In Simple Words
Imagine an art gallery broker who knows a collector's aesthetic taste and pitches a rare painting directly to them before it ever goes up for public auction, prompting the collector to buy immediately even though they were not actively browsing the market that day.
Small and medium firms in France
- No proactive agency outreach
- Almost no unsolicited candidate profiles
- Proactive agency outreach
- About one extra profile per firm
Trial contact outcome during the initial intensive months. Profiles were proposed without a declared vacancy. This does not separately measure latent demand.
See source →Research question
Employers often possess unarticulated or latent hiring needs but delay posting formal job vacancies due to administrative overhead or uncertainty regarding local candidate availability.
Participants
N = 7,438 small and medium-sized enterprises in France across 129 local employment agencies.
Study Design
Monthly longitudinal tracking of counselor-initiated candidate profile presentations during a 3-month intensive prospection campaign.
Results
Treated firms received nearly 1 additional spontaneous candidate profile push per firm from public counselors compared to control firms which received virtually zero (a 488% jump in total counselor interactions including spontaneous profile pitches, p < 0.01), effectively uncovering latent job demand.
Takeaway
Equip employment counselors to proactively present pre-vetted jobseeker profiles directly to firm managers without waiting for an official vacancy posting to trigger hiring.