The candidates most employers find. And the ones they don’t
job boards serve a legitimate and important function in the recruitment process. strong candidates find themselves in the open market for any number of valid reasons — a business restructure, a company closing, a relocation, or simply a well-considered decision to seek a new challenge. dismissing advertised candidates as a category would be both inaccurate and counterproductive
however, this observation holds: the candidates most reliably found through job board advertising are, by definition, those who need to be looking. they are actively searching because their circumstances require it
the candidates who are not on job boards — those who are performing well, highly valued by their current employer, well rewarded, and genuinely engaged — are not refreshing search alerts. they are busy doing excellent work for someone else
these are, in many specialist markets, precisely the candidates most worth hiring. accessing them requires a different approach: proactive outreach through a recruiter with the right networks, trusted relationships - and the credibility to have a conversation that a candidate has no particular reason to take
employers who default to advertising as their primary search strategy are, in effect, selecting from the fraction of the talent market that has raised its hand. the larger and more capable portion of that market remains unaware of the opportunity and, without deliberate effort, will stay that way
a well-structured recruitment strategy uses advertising as one channel among several — not as the first and primary move
