White Paper Final v 2

7/30/2019 White Paper Final v 2

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/white-paper-final-v-2 1/12

Before building Entelo and since we’ve started the company, we’ve hadhundreds (probably over a thousand by now!) of conversations with people

about how they recruit. We’ve heard all sorts of interesting stories and a lot of

great ideas. A recent conversation with a recruiter spurred something that’s

been smoldering for a while here at Entelo.

This recruiter felt that the recruiting industry is getting it wrong. He believes that

there is too much focus on the wrong aspects of recruiting and that, if you could

shift the recruiting mindset, recruiters would be more successful and companies

would be more satisfied with their recruiters. And for him, the missing piece

boiled down to one metric:

Candidate Response Rate (CRR)

Companies in fast-growth mode that are attempting to fill in-demand roles

in technology, sales, marketing, etc. can’t simply wait for the right candidates to

come to them. They need to proactively find their talent. In the industry, this is

referred to as passive candidate sourcing (a somewhat weak phrase for a

critical company activity, but that’s a topic for another day!). Facebook does this.

So does Google. And if you believe the research, many more companies will bedoing passive candidate sourcing in the future.

If you’re doing passive candidate sourcing, the number of responses you

receive from candidates is a function of two variables: (1) The number of

candidates you contact and (2) the percentage of candidates who respond.

Inside the Brain of the Passive Candidate

www.Entelo.com [email protected] @Entelo!

http://twitter.com/entelo


mailto:[email protected]


http://www.entelo.com/


http://talent.linkedin.com/blog/index.php/2011/12/passive-candidates-accelerate/






Let’s break down each element.

(1) The number of candidates you

contact: Theoretically, this number is

unlimited. The major limitation here is

your time as a recruiter. However,

there are two schools of thought.

School #1: Recruiters should aim for

volume, trying to mass-message as

many people as possible. This is one

of the benefits people find in tools like

LinkedIn Recruiter. It allows them to

mass-message more efficiently,thereby increasing the number of

people who have been contacted.

School #2: Mass-messaging

candidates is not efficient. For

starters, it’s not ideal for candidates to

receive dozens of generic-sounding

messages in their Inbox each week.

Many of the opportunities might not

be right for them. Some candidates

even view these messages as spam,

which both annoys them (to the point

that many folks have stopped

checking their LinkedIn InMails) and

potentially reflects negatively on you

and your company.

(2) The number of candidates who

respond: Sending customizedmessages to candidates is often best

(see a thorough blog post on this

here). Personalized messages

involves doing homework on potential

candidates to assess fit and crafting

messages specifically for each

candidate. This process makes for a

much better candidate experience

(most candidates are thrilled to

receive messages from recruiters who

very clearly took the time to

understand their work and expertise).

The response rate from custom

messages is significantly higher than

that from mass-messaging

But thoroughly researching

candidates and crafting custom

messages is hard work. An

automated sourcing tool like Entelocan save you 80-90% of research

time. Nevertheless, time and effort will

need to be spent in using that

research to draft a custom message.

Because of this time commitment,

you’re only going to be able to send a

certain number of messages per day.

Therein lies the rub and the crux of

this whitepaper.

If you’re limited in the number of

messages you can send per day, then

one of the most important decisions

you’ll be making as a recruiter is

which candidates you choose to

message. This decision will be a

critical factor in determining your

organization’s success.

For many open reqs, there are more

than enough quality candidates. Tools

like Entelo, LinkedIn and others make

it possible to view candidates with the

skills that you’re company needs. If

you’re looking for a Ruby on Rails



http://blog.entelo.com/outbound-recruiting-101-part-1-of-7-go-custom/














engineer in the Bay Area and there

are 10,000 Ruby on Rails engineers in

the area, you can’t message all

10,000 of them in the appropriate

fashion. You must choose your battles

wisely. How do you do that?

Identify which passive candidates

are actually more likely to be open

to new opportunities.

The rest of this whitepaper is devoted

to the signals that you can use to

identify which passive candidates

may be more likely to take on newopportunities.

#1 - Company-level data

Company-level data is composed ofinformation and news about the

company where a candidate is

currently working. There are pros and

cons to using company-level

indicators.

Pros - When you identify data which

suggests that candidates may be

more likely to change jobs, youidentify a whole new host of

candidates to contact. For example,

let’s say that Acme Software Corp just

announced that they will be laying off

1,000 people at the end of the year.

