Passive Candidates Part 2: How To Exploit The Passive Candidate Talent Pool

We’ve talked previously about how 25% of people are actively looking for a new job, and a huge 60% are open to new opportunities and are willing to talk to recruiters. However, most consultants don’t seem to be aware of this, and simply recruit from recent candidates and applications. If you want to provide your client with the very best talent, then you need to start exploiting the large pool of passive candidates. Here are three ideas to get you started.

Network

 

business and networking concept - social or business network

 

If you recruit in a particular niche, such as accountancy, IT or professional services, then networking is one of the most powerful tools that you have at your disposal. Attending relevant events, get-togethers and roadshows are a great way to increase your knowledge of the sector, but also to meet great candidates. Most of the people you meet won’t be there with the intention of looking for a new job, but talk to people, take their business card and make a few notes on it when you get chance about what they do and what their skills are.

Once you’re back in the office, you can add them as a ‘potential passive candidate’ to your CRM or a spreadsheet. When you’re struggling for candidates for a particular vacancy, they might just be the perfect fit for the role, and you can refer back to your meeting when calling them. According to the Linkedin study referred to in our previous blog, statistically there’s only a 15% chance they won’t be interested in talking about the role.

Mine your candidate database

 

Businessman Searching Candidate With Magnifying Glass

 

Are you making best use of your candidate database? When you get a vacancy, along with the applications you get from the job boards, how far back do you go when looking at people you already on the books? Of course, the more recent the registration, the more chance they are still in the market for a new job. If you’re struggling to fill a vacancy though, it is worth going back as long as you have to, to find someone with the right skillset. You might have had no contact for several years, but recruitment is about conversations, and as mentioned previously, according to the Linkedin statistic quoted in our previous blog, they should be open to talking about the vacancy.

As a side note, calling old candidates and getting updates as to what they are doing now is a great task for your office junior or apprentice. As well as giving them great experience on the phone, it’s amazing what opportunities can be uncovered. That trainee you spoke to 5 years ago might just be about to start their own business…

Make the most of Linkedin

 

recruiter lite

 

Linkedin is amazing for recruiting passive candidates. As well as joining and engaging with relevant Linkedin groups, you really should get a Linkedin Premium package. Their Recruiter Lite solution is a great place to start and will enable you to contact candidates directly with InMail. You get 25 each month and you can use these to send messages to candidates that you aren’t connected with. Recruiter Lite also gives you access to eight search filters that are exclusive to Linkedin Premium members, thus enabling you to hone in on the candidates with exactly the right skillset that you require.

We’d love to hear your experiences of recruiting passive candidates, why not leave a comment below?

Till next time,

Cheryl

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