Why passive candidates are really better

sunny

I’m don’t claim to be an expert, but I’ve always thought that the topic is overblown – I just don’t understand why being an active candidate is relevant to their eventual performance as an employee. Everyone has actively searched for a new job at some point in their lives, even “A” players, and it doesn’t make them any less effective at what they do.
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I still believe this is true (can anyone show me differently?), but the upcoming issue of the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership makes a different argument for recruiting passive candidates, and one that makes more sense to me.
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Candidates who are happy (or at least not unhappy) at their current job are more likely to stay at their next one.
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From David Williams’ article in the Journal, which he wrote based on a study conducted by the Corporate Executive Board’s Recruiting Roundtable:
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In addition, we analyzed organization-supplied performance data to test whether individuals who were passive in their job search tended to outperform those who were more active—a critical question that has been a bone of much contention in the trade press. Our findings revealed that passive candidates slightly outperform active ones, but only by a few percentage points. The real difference between active and passive candidates was related to intent to stay (i.e., a predictor of retention). Figure 2 shows that individuals who were passive in their job search are much more likely to stay at the organization than those who were very active. In other words, job-seeking behavior carries over into the current job: if I was active in seeking a job, I’m much more likely to leave that job. And if I was passive in the labor market when I was contacted for my current job, I’m much more likely to be passive when I’m an incumbent in that job.