This is a quick read.....I promise!


What’s with the recent articles and buzz going around about passive candidates?

Seems that I have seen or read more articles recently about the ways “creative” organizations are going about building pipelines of candidates for roles they ANTICIPATE needs for.

 One article for instance talks about how PNC Bank has placed an HR person in each region and titles them a “Talent Scout ”. Their job is to always be networking and going to events where bankers would be. This Talent Scout then meets these people in a casual environment and starts to build a relationship and slowly builds rapport and a relationship with them. Meets them for lunch, coffee and just gets to know them over a period of time.

     While I don’t think this is a bad practice at all, I do know this is NOT A NEW CONCEPT!

I’d call this person the Social Butterfly…We knew them in High School as social butterflies and when they walked into a party they talked to everyone…..In College, we called them Rush Chairman, as adults we call them kickass recruiters.

Any good/natural recruiter has been doing this from day 1in their recruiting role….and here’s the real kicker, if you have the right organizational culture…this is NOT JUST HR doing this. In fact, it’s an expectation of every leader in the organization to be meeting talent and building rapport.

Having a culture that expects each leader to know their competition by name is a great deal more powerful than making it one persons job.

Let’s face it……As a recruiter myself, I would like to think I am better at relationship building and better at finding potential candidates than any hiring manager, right??? In reality the hiring manger is who this person would potentially work for, not me….and people know what I want…it’s obvious…I get paid to find and hire people so being in HR we are not being sly by just doing coffee….smart people know why we are buying them coffee and it’s not because I need a friend…..I have 400 best friends on Facebook.

I’m not knocking this, I’m just saying it’s not a new idea or concept and the real power is to build a culture of leaders to do this, NOT specific jobs to do it. Set goals, track them and reward the behaviors!

 I guess if you don’t have this culture maybe this is where you start……I’m lucky enough to work for an organization that this is an expectation of all leaders and I’m lucky enough to be in a organization where I can say to my hiring managers…..”Who have you met, where is your pipeline of candidates?”  and not have the manager be offended and reply “It’s not my job, it’s yours!”

It’s a great place to work as a recruiter…….Social Butterflies, Rush Chairman and Talent Scouts should apply.  J