In recruitment, there is a fairly widespread assumption: if a company has a good job advert, publishes it through the right channels and gives it sufficient visibility, candidates will eventually come forward. It is a reasonable approach and, for many vacancies, it works. Keywords are considered carefully, the job description is reviewed, positioning is taken into account, the right channels are selected and every effort is made to ensure that the advert reaches as many professionals as possible.
But there is one question that is often overlooked: what happens if the person we actually need never sees the advert?
On platforms such as LinkedIn, the opportunities shown to each user are influenced by their profile, preferences and activity, among other factors. LinkedIn itself explains that its job recommendations are personalised based on this information. This means that a company can do everything right when publishing a vacancy and still fail to reach precisely the professional who could be the right fit.
And this highlights an important distinction: giving a job advert visibility is one thing; searching for talent is quite another.
Visibility helps. But it does not always solve the problem
There is considerably more work behind a good job advert than may initially appear. The position needs to be properly understood, the requirements clearly defined, the content carefully written, the right keywords selected and the most appropriate channels identified. At onhunters, we pay close attention to all of these elements because the way an opportunity is presented also influences who is likely to find it.
Working on the positioning of a vacancy, reviewing how responsibilities are described, identifying the terms a professional is likely to use when searching for an opportunity and selecting the right channels for distribution are all part of a well-considered recruitment strategy. There would be little sense in publishing a position and then overlooking how it is actually reaching the market.
However, even a perfectly constructed job advert has an inherent limitation: it depends on the professional finding it. They need to come across the advert, stop to read it, consider whether it could be a good fit and decide that it is worth submitting an application.
For generalist positions, this approach can work reasonably well. But the equation changes when we are looking for highly specialised technical professionals, middle managers with specific experience or executives whose career background needs to meet very particular requirements.
In these cases, the problem is not always a lack of candidates. Sometimes, we simply are not reaching them.
The talent market is broader than the candidate pool
A professional may have exactly the experience a company needs and never have seen its job advert. They may not be looking for a new role at that particular moment, may not regularly use the channel where the vacancy has been published or may simply never come across it.
And this matters because not seeing a job advert does not mean being uninterested in an opportunity. Recruitment should not be limited solely to people who, at a particular point in time, have decided to sit down in front of a job board and start submitting applications.
The pool of potentially suitable professionals is, by definition, broader than the set of applications a company receives. Among those professionals, some will be actively looking for a new role, others may be open to hearing about new opportunities, and others may simply not have started any form of job search.
When a company has been waiting for weeks for a particular profile to appear, the question should perhaps not simply be how to generate more applications. It is also worth considering whether we are waiting for the candidate to make the first move when we could be making it ourselves.
When publishing is no longer enough
Direct search starts from precisely this point. The company explains what it needs, and the process does not end with publishing a job advert. The market is analysed, professionals who meet the defined criteria are identified and a professional conversation is initiated to introduce them to the opportunity.
The difference may seem subtle, but it fundamentally changes the logic of the process. We are no longer simply waiting for the candidate to find the company; we are also taking the opportunity to the candidate.
This requires an understanding of the market in which the profile operates, a clear view of which experience is genuinely relevant and the ability to distinguish between what is essential for the position and what has simply been included in a job description. Direct search therefore requires more than tools: it requires judgement, market knowledge and the ability to identify the right professionals.
And this is precisely why, in certain recruitment processes, increasing the visibility of a job advert is not enough. We can optimise the content, work on the keywords, select the right channels and achieve significant reach. But if the professional we are looking for never sees it, all that effort remains on the employer's side of the equation.
Direct search allows us to work on the other side as well: the professionals who may be the right fit.
It is not about publishing more. It is about searching better
In recruitment, it is easy to associate success with volume: more views, more applications, more CVs. These indicators can be useful, but they do not necessarily tell us whether we are any closer to finding the right person.
A position can attract dozens of applications and still fail to solve the recruitment challenge that prompted the search in the first place. By contrast, a direct search can start from a much smaller pool and focus from the outset on professionals who meet the characteristics the company actually needs.
That is why, at onhunters, we do not see publishing and direct search as competing strategies. They are different tools that can complement one another depending on the position. We publish and work on the visibility of job adverts when that channel is appropriate, but when a role requires a more targeted approach, we take the additional step of actively identifying qualified professionals.
The objective is not to accumulate applications. It is to broaden the search until we find professionals who can genuinely fit the organisation and the project.
Because a job advert can be perfectly written, contain the right keywords and achieve considerable visibility. And yet, the person the company needs may never see it.
When that happens, the solution is not always to make the advert even more visible. Sometimes, it is something much simpler: stop waiting for the candidate to find the opportunity and go out and find them ourselves.
At onhunters, we carry out this type of search for positions where finding the right professional requires going beyond the applications received. If you need to recruit a particular profile and would like to find out how we could approach the search, tell us what profile you need to recruit.
