What is Passive Candidate Recruitment?
We are now in a situation globally where there are more job vacancies than talented people to fill them and employers are starting to think more creatively about how best to target their recruitment resources. As a result of this, many are employing passive candidate recruitment. This is essentially targeting people who may not be actively job seeking at the moment but would be willing to jump ship if a job offer with better conditions or pay was offered to them.
This can really turn how we think of candidate recruitment on its head. The traditional model of posting a job advert and then waiting to see what the response is like before producing a shortlist to take forward for the interview looks slightly dated in comparison. The bottom line is that this is an employees market and recruiters need to adapt how they have traditionally done business in order to engage with the best talent in their industry.
What are the Benefits of Passive Candidate Recruitment?
Passive candidate recruitment has many more potential candidates than active candidate recruitment and bypasses the usual job boards and online CV marketplaces. You are able to reach further into the talent pool and can therefore find people who may never have actively applied for a job if you had advertised it using traditional methods. Having access to all of the best talent across your industry can be a huge boon for a company and if you make the right offers, you can vastly improve the calibre of people you are recruiting.
Passive Candidates are Experienced
Passive candidates tend to have more experience and greater levels of skill to bring to your company because they are already employed in the job roles that you are looking to fill. This means that there should be less initial training needed before they can start to do the job that you have for them.
These candidates also tend to have worked in the field longer and are more adept at fitting into company cultures and knuckling down to work. This means that fewer hours should be lost due to clashes over company culture and people who feel that their face doesn’t fit for whatever reason.
How can we Recruit Passive Candidates?
There are several ways to recruit passive candidates and companies who work hard at preparing to do so will do better than those who go into the process blind.
Cultivate a Strong Brand
In order to succeed in recruiting passive candidates, it is important to cultivate a strong employer brand. You can help to do this by leveraging testimonials from current staff about what they like about the company and the culture. Maybe sit down for some Q&As with current staff and record the best testimonials that they produce. Your employers aren’t obligated to take part but those that do so willingly can really help with your brand image and your projection of a positive company culture.
Projecting your company culture is an important way of reaching this target audience. They may have been at the same company for years and the office culture might not be great, so showing them that the grass is greener in this respect on your side of the fence may make the decision to leave their current employer easier.
A positive company culture can definitely be a deciding factor when all other things are equal and can be the final piece of the puzzle needed to help people make the decision to move from the job they currently have. It takes away a lot of the worry and uncertainty that comes with applying for a new job, if they know they are moving to somewhere welcoming.
Personalise the Message
When it comes to approaching the people you wish to recruit, you should be sure to personalise the message, taking into account the skills they have and any details that you have on record about their previous employment. This is an essential component in making them feel valued and pursued by your company. It almost goes without saying that you should be prepared to offer them better conditions and/or remuneration than they are receiving in their current post. Most people won't want to give up a current, secure job unless you can offer them something that looks like it is substantially better in some way that matters to them.
LinkedIn Recruiter
This is where the networking website LinkedIn truly comes into its own for recruiters. LinkedIn Recruiter allows for the targeting of passive candidates who have shared the skills that they have online. This allows potential employers to search on the skills they require and find the people that they would like to interview on that basis.
This is an excellent way to identify people who may well fly under the radar otherwise and it can really help to find the top talent in the relevant areas, whatever their current job title happens to be. There are also certifications that individuals can take on LinkedIn so that they can have their skills in certain areas verified by the platform and these should show up on the profiles of those who have used them to date.
Sharing via Social Media
Another way of recruiting passive candidates that works well is to ask current members of the team to share widely across their social media. Using the premise that “birds of a feather flock together”, many people already working in a field will have a wide network of people who are in similar occupations to them. Taking advantage of this situation means that it is possible for the message to reach quite widely into the community that is being targeted.
Social shares from friends of those people who have shared the job can help to spread it exponentially amongst qualified people. This takes the pain out of getting the information out far and wide and getting it placed directly in front of the people who need to see it.
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