I am a member of an online recruiter’s group and have a mild interest in their topics. What we do at Select Metrix is far from recruiting, but we often get lumped in with recruiters so I figure it is good to know the topics that interest them.
One myth I keep encountering is this Jurassic-era myth that good salespeople do not look at employment ads. Only the “unhappy” salespeople look at ads. Here is a direct quote from one of the recruiters:
People only look on job boards if they are unhappy with their job / boss / company. To recruit the happy people (happy typically equals good)…you need to direct recruit.
Talk about generalities! My word, this is either a shameless plug for their services or an obtuseness in understanding salespeople. Companies go under, commission plans change, territories get realigned, sales days become repetitive, better opportunities emerge. I would argue that these are but a few valid reasons for driving “happy” salespeople to look for a new position.
It would be most helpful if the author of that quote would have defined “happy” and “good.” Better yet, define how happy = good. I could ask 10 different people to define those terms within the context of the quote and I would get 10 different answers.
The modern worker consistently montiors the job boards for potential opportunities. We have seen stats as high as 66% of employed workers check the job boards once a week. These boards certainly make it easy with their automated search agents that will deliver an email to your inbox every night with jobs that match your specific criteria.
Information flows quickly and the younger workers are plugged in and looking for the latest opportunity for themselves. We have written about this topic in our article Hiring Adjustments for Generations X and Y:
Most people are familiar with the term €œcareer path.€ The Baby Boomer generation experienced a marketplace where preordained opportunities existed to climb the corporate ladder within the same company. Today€™s younger generations generally do not have such consistent opportunities before them. More importantly, many of the younger generation do not subscribe to the same loyalty as the Baby Boomers.