In today’s highly competitive job market, it is your job as a recruiter to find job candidates from all different backgrounds and interests. This implies that it is your job to start posting job roles on various recruitment platforms and dashboards. Additionally, you will also have to get started with the interview process. If everything works out well, you will likely find an employee that fits the job role; however, these candidates landed the job because of their efforts – these are known to be active.
On the other hand, there are types of potential employees that are not counted when recruiting new employees for your company – these candidates are known as passive. This article will discuss everything there is to know about passive candidates.
Who Is A Passive Candidate? How Are They Different From Active Candidates?
As we have discussed briefly, the passive candidate meaning is a person who is considered for the job role; however, the individual has not been actively looking for the job role. It means that the person has not applied officially for the open job position, or may not even be looking for one. However, you, as the HR of your company, are still interested in adding the individual to your team; this makes the person a passive candidate.
Now, it is time for you to understand the differences between active VS passive candidates. On the one hand, you will have active employees who keep looking for jobs regularly via job boards, mailing job applications, and/or using their social media networks to find new job roles.
On the psychological terms, these candidates are very excited, expectant, or anxious about finding new jobs, which also depends on their life approach and circumstances.
When connecting with such people, you will notice that they are very receptive and always willing to chat. Even if they are not immediately available, they will try to connect with you as soon as possible. Since these candidates are very active, they hope to land a good job soon.
On the other hand, passive candidates are in another zone. They are quite the opposite of active candidates and will not even check the job boards for openings. Additionally, they may not even use their social media accounts to look for a job. The best these people do is keep updating their career-related social sites like LinkedIn.
When you try to get in touch with passive ones, you can either expect a ‘cool’ answer or a straight no answer.
Source: workable.com
You need to remember that these are just ordinary people. These cold calls from a recruiter will be shown the same skepticism as a call from an insurance company. If they find it uninteresting, these candidates may even cut the call within the first few seconds – this only means that they are not interested and do not want to know more.
Why Do Recruiters Think That Passive Candidates Are Better?
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They Are Less Desperate
One of the reasons is that they are not looking for a job currently. It means that they make more career-oriented decisions rather than on necessities.
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Candidates Are More Transparent
Since these people are not desperate for a job, they tend to be more transparent. Most of these candidates are already employed and have a secure profession. If you want them to join their company, you will have to provide certain incentives. These candidates tend to be very transparent and will let you know of the incentives they expect if they join your company.
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Quick ROI
Typically, passive candidates will try to align their own benefits with the job role they are looking for. With this, it will increase your company’s employee engagement. Hence, the candidate will bring in faster ROI. Additionally, they will also increase productivity and lower integration time. Moreover, the chances of a bad hire are less when it comes to passive ones. With SignalHire, finding such passive candidates becomes significantly easier — whether you’re targeting a specific role like a basketball referee or university talent partner, or seeking professionals from a particular company such as Allegiant.
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Better Fit For The Job
Passive candidates have earned a unique reputation in the market today – they tend to be better than active ones. Therefore, this could also bolster the reputation of your company. Statistically, these people are highly qualified and are currently not looking for a new position to improve their competencies or skill set. Hence, you will not have to spend extra time training these candidates for the job role.
Why Is Hiring Passive Candidates Easier?
It is very easy to learn how to engage passive candidates; in fact, the entire process is easier than you might think. Let us learn how you can do so:
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Finding The Candidates
The first step of this process is to look for passive candidates. You can use various social networking platforms like LinkedIn and post job openings. Your goal here needs to first build a rapport, after which you can start selling. You need to show your interest in talking to them and gain their trust. Only after that, you can start telling them about the vacant job opening.
Source: kurzsolutions.com
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Getting Their Attention
When you start pitching, ensure that you keep it short and sweet. You need to think like the candidates and look for things that would make them want to work with you. Like active ones, you need to get done with your research and be prepared.
Bring up topics that they find interesting; if you want, you can look through their social media accounts. Always try to show your interest first before you try to pitch the job post.
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Understand Their Requirements
If people are not looking for a job in the first place, there is no use in pitching the empty job role. One of the best ways to build a rapport with the potential passive candidate is to listen to what they have to say. However, it is just as vital that you let the candidate know whether their requirements can be met or not.
Once you are done with the research, you can start breaking the ice with the candidates. Getting your research done will allow you to handle the requirements of the candidates better.
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Build Trust
There is always a better chance of winning over a passive candidate if they think that you are trustworthy, and you care. Hence, you need to communicate to build trust with the candidate.
One thing that does not work out is sending a series of generic emails. You need to remember that these people either are already employed or do not want to be employed for the time being. Your job here is to make them feel like you genuinely want to approach them because you think they are experts in their jobs. Or else, they will simply mark your emails as spam.
Additionally, these keep receiving such emails from different recruiters. Hence, you need to put in some effort to create a personalized email to that they notice that you are trying to contact them.
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Make Them Understand Your Goals
Of course, while you are trying to entice the passive candidate to join your company, it is equally vital that you make it clear about your goals (or your company goals). This is very important because the candidate will be spending a lot of effort and time if they join your company.
There is a reason why these candidates may say no to your offer – they are already comfortable with their current location and job. Hence, you need to attract them to your company. Let them know how the job opening will benefit them. Also, let them know what you expect from them.
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Keep The Doors Open
Of course, engaging with passive candidates will require more work than with active ones. However, the process does not have to be complicated. You will have to get into the art of persuasion and use special convincing techniques. Yes, this work will definitely pay off. The reason why you should always opt for passive candidates is that they are higher-quality candidates.
Ensure that you keep all lines of communication open with them. Even though they may reject your job proposal at first, it is always possible that they may want to know more about the job post or get interested later. Hence, it is advised that you keep all doors open.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, recruiting passive candidates is often the best choice for your company. However, you will have some work cut out for you. You will have to put in some effort and time to secure the best candidates for your company. You will have to specifically tailor strategies to use social media, referrals, and various other tools like SignalHire to find the best candidates for the job. If you have any additional queries, do not hesitate to leave them in the comment section below.
