Aggressive Passive Recruiting

Sunday 16 August 2009 at 5:44 pm

I was walking in my neighborhood the other day and noticed a landscape truck.  On the side panel was the name of the company along with these words "we have employment opportunities."  It served as a reminder that while unemployment continues to increase, everyone is looking for talent.

Now is the time to recruit the talent you always wanted but have had difficultly attracting and hiring.  MBA's are there for the choosing, executive talent in large companies is there for the stealing and Generation Y is impatient.  This job market represents a huge opportunity to compete for talent.  You need to be aggressive. 

Aggressively seek candidates.  Goldman Sachs may have their pick of MBA's but there are fewer overall career opportunities in the financial industry than the past.  The majority of recent MBA graduates are still looking for work.  You can find them by contacting the business school of your choice.  Most B-schools have a website where they offer employment opportunities for their students and alumni.  However, they are passive in seeking job opportunities and rely on employers contacting them.  While posting job opportunities is a good start you also need to target the career services department to talk to them directly about their alumni.  Understand that most career services departments support the entire college or university and they may not have a handle on all their students.  Ask them to contact interested students and offer to visit the campus to interview.  .  

Aggressively use the Internet.  There are plenty of places on the web where talent can find you.  Most companies rely on their brand to attract candidates.  That is fine as long as you have a recognizable brand.  However, the candidates you want are passive so you need to find them.  You can search for talent (by company, school, degree, etc.) on the number one business social networking site www.linkedin.com.  Use your imagination.    

Aggressively market what you have to offer.  I watched a web episode of it’s Everybody’s Business with Jack and Suzy Welch http://tinyurl.com/lhw4dr.  The company featured was Domino’s, the Number 1 pizza delivery company in the U.S.  Pizza is a 12 billion dollar industry and 67% of the U.S. population eats pizza once a month.  Domino’s has been in business approximately 50 years with almost 20% market share.  They have approximately 170,000 employees and $1.5B in sales.  I never thought of a career at Domino’s.  However, they have great management and franchise opportunities and I love pizza.  They also have people who have been with them for over 20 years thus, stability. 

I live in an area that has at least five different pizza delivery companies.  Are they all the same?  Obviously, they are not.  However, I did not know that Domino’s is the Number 1 pizza delivery company in the U.S.  With that information who would not want to work for a company that was Number 1.