The Myth of the Passive Candidate

By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

A long time ago in a galaxy far away

My partner and I opened our recruiting firm trying to place IT professionals in New York. Yes, we did cold call recruiting but in those days, what passed for technology was a telephone. There were no computers, no LinkedIn, not even a fax machine. There was no Monster or CareerBuilder to complain about. It was a simpler time in recruiting.

You recruited candidates or referred active applicants who applied to an ad you ran in the Sunday New York Times . . . but the New York Times was expensive back then in The Stone Ages. At least it seemed that way to all of us.

You could easily spend more than $10 per column line for a classified ad . . . but then again, a new car would cost as little as $3500 at that time.

We didn’t have a lot of money despite having our offices paid for for the first year. We made a lot of mistakes but we did one thing very well. We created an argument against active job applicants that exists to this day.

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