Passive vs. Aggressive

I had a conversation with a headhunter who spotted my profile on LinkedIn. Because my employer monitors the Internet, I feel the need to say that it was an inbound communication (I’m not actively job-seeking) for a position that wasn’t of much interest (the firm isn’t “serious” about its Internet operations), so no worries. But that’s beside the point …

The point is that during the course of our conversation, he gave me a good grilling to gather more detailed information about my experience. And though the conversation wasn’t ultimately productive, he gave me a bit of advice about my profile: specifically, that there is a lot of information hidden behind the generic descriptions of the positions I’ve held, and that I should consider updating my resume to expose more information about specific results of my activities.

That thought stuck with me a while, and I began working offline on a more compelling profile, a task I eventually abandoned because I’m generally satisfied with my present company and am not aggressively job-seeking just now. My profile, such as it is, is just a place-holder, which reserves a seat for an unknown future time.

What occurred to me is how similar this is to the reasons I was unable to take interest in the position he was offering: the company’s Web site is merely a place-holder with some general information about its product offerings, fairly well done, but seeming to rely on prospects with an active interest to come to their site and dig for the information that would compel them to become customers. And the company doesn’t seem to have any genuine interest in changing that, as evidenced by the size of the resources they are willing to allocate.

Since then, I’ve been looking at Web sites through a different lens, which I’m sure will wear off after a while and I’ll go back to the usual routine, but while it lasts, I think it’s important to record this observation: the majority of companies online seem to have Web sites that engage in this same form of passive marketing, as if they’re waiting for a highly motivated prospects to show up and dig around for the information that will convert them to customers. And it could well be that, with a little work, they can re-tool their messaging to significantly improve their conversion rates.

But perhaps, like me, they are generally satisfied with their current customer base, feel they are making as much income as they really need, and aren’t really interested in aggressive growth. Though I doubt that many of their executives would say as much, their actions speak louder than words.