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Hot Tip #26 - A Partial List of the Ten Commandments of Recruiting Passive Candidates

By Lou Adler, August 21, 2007

There's a great article about recruiting in the September 2007 issue of Fast Company - "The Inevitability Of $300 Socks." Actually, it has nothing to do with recruiting unless you read between the lines. And what a great story is told between those lines! Chip and Dan Heath, the authors of the business best seller Made to Stick - Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, make the point in their article that some basic products attain premium pricing when they're seen as ideas rather than mere commodities. The Heaths cite alcohol, jeans and spa treatments as idea-based products and oil changes and fax machines as idea-free. You obtain premium pricing and margins with idea-based products and basic market returns with basic commodities

Read more articles by this author.

Related Topics:

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In the world of recruiting it's a little different. In general, you need to pay premium pricing to attract top performers if you're offering basic commodity-like jobs. But if you could convert your jobs into ideas you might be able to eliminate the premium and still attract a better class of prospects. If you're an employer of choice (EOC) this is certainly the case. While most EOCs offer competitive compensation packages, it's the idea of working in a well-known and professional organization with upside opportunity that top people find attractive. You can obtain the same benefit by converting each job into a similar and unique value proposition.

Here are some ideas on how you might want to create these idea-based jobs:

1. Stop thinking of your jobs as just jobs, and consider them career opportunities instead. This is how you start creating $300 socks by thinking long term, not just about filling a job with a person with a certain set of skills.


2. When taking the assignments ask your clients to emphasize the career opportunity aspects of the jobs they're trying to fill. Ask about the big projects, what the candidate will learn, what the candidate will be doing, and the upside potential. Candidates will offset compensation if the job has a steep learning component.


3. Develop a series of case studies of other people who have taken these jobs and have done well. This way you'll have stories to tell your prospects that these are not mere jobs you're offering, but stepping stones to something much bigger.


4. Ask your hiring manager clients to describe why these jobs are important to the company's overall success. At Vanguard they make a compelling case that their client relationship associate position is the company's most prized touch point with their clients. (Note: this is an entry-level call center position.) By linking the job to a part of the company's overall business you increase its value.


5. Create an employee proposition that lists the top 6-8 reasons why a top person with other opportunities, and is currently fully-employed, would consider accepting an offer for a lateral compensation move. While you might not make a lateral offer, you'll uncover plenty of ideas you can use to position your opportunity as more than a compensation move.


6. Ask your hiring manager to justify why a top person with all of the qualifications listed on the job description would want to do the same things with your company that he's already doing. After the discussion, your client will probably agree to see someone with about 80% of the requirements listed.

Here are some other articles you might want to read on how to prepare these career opportunities. Our term for these type of career-oriented job descriptions is performance profiles. Once you convert your jobs into career opportunities as described, you'll have all of the ammunition you need to convince top performers to consider your offerings despite every other situation they're considering. Just tell them you'd like to show them a $300 pair of socks.