Key to any negotiation is a solid understanding of the facts at hand.

Facts typically relate to the individual, their context, or the part they play in the situation you’re negotiating through.

But if the facts are inaccurate or based on unprovable assumptions, those negotiations are built on a house of cards, prone to collapse for the most minor of reasons.

You see it everywhere in recruitment.

“If you do w, there will be a x% chance of y happening in z time frame.”

“Only x% of the market is visible”

Numbers which can feel real in discussion:

“Don’t accept counter-offers. 90% of people who accept them leave within 6 months”

“Only 20% of the candidate market is visible”

“Only 20% of the jobs market is visible”

Facts which are stated to try and change the mind of the other, so that they see things differently.

But the problem with these facts is that they are developed to serve an agenda, rather than having specific meaning to the person you are negotiating with.

Let’s look at the counter-offer argument.

What’s the problem here?

It’s that you’re employing a quantitative (numbers) line to a qualitative (relationship) situation.

The truth is that the right decision for a candidate might be to accept a counter-offer if the employer makes a genuine change that addresses their reason for leaving.

It’s when the counter-offer is cynical that those people leave in short measure - because those underlying reasons aren’t addressed.

When you look at it this way, the next questions become - what are the underlying reasons for leaving, and are they something the candidate should broach before thinking about moving jobs?

The answers to those questions are the real facts of the situation, rather than a popular line that is commonly accepted yet has little substance for the individual.

5 Whys everything to find better answers.

How about the 20% lines for hidden jobs and invisible candidates?

These come down to what we mean by both.

Jobs aren’t actively hidden. If they aren’t filled through an advert, they are filled through other means job seekers can take advantage of.

If you’re interested in why this is a misleading notion, have a read of this article.

The same can be said of invisible candidates.

What do we actually mean by this?

In most situations, it boils down to the principle that the number of applications to an advert represents only 20% of available candidates .

However, again, it’s a quantitative argument for a qualitative discussion.

For example, a candidate from an advert is necessarily an applicant, but an applicant is rarely a candidate for employment.

Indeed most recruiters who talk about advert efficacy say that 90% of applications are immediately unsuitable.

Let’s say you have 100 applications, 10 of whom are candidates.

How many invisible candidates are there?

Is it another 400, or another 40?

What about if none of the applicants to an advert are candidates?

Does that mean there are 0 candidates anywhere?

This statement ignores that an advert's quality will impact the applications' quality.

In my adverts recently, my percentage of candidates has ranged between 20% and 40%. And these are employable candidates.

Do we really need to look at an additional 4x that number. Is that reasonable or practical?

What about that 80% figure that are the invisible candidates?

Why are they invisible?

Is it because they don’t apply to adverts, because they didn’t like an advert, or because they are only accessible through sourcing and proactive contact?

And if it’s the last point, how many of these 80% are discoverable by recruiters who don’t have excellent sourcing skills?

I wrote my first guide to boolean sourcing in 1998, for my Dad’s company, as I was midway through a maths degree. I work on my sourcing skills, and I accept that candidates don’t always know how to be discoverable to traditional sourcing methods.

I find candidates others miss, yet I am no more than an 8 out of 10 in sourcing skills. It’s an opportunity for improvement.

How many of the 80% of invisible candidates will a typical recruiter not be able to find?

And if they don’t find them, does that mean they don’t exist?

Of course not.

A final example, and then the point.

In a LinkedIn post today, a contact of mine was excited to share the fact that there are 120,000 more vacancies than before the pandemic.

An exciting fact for job seekers.

Yet how do these vacancies correlate to job seeker availability?

The answer is they don’t.

The majority of these are vacancies which candidates won’t find attractive, and which don’t reflect the skills of available job seekers.

It’s not an exciting proposition. It’s the path to disaster as we move into The Great People Shortage.

The numbers alone may be exciting for some, and an opportunity for those that drive the benefits of diversity, but it is surely ominous of things to come in an ageing population with reduced childbirth.

At last, here’s the point.

If we use facts to support arguments, and these are not facts at all, how does that support our credibility as an industry?

Or are we guilty of ‘well, you would say that’ creating suspicion that works against effective negotiation?

Isn’t it better to get to the root of these numbers, understand where they come from and what they actually mean?

So that we can present real solutions to real problems.

Or shall we just use them to support our own goals?

Stats without evidence are just bad marketing.

Thanks for reading.

Regards,

Greg