How to source passive candidates successfully

Introduction:

Passive Candidates: How We Source Talent in Competitive Job Markets This is always typically a pool of highly qualified people. Talent acquisition professionals are required to prepare a strategic, innovative, personalized approaches to source-to-successfully source these candidates. Talent Sourcing Here’s a breakdown of the important steps to effectively source passive candidates, focusing on recruiting techniques, sourcing talent and utilizing modern tools and techniques.

What is Passive Candidate?

Before we get into sourcing strategies, let's define what passive candidates are. Passive candidates are ones that are not actively looking for jobs, so they are not browsing the job boards or applications like active candidates. As such, they tend to be high achievers in their current roles and could be inclined to change jobs if the right opportunity comes their way. Sourcing passive candidates can be a struggle because these are the people who are not easily found or actively quenched with your recruitment process.

Targeting passive candidates broadens your talent pool, you can find experienced workers looking for a new opportunity, and you have a lower risk of finding employees that are only interested in the position temporarily. But attracting passive candidates is not simply about posting ads or sending cold emails. It is something you have to work at with intention and mindfulness.

Utilize Social Media and Networking Channels

Social media and professional networking sites, particularly LinkedIn, remain one of the best ways to source passive candidates. These platforms draw data from more than a billion professionals in every field, many of whom might not even be looking for a job but would still consider a fabulous proposition.

When using LinkedIn, take advantage of the narrow fields you can input, such as location, industry, or job titles, to help narrow your searches to fit the people you want to reach who are in the positions you are looking to fill. Tailor your approach to establish genuine conversations that convey your value. Instead of sending a generic connection request, write a message to them, highlighting their skills, and why you see them as a good candidate for your company.

Utilize Employee Referrals

Active Employees as Source of Passive Candidates A strong employee referral program leverages the network of your current workforce to persuade them to recommend powerful candidates who may not be seeking a job but would be open if approached in the right way.

Provide rewards: Incentive people to refer others by providing them bonuses. And of course, create an internal culture that promotes cross-pollination and idea-sharing. Valued employees are more likely to provide you with references of passive high-quality candidates.

Concentrate on Fostering a Powerful Employer Brand

Sourcing passive candidates Dispersed employers you will need strong employer branding. Recruitment marketers need to start thinking in terms of establishing a company image that became a magnet for the crème de la crème candidates, even if they are not on the job market. Passive candidates are typically interested in organizations with an attractive company culture, defined career pathways, and a motivating mission.

Invest into employer branding, and highlight your company values, work culture, and success stories. Showcase your organizational culture through social media, your company website and to passive candidates through employee testimonials. And when passive candidates resonate with your brand values, they are more likely to consider your open jobs when the time is right.

Create a Targeted Outreach Campaign

Finding passive candidates takes a more personal approach than normal recruiting techniques. Rather than reach out with the same mass emails, try to learn about each person’s career ambitions, skills and interests. Before contacting potential candidates, do your research to make sure you’re providing them with something that adds value.

Use your outreach to share what makes your company unique and what growth you believe the passive candidate could find in the role you’re offering. Be honest about the demands of the job and emphasize how their unique skills will be appreciated. Personalized messages will demonstrate to candidates that you’ve done your homework, and are much more likely to lead them to engage in a conversation.

Create and Cultivate Talent Pools

Sourcing passive candidates is just one part of the bigger picture of your talent acquisition strategy — and while those may fill your near-term needs, you need to think about the long term as well. A talent key allows you to get acquainted with wall-mounted treasures when there is no work at hand. You now have a pipeline of passive candidates on standby for future recruitment needs.

Keep track of all the passive candidates you interacted with in the past using a customer relationship management (CRM) system or an applicant tracking system (ATS). Keep in contact with them via newsletters, job updates or industry news. This nurturing relationship ensures that your organization is front-of-mind whenever these candidates decide to pursue new employment roles.

Provide Value and Build Relationships

If you're recruiting passive candidates, your approach should be much more about building relationships than direct selling. For that, it’s important to build the trust and open up a dialogue, and not just pitch an open role. Talk about industry news to passive candidates and perspectives you found interesting for them, to lead to their career evolution.

You're known as an industry leader when you provide real value through networking and offer candidates things they find valuable, such as industry insight, professional development resources, or even skill-building advice. Passive candidates will feel more comfortable reaching out to you since they can trust in your market knowledge.

Network at Industry Events and Conferences

Meeting in person for networking is a great way to spot passive candidates. Networking events, trade shows, and meetups enable you to interact with strong candidates who would not actively look for a role but may be receptive to hearing about new roles. These types of events are great for networking, and for having meaningful conversations with potential future employees who might be an ideal fit for your company.

Network all the time — you should be doing it even if you’re not currently hiring. Developing a presence in relevant industry circles, increasing your visibility, and positioning your company as an attractive employer.

Adopt Data-Driven Recruitment Practices

Data drives modern recruiting more and more. Using data analytics tools, you can recognize trends and patterns among the profiles of successful candidates for specific roles. This guidance can inform your passive candidate sourcing strategies, helping you to improve how you reach the people you want.

Data allows you to focus your search on the profiles that best match the candidate you are trying to find — for instance, if certain education levels or particular skills correlate with the success of candidates in specific roles. This recruitment approach minimizes the number of people you contact who do not match the job requirements.

Conclusion

The process of sourcing passive candidates is somewhat more nuanced and requires proof of thought, a personalized approach, and the use of modern recruitment tools. If you would like to create a short-term talent funnel, use active recruitment techniques, social media, and LinkedIn to attract passive talent, and design conversion funnels for building long-term candidate relationships. Keep engagement with individuals in mind as you refine your sourcing skills; talent acquisition isn’t simply about locating existing talent to fill current roles, but rather building a repository of talented professionals who may one day prove to be contributing members of your organization.