Recruiters are often in need of active candidates to quickly fill positions, and look over passive candidates that could be of value for future positions.
According to Glassdoor, There’s a strong case to be made for balancing the two approaches: recruiting active candidates for open roles today while actively building a passive candidate pipeline for future roles. But in order to do that, you need to strategically deploy different tactics that resonate with each candidate type.
Here are six tips that can help you build a recruitment strategy that attracts both active and passive candidates for the best possible mix:
Tactics for Reaching Active Candidates
Active candidates are hunting for a job and just as interested in finding a new role as you are in filling one. If you want to be effective in reaching the best possible active candidates for your job openings, keep these three things in mind:
1. Be Visible
First, make sure you’re visible to the candidates you’re interested in. Find out where they go online and invest your marketing budget in ads and outreach specific to your audience.
2. Look the Part
As you pursue visibility in the right places, make sure the message you’re putting out into the world is attractive to prospective active candidates.
3. Have Something to Say
A key part of your active candidate recruitment strategy needs to be refining your job description, messaging and intake content when a candidate finally reaches out.
Tactics for Building a Passive Candidate Pipeline
Most passive candidates are already employed and do not want to — or contractually cannot — change jobs. That’s why the key to recruiting passive candidates lies in paving the way for a long-term relationship. Because while it might only be a matter of weeks before you fill a role with an active candidate, passive candidates average three to six months — and can require as many as 8-15 touch points to become active and decide to switch jobs.
Here are three key things to consider when making an effort to fill your talent pipeline with passive candidates:
1. Start With Forecasting
Recruiting is a notoriously reactive field in which recruiters are tasked with filling roles quickly and on short notice. That might work for active candidates who can hop on a company’s time table to fill a role, but passive candidates require more planning to make the timing work out.
2. Research Your Target Audience
When you’re engaging passive candidates, don’t just blast inboxes with job descriptions out of context. Take the time to get to learn about the motivations and experiences of the candidates you want to recruit, then use that insight to create content, ads and visuals that will appeal to them.
3. Track the Conversation
Once passive candidates start engaging with your content, keep an eye on what catches their attention. Use that information to inform your next move, which might involve adding more of a certain kind of media or rewriting or removing unpopular content.
No matter how hard you work on forecasting your talent requirements, recruiting will inevitably remain a continuous business need that is difficult to plan for. Balancing active and passive candidate recruiting approaches allows you to fill the roles that need to be filled while slowly and purposefully building a cost-effective, long-term candidate pipeline.
Original article here.
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