Finding Untapped Talent Pools

Career Solutions Group’s value to small and mid-sized corporations is to identify and reach “passive candidates” or people not actively on the job market.  In reaching the “untapped talent pools”, Career Solutions has the opportunity to engage a potential candidate with a job or career opportunity on behalf of our clients and before competition is engaging them.

In 2023, Career Solution’s Researchers reach the “untapped talent pools” in three ways:  

•Identifying and recruiting candidates who aren’t online

•Attracting candidates to career shift by market or geography

•Identifying and targeting candidates affected by a future RIF.

Potential Candidates NOT on the Internet

Depending upon the industry, there are many potential candidates for open positions that never see online job postings.  From Career Solutions’ work in talent markets in many industries, we would say Manufacturing may have the most people without any internet profile.  

According to the website Statistica, 18% of Americans are not on social media.  From 2008 to 2016, Americans engagement on social media skyrocketed from 10% to about 80% of the population.  But in the past 6-7 years, about 20% of the US population does not have a social media profile on LinkedIN ( or Facebook, Instagram, Snap, or others).  Globally, 40% of the world population is not on social media.  Pew Research says the percentage of people in the US who actively use social media is about 72% of the population.  Although many of us use and heavily rely on social media daily, there is still a significant part of the population 2-4 out of every 10 people that can’t be found online.

Career Solutions’ Researchers have found that there is no single method to identify and reach people without any online internet presence or profile.  Our Researchers start with publicly available information about candidates and then work through referrals and telephone calls to identify co-workers of known candidates.  Calling candidates on the telephone in 2023 is even more challenging than it was in the 1990s when Career Solutions started because there are few Receptions anymore to direct callers and most calls go to a stand alone voicemail box to wait for a return call.

Attracting Candidates to a Career Shift

While Career Solutions spends effort to identify candidates not on the internet 70-80% of the population is online is some fashion and reachable.  So why are they responding to job postings?

What Career Solutions has found is that while many potential candidates do not respond to online job postings or ads, candidates actually do see them and read them.  Why don’t they respond or reply is anyone’s guess.

But if Career Solutions can reach them and get their attention (it’s takes multiple attempts nowadays) then we can attempt to find out what roadblocks some candidates perceive to a particular job posting or open position.  

One interesting example is a theme we have seen post-pandemic.  There are professionals with global companies who are tired of travel and frustrated by lack of involvement in their local communities (chicago area global manufacturing exec shifts to 100 employee manufacturer).  Through our normal interview Q&A process, Career Solutions’ recruiting staff has been able to convince some potential candidates that there might a a small or medium sized corporation near their home with a great opportunity.

This is just one example of the post-pandemic career shifting going on as people re-evaluate their working lives.  Sometimes a personal interview helps a reluctant “career-shifter” become interested in one of our clients’ opportunities.

Identifying & Targeting Future Reductions In Force

In our changing economy with rising interest rates, there are certain sectors of the economy and job market that may be “downsizing” or planning RIFs.  Wall Street has spoken for weeks about layoffs in the Technology sector from over-hiring.  And as the Federal Reserve continues to increase interest rates to control inflation, the number of consumer & mortgage loans is on the decline.

Somewhat surprisingly, Career Solutions has found that there are Technology candidates in the Indianapolis area employed by major tech companies headquartered on the coasts.  We are not seeing the Indiana employees of tech companies being laid off, necessarily, probably due to their cost-effectiveness to their employers by being in low-cost Indiana.  But these Hoosier tech workers are nervous about their employers’ organizational changes and open to listening to other job opportunities.

In the Mortgage sector, Career Solutions is starting to hear of planned layoffs in some of the mortgage processing department in Indianapolis area financial institutions.  But with the low housing inventory and high demand for houses, it would seem that there shouldn’t be too much decrease in loan volume especially if consumers need to refinance due to the change in rates of their loans.

The RIFs will help the local job market overall.  Most people being laid off will immediately be offer other positions.  The severe shortage of workers across all industries is going to continue for the foreseeable future (years).

While identifying potential layoffs in local organizations is an active, ongoing part of our research and recruiting activities, some of our corporate clients have been more strategic in identifying competitive talent.  In the past, Career Solutions has been retained by corporate clients to pro-actively assess competitors’ talent in preparation for M&A ( medical device , public accounting )  and economic driven expansions ( commercial banking , investment management , power generation , engineering & automation ).

These are three ways that Career Solutions Group is helping our clients find the untapped, passive candidate pools in Indiana.  While we still contact and interview the publicly known and actively interviewing candidates as part of our recruiting process, we have found through our three decades of work with Indiana employers that hiring talent that wasn’t looking to make a change provides the longest lasting benefit to our clients’ company organizations.