It's easy to make a swift judgment about candidates based on experience, social profiles, and resumes. Indeed, much of your job depends on it. But just as you can't judge a book by it's cover, you can't judge a professional by their cover letter. Hiring managers may tell you to pass on a candidate, or you may scoff at a resume, but even if you're both right there are still valuable conversations to be had.
Hiring Managers Don't Always Know What They Want
Hiring managers don't look at resumes and profiles all day, and the skills that might make someone great in your role aren't always obvious on the surface. A candidate they pass on might still be great, so especially in the calibration phase, it's important for you to reach out anyway. Even if your hiring manager was right about the candidate, learning in detail what makes someone NOT a good fit can be just as valuable as learning what does make them a good fit.
Zack Isaacson, Director of Global Talent Acquisition for Sumo Logic, recently joined us on the podcast to discuss this and many other issues. Here's what he had to say about pre-sourcing techniques for getting on the same page as your hiring manager:
Don't Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight
There's more to reaching out to bad fit candidates than just learning more about what makes a person a good or bad fit and stopping great candidates from falling fall through the cracks. Information offered by bad fit candidates can still be particularly illuminating. Especially if it's a new role that you haven't recruited for before, there are dozens of base line items that you'll need to know intimately before you can hope to appeal to an all-star candidate. In the example of a sales person, what are their current comp structures? What regions are they selling to? What are the specifics of their sales process? This is critical information you'll want to have ready when you talk to a company's best salesperson, and it can all be gleaned by talking even to that same company's worst salesperson.
You can't expect to recruit for challenging roles when you can't speak the candidate's language. The very worst thing that happens when you reach out to someone who ends up not being a fit is that they teach you something about their job, and that knowledge will leave you well-armed when it comes to future recruiting for the role.
