Blogs

Recruiting candidates is an art as it involves mixture of various techniques and tactics and a good amount of research to deploy right candidates to the right job. There are many people who are actively looking for relevant job opportunities and various recruiters target them to get suitable employees for the seeking firms.

A person who is actively looking for a job or job change is very easy to be convinced but the problem arises in the case of passive candidates. Finding and convincing a passive candidate can be very challenging for the recruiters as they are to be dealt with differently.

Who are passive candidates?

A passive candidate is the one, who is not actively looking for any job opportunity. They are employed and are quite choosy about the new opportunities.

The passive candidates can be satisfied with their current job, but they are still a great prospect for other employers who want to have employees for certain positions, especially when the candidate fulfills all the criteria needed for the job role.

It is challenging to approach such candidates, but it is also vital for successful talent procurement.

Why passive candidates are important?

With the venture of social media and other online professional and development platforms, the way recruiters recruit, and the way job seekers look for a job, has changed.

Professional platforms like LinkedIn has a huge user base of professionals from various sectors and domain. Around 332 000 000 people worldwide are using LinkedIn, with a new user added every 2 seconds. There are a lot of passive candidates on LinkedIn, around 75%.

To get the best of resources, you need to tap on the opportunities at the right time. Reaching out to those passive candidates can help you in getting useful resources that might prove to the best suited choice for a specific role.

How to reach for passive candidates?

While looking out for the passive candidates, you must consider the following things:

• Researching:
  • Information of the organization where the candidate is currently working
  • The time-period since the candidate is working in a company
  • The benefits received by the candidate his company (salary and other benefits)

  This will help you in determining the latent needs of the candidate and it would be easier for you to tap onto him/her.

• Increase your visibility:

  You should try to stay active on various platforms and should be known through your PR activities, company branding, etc., so that the passive candidates may notice you. If you are not active enough, such candidates won’t notice you and you might miss out on them.

• Take help of your employees:

  Employee referrals can also be sometimes beneficial. Ask your employees for probable candidates in their social circle, who they might think would be the best fit for a certain job role. If any passive candidate is a known of your company’s employee, chances are that he/she might consider you on referral of your employee. Your employees also serve as your brand endorsers.

• Make your job posting look interesting:

  It might sound funny, but it is true. Passive candidates aren’t actively looking for jobs. If a job posting is attractive or catchy enough to have caught their side, it proves as an advantage. Boring postings may go unnoticed. Work on your job posting content and presentation and make it appealing.

Advancing moves towards passive candidates:

Communication:

Every candidate is different and not all will be affected by the same strategy or form of communication. You need to know well about the candidate before approaching him/her. Reaching your candidate via phone, emails or any other format is what you will have to try to see which method works the best.

E-mails are one of the best methods to reach out to the candidates. You need to be innovative and creative while drafting the mails as interesting and catchy mails would grab the attention of the candidates. Always use a composed approach and never try to be aggressive or over-convincing.

Focus on building relationship with such candidates as they are already occupied with something else, they might not entertain you just any time. Try to be flexible with them.

Looking forward to meetups:

While this might seem a bit over the top, but it can work in your favor. Meet-ups like an expo, fests, conferences, etc. Can be your chance to reach out to such candidates and build prospects. Going to relevant events might help you approach desired kind of candidates.

Get to know the point of motivation:

For every person, the motivational factors are different. You need to understand the difficulties the passive candidate is facing currently at his/her current workplace and what could motivate him/her to switch to your organization. This is where the relationship building plays an essential role.

Social media is your weapon:

No talks on any topic can wind-up without mentioning about social media. Almost every organization, today, is on social media platforms. These are the excellent way of communicating with your target audience, globally.

Monitor your social media presence. Keep your information updated and in-sync on all the social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Social media helps you maintain your visibility and the same time enables you to connect to the passive candidates.

Making sure that the candidates are well-informed:

Engaging and informing the candidates is a very important aspect while hunting for passive candidates. Keep the candidates informed about the activities of your company, but do not give them overdose of the information and force them. Try to maintain a relationship with them and communicate.

Don’t try to be over-convincing:

You might badly want a candidate for your company but in the case, you are being too pushy or forcing the candidate, you might end up on losing him/her. Discuss the opportunity with them and keep the prospects open.

Keep your toes on the edge:

You must remember that you are always recruiting. Not necessarily every candidate is going to turn up when you have a vacant position. Some candidates might appear when you have no vacancy. Be prepared for all kinds of situation. Maintain a record of potential candidates and keep it for future requirements.

Passive candidates can prove to be a very beneficial resource for your organization and they should be approached tactically and smartly.

Turacoz Workforce Solutions is a medical staffing solutions organization, catering to US and Canada region. We believe in recruiting the right candidates for the right job and keep both employee and employer, satisfied. We understand the needs of passive candidates and also active candidates and are always working to fulfill them.

We offer temporary hiring services, temporary to permanent and permanent hiring services to the seeking firms and try to place the right person to the right job, benefitting both the employees and the firm.

January 21, 2019 By Aakanksha Pareek