A recent Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development report found 44% of talent acquisition teams were recruiting passive candidates as a means to cope with a difficult labor market. Another 45% of TA orgs said they were planning to reach out to “passives” too.
Fast-forward to today, and conditions are much the same they were around early 2020:
- The Great Resignation has yet to cease (and The Great Return has yet to commence).
- There remains a dearth of job seekers actively looking for new career opportunities.
- Recruiters continue to test new tactics and techniques to find top talent for job openings.
- Sourcing passive candidates for open positions is as important as ever for companies.
As we’ve discussed, recruitment marketing is an ever-evolving approach for talent teams.
But, one constant with recruitment marketing is the need to target passive job candidates (i.e., those who are not actively looking for a job) who are good fits for roles you can add to your talent pipeline (along with active job seekers — that is, your applicants).
That means you need to attract and engage these folks via multiple channels (e.g., social media, employee referral programs) in a speedy and smart manner.
That’s where targeted, personalized talent nurturing — and the need for an applicant tracking system that can help you provide a stellar candidate experience — comes into play.
Why attracting passive candidates is more critical than ever for talent acquisition teams
Roughly two in five recruiting leaders said their teams proactively identified passive talent and gauged their interest in potentially considering leaving for a new position elsewhere when the COVID-19 pandemic began, per our recent State of Recruiting Report.
However, these TA directors also noted this was simply exploratory outreach.
Translation? They had no intention of making offers to any potential candidates at the time. That’s because their businesses, like many others, paused hiring until external conditions improved. (Even if their job postings remained ‘live on their site and job boards.)
Rather, these talent acquisition leaders just needed to know there was an “appetite” among non-active candidates to potentially accept a job offer.
Why? So their teams were ready (i.e., had a robust talent pool of ideal prospects to engage) when requisitions started rolling in.
If you didn’t establish a passive sourcing strategy in these past few years — and, in turn, bolstered your candidate database with numerous qualified professionals of interest — like these talent directors and their recruiting orgs, it’s (well past) time to do so.
4 expert tips to help you and your talent team connect with (and convert) ‘non-active’ candidates
The pros of prioritizing passive job seekers (an oxymoron of sorts) in your recruitment marketing (e.g., delivering targeted messages to pros of interest on LinkedIn) are many.
But, you need to be savvy about how you pitch your roles to them. Here are some best practices to follow when reaching out to passive prospects regarding job opportunities.
1) Ask hiring managers what general worker qualities and skills they prefer.
Departmental leaders involved in your hiring processes and recruitment cycles certainly need the biggest say in what type of employee works best (no pun intended) for their teams.
Therefore, it’s in your talent team’s best interest to secure a list of wants and needs in prospective hires. Even if there aren’t any open reqs for their business units at the moment.
Why? Because, even without knowing specific job/role specs, you can get a high-level sense of what the ‘ideal employee profile,’ so to speak, looks like in the eyes of these hiring managers.
2) Learn what passive candidates look for in terms of careers and employers.
Just as you want to ensure you’re aligned with hiring managers on what to look for in prospective hires, you need to pay equal attention to what passive candidates desire in terms of their next position and the next company at which they’d like to work.
A 2022 Gallup poll of U.S.-based employees found 64% want better pay in their next job.
Moreover, roughly 60% of these workers said they need an improved work-life balance and the “ability to do what they do best” wherever they work next in their careers.
It’s this kind of data that can help you address candidates’ biggest pain points and must-haves.
3) Work with HR to differentiate your employer brand positioning/messaging.
Other employer-related preferences for passives (e.g., ability to work remote and for a business that prioritizes DEI) also factor into prospects’ decision-making about where to apply.
It’s considerations like these that must be front and center in your employer brand messaging.
The more you can differentiate your org from others, the better you can position it stand out from ones that don’t offer modern perks and benefits and a great company culture.
4) Know when to automate nurtures and manually reach out to each candidate.
The three previous tips all fall under ‘pre-outreach’ advice. When it comes to actually engaging passive candidates in your pipeline, you and your team essentially have two options:
- 1) Reach out to each individual prospect manually with custom-tailored messaging — based on all your legwork and research from the best practices above — to entice them to reply.
- 2) Automate your nurture messaging to passive candidates at the individual level and for segments of potential hires — both of which you can accomplish with ease using LeverTRM.
Look no further for proof of the importance of (and substantial ROI realized from) automated nurturing than the campaigns executed by Lever customers such as TextNow.
Both businesses have seen strong results from nurtures, thanks to Lever Nurture, which enables them to test things like the campaign schedule and number of touchpoints.
How targeted, personalized, well-timed nurturing can help you win over passive candidates
Regardless of where you find job seekers (or how they find you), you need a concerted candidate nurturing strategy that helps you move them through your funnel efficiently.
That is what LeverTRM users do daily: build, test, and optimize nurtures to steadily improve their open, reply, click-through, and conversion rates from active and passive candidates.
LeverTRM users have sent more than 5 million nurture emails to prospects using Lever Nurture. This has helped them engage their prospects in a more intelligent, streamlined manner.
“[Nurturing candidates is] no different to your sales pipeline,” Secure Code Warrior Global Head of Talent Nathan Reese said about Lever Nurture. “How you take customers through your sales journey should be no different to how you take your candidates through your hiring journey.
“[T]he fact that Lever introduced Nurture years ago,” Nathan added, “gives me an abundance of confidence in how far ahead of the competition they are.”
Download our candidate-nurturing eBook today to discover how you and your talent team can automate your personalized outreach at scale and convert more qualified prospects.
