End-user spending on public cloud services reached $396 billion in 2021—and is forecasted to grow 21.7% to reach $482 billion in 2022 (Gartner). With over 8000 software sales jobs being advertised on LinkedIn in the UK alone (January 2022), it is clear to see that great people, and salespeople, in particular, are in high demand.  With this number of open positions, it is evident that we are currently in a candidate-driven market.

What is a candidate-driven market and what are the issues?

How can you overcome the issues of a candidate-driven market?

How can Oakstone assist you in a candidate-driven market?

A candidate-driven market is when the number of open roles outweighs the number of people searching for employment. As a result, the market is highly competitive, with companies battling to attract and recruit the best candidates out there.

It often means great candidates who are in high demand are faced with multiple employment opportunities at one time, and unless you’re offering an extremely attractive opportunity, you are going to lose out on getting these people on board. 

Unfortunately, advertised open job roles only attract open candidates or candidates who are actively looking for a new role, who make up around 25% of the talent market, which means you’re not targeting 75% of potential candidates.

With the high growth predictions of software companies, you need to hire quality people, fast. The only way to do that in a candidate-driven market is to target 100% of the market and not limit yourself to just the active candidates.

This means targeting passive talent. These people aren’t looking for a new opportunity; they’re quite happy in their careers; however, it’s not to say that if an opportunity presented itself, they would turn it down without consideration.

After all, it’s much better to look for the people you want, rather than waiting for them to come to you. 

Having an internal recruitment strategy may be your top priority, but how will you target these people? They’re not looking for a new opportunity, they’re not marketing themselves, and they’re certainly not applying for positions. The best way to target this 75% of the talent pool is through an executive recruiter.

The benefit of targeting passive candidates is that they won’t be interviewing with anybody else, so you don’t need to worry as much about them applying for other jobs if you move fast. It is, however up to you to present the best description of the opportunity available.  It’s all about selling the position to the candidate, and there is no guarantee the opportunity is going to appeal to them. The way the opportunity is presented means everything.

There may be many cases where the candidate is still not interested in your opportunity by the end of your discussion; however, handling the situation correctly will encourage them to pick up the phone the next time you call - or to recommend someone else for your role.

Oakstone has over 29 years of working with high-growth SaaS and FinTech companies and has worked closely with them to source and attract exceptional talent. We use specialist recruitment methods to target result-driven passive candidates who aren’t looking for a new opportunity and present them with companies and opportunities which closely match their experience and career goals. As a client-driven organisation, and unlike many other recruitment firms, we source and find talent which perfectly matches our clients’ opportunities which means a more streamlined, targeted, and, therefore, more successful approach to recruitment.