A quick thought exercise: If you randomly approached 100 people on the street and asked them if they were actively exploring the labor market, what would you find? Well, you’d first find that people don’t like to be randomly approached on the street. More importantly, though, you’d learn that a surprising number of people are effectively “off the market.” In fact, our recent analysis of the labor market reveals that 40% of the labor market is passive. So what? If we only use recruiting channels frequented by active candidates, we’ll fail to reach almost 40% of the overall labor market. In marketing lingo, we’re cutting our “addressable market” in half. That’s a bad formula for approaching markets, whether you’re selling things or recruiting people.
You can see this vividly displayed in this chart. The chart might remind you of scenic mountain vistas. It will almost certainly remind you of the perils of failing to pursue passives. And, we hope it’s useful in making the case for more aggressive passive recruitment (and pipeline building) in your organization. (Roundtable Members: Click here to access our in-depth work on Building Talent Pipelines.)
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