No More "Passive"

I am not going to use the term “passive candidates” anymore. I have used it in the past as short-hand for describing a person who won’t ever be coming to your job site to apply for a job.

But the concept of a “passive candidate” appears to be a contradiction in terms. When I have been talking about passive candidates I have been speaking of people who are constantly updating and expanding their networks and finding ways to add value to that network. They work almost as hard as “active” seekers at getting to their next opportunity.

Because they are good at their jobs, and are in demand because of it, they expect you to come looking for them. They definitely won't be looking for you. Even more, they expect that you will have done your research and know what they do, why they are good and who else thinks so. This means they don’t expect to go through lots of interviews or have to prove themselves to potential employers. Their network can verify they are good and their network is trusted by the people who do the hiring.

So I would like to propose the concept of Brand Talent. (It may be that others such as Tom Peters have done this - let me know if you have heard of this before so I can link to their definition.) Brand Talent has the following characteristics:

• They are networked (there is some identifiable way that they track the people in their network).
• Their network works for them, and they work for it (they add value to it and it in turn is ready to provide value to them).Their skills are in demand by multiple employers (there is competition for their services).
• Their network can verify that they can perform those skills, and is willing to take the time to prove it.
• Their network is trusted and verifiable (the hiring authorities are willing to use the network to reduce the time it takes to figure out whether the brand talent is any good).
• They have developed some brand identity within the community that hires or contracts roles with those skills (people have heard of them before).
• They don’t look at job boards or job postings, and they are inherently skeptical of any recruiter / hiring authority who calls them and doesn’t know their brand and offer them work that is consistent with it. 

Given that definition, we can then say that the term “passive talent” represents people who don’t have those characteristics and aren’t looking for a job. When they do start looking for a job, they become “active talent.”

In this way of thinking, the LEAST valuable talent is passive talent. At least active talent is looking. But active talent is a far and distant second to brand talent.

In the future I will start using these terms since they more closely resemble the reality of the world that I operate in.

Comments

[Colin Kingsbury]

Some very good points here and a good antidote to all the words given over lately to "passive jobseekers." The key question of course is, why is that talent passive? This reminds me of the concept of "latent demand" in sales. Sure, if you can tap into that latent demand, you'll do extremely well, but what the sales books don't tell you is that it's about 10,000 times easier to say "turn latent demand into pain" than it is to actually do it. In reality what you end up doing is building a relationship with prospects so that when the pain-triggering event happens, you're on the list of people they call.

[Glenn Gutmacher]

There are a few variations of "brand talent" floating around:

1) The Hollywood references to name brand talent - not really what your're talking about, so let's skip

2) Well-defined in the context of on-air radio personalities:
http://www.mcvaymedia.com/adltcontmp/04/brandtalent.htm

3) From http://www.ecustomerserviceworld.com/earticlesstore_articles.asp?type=article&id=1592 -- the Gallup polling organization defined people with “brand talent” as those who really own and live the values and behaviours that align with the positioning and personality of the brand. These people are a living extension of the brand, bringing the values to life and delivering them directly to customers. (They focused on salespeople in particular.)

[Sarah Lucas]

Find "brand talent " by using AutoSearch

Check us out sometime www.getautosearch.com