Employers and recruiters tend to prefer passive candidates because they have the right skill sets, have the right qualifications and have a history of good employment. But for a startup working environment, could active candidates be the ideal employee?
When it comes down to it, what you want to hire is the right person with the rights skills at the right level. But when you enter the market with your startup, the budget is often an issue. So hiring the ‘ideal’ employee isn’t always possible.
So I’m going to make a case for active candidates, and why they are exactly what a start-up needs.
1. Active candidates are more hungry
Because an active candidate is out there in the market looking for their next role, hiring them would mean you would be getting an individual ready to go.
The Polling Company finds that 70% of talent acquisition leaders believe that active candidates have better motivational drive than passive candidates. When a candidate has a genuine interest in a job, then you have hit the jackpot. As long as they have the right skills and ambition, they really don’t have to have the wealth of experience you think they need.
2. Active candidates are receptive to change
Activate candidates are generally found to be much more motivated to make a change in their lives, hence the reason for actively seeking out a new role.
The business direction in start-ups, or even SME’s, can change quite often. One day you might be a content marketing agency, the other your a recruitment marketing agency. So you need candidates who not only are open to change, but are driven by it.
3. The hiring process can drag out with passive candidates
When hiring passive candidates, you will need to be doing a lot of persuading and enticing. Active candidates make themselves easier to find and easier to get in contact with.
More so, activate candidates would be ready to ready to go right now, For a startup, it would be ideal to hire people who can start quickly because of the speed at which the business is operating in.
4. Passive candidates can be more expensive
Furthermore, while the process of hiring a passive candidate, who I agree would have better job experience than the active candidate your considering, is dragging out. You will more often than not find yourself having to offer a higher salary than expected because the passive candidate will know they are a wanted commodity.
5. Being passive doesn’t mean you’re a superstar
Forbes report that some managers and CEO’s are biased against unemployed candidates because they believe that only bad employees get laid off or fired. But honestly, it takes a lot of guts to look for a new role and new challenge.
Employers and recruiters, in my opinion, favor passive candidates because they don’t want to take the risk. Hiring a passive candidate is the easy way out.
You could say that the very best employees are already employed. But as John Feldmann says in his article ‘Active vs. Passive Candidate: Recruiting on Baseless Merit‘, “There are few employees who are lucky enough to retire without ever having experienced a day of unemployment”.
So as a recruiter or employer, I implore you to consider active candidates when it comes hiring for startups. The hunger and flexibility an active candidate would bring could be the catalyst your startup needs!
