is essentially like trapping: set the snare and wait for the right person to stumble by - it is an inherently passive strategy with no control over what wanders in. Additionally, the only people who will search for or even “see” ads for jobs are those who are actively or casually looking.

I believe the less obvious but true value of job posting lies primarily in the collection of active candidates and the ability to cultivate them over time into more experienced/qualified candidates who will inevitably become passive/inactive job seekers.

Human capital data stored within your ATS/CRM increases in value over time, but it’s actually of NO value unless you have the ability and skill to retrieve and leverage that data.

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), Job Posting, Resume Sourcing

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