Top MES professionals are in high demand and not applying for jobs; they need direct, personalised outreach to consider a move.
Definition
Active candidates are actively applying for roles and engaging with job adverts. Passive candidates are employed, not applying for anything, and only move if they're directly approached and given a compelling reason. In specialist technical fields like MES, the best talent is almost always passive.
What this means when you're hiring
If you're only interviewing candidates who responded to your job advert, you're interviewing the bottom 20 per cent of the available talent pool. The senior MES professionals who are genuinely good at their jobs aren't refreshing job boards; they're busy delivering projects and waiting for someone to approach them with something worth considering. This is why direct search is the core skill in retained MES recruitment and why a posted job advert almost never fills a Director-level position. I'd estimate that 85 to 90 per cent of my placements at senior level are passive candidates who weren't on the market when I first contacted them.
Where candidates get this wrong
Active doesn't mean desperate and passive doesn't mean loyal. Many active candidates at senior level are active for a very good reason: they've been made redundant, their company is struggling, or they've already checked out. Many passive candidates are quietly open to a move but never take the initiative to look. The distinction matters because it affects how you approach the conversation, not how you judge the quality of the candidate.
How expectations change by level
At junior to mid level, active candidates are plentiful and job boards are a viable channel. Above Manager level in MES and digital manufacturing, the proportion of passive to active shifts dramatically. By Director level, virtually all viable candidates are passive. Running a job advert for a VP of Digital Manufacturing is mostly signalling to the market that you have a vacancy; the actual hire almost always comes from direct outreach.
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