Passive candidates make up 70% of the workforce. With the right approach, there is an abundance of potential talent you can tap into. Let’s explore how you can gain a deep understanding of your target talent segments, adopt proactive recruitment strategies and leverage technology to open the door to finding hidden talent.
1. Understanding your target talent segments
Defining your target talent segments and personas will allow you to gain a deeper understanding of passive candidates and tailor your approach.
Acknowledge passive candidates’ needs
Understanding passive candidates’ unique needs and motivations is the first step in developing effective strategies. Passive candidates often prioritize financial and job security. They are comfortable with the ‘known’ of their current work situation and can be apprehensive about the ‘unknown’ of new job opportunities. Understanding their needs will allow you to address them, building comfort and trust, leading to less resistance to change.
Identify the right channels
Knowing where your target candidates spend their time online and what channels they use can help you reach them more effectively. What social media platforms do they use? Are they part of any industry specific forums? Would they be involved with professional associations or groups? Use these insights to inform what channels you should leverage to reach them.
2. Promote your unique employer brand & culture
Your employer brand is your company’s reputation as a place to work. It’s one of the most powerful tools in attracting passive candidates. A strong, positive employer brand can make your organization stand out as an attractive prospect to those not actively job hunting.
Share engaging content
Consistently sharing engaging content can build awareness of your employer brand and keep you front of mind for passive candidates. Don’t be afraid to be different, try new ideas and content that will set you apart from the competition. Get creative with engaging videos that showcase your workplace, employees, projects, and company events. Highlight your company’s vision, mission and values, as passive candidates are attracted to organizations whose purpose is aligned to theirs. Don’t underestimate the power of blogging to provide thought leadership, industry insights and employee stories to engage passive candidates.
Leverage employee advocacy
Your current employees are the best advocates for your business. Encourage employees to share their positive work experiences on social media. Authentic employee testimonials and user-generated content can significantly influence passive candidates. Feature your employees’ success stories and achievements to showcase career growth opportunities within your company. Create a team hashtag to encourage sharing company initiatives and team events.
3. Use proactive sourcing strategies
Proactively sourcing talent will enable you to build a broader, and often higher-quality talent pool that you can tap into when the need arises, meaning you’ll never be faced with starting from scratch with zero candidates
Use referral programs or alumni networks
Leveraging your existing networks is a highly effective way to source passive candidates, often leading to better cultural fit and higher retention rates. Implement structured referral programs that reward employees for referring successful candidates to maximize results. The program could extend to your alumni network who can speak to working for your organization.
Capture talent on your career site
Your career site is your central source for linking content to showcase what it is really like to work at your organization. Ensuring that your career site has the functionality to capture visitors is crucial in getting passive candidates into your talent community. Clinch customers have increased candidate conversions as much as 212% through intelligent career site functionality. By enabling candidates to join talent communities and sign up for job alerts, and leveraging smart exit CTAs to capture those about to leave the site, you can ensure you capture visitors even when you don’t have a suitable vacancy at the time.
Attend events or host live chats
Engaging passive candidates through events and live interactions can build relationships and showcase your company’s expertise. Attend and sponsor industry conferences, webinars, and meetups. These events provide opportunities to connect with professionals who may not be actively looking for a job but could be open to new opportunities when tapped on the shoulder. Hosting live chats and Q&A sessions using platforms like Clinch Employee Connections are a great way to interact with potential candidates, answer their questions, and provide further insights into working for your company.
4. Keep passive talent warm
When it comes to top talent, you need to be prepared for the ‘long game’. The right fit might not be right now. A candidate relationship management (CRM) system allows you to build and nurture relationships with potential talent for conversion at a later date, so when the time is right for prospective top talent, you’ll be an ‘instant yes’ in their eyes.
Tailor and personalize messaging
Personalized communication can help break through the noise when reaching out to passive candidates. Customize your messaging to highlight specific aspects of the candidate’s background and how they align with opportunities at your company. Mention any common connections or interests to build rapport. Maintain ongoing communication even if there’s no immediate interest. A well-timed follow-up can reignite interest when circumstances change for the candidate.
Use automation to streamline communications
Leveraging recruitment CRM capabilities can help manage and streamline your engagement efforts with passive talent. Use automation to schedule and send follow-up messages, ensuring consistent and timely communication. Implement email campaigns that provide regular updates about your company, industry news, and latest career opportunities. Clinch CRM reduces recruiter workload with ‘ready to go’ pipelines of talent.
Inform your strategy through analytics
Monitor the engagement levels of your outreach efforts to understand what resonates with your target audience. What social posts and emails are getting the most traction? What content are they engaging with on your website? Clinch’s heat map technology can help you identify what content visitors are engaging with (and what they’re not) to optimize your landing pages. Continually adjusting your proactive strategy, with a data-backed approach, to engage passive candidates will boost your effectiveness.
Take these first steps towards effectively attracting and engaging passive candidates, ensuring a robust pipeline of qualified candidates to meet your current and future recruitment needs. Remember, the key is to build lasting relationships and create an environment that passive candidates find compelling enough to consider, even if they aren’t initially looking for a change. Back your approach with the right technology and analytics to effectively find, engage and convert hidden talent.
