Rather, it's about clearly identifying targets well in advance of incurring applicant tracking costs. It means knowing your customer before you make a sales call. The discipline itself is not new to high end Executive Search Firms. Their businesses have always been built on a well greased network of candidates. The game changes, even for these experts.
Shortages require long term management.
While the network approach works, the rolodexes on which it is built have to be larger. The relationships must exist of multi-year time lines. Candidate pools, built on solid personal relationships, become the core asset of recruiting enterprises. This is true whether you work inside or outside of a corporate HR environment. This means that advance research will be the discriminating factor between success and failure.