[pjungwir]

Certainly.

Especially right now, you need to attract candidates who are "passively looking": people who have a job, but would move given a good offer. I do freelance development and consulting, and I'm basically happy with that. I wouldn't turn down a great opportunity, but I'm not going to start the application process unless I know you can beat what I'm already earning.

[BinaryIdiot]

Almost every single time I've decided to move to a new job I was passively looking at best. Every person I know, even the ones who are happy at their jobs, would be willing to move if an opportunity cropped up that interested them more than their current gig (money is important too, of course, but not 100% of the equation).

I'm only speaking from anecdotes but I feel like finding a way to cater to the passively looking engineering job area could be HUGE if done well. Trouble is I don't entirely know how to do it well and not come off as spammy.

[pjungwir]

I agree about it being huge. But from an employer perspective, even if it's not huge, what counts is the margin, and if it gives you a few more good candidates than everyone else trying to hire, that is a big advantage. All the things Joel Spolsky wrote about the developer hiring market change, if you are reaching these passively looking people.

[mooreds]

> finding a way to cater to the passively looking engineering job

Isn't that what SO does, quite well?

An idea I had that I have never implemented but would happily subscribe to is a weekly or monthly newsletter with jard data about salaries. Not self reported salaries, or salaries from job posts, but honest to goodness salaries, anonymized.

I don't know how you would get the data, but I doubt you'd have trouble attracting subscribers and attention if you had good data.

[finspin]

This is a great angle I haven't thought of. I'm guessing passively looking candidates might be quite a big chunk of the market. Given a financially interesting offer they might apply for a job which they would otherwise just skim through.

[bbcbasic]

Potentially they are better hires. They found a great job and they are happy. If they take your job it's definitely for the right reasons.

[Schwolop]

I tried for a while putting in big letters "Please do not offer me jobs for less than $n" (with n about 80% of my salary at the time) on my LinkedIn profile, but it had absolute zero effect on recruiters. Presumably they don't manually read the profile at all, rather just skim for keywords.

[mooreds]

I did the same with location and had much the same result (the entreaty was ignored).