This immediately raises the odds that

people at Acme may be more likely to

leave, either because they fear being

laid off themselves or because lay-

offs typically have such a hit to morale

that even those with more job security

start to look around. If you’re attuned

to these things, it can mean that you

now have many candidates who may

be more receptive to your job

opening.

Cons - Company-level data is often

not the most powerful indicator of

propensity to change jobs. Even in

companies with bleak environments,there are often many die-hards who

won’t want to leave. The inverse is

also true. Companies that are doing

well have people leaving them all of

the time for a variety of reasons. If

you’re only focused on company-level

data, you would miss these

individuals. Therefore, you also need

to look at individual-level data, which

is explained in the second half of this

whitepaper.

When you’re looking at company-level

data, keep in mind that you’re looking

for anything that would suggest a

candidate’s propensity to leave or not

leave their current job. Even more

important, look for leading indicators

of candidate availability.

We’ve done countless hours of

research on this topic. Below is a list

of things to look for.











#1 - Company layoff announcements.

This is perhaps the #1 leading

indicator of employees departing the

company and looking for new

opportunities. Of course, there’s the

obvious fact that those being laid off

will leave the company. But when

layoffs happen, it typically means that

others who aren’t laid off start looking

for greener pastures. The

announcement of impending layoffs

significantly raises the odds that the

company’s employees will changejobs in the coming months. It’s one of

the reasons why layoff

announcements can be so toxic to a

company.

What to do: As a recruiter, you should

spend at least a portion of your day

paying attention to the business

press. Read the high-profile

newspapers and online media

publishing business news, and set up

google alerts.

#2 - High-profile departures. Another

sign of trouble at a company is when

senior-level executives leave. The

departure of, say, the VP of

Engineering of a company doesn’t

necessarily mean that others will

defect as well but, as with all of thesethings, you’re playing the odds. There

are a number of reasons why the

“domino effect” exists within

companies. Sometimes it signals

internal struggles. Often, the senior-

level executives will see trouble on the

horizon earlier.

What to do: Similar to layoff

announcements, you’ll learn a lot of

this through the business press. Think

about where high-profile departures

get announced for your industry/

geographic location and pay attention

to those publications. You can even

set up custom Google alerts to help

you stay on top of these types of

events.

#3 - Stock price declines. For

candidates working at publicly-traded

companies, one of the biggest

leading indicators of people leaving is

the recent performance of the stock

price. Stock price declines are telling











of all sorts of things. They may

precede the kind of rough financial

performance that could lead to

layoffs. Poor stock performance also

affects employee stock option value,

which could impact retention. And

stock price is of course highly

correlated with morale in a company.

At the end of the day, very few people

want to go work in a dreary

environment all day.

What to do: Stay in touch with stock

price movements for companies that

you are recruiting from (e.g., if you arerecruiting for a gaming startup, you

might include the ticker symbols of all

of the publicly-traded gaming

companies in your portfolio). Set up a

portfolio on a site like Google Finance

and check in every day or two. In

addition to being able to better track

stock price movements, you’ll also get

updated news on related companies.

#4 - Acquisitions. When companies

get acquired, people leave. Not

everyone leaves and people typically

don’t leave right away, but the news of

a company getting acquired is

something to pay attention to. There is

typically a lock-up period in which

people who leave prior to the lock-up

will forfeit significant value, butemployees nevertheless find

something else right away. Many

startup employees get quickly

frustrated by big company

bureaucracy and choose to leave

money on the table instead of

continuing to work in a stifling

environment.

What to do: There’s a two-step

approach here. First, be aware of

acquisitions. You’re probably not

going to have the best results

emailing people right after the

acquisition is announced. Other

recruiters are likely contacting them

and candidates haven’t really had a

chance to know if they will enjoy

working for the acquirer. It’s better to

wait a month or two before sending a

message.

In addition, you may want to set up a

task to reach out to the candidate 10

months or so after the acquisition. The

lock-up may expire after 12 months

(many are longer, typically 24 months)

but even if it doesn’t, the 1-year mark

may be important financially. If

candidates know that they will be

leaving after 1 year, the 10-month

mark (give or take a month) is

typically when employees start

looking for new opportunities.

