Since starting Entelo, we’ve had hundreds (probably over a thousand by now!) of conversations with people about how they recruit. We’ve heard all sorts of interesting stories and a lot of great ideas. A recent conversation with a recruiter spurred something that’s been smoldering for a while here at Entelo.
To this recruiter, the hiring industry was getting it wrong, and that with a quick shift in the team's mindset, recruiters would find more qualified people and companies would be satisfied with their hiring team. The missing piece boiled down to one metric: the candidate response rate.
Companies in fast-growth mode attempting to fill in-demand roles in tech, sales, and marketing, to name a few, can’t simply wait for the right candidates to come to them – they need to proactively find their talent. In the industry, this is referred to as passive candidate sourcing (a somewhat weak phrase for a critical company activity, but that’s a topic for another day). Facebook does this. So does Google.
The number of responses you receive from candidates is a function of two variables:
Let’s break down each element.
Theoretically, this number is unlimited. The major limitation here is your time as a recruiter. However, there are two schools of thought.
School #1: Recruiters should aim for volume, trying to mass-message as many people as possible. This is one of the benefits people find in tools like LinkedIn Recruiter. It allows them to mass-message more efficiently, thereby increasing the number of people who have been contacted.
School #2: Mass-messaging candidates is not efficient. For starters, it’s not ideal for candidates to receive dozens of generic messages in their inbox each week. Many of the opportunities might not be right for them, either because these candidates aren't interested in a new job, or worse, the role is irrelevant to their skills and experience. Many candidates view these messages as spam, which both annoys them (to the point many folks have stopped checking their LinkedIn InMails) and likely reflects negatively on you and the company.
Sending customized messages to candidates is often best (we take you through a step-by-step guide here). Personalized messages involves doing homework on potential candidates to assess fit and crafting messages specifically for each candidate. This process makes for a much better candidate experience, and most people are thrilled to receive messages from recruiters who clearly took the time to understand their work and expertise. The response rate from custom messages is significantly higher than that from mass-messaging.
But thoroughly researching candidates and crafting custom messages is hard work – it takes significant time and effort to study people and to draft a custom message. Realisitcally, you’re only going to be able to send a certain number of messages per day. Therein lies the rub and the crux of this series of posts.
If you’re limited in the number of messages you can send per day, then one of the most important decisions you’ll be making as a recruiter is which candidates you choose to message. This decision will be a critical factor in determining your organization’s success.
For many open reqs, there are more than enough quality candidates. If you’re looking for a Ruby on Rails engineer in the Bay Area and there are 10,000 Ruby on Rails engineers in the area, you can’t message all 10,000 of them in the appropriate fashion. You must choose your battles wisely. How do you do that?
Length of time at existing company
You can think of this like a bell curve. People that have been at their job for only a few months aren’t likely to be looking for something new at this point. Even if they are, it raises a red flag that they might be a job hopper and even if you could hire them, you may not want to. On the other hand, people who have been at their jobs for, say, 10 years, are also unlikely to be randomly looking to leave their company after all that time.
You want to focus on the “most likelies”, which includes people who have been at their job for anywhere between 10 months to 4 years. It breaks down like this:
So the sweet spot for recruiting passive candidates is usually between 10 months and four years with “spikes” at 10 months, 21-22 months and around 45 months.
What to do: Looking specifically for people who have been at their company for 21-22 months is hard. However, this general thinking should guide you when looking at a candidate. Someone who looks great on paper, but has only been at their company for five months is typically not as good a candidate as someone who looks slightly less ideal but who has been with their current company for 23 months.
Social networking activity
If you’re looking for the top leading indicator of a career change, you’ve found it. Most people don’t change their social networking profiles very often. They may be undertaking a lot of activity on a social network (e.g., posting status updates to Facebook) but actual profile changes are rare. When they happen, more often than not, it’s because people realize someone will likely be viewing their profiles soon and they want to make sure their profiles looks as good and accurate as possible. Sound like a job hunt? :)
Being deliberate and thoughtful about your approach to recruiting candidates is key to improving response rates and increasing the chances they'll want to hear more about the role you have to offer. Keep in mind, engaging people is a multi-touch process – build the relationship to build the interest.
Recommended reading: