Your Candidates Are Getting Smarter

In a meeting with a client yesterday, our Chief Search Strategist had an interesting question come up: “You came up with 300 or so people who fit our general requirements in our local area.  If I went on LinkedIn, would I find people that you hadn’t found?”.  

It sparked a conversation in our office afterwards that would have never happened 10 years ago.  The conversation’s focus: if we’re doing research on prospective candidates, and there are lots of easy ways for clients and hiring managers to do the same, how much more research can a candidate do once they’ve been contacted?  

The simple answer: they can research.  A lot! 

It starts with just knowing what jobs are even out there.  With aggregators like  Indeed and SimplyHired , active job seekers can quickly find out every job that could potentially be a fit for their skill set and fire off dozens (or even hundreds) of resumes in a very short amount of time.

But it’s more than just knowing about the jobs that are available. The “passive” candidate, the really elusive folks who don’t apply for jobs and who you have to go find, can quickly learn quite a bit about your company through social websites, information about your competition, what your past employees thought about how they were treated or if you have every had any financial difficulties by checking out sites like Frakked Company .

We’ve also seen a huge uptick in the number of sites that will provide really valid pay information. While every survey we’ve ever seen will show that Salary/Compensation is way down near the bottom of the list of reasons why someone would stay in a job, it’s a significant piece of why someone would choose to accept a new job. Everyone’s heard of Salary.com and PayScale but now there are even sites where company-specific salaries are published. Don’t believe us? Check out Vault.com’s Salary Overview .

The biggest take-away from our whole conversation: we’ve got to make sure that our clients have cleaned up their online image as best they can and then keep an eye on it. People want to work at places where they can have fun and be recognized and if you’re not making sure that your company has a reputation for allowing those things to happen it’s probably having a pretty big impact on your ability to land A-Players.

Tags: Frakkedcompany.com, hiring manager, Linked In, LinkedIn.com, OtherInbox, passive candidate, passive candidates, Recruiting, Salary.com, Vault.com