Dr John Sullivan Talent Management Thought Leadership
Counting on coincidentally open jobs hurts recruiting.
If you’re not familiar with this risky but common recruiting practice that I call ”coincidentally open jobs.” It is where you simply assume that at the time when one of your most desirable recruiting targets finally decides to re-enter the job market. You (without data) simply assume that your company will have a relevant job open for them to notice and apply to.
However, in my view, it’s a major mistake to rely on pure chance to ensure a match between your open job and the time that your top recruiting target begins to search for a job.
Not Having An Open Job At The Same Time Will Be Costly
Everyone involved needs to realize that the recruiting of top candidates in mission-critical jobs will be severely hampered whenever you don’t have an open job at the time your top candidate begins looking.
Obviously, without an open job to drive them, your company’s recruiters won’t be actively sourcing top talent that is not yet in the job market. This means that your recruiters won’t know about your recruiting target’s recent start of a job search.
And without a currently visible job posting to alert your targets about your company’s current job opening, these desirable recruiting targets won’t have any reason to visit your careers website or to apply at your company. So it is clear that recruiting should avoid any mismatch or misalignment between when a top target is job searching and when your company has an open job.
Evergreen jobs are a superior alternative to hoping for a time match.
Evergreen Jobs for Top Talent – Ensuring There Will Always Be an Open Job for Your Top Recruiting Targets
Once hiring managers and recruiting leaders realize how damaging it is to their company in terms of costs, time, and loss of talent. When they fail to have a relevant position open when any of your top recruiting targets begin looking will invariably force your recruiting leaders to begin exploring the variation of “Evergreen jobs” that is designed specifically to recruit your top recruiting targets.
This “top target variation” guarantees that there will always be a fully funded open requisition when one of your company’s top recruiting targets becomes available. These Evergreen jobs are also unique because they have a highly flexible job description and compensation package. This allows each Evergreen job to be easily tailored to fit the needs of any of your top recruiting targets who might consider joining one of your critical job families.
Why “Currently Employed Top Professionals” Are The Most Desirable Recruiting Targets
Although the concept of creating Evergreen jobs works for almost every level of recruiting target (especially high-volume jobs), I have found that “the currently employed top professionals” working in mission-critical jobs version produces the highest business impact. Because (unlike unemployed candidates) their training, experience, and skills of these employed recruiting targets are likely to be completely up-to-date. And because these targets have held a mission-critical job at a significant company for a while. Their current managers have clearly labeled them to be highly valuable.
These High-Value Targets Are Difficult To Recruit
Unfortunately, despite their high business impact, these employed targets in mission-critical jobs are especially hard to recruit. First, because these targets are rarely in the job market as a result of being valued and treated well. As a result, these high-value targets may only enter the job market every 2-3 years, which means that your recruiters will likely have only one shot at recruiting them. They are also hard to recruit because the competition for this valuable talent is fierce. So whenever an opportunity to successfully recruit these targets comes along, realize that your recruiters will have to get it perfect the first time.
The Benefits Of Evergreen Jobs For Employed Top Talent
When you’re making the business case to your executives for implementing Evergreen jobs for top employed talent, here are some benefits to include:
- Your quality of hire will improve – when “employed top talent” that is just entering the job market sees that your company has an open job. Becoming aware of this opportunity will eventually improve both the volume and the quality of the talent that you hire. And the top recruiting targets that you fail to hire this time around. Can be put on your talent pipeline for future job openings.
- You will be able to hire faster – because a low Evergreen requisition is pre-approved and fully funded already. Not having to create new requisitions and the related paperwork may reduce your overall “time to fill” for top employed talent by as much as 20%. And being able to hire faster means that you won’t lose as much top talent to your more agile competitors.
- It will build your employer brand – by showing your top recruiting targets that you are striving to accommodate them; you will help to build up your employer brand. And that improved public image will, over time, eventually improve both the quality of your applicants and your overall hiring results.
- Continuous sourcing will make it easier to build relationships – because always having an open Evergreen job is designed to encourage continuous sourcing for these critical recruiting targets. As a result, these Evergreen jobs will provide your recruiters with a broader time frame through which they can build trusting relationships with your recruiting targets.
- Your recruits will likely bring others with them – because your top recruiting targets are currently working among a large group of qualified colleagues. After being hired, if your star employee finds your company to be highly desirable. They will likely eventually bring 1 – 3 of their most talented colleagues from their old company along with them.
- The Evergreen job program has a high ROI – this approach is intuitive, so it is easy to sell to executives and implement. And because this approach doesn’t incur any significant upfront recruiting or employee costs. A well-designed program will generate a high ROI.
Final Thoughts
If one of your goals is to make recruiting a more logical process. Then it makes sense to start questioning the common practice of coincidental job openings. Because it’s simply not logical to “just assume” (or hope) that you will have an open job each and every time that one of your top employed targets begins applying for jobs. So in my view, it’s time for recruiting leaders to take proactive action by creating an “Evergreen job” in each mission-critical job family. So that your most desirable candidates will at any time be able to easily find a relevant open job at your company. And those that can’t be hired right now can go into your talent pipeline for further assessment and trust building.
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Notes for the reader
This is the latest article from Dr. Sullivan, who was called “the Michael Jordan of Hiring” by Fast Company.
Please help spread his ideas by sharing this with your team/network and posting it on your favorite social media.
Dr John Sullivan is its author – It first appeared in the 10/13/26 issue of Aggressive Talent Management.
