Candidate Research — The Critical Information That You Must Know About Your Recruiting Targets

It’s a sad fact that most of what we know about those who we are trying to hire (recruiting prospects and candidates) is anecdotal and historical. At the same time, both the job search process and candidate expectations are changing at an incredibly rapid rate. These changes are a result of the Internet, social media, and the new technologies that change the way that people look for and apply for a job. In a companion article published on ERE.net on 1/25/16 entitled “The Most Damaging Strategic Omission In Recruiting – Candidate Research,” I highlighted the many lessons that recruiting could learn from the “customer research” function in the sales and marketing departments. Once you are convinced that recruiting should have its own process of prospect/candidate research, the next step is to identify what information you need to collect. This article contains a detailed list of the information that would dramatically improve both prospect attraction and candidate closing.