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Hot Tip #19 - Passive Candidate Recruiting Requires Professionalism and Product Knowledge

By Lou Adler, July 5, 2007

If you do any passive candidate recruiting you should go to LinkedIn.com and link to me using my lou@adlerconcepts.com email address. Of course, I won't give you a pass-through to any of my one million plus first and second degree candidates unless you clearly understand real job needs (here's an article on how to take the assignment and using performance profiles that you must read first) and have sent me a compelling email as to why this is a great job for a great person. Of course, that's not the purpose of this article, but it's a good introduction to my real point on how to contact and recruit passive candidates.

Read more articles by this author.

Related Topics:

Recruiter Hot Tips, Sourcing

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Last week, I got a referral from someone I don't know on LinkedIn asking me to connect her to a top CFO I personally know. This is the unique value of LinkedIn. It shows who's connected to whom so you can reach out and touch someone very quickly, if you do it right. Of course, this person did it wrong. Let me explain how not to use LinkedIn.

First, not only is the CFO a personal friend, but I also placed him twice in his career and he has probably hired half a dozen people through my firm. The connection on LinkedIn was from a person who knew someone directly connected to me, so I had no clue who this woman was. In her note to me she coldly asked me to pass on her note to my CFO connection. The request for the direct connection was reasonable, but the note was amateurish, gauche and insulting. It said "I notice you are directly connected to _____. Please ask him to send his resume to me for a CFO search." That was it.

If she said, "I'm ______, a recruiter with ______. I'm leading a search for CFO for a $3 billion publicly-traded company and I would like to chat with ____ about it. Would you mind sending this request to him?" I probably would have passed on her note, without thinking. Her request was so bad, I had to write an article about how not to contact top people. Of course, a real good recruiter would not have needed the introduction, and would have called him directly. His title and company name were clearly visible.

Here are some key rules to follow if you're recruiting top performers, whether they're fresh out of school or seasoned executives:

1. Know the job, the market, the industry and your company. You must be an expert in your field if you want to ever coach and counsel experts in theirs.


2. Don't move too fast. Start every discussion with the idea that you just want to discuss a major opportunity. A career move for a top person involves a host of long and short variables and this takes time. Move slowly sharing critical information at each stage of the discussion.


3. Hold back critical information. Be a bit vague early on. Your industry and market knowledge should be enough to engage the person in a lively discussion. The promise of more information is how you get candidates to move forward in the process.


4. Network, network, network. Building relationships by exchanging useful information is how you get referrals. No one will give you a single strong referral unless you understand your product and your market. Top people want to stay connected with knowledgeable and well-connected recruiters, so they're willing to give you some names to maintain this relationship.

So, whether you use ZoomInfo (a personal favorite), or LinkedIn (a necessity) or some other name generation technique, make sure your initial contact is professional and appropriate. ZoomInfo's JobCast program allows you to email dozens of potential candidates instantaneously, but not one person will return your email unless the message is compelling and insightful. If you call someone on the phone it's unlikely they'll even call you back unless your message truly stands out. Your odds for a callback increase 5-10 times if you can leave the name of a known contact as part of your voice mail message. That's why getting referrals is really the key to passive candidate recruiting, and the real point of this article.