Passive employees are those that are not actively looking for work, but they might be interested if the right opportunity were to arise. Employers often target passive job seekers because of the lack of qualified job candidates to fill critical roles. Locating and successfully luring passive job seekers are critical for organizations to remain competitive in a tight labor market.
To target passive job seekers, follow the steps outlined below to get ahead of the competition.
Step 1: Strengthen the organization’s employment brand
If your employer brand needs some bolstering, consider taking the following steps:
- Become a good community citizen by sponsoring community events.
- Provide opportunities for employees to donate their work time to volunteer or help in community projects.
- Invest in a social media expert who can get your employment brand noticed.
- Use advertising for employment brand initiatives as well as product branding.
Step 2: Assess current and projected staffing needs
To target the right passive job seekers, you must understand your organization’s current and projected staffing needs. Conduct a staffing assessment that can identify current and anticipated gaps in the organization’s workforce, including knowledge and skills as well as retirements and company growth based on the company’s strategic plan.This analysis will help determine which passive job seekers should be targeted and what relationships need to be built for future positions.
Step 3: Source passive job seekers
To find passive job candidates, look where those candidates look and go where they go, both physically and virtually. There are many different groups within social media platforms that are great for finding highly specialized talent. Other ways to source passive job seekers include cold calling candidates and keeping an eye on other organizations for employees who might be persuaded to move to the company you’re representing. (This may not be applicable for those working in roles with non-compete contracts)
Other ways to source passive job seekers include:
- Blogs. Many organizations are increasingly using blogs to source passive job seekers.
- Employee referral programs. Employee referrals remain a popular way to identify passive job seekers, so if you have not implemented or updated your referral program, now is the time.
- Social media. Again, social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and other professional or association network sites or industry specific forums, are rich landing places for highly specialized talent.
Step 4: Engage passive job seekers
To keep passive job seekers interested, it is necessary to establish an ongoing relationship with them.
Keep in mind that passive job seekers are generally happy with their current job and will not be willing to leap into another job without serious consideration. This makes relationship building a must when trying to engage passive job seekers.
That relationship must be built over time. Don’t pressure passive job seekers to move quickly. To start building the relationship, engage them with authentic communication, whether that is through phone calls, email or LinkedIn.
Another way to build on that relationship is to understand what passive job seekers want to know. They want to understand the company culture, the employee experience and the job. This is where having a strong employment brand is important. Passive job seekers will likely take a look at Glassdoor and similar sites to see what current and former employees are saying about the organization.
Step 5: Make the application process easy and tailored to passive job seekers
The last hurdle in targeting passive job seekers is to convince them to apply for the job. To do so, consider making the application process easy to complete. Online applications that require excessive information or that are not designed for mobile access may discourage job seekers from completing the application.
Finally, when you get to the interview stage, there are a few things not to do when dealing with passive job seekers:
- Don’t question them as though they are active job seekers. Don’t ask “why should I hire you?” This may turn off passive job seekers.
- Don’t expect that they have conducted extensive research about your organization—remember, you came to them, they didn’t come to you.
- Don’t try to lure them with a similar job. Lure them with a job that offers additional responsibility or the opportunity to develop new skills and abilities and an increase in total compensation.
The ability to target passive job seekers is a must to remain competitive in your industry. With many employers moving to allow remote work, the pool of specialized talent increases exponentially.
Hopefully this article has inspired some new ideas to stay ahead of the game on hiring passive job seekers. Most importantly, don’t forget that once you’ve hired those highly desired employees, do everything you can to make sure they are welcomed with a great candidate experience so they can enjoy many years with the organization.
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