CONFIDENTIAL EMPLOYER: a hideout for employers with a poor image?
What are good reasons for not divulging a company’s identity during the recruitment process? A) The person that you want to recruit will replace someone who does not know yet that they are going to be dismissed… B) Recruitment is so strategic that if the competition finds out that the company is looking for a certain type of profile, the whole strategic plan will be revealed…
It’s rarely point B and only sometimes point A, but as a general rule, the title “confidential employer” more often than not serves to hide, conceal, and obscure the truth; the company you work for does not have a good image. By “not admitting who you are from the word go, you will receive a small portion of applications coming from people who do not wish to work for your company”. You will have a large sales job to do when you reveal your true identity (and it must be done at some point), not mentioning that some candidates could react badly if they feel they have been fooled. To play at this game is a sign that you are short of solutions…It’s thinking that you will receive more applications by concealing the company’s identity than by revealing it. What type of candidates do you think you will attract using such strategies???
Sometimes it’s the trouble with recruiting a type of profile which pushes the company to hide behind the “confidential employer” label. For example, last month, a placement agency preferred to hide behind this title rather than admit publicly that it was looking for “independent workers working on commission from home”. If only this agency’s clients knew how their business was treated…
Finally, one last reason and the most creditable for using the name CONFIDENTIAL EMPLOYER: To attract candidates who apply for the job and not for the company. Nice problem…Your image as an employer is so good that you want to recruit without its aid… Unfortunately, this explanation is somewhat rare…