#5 - IPOs. IPOs are almost identical to

acquisitions in that many people will

stay through the IPO but depart

shortly thereafter (e.g. high-profile

Facebook departures after the IPO).IPOs tend to be less determinate

because many people will leave prior

to the IPO and some will stay well

past, particularly if the stock does

well. The event of an IPO has an

emotional component as well, as



http://www.google.com/finance











there are few things that are more

enjoyable than being at company

headquarters on IPO day.

What to do: At the risk of sounding

like a broken record here, pay

attention to the business press.

Other factors:

#6 - Funding status. If a company

announced funding a while ago buthasn’t announced anything recently,

it’s possible that the company may be

on the verge of shutting down. Sites

like Crunchbase can be helpful in

identifying this. Also look for any

press that the company has gotten

recently.

#7 - Bankruptcy or shutdown. By the

time a bankruptcy or shutdown isannounced, the writing has typically

been on the wall for a while and most

employees have secured new jobs,

but occasionally these

announcements are actionable (e.g.,

Lehman Brothers filing for bankruptcy

on short notice during the financial

crisis of 2008).

#8 - Alexa/Compete/Quantcast rank.

The health of consumer Internet

companies can often be ascertained,

at least in part, by their web traffic.

That information is publicly available

on sites like Alexa, Compete and

Quantcast.

#9 - Negative news about company

culture. Occasionally, there will be a

story in the press about the negativeconditions at a particular company.

While sometimes this is just the

feelings of a few select employees,

often where there’s smoke, there’s

also fire.

#10 - Quarterly earnings

announcements. This is tightly tied to

stock price. When a company

announces that they missed their

earnings for a quarter, that’s usually a

sign of worse news to come.

This list may seem overwhelming.

Remember that incorporating any of

this data into your recruiting process

will put you ahead of 99% of

recruiters. While savvy recruiters look

at many of the above items, mostdon’t, which is a huge missed

opportunity.

One final point on company-level

data: the above data points should

not be thought of as data only for one



http://www.quantcast.com/

http://www.alexa.com/

http://www.compete.com/













http://www.crunchbase.com/

http://www.crunchbase.com/



specific company. Industries often

move in lockstep. If you hear that a

company is announcing layoffs, it’s

possible that it’s competitors may also

be announcing layoffs soon (due to

macro-level factors). Factor this into

your calculations as well.

#2 - Individual-level data

There are a lot of things to consider at

the company-level which play a role in

a candidate’s potential availability.

However, there might be even more

individual-level data to consider.

Recruiters have exponentially more

data available to them today than

ever before. As we mentioned with

company-level data, this can seem

overwhelming but once again,

remember that by incorporating even

just a small amount of this type of

data into your recruiting process,

you’ll be significantly ahead of most ofthe recruiters that you’re competing

with for talent.

Here are the things to look for in an

individual candidate to assess

whether or not they may be open to a

new opportunity.

#1 - Length of time at existing

company.

You can think of this like a bell curve.

People that have been at their job for

only a few months aren’t likely to be

looking for something new at this

point. Even if they are, it raises a red

flag that they might be a job hopper

and even if you could hire them, you

may not want to. On the other hand,people who have been at their jobs

for, say, 10 years, are also unlikely to

be randomly looking to leave their

company after all that time.

You want to focus on the “most

likelies,” which includes people who

have been at their job for anywhere

between 10 months to 4 years. It

breaks down like this:

10-month mark - If someone is

miserable early in the lifecycle of their

job, they will often look to wrap up in a

year and may be looking for their next

gig around the 10-month mark. Also,

employees may have a 1-year cliff for

stock options that they want to hit

before leaving. If they are looking toleave after 1 year, they’ll likely start

poking around for new stuff around

the 10-month mark. If your message

arrives then, the timing could be

perfect.











2-year mark - As with the 1-year mark,

the 2-year mark is also significant. It

often will mean that employees are

50% vested in terms of shares and 2

years at a company usually looks

better than a 1-year stint. Similar to

the above, you may want to reach out

to them 2-3 months in advance of

their 2-year anniversary.

4-year mark - This is the point at

which many people become fully

vested. If things have gone really well

for someone at a company, staying 4

years is usually pretty common. Andvery few people would fault an

employee for leaving after 4 years.

So the sweet spot for recruiting

passive candidates is usually

between 10 months and 4 years with

“spikes” at 10 months, 21-22 months

and around 45 months.

