I am not going to use the term “passive candidates” anymore. I have used it in the past as short-hand for describing a person who won’t ever
be coming to your job site to apply for a job.
But the concept of a “passive candidate”
appears to be a contradiction in terms. When I have been talking about passive
candidates I have been speaking of people who are constantly updating and
expanding their networks and finding ways to add value to that network. They
work almost as hard as “active” seekers at getting to their next opportunity.
Because they are good at their jobs, and are in demand because of it, they expect you to come looking for them. They definitely won't be looking for you. Even more, they expect that you will have done your research and know what they do, why they are good and who else thinks so. This means they don’t expect to go through lots of interviews or have to prove themselves to potential employers. Their network can verify they are good and their network is trusted by the people who do the hiring.
So I
would like to propose the concept of Brand Talent. (It may be that others such
as Tom Peters have done this - let me know if you have heard of this before so I can link to their definition.) Brand Talent has the following characteristics:
- They are
networked (there is some identifiable way that they track the people in their
network).
- Their
network works for them, and they work for it (they add value to it and it in
turn is ready to provide value to them).
- Their
network can verify that they can perform those skills, and is willing to take
the time to prove it.
- Their
network is trusted and verifiable (the hiring authorities are willing to use
the network to reduce the time it takes to figure out whether the brand talent
is any good).
- They have
developed some brand identity within the community that hires or contracts
roles with those skills (people have heard of them before).
- They don’t
look at job boards or job postings, and they are inherently skeptical of any
recruiter / hiring authority who calls them and doesn’t know their brand and
offer them work that is consistent with it.
Given
that definition, we can then say that the term “passive talent” represents
people who don’t have those characteristics and aren’t looking for a job. When
they do start looking for a job, they become “active talent.”
Some very good points here and a good antidote to all the words given over lately to "passive jobseekers." The key question of course is, why is that talent passive? This reminds me of the concept of "latent demand" in sales. Sure, if you can tap into that latent demand, you'll do extremely well, but what the sales books don't tell you is that it's about 10,000 times easier to say "turn latent demand into pain" than it is to actually do it. In reality what you end up doing is building a relationship with prospects so that when the pain-triggering event happens, you're on the list of people they call.
Posted by: Colin Kingsbury | November 22, 2005 at 09:07 AM
There are a few variations of "brand talent" floating around:
1) The Hollywood references to name brand talent - not really what your're talking about, so let's skip
2) Well-defined in the context of on-air radio personalities:
http://www.mcvaymedia.com/adltcontmp/04/brandtalent.htm
3) From http://www.ecustomerserviceworld.com/earticlesstore_articles.asp?type=article&id=1592 -- the Gallup polling organization defined people with “brand talent” as those who really own and live the values and behaviours that align with the positioning and personality of the brand. These people are a living extension of the brand, bringing the values to life and delivering them directly to customers. (They focused on salespeople in particular.)
Posted by: Glenn Gutmacher | April 14, 2006 at 07:06 AM
Find "brand talent " by using AutoSearch
Check us out sometime www.getautosearch.com
Posted by: Sarah Lucas | March 13, 2009 at 10:32 AM