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Passive candidates, also referred to as “passive sales,” are companies that have the ability and interest in buying your company’s stock but don’t need help from you. This is a different type of candidate than an active one, who needs assistance or leads from the recruiter to increase their business activity. Here are some tips on how recruiters can attract these passive candidates:
Passive candidates are people who have the skills and experience to do a job, but are not actively seeking employment. They may be looking for work, but they don’t have time to search or apply for jobs. Recruiters can use some of these passive candidates’ skills and experience by recruiting them. Read more in detail here: passive candidates recruiting.
Passive candidates are persons who are generally employed, highly qualified, and aren’t actively searching to quit their current positions, but would consider switching if the perfect chance presents itself. Employers seek them out for a variety of reasons, including their superior retention rates and sheer numbers. You’ll need to use a combination of techniques, including employee recommendations, artificial intelligence, and your present workers, to attract them in the same way you would an active applicant.
What’s the Difference Between Passive and Active Candidates?
There is just one major distinction between active and passive job searchers. People who apply for vacant positions your firm posts online, such as on Indeed, Monster, ZipRecruiter, and your organization’s website, are considered active job hunters. Passive job prospects, on the other hand, aren’t actively hunting for work but could be interested in joining your firm if lured and appropriately motivated.
Although the majority of passive applicants are not actively looking for a new job, many may look at job boards, network, and probe about within their field to see what chances are there.
This is vital for hiring managers to know since passive job searchers need more effort to get their attention than active job hunters because they do not apply to job advertisements.
Consider ZipRecruiter if you want to attempt a job board that will help you gain the most exposure. With only one click, you may publish your available jobs on 100+ employment sites. Sign up for a free account now to begin posting jobs.
ZipRecruiter is a website where you may find jobs.
Active vs. Passive Job Seekers
Why Is It Important For Your Business To Attract Passive Candidates?
Why should you worry about passive applicants, particularly if they aren’t interested in your firm and you have to go out of your way to find them? That is an excellent question. Passive candidates are crucial for your company since they often represent more stable, longer-serving workers as well as people with established and seasoned skill sets.
Positions that are difficult to fill
Passive applicants, on the whole, are happy in their existing jobs to varying degrees, thus they aren’t actively hunting for new jobs, which makes them valuable assets for their current employers. In particular, (1) the employee has skill sets that the business need, (2) the person is not actively seeking to quit the firm, and (3) the employer may concentrate their recruiting (and retention) efforts elsewhere within the organization.
This gets us to our point: Many businesses that do have a plan for obtaining passive applicants do so because they have “difficult to fill” jobs. Many companies that have a job that needs someone with specialized skills find success when they concentrate their efforts on passive applicants in the sector.
Increased Retention Rates
Employees who were hired as passive candidates are more likely to stay with their organization for a longer period of time than those who were hired via other methods. This might be owing to the candidate’s (as well as the employer’s) luxury of being able to stay with their existing employment if an opportunity isn’t just right. Because opportunities are analyzed so closely, passive applicants’ job transitions are more likely to pay off for all parties involved.
A Larger Candidate Pool
Another reason your organization should be concerned about the illusive passive candidate is that, according to LinkedIn, passive candidates account for around 70% of the worldwide workforce, while active applicants account for just 30%.
Many of the passive job searchers with whom organizations have contact are enabled via existing employee networks. According to LinkedIn’s data, more businesses are turning to their internal organizational (employee) networks to find passive candidates, assuming that exceptional workers have acquaintances or friends in their network that are similar to them.
There’s also the matter of the kind of employee you’re searching for. According to ManPower, in most professions and sectors, attracting the attention of entry-level to mid-level passive job searchers is simpler than capturing the interest of an executive-level passive job seeker.
Senior-level managers, directors, and executives, according to ManPower, submit considerably fewer applications proactively than early career-level professionals.
Part of the rationale for the skewed data indicated above, particularly the higher number of passive candidate movements in entry-level to manager-level jobs, is that such positions are much more plentiful than vice president and executive-level positions. This viewpoint is shared with you to highlight the kind of positions in which you are most likely to find success while recruiting passive applicants. Executive-level passive job searchers certainly exist, but they need a longer-term job transfer glide path (planned or not).
How to Recruit Passive Candidates Successfully
Recruiting new personnel is a time-consuming process. Knowing how to get in front of passive applicants who can complete challenging roles, on the other hand, will improve your team. It’s the difference between firms that thrive and those that fail in this quest. Here are some pointers on how to locate those elusive passive candidates:
Create a Strong Company Image
Once you’ve established contact with passive job searchers, they’ll look into your organization (even if they have no desire to make a move). They will be compelled to visit your company’s website and social media profiles due to their curiosity. Are you quite positive you know what they’ll find?
Make the necessary changes to your employer brand now if you haven’t already. Before wooing passive prospects, make sure you have the following in place:
- The primary homepage for your business should advertise your business, what it does, and how it is changing the world.
- Your career website should also include a list of perks, CSR activities, and other characteristics that enhance the employee work experience.
- For diverse cultures and generations, all of your social media channels must be active and interesting.
Diversify Your Passive Candidate Recruiting Strategy
You will fail if your aim is to just list your job openings on LinkedIn, Indeed, your website, and other job boards. Passive applicants do not watch these institutional job boards since they do not look at what is available in the job market most of the time.
