A job posting goes live, the applications trickle in, and a few weeks later the hiring manager is staring at a stack of resumes that mostly do not fit. Nobody in the stack has actually run the kind of search, category, or platform migration the role calls for. Meanwhile, the person who has done exactly that, twice, is sitting at a desk somewhere else, not job hunting, not on LinkedIn at 2 a.m. browsing openings, and never once seeing the posting at all.
This is the quiet problem behind a lot of eCommerce searches that drag on far longer than they should. The posting itself was fine. The channel was the issue. Most of the strongest eCommerce talent at any given moment is not actively applying anywhere, and a hiring process built entirely around waiting for applications is, by definition, only reaching a fraction of the people qualified to do the job.
Most Qualified eCommerce Candidates Are Not Looking
The people best suited for a senior eCommerce role, someone who has scaled an Amazon catalog past eight figures, led a DTC brand through a Shopify Plus migration, or built a retail media program from scratch, are usually employed, usually performing well, and usually not thinking about a job change on any given Tuesday. They are not lazy candidates or hard to convince. They simply are not looking, which means a job board posting never reaches them no matter how well it is written or how widely it is distributed.
That does not mean they are unreachable. It means reaching them requires a different motion than posting and waiting. A passive candidate who is not browsing job boards can still be very open to a direct, well-timed conversation about a specific opportunity, especially one that solves a problem in their current role they have already been quietly frustrated by.
| Pool | Where They Are | How They're Reached |
|---|---|---|
| Active | Job boards, applying directly | Job postings, careers page, job board distribution |
| Semi-Passive | Browsing occasionally, open to a conversation | LinkedIn visibility, referrals, recruiter outreach |
| Fully Passive | Not looking, not browsing | Direct outbound, warm introductions, existing recruiter relationships |
What It Actually Takes to Reach Passive eCommerce Talent
1. Warm referrals and internal networks
A referral from someone the candidate already trusts, a former colleague, a current team member, a manager from two roles ago, carries far more weight than a cold message from a stranger. Asking the existing team who they know from past roles, conferences, or industry groups is the lowest-cost way to surface passive candidates, and it is consistently underused relative to how effective it is.
2. Direct, specific outbound outreach
Outreach that works does not read like it was sent to two hundred people. It references something specific, the candidate's actual background, a platform they have worked in, a category they know well, and makes a clear, concrete case for why this particular role might be worth a conversation. Generic templated outreach gets ignored by exactly the kind of high-performing, frequently-contacted candidates a search is trying to reach.
3. Employer visibility, before a role even opens
A passive candidate who has seen a company show up credibly in their feed, through team content, leadership visibility, or a strong reputation in the category, is far more likely to take a call when outreach finally arrives. Building this kind of visibility takes time, which is exactly why it works best as an ongoing habit rather than something started the week a search opens.
A posting is one channel reaching one segment of the market, the people actively applying right now. For a niche or senior eCommerce role, that segment is often small, which means a posting-only strategy is structurally limited before it even starts, regardless of how the posting itself is written.
A passive candidate who is happy in their current role needs a real reason to engage, and a templated message with no specific reference to their background gives them nothing to respond to. The response rate difference between generic and genuinely personalized outreach is large enough to change the outcome of an entire search.
By the time a posting has clearly underperformed, weeks have usually already passed. Building a short list of passive candidates in parallel with, or even before, a posting goes live keeps a search moving instead of stalling out while waiting to see if applications materialize.
On most of the Director and VP level eCommerce searches we run, the candidate who ultimately gets hired was not actively job hunting when we first reached out. They were sourced, not applied.
Building a Pipeline Before You Need One
The hiring managers who struggle least with this are the ones who treat passive candidate awareness as an ongoing habit rather than a fire drill. That can mean staying loosely in touch with strong people met at conferences or through past hires, keeping a running list of names that come up in conversation, or simply paying attention to who is doing notable work in the category even when there is no open role to offer them yet. None of this requires a large time investment week to week, but it requires starting before the search is already overdue.
For most hiring managers, running a full outbound sourcing motion on top of an already full role is not realistic, which is usually the point where outside help starts to make sense. A recruiter who has spent years building relationships across a specific niche, Amazon, DTC, retail media, Shopify Plus, already has a working list of passive candidates rather than starting from zero. If a search has been open for a while with limited traction, it is worth understanding whether the issue is the role itself or simply the channel reaching it. For more on what a realistic search timeline looks like, see our post on eCommerce hiring timelines, and for a look at what it actually costs to get a hire wrong, see the true cost of a bad eCommerce hire. If you want help reaching the candidates who are not on any job board, reach out directly, or learn more about how we approach every search through our direct hire recruiting page.