How to Recruit Passive Candidates: Recruiting passive candidates benefits your business by bringing in a wealth of experience and skills. The biggest challenge is overcoming their reluctance to change jobs. Our guide will show you how to recruit passive candidates and increase your chances of a successful hire.
5 Steps to Recruit Passive Candidates
Here are five steps to recruit passive candidates and level up your business.
Build Your Brand
It is crucial to build your brand and create a favorable workplace culture. You must appeal to passive candidates who are already employed at another company, so it’s best to demonstrate what they’re missing.
Most employers don’t understand the true value of job ads and recruitment emails, believing they can win candidates over with a few messages without clearly showing the benefits of their company. This is not the case, and as with most things, the more time and thought you put into your job ad or email, the better talent you’ll secure.
To build your brand, you have to have a clear idea of the company’s goals, objectives, and values. For example, today it’s important to express that your company is flexible, fair, and fun but doesn’t shy away from hard work. Managers must strike a delicate balance in showing this to candidates; they want to be convinced of the company’s offers.
After you’ve developed a mission statement, published a vision statement, and established your company’s goals, objectives, and values, you need to get the word out there if you haven’t already. Start posting job adverts across various platforms to build up your image, establish a positive reputation as a credible company, and show that you’re in business. Word will soon spread.
Start Searching for Candidates
Now comes the stage in the hiring process when you need to start searching for top talent. Most companies will have a different idea about what type of passive candidate they are looking for, but the technique to recruit them remains the same: from start to finish, you must woo them. In a nutshell, why would they want to quit their job, risk their financial security, and come and work for your company?
When recruiting, it is important to understand why certain candidates would be attracted to a position and to think about what elements of your company might appeal to them. For example, a workplace culture that works hard and knows how to play hard might appeal to candidates interested in socializing at the office while enjoying a lively working environment.
In order to successfully find a new hire, it can be helpful to reach out to candidates directly and ask them what they’d like to see in an employer. This approach might seem too direct, but it can kickstart the entire recruitment process, showing that you’re an employer that’s willing to listen—something they may have found hard to find.
To find out whether a candidate would be interested in a job, determine what the candidate thinks the company’s strengths and weaknesses are and what is most important to him or her. First, find out if they are someone who could contribute to the company’s needs.
Use Automation Tools
Automating the recruitment of passive candidates can benefit many organizations, from increasing their chances of success with these candidates to saving them time and stress.
Scientific and technological advances have enabled automation tools capable of locating passive candidates more quickly. These tools include artificial-intelligence-powered solutions, which are able to forecast successful hires better than managers themselves. The technology can even predict which candidates are most likely to want to switch jobs.
Build a Referral Program
Building a referral program can be fast and easy; even a simple program that requires employees to post your job openings on their social media pages can work in some cases. Just make sure you provide incentives for doing so, like financial rewards or time off, or even unique incentives like tickets to special events.
Gone are the days of simply pushing your jobs to the leading job sites. With an employee referral program, you can find excellent candidates who fit your company culture while reducing your sourcing costs.
It is critical for businesses to turn their employees’ networks into an army of influential recruiters; one way to do this is to reward employees when they develop a new hire.
Simplify the Application Process
Simplifying the application process for passive candidates is another way to attract them. Most companies assume that passive candidates will be happy to fill out lots of pages in their job application process. This is an assumption that fails to consider that passive candidates don’t strictly need a new job and are usually hesitant to jump ship if they have to sign up too much.
While it’s tempting to wait for the most active and interested candidates, passive candidates may also be a good fit for your company. And while they may not find leaving their current jobs right away as easy as some of your more active candidates, you can still learn how best to sell your position and make signing up as straightforward as possible.
When screening candidates, don’t rely on responses to open-ended questions that could potentially be answered by any candidate. Instead, give each candidate a set of specific criteria he or she should meet.
Automated applications can streamline the recruitment process and make it far more manageable. You will be able to sign and collect documents in a few clicks and send friendly reminders to passive candidates, keeping them on track without applying unnecessary pressure and scaring them off.