Let’s make the assumption that the best passive candidates are only interested in discussing possible career moves. This is a pretty safe assumption, and one that will never lead you astray when recruiting passive candidates. The key to recruiting passive candidates is to get them to see your opportunity as a career move in the first few minutes of your initial conversation. Pulling this off involves four critical steps:

• First, get the candidate to become the seller with your opening question.
• Second, get the candidate to provide a super-fast overview of his or her background, before you say much about the job.
• Third, ask a few questions during this overview looking for areas of stretch and growth.
• Fourth, present the gaps between your opportunity and the candidate’s background as reasons for moving forward.

The importance of the buyer/seller relationship can’t be overstated. If a candidate is selling you as to why she’s qualified, you’ll learn more about the candidate’s background. If you’re the seller, the candidate will be asking you all of the questions. One way to become the seller is to be vague about the job when you first call and just ask the person if she’d be open to enter into a discussion to determine if your job represents a career move. If the person says yes, she automatically becomes the seller.

Now don’t start selling the job as soon as the candidate says she’s willing to talk. This is a common rookie recruiter mistake. Instead, move on to phase two, and ask the candidate to give you a quick overview of her background. Suggest that you’ll then give the candidate a short overview of the job, and if there’s mutual interest you can schedule some time later to discuss the opportunity more seriously.

Now move directly into phase three. While the candidate is describing her background ask some obvious questions to see if there is a reasonable job fit between your job and the person’s background. This includes finding out the size and scope of the person’s job, the company prospects, and the person’s current satisfaction. As part of this, look for factors where your job could represent a significant growth opportunity. Consider company growth rates and industry trends as well as the size and scope factors.

If you find some areas of growth and opportunity, you’ll need to move into phase four – presenting your job as a career opportunity. Just summarize them all in a nice package using these points to explain why you think your opening is worthy of additional consideration. Don’t rush the process. Just ask the candidate if she’s open to have another more in-depth discussion with you to learn about the job and a more in-depth evaluation of the person’s background. After this next session, you’ll both evaluate the situation to see if it makes mutual sense to get serious.

If you don’t find enough areas of growth and stretch, which is quite common, shift the conversation to networking and getting referrals. This is the subject of earlier articles in this series on passive candidate recruiting, so I won’t repeat them here. Instead, I’ll suggest that staying the buyer and proceeding along a path of more detailed discussions is how you engage with and recruit passive candidates. Violate these fundamental principles of human nature at your peril.