What is a passive candidate?
A passive candidate is someone who isn’t currently seeking a position but would potentially leave their current job for the right opportunity. The truth of the matter is that a significant portion of the workforce doesn’t feel happy in their current position and is silently looking for new opportunities. Employee retention efforts are a great way to reduce the number of passive candidates working for your business while you identify potential new hires who aren’t happy working for your competition.
The several types of passive candidates may include:
Ex-employees
If you stay in touch with those who’ve left your organization, it’s always possible to attract them back if you have an advancement opportunity for them. If you conduct exit interviews, pay attention to the reasons your ex-employees give for leaving so you know how you can motivate them to return.
Referrals
The people most passionate about their roles within your company are likely boasting about their amazing jobs to friends and family members. It’s possible to find potential recruits by networking with your happy employees and seeing if they know anyone who could be a good fit for an open position.
Cold candidates
These candidates have no connection to your business at all. You may find them on social media or through other people’s extended networks. Reaching out to these passive candidates is hit or miss, but you can narrow your field when searching social media sites for people who meet your requirements.
Where to find passive candidates
Employers implement many strategies to find passive candidates. You could consider some of the following sourcing techniques:
Reaching out on social media
When you reach out to candidates on social media, consider how your open position solves a need or desire they may have. One great example is to target people who’ve been with their current company for a while without any career advancement. You can attract them to your business with the offer of a promotion and new role that may get them past the hurdle they’re trying to overcome.
Building brand awareness
Another way to network with passive candidates is through brand awareness. Making more people aware of your brand increases the chance they’ll seek to learn more about your business and its core values. While this strategy takes a while to yield results, the candidates who reach out are much more likely to add to your company culture.
Starting a blog
Combined with search engine optimization techniques, a company blog can show people why working for your business is better than staying on with a competitor. People who subscribe to your blog will be aware of any job openings you mention in your posts and could reach out if you have a role that matches their skill set and qualifications.
Referral programs
Incentivizing referrals is a great way to get in touch with more potential candidates. It also makes your current employees much more excited about getting the word out to their contacts. It’s a good idea to brainstorm with your human resources team about what incentives would be most effective and how to implement and track the program.
Why should you stay in contact with passive candidates?
The key difference between passive candidates and active candidates is that passive candidates aren’t in a hurry to apply for a new position. When you’re interacting with this type of candidate, avoid pressuring them into applying. You should stay in touch so that when the opportunity presents itself, you’re fresh in their memory and they remember who you are.
It may take months or years to convert a passive candidate into a new team member, but it’s worth it when you’re targeting candidates who have the potential to be game changers for your business.
How to engage passive candidates and keep them warm
Some tips for engaging passive candidates include the following:
Do your homework
A passive candidate won’t care about what you have to say if you don’t show any effort. For example, if you found someone’s information on a social media account, highlight what you’ve learned when you send an email or text message. Instead of saying that you liked their social media account, give specifics. What stood out about them and makes you want to connect with them?
Give them something to care about
If you’ve done your research, you may have identified a few things you can use to attract a passive candidate to your business. If you’re not showing them how your company is the solution to those problems or concerns, they probably won’t care much about your efforts to sway them. If you hit on those pain points in the right way, however, it could make them reach out sooner.
Try to choose the best timing
As previously mentioned, you could use information such as whether a candidate has been stuck in the same position without opportunities for career growth for leverage. Other information that may indicate the opportune time to reach out includes if they recently added information to their social media accounts or updated their resume. This could signify the desire to begin actively hunting for jobs soon.
Be prepared to follow up later
There are many reasons your email, voicemail or text message could go unanswered. Sometimes it’s just because it gets buried beneath other messages or the timing wasn’t right. That doesn’t mean your passive candidate wouldn’t be interested if they decided to look for a new position later, so send an occasional follow-up message to stay relevant.
You could include important company news, employee testimonials or a link to a video that shows what your company culture is like.
Invite them to corporate events
Whether it’s a community outreach program, job fair or brand-building initiative, keep your passive candidates in the loop so they can attend one of your events if they want to. If you’re hosting a public event and a passive candidate shows up, they’ll meet their potential coworkers and build a personal connection.
Let them know when you have major announcements
Whether your business just hit a milestone, developed a new innovative product or attracted a large investment, let your passive candidates know why your business is successful. One of the reasons a candidate may seek a job with your company is because their current employer is struggling or underachieving, so showing them how your business is excelling could make all the difference.
