Knowing What You Want

We lost a candidate for a senior role recently. Losses always hurt, but are of course normal to some degree in startup recruiting. Part of being a startup by definition is having more constrained resources yet needing higher levels of talent than the average employer.

What surprised me about this loss was that at the initial screen, we seemed to be exactly what she said she was looking for. Our specific stage of maturity, role scope, product offering. The role she ultimately accepted was at a later stage company in a totally different line of business. 

Over the past decade or so of building businesses, I’ve been struck by how few people seem to really know what they want professionally, and pursue it intentionally and aggressively as a result. These are the candidates that network their way to someone on the leadership team, that can answer the ‘why’ question with a high degree of fluency, that aren’t running personal auction processes. 

Job boards like Indeed make applying for lots of jobs at the same time incredibly easy & efficient. Yet how many candidates bother to submit cover letters? Read about a company, yet then apply directly on their career page. In my experience: less than 2%. 

Recruiters bring opportunities to candidates who are particularly attractive, at least on paper. Professionalized talent functions operate in a similar way. Update your LinkedIn profile & wait for the opportunities to come you. I’ve had candidates tell me about past job searches where they’ve gotten ‘several offers’, but didn’t end up accepting any. Perhaps that speaks to the qualifications of the candidate, but doesn’t offer much assurance that they’re taking a proactive approach to building a career. 

It’s easy these days to be professionally reactive, but is this best for the individual or the organization? Is it coincidental that as it's become easier to lob in job applications or wait for someone to find you, employee satisfaction is dropping? We need dynamic organizations built by proactive people who want to come together to solve hard problems relating to a specific microindustry. 

I only recruit candidates who know what they want, and can articulate it clearly and coherently. Despite all of the professional advances the Internet and startup recruiting models have brought, this type of candidate is still in very short supply.