Consider using the following to vary your recruitment approach and attract passive candidates:
- Use your company’s social media platforms: Even if passive applicants aren’t searching for work on job boards, they may have signed up for your company’s newsletters, blogs, and social media posts. Social media is also the ideal way to reach out and create first contact.
- Internally, post your job opening: Multiple stakeholders (i.e., your workers) will act on your behalf if you let them know what’s going on and that you have an exciting position to fill.
Use LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions Tool (think ‘AI’) to find the right person for the job.
LinkedIn offers a feature that has the potential to be a game-changer. LinkedIn Talent Solutions is a tool that enables you to do a broad search inside LinkedIn’s database. This is the kind of artificial intelligence (AI) in which we advise investing.
You get access to over 690 million LinkedIn users and may broaden your searches beyond your own LinkedIn connections. LinkedIn provides 20+ intelligent and user-friendly search filters and suggestions. In addition, LinkedIn’s new “Find more people who like” tool allows you to construct a search based on suitable prospects you may already know. This is one of the most effective methods for gathering passive applicants with whom you may wish to connect.
You may contact any LinkedIn user through InMail straight from your LinkedIn Talent Solutions tool when you’ve found passive prospects you’d want to connect with. You may choose from a variety of customizable templates to swiftly contact applicants using InMail.
There is no need to fill out an employment application (paper or online)
The most important tip we can provide you is to pay attention to an aspect in your recruiting process that is typically disregarded (and one that not everyone agrees with). We can tell you from experience that if you expect passive applicants who see your job post to fill out a long application, whether online or otherwise, you will lose top talent to competitors who do not.
We understand that having prospects complete an employment application helps you sort out those who aren’t actually interested in working for your firm (by requiring them to expend extra effort to fill the two-plus page application). If you want to catch passive prospects that may be great fit for your firm, get rid of the job application or find a method to eliminate it from the first phase of the hiring process; this implies only final round applicants should fill out applications. Their work history, skill sets, and general experience are all mentioned on their résumé, so you can start evaluating them right away.
Pro Tip: Accept their résumé and maybe a cover letter as their only requirements for applying for the job.
Speak in Their Tongue
Passive job searchers, in addition to being charmed, will need a compelling cause to leave their present position and join your team. Having said that, everyone is unique, with their own set of requirements and priorities. It’s your responsibility to figure out what motivates them. What is it that they really desire from their job that they aren’t receiving right now? The data below show the top five priorities for getting a passive applicant ready to make the transfer.
To speak the language of your preferred applicant, you must first understand what your company’s superpower is. (Image courtesy of Pandologic.com)
Do Not Make Any Attempts To Rush Passive Candidates
If you need to fill a job quickly, it’s usually preferable to avoid the “passive applicant” option. Most passive applicants are aware that they have the option of pondering the concept, waiting for the ideal moment, or bargaining for a better benefits package (if you are negotiating). Because these applicants are frequently not in a hurry, if your organization is short on time, use the more conventional option, where you have greater control over the recruiting, interviewing, and hiring procedures.
Consider your initial point of contact to be the sowing of seeds. You might contact out to introduce yourself and your organization after receiving a reference or locating someone on LinkedIn.
You may close the conversation by saying something like, “I realize you’re not seeking to make a move right now, but my job is to discover the greatest people for my organization.” I’ve recognized you as someone with the abilities we’re searching for based on my study. Please let me know if you’re interested” (word track partially borrowed from Insperity).
Long-term investing (regular, no-pressure check-ins over time) is often necessary to find the passive prospects worth the wait.
Inquire about referrals
Employee recommendations are still the quickest, most direct, and most reliable approach to hire passive job searchers. If you’re speaking with an employee who is a terrific team player with a diverse skill set, it’s reasonable to assume that any friend or acquaintance they recommend for a job would have similar attributes (as the proverb goes, “birds of a feather flock together”).
Employee recommendations that result in new recruits are 70 percent more likely to stay with the organization than non-employee referral hires. (Image courtesy of icims.com)
Set up a referral program that pays out a bonus for successfully suggesting a candidate. Bonuses may vary from $100 to several thousand dollars for a successful referral.
Before you need them, recruit passive candidates.
One of the most difficult things to accomplish is to keep your busy mind open to perceiving incredible skill when you are not in need of it right now (that is, you do not have any open positions). This is the greatest moment to look for and attract prospective passive candidates. You might call this conduct “passive employer” since you’re the one casually discovering brilliant folks and passing along a business card or a lunch invitation.
Because you don’t know what your passive candidate’s demands will be in the future, this is purely a networking and relationship-building endeavor. Let them know that you like their abilities and would want to contact them in the future about a potential cooperation or a unique job opportunity. The aim is to pique the person’s interest in your company and make them desire to learn more.
Conclusion
Candidates that are passive are easily overlooked. It takes effort and time to seek them out. There’s no guarantee that your efforts will pay off. Believe us when we declare that none of these facts are important. There is no statistical advantage to a corporation that effectively attracts the attention of passive applicants and finally hires them. You will not always be successful, and some will take a long time (or wooing), but your efforts will surely be worthwhile.
A passive candidate is someone who is not actively looking for a job but would be happy to hear from you. A passive candidate will usually appreciate being contacted by email and can be recruited through the use of a “passive candidate email template.”
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