Capturing Attention and Definition of Passive Candidates

Companies searching for staff via job ads try to capture candidates’ attention with inducements in the summary teaser or first paragraph, luring position titles or addressing them informally to create familiarity and closeness.

Common wisdom suggests that messages sent to passive candidates in case of direct approach must have even greater power to capture people’s attention.

Then who are passive candidates? Ad definitionem, passive candidates are people, who are not actively looking to move, i.e. are not applying for jobs. If they do not search for a new job, they’re most likely happy in their current one and thus, unlikely to embark on a new one. Hence, a more accurate definition would describe passive candidates as those who do not actively look for jobs, but are keen to move. Consequently, people who do not consider any career move, are not candidates period.

And what about those who indicate that they look for new opportunity irrespectively of their status - employee or jobseeker in their LinkedIn or Xing profile. By being approached by the employer they too qualify as passive candidates.

The full definition of passive candidates could then be: people who are keen to move and are approached by a company instead of applying for jobs by themselves.

From the perspective of this belief, I doubt whether one can motivate a person not intending to leave his current employer to join the recruitment process of a next-employer-wannabe in hopes to land a new job. Neither a particular message will do nor the medium.

Take for example, an electronic greeting card. Cartoony or not, with animation, with music and what not, if the person is not ready for the next career move, s/he passes on the opportunity.

What about a visualization of a prospective title like the example below. A mixture of personalized job ad and a direct approach method.



How LinkedIn and Google figured out that I might be interested in B2C Marketing position, is still a mystery to me.

What will then help one to reach out to people initially uninterested in a job change possible?
I believe repetition makes poaching them possible. Sending multiple messages by various persons from the company instills the idea of moving and makes one more sensible for and critical of the conditions and career prospects at their current employer.