Avoid Wasting Time on ‘Off the Market’ Candidates

So, a client has just given confirmation that you can go ahead and start looking for candidates for a nice position. It’s time to start finding people who look like they might fit the bill. You have a recruitment database full of information about different people, which you can trawl to look for relevant people, and of course, all those CVs on the job sites you use.
This is something you do all the time, and you know it is a numbers game – of the people who haven’t specifically applied for this position, the vast majority of the people you email or try and call won’t be suitable or available, but somewhere in your various networks is the person you are going to place in this new role.

But should you really have to consider it a numbers game to this extent? Why are you wasting time mailing that person who it turns out moved to Australia years ago about a job in Basingstoke, or that seemingly perfectly qualified candidate who has actually changed career but never bothered removing their old CV from Monster? You might accept that these disappointing, annoying occurrences are just a part of the job – false leads in the detective work of tracking down the perfect candidate, but in reality, you can work a lot smarter to pre-screen the people you contact.

Don’t Trust People to Update Their Own Records
When someone has an account on a dating site, they tend to delete it once they’re in a relationship, because they no longer want messages from potential dates and it can look pretty bad for them if their new partner discovers they have an active account. People just don’t think that way when it comes to job seeking sites, however.

When someone who was actively looking for work starts a new job, they tend to forget to update every site their CV was on saying that they are no longer searching. This can end up with CVs that not only belong to people who are off the market, but also vastly out of date CVs still coming up in searches. So, if you aren’t paying attention, you can end up considering someone for roles far too junior for their current interests, because you’re looking at a CV they used seven years ago. Sending out messages to people on your database asking if their records are still correct and to update them doesn’t really work because unless they are actively looking for work right now, they don’t care if you have up to date records for them.

Keep Your Contact Records Clean, And Use Your Head
Keeping your own contact records within your internal recruitment software clean is important to avoid wasting time on people who only look good for the role because of old data. Don’t be afraid to put flags on contacts that you haven’t interacted with for years. However, when you are searching outside of your own contact records, for instance CVs on job sites, pay serious attention to dates. CVs uploaded more than two years ago will be completely out of date, and only those uploaded in the past few months have a decent chance of belonging to active jobseekers. If you are headhunting, slightly different rules apply, but in general, you can make your search for the perfect candidate feel like less of a grind if you aim solely for people you can show are currently relevant and have a good chance of being active jobseekers.