Silver Medalist Candidates: Leverage the Power of the Runner-Up

When there are multiple competitors vying for a single, top winning spot, at the end of the contest we tend to focus our attention on the ultimate winner, forgetting about those who may have come in a (sometimes very close) second place. During most Olympic events, the top three finishers – not just the decisive winner – are awarded. Why? Because it’s recognized that just because you didn’t finish first, doesn’t mean you aren’t still one of the top elite performers in your event. In fact, several countries determine an athlete’s future Olympic qualification based on past performance history.In the staffing world, the concept of silver medalists is used to identify candidates that were considered for a position but weren’t ultimately selected – your second place finishers. Similar to previously-competed Olympic athletes, Silver medalist candidates are valuable to your staffing organization because you (and they) have invested heavily in preparing and qualifying them for a position, but they have not yet been placed.

silver-medalist-blog-photo-1.jpgToo often, once a candidate is not accepted for a position, recruiters will simply place them back into their (many times bottomless) resource pool. When a new position presents itself, they will rely on sourcing new candidates from external posting responses, job boards, and new leads overlooking their existing candidate database, which could provide qualified candidates that are closer to the dollar. Silver medalist candidates will have already been screened, internally interviewed, pre-onboarded, assessed and perhaps even referenced and client interviewed. Silver medalist candidates are actively engaged with your staffing brand and are primed for placement, making them an obvious go-to talent pool. Further, recruiters can proactively pitch silver medalists to clients without an open position (aka skill marketing) because they have so much knowledge and detail about the candidate.

By tracking silver medalist candidates in your ATS and prioritizing them for placement, you will reduce your average time to fill and cost per hire.


Erecruit Pro Tip:

By using an Erecruit tag to denote silver medalists, recruiters can visually identify silver medalist candidates wherever they are in the application – these high value candidates are visible when finding candidates that match a position and viewing a candidate record.

How to track and leverage Silver Medalist candidates in Erecruit:

  1. Have your System Admin or Erecruit create a Public Tag labeled “Silver Medalist” and color code it Silver and add a workflow to automatically remove the “Silver Medalist” tag once the candidate has their first placement
  2. Train recruiters to add the Silver Medalist tag to a candidate when they are rejecting Matches on a newly filled position
  3. Show recruiters how they can see the silver medalist tag when searching for candidates and filling positions
  4. Train recruiters on how they can filter the database to find silver medalists so they can easily skill market
  5. Encourage recruiters to show the Silver Medalist tag in saved searches

Silver Medalist from erecruit on Vimeo.

Contact your in-house Erecruit System Admin and In-house trainer to implement this Erecruit Best Practice or contact Erecruit to find out more about our staffing software.


Sara Moss is the Vice President of Staffing Best Practices for Erecruit. Sara is responsible for helping staffing firms evaluating, implementing and running Erecruit to increase operational efficiency, improve service levels and maximize their return on technology investment. Join her in conversation on Twitter, LinkedIn and smoss@erecruit.com.
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