What to do: Looking specifically for

people who have been at their

company for 21-22 months is hard.

However, this general thinking should

guide you when looking at a

candidate. Someone who looks great

on paper but has only been at their

company for 5 months is typically not

as good a candidate as someone

who looks slightly less ideal but who

has been with their current company

for 23 months.

#2 - Social networking activity.

If you’re looking for the top leading

indicator of a career change, you’ve

found it. Most people don’t change

their social networking profiles very

often. They may be undertaking a lotof activity on a social network (e.g.,

posting status updates to Facebook)

but actual profile changes are rare.

When they happen, more often than

not, it’s because people realize that

someone will likely be viewing their

profiles soon and they want to make

sure their profiles looks as good and

accurate as possible. Sound like a job

hunt? :)

Social networking activity indicators:

Profile updates - This is the obvious

one. When people change certain

things on their LinkedIn, Twitter,

Github and other profiles, it is highly

correlated with their starting to look

for a new career opportunity. Ofcourse, this isn’t true 100% of the

time. But once again, we’re looking for

positive correlation, not perfect

correlation.









http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/positive-correlation.asp

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/positive-correlation.asp



Uptick in activity - A recent uptick in

activity is another important indicator.

Did someone who never used to go to

Meetups all of a sudden start

attending them frequently? Or

perhaps you see someone on Github

who has committed a lot of code very

recently. These things can often be

highly correlated to someone looking

for a new job.

New membership on social sites -

Engineers are starting to hear that

Github is the new resume. This

motivates engineers who don’talready have a Github profile to

create one before they begin a new

job hunt. The same is true for many

other sites. There is a challenge here

in that many sites don’t make it easy

to determine when a profile was

created, but if you are able to figure

that out, it can be helpful.

Connecting with recruiters - If you

notice that someone you are

connected with starts connecting with

recruiters, that’s often a sign that

they’re looking to make a move. In

addition, if you see a lot of back and

forth on Twitter between a candidate

and a recruiter (even if it’s just friendly

banter and not related to work) that

can also be a leading indicator.

Adding recommendations on LinkedIn

- This is probably the biggest

giveaway that someone is looking to

make a move. After all, almost no one

thinks about asking for

recommendations when they are

happy at their current job. LinkedIn

lists the date the recommendation

was posted. Looking for the addition

of new recommendations when you’re

looking at a candidate’s profile could

give you a leg up.

Sentiment analysis on Twitter - While

it’s possible that someone’s “mood”

on Twitter can indicate their potential

willingness to make a career move,

this is tough to get right. There are too

many factors here to consider and so

much noise vs. signal for mostpeople. Sure, if you see someone say

“I hate my job and my boss is a

schmuck” on Twitter, then that person

might be open to a new career

opportunity. But this may not be the

person you want to hire anyways.

What to do: We’re publicly launching

something on Entelo to greatly help

with this soon but in the meantime,

check out tools like Bullhorn Radar,

Job Change Notifier and LinkedIn

Signal. These tools have varying

degrees of efficacy for this (e.g.,

Bullhorn Radar only shows you

changes for your 1st degree LinkedIn

connections; Job Change Notifier

sometimes isn’t helpful because it

often shows you people who havealready changed jobs, etc.) but these

tools can provide valuable insights.

LinkedIn Signal in particular can be

useful because it will allow you to see

changes for people you aren’t

connected to (a relatively recent



http://code.dblock.org/github-is-your-new-resume

http://www.linkedin.com/signal

http://www.jobchangenotifier.com/


http://www.bullhorn.com/news-event/jul-jul/bullhorn-launches-free-social-recruiting-platform-recruiters-and-hiring-manager-0



















feature) although the interface

through which to do this is fairly

confusing.

#3 - Explicit hiring signals

All of the signals that we have listed

thus far are primarily indications that

someone might be looking for a new

opportunity. The aforementionedindicators are positively correlated

with passive candidates being on the

lookout for something new, and can

serve as strong signals of candidate

availability.

However, it’s even easier when

passive candidates explicitly say that

they are looking for something new.

This is the middle ground between acandidate actively applying for a job

via your company website or a job

board and a passive candidate who

has not explicitly stated an interest in

a new opportunity. Below are ways

that people signal that they are

looking.

#1 - Language indicators in socialnetworking profiles. Candidates will

often put phrases into their bios,

resumes, etc. that signal that they are

looking. Examples of these are things

like the following:

“actively pursuing”

“actively seeking”

available

“available for”

“in search of”

“new job”

“new opportunity”

“new opportunities”

“open to”

pursuing

seeker

seeking

These are just a dozen. There are

hundreds more of these types of

phrases that might be utilized and

many recruiters will incorporate

Boolean strings to find resumes that

match on these phrases. (Note: You

will typically find a good number of

false positives when doing these

types of searches.)

Glen Cathey at Boolean Black Belt

has written a very comprehensive

article on this topic entitled How to

Find and Identify Active Job Seekers

on LinkedIn. We highly recommend



http://www.booleanblackbelt.com/2011/08/how-to-find-and-identify-active-job-seekers-on-linkedin/














http://www.booleanblackbelt.com/

http://www.booleanblackbelt.com/



that you check it out for additional

background.

LinkedIn is also a special case here

for another reason. Every LinkedIn

profile contains “Opportunity

Preferences,” a section that allows

each user to signal their openness to

being contacted about various things.

The settings in this section are as

follows:

• Career opportunities

• Expertise requests

• Consulting offers• Business deals

• New ventures

• Personal reference requests

• Job inquiries

• Requests to reconnect

“Career opportunities” and “Job

inquiries” are the items most closely

correlated with someone’s likelihood

of being open to something new.

“New ventures” might also have some

signal, especially if you’re recruiting

for a startup. Do note that these

preferences are notoriously out-of-

date much of the time for candidates.

That said, it does make sense to look

at these for each candidate that

you’re planning to contact. LinkedIn

strongly advises against contactingcandidates for inquiries unless they

have explicitly mentioned that they

are open to that type of

communication.

#2 - Participation in hiring-related

sites. Recently, there has been a rise

in sites that attempt to match job-

seekers and employers in a non-

public way. While these services are

still fairly niche, they can often provide

good candidates depending upon the

industry and geographic region that

you’re focused on (they’re best right

now for tech candidates in major U.S.

cities). Some examples are the

following:

AngelList Talent

Developer AuctionStartupDigest VIP

WhiteTruffle

Sites like these are either completely

free (in the case of AngelList) or

charge a fee only upon successful

placement of a candidate. This lowers

the risk of using these services to no

avail.

#3 - Presence in a resume database.

While resume databases are on the

decline in many industries (the growth

of social networking sites has, in large

part, led to their demise) they can still

be valuable sources of data. For free









https://www.whitetruffle.com/

https://www.whitetruffle.com/

http://startupdigest.com/vip/

http://startupdigest.com/vip/

http://developerauction.com/

http://developerauction.com/

https://angel.co/talent

https://angel.co/talent



resume databases and any paid resume databases that you have access to,

you should be looking for the following:

Recently added resumes. Candidates typically only add their resume to a

database when they start looking. If the database allows you to see who recently

added their resume, you’ll get a good sense of availability.

Recently updated resumes. Similar to recently added resumes, people typically

only update their resumes when they are thinking about looking for something

new.

Other explicit signals. There are literally hundreds of other ways for people to

explicitly signal their availability. For example, on the website Dribbble, people

have a flag called Hire Me that indicates their openness to new opportunities.

Freelance websites are other good places to look as the mere presence of aprofile on one of these sites typically signals openness to job inquiries.

What to do: Familiarize yourself with the various signals that are out there related

to explicit availability. Then, depending on the roles that you’re looking to fill, do

a deeper dive in the areas that are the most relevant to you. For example, if

you’re doing tech recruiting in the Bay Area, definitely sign up for AngelList,

WhiteTruffle, etc. as there’s no harm in doing so and it may yield some

candidates. If you’re recruiting for a position where people commonly post their

resumes to a resume database, actively check for new and newly updated

resumes.

Summary

There are, no doubt, many factors that can signal passive candidate availability.

We’re really excited about what we’re releasing at Entelo, which relates to many

of the things discussed in this whitepaper. If you’re interested in using our

product, sign up at www.Entelo.com. We wish you the best in your recruiting

efforts and if you have additional ideas on this topic, please don’t hesitate to

drop us a line at [email protected].














http://blog.dribbble.com/post/7857684746/hire-love

http://blog.dribbble.com/post/7857684746/hire-love

http://dribbble.com/

http://dribbble.com/

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