6 Ways to Engage Passive Candidates
As a small business owner, engaging passive candidates for positions you’re looking to fill can be an important strategy. There are many reasons for this, the main one being that passive candidates – those who are happy with their current jobs and aren’t actively looking for a new job – often possess more skills and experience than those who are actively looking for jobs.
This may be especially true when it comes to your small business. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, small businesses have more employees (based on percentage) with a high school education or less, and larger firms have more employees with bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Get in on that talent when they aren’t necessarily looking for a job with a small business like yours by learning how to engage passive candidates. Here are six options for doing so:
1. Use Social Media
It’s no surprise that social media like Twitter and Facebook is one of the top ways to engage passive candidates in today’s job environment. Everybody’s got an account, so why not use that to your advantage? This recruitment strategy has worked out particularly well for companies like Starbucks, which uses Facebook and Twitter to turn fans into partners (employees).
Social media can help you in several ways. Use social networks like LinkedIn to get information on potential employees, and use other social networks to brand not just your business but your employment. You can use social media to talk about the various challenges your employees are meeting, and you can even throw out job opportunities on your social media network to reach a larger pool of potential candidates for free.
2. Create a Company Blog
Have your employees write blog articles on what they’re currently working on. This can showcase your business and the benefits and challenges you bring to your employees. It can also help brand your business for potential employees as well as for customers. Showing your business as a great place to work can be one of the best ways to bring in passive candidates who are already relatively happy with their current jobs.
You may also want to provide industry news on your company’s blog. This can keep potential employees coming back for more information every day. Help them stay on top of the latest standards and news, and once you become their favorite source of information, they’ll view you more favorably and will be more likely to read any job postings you put on your company’s blog.
3. Write Enticing Job Descriptions
If you don’t know exactly what a potential job is going to entail, passive candidates are going to pick up on that. Remember, these aren’t people who are actively searching for jobs. That means they’re not going to jump on – or even consider! – a job with a poorly thought-out and poorly written job description.
If you’re not much of a writer, consider hiring a freelancer to write job descriptions for you. Just make sure that you spend plenty of time nailing down exactly what the job will entail and then talk over the details with your writer to make sure you get a job description that is both accurate and enticing.
4. Contact them Personally
When you find some passive candidates in whom you are interested, try contacting them personally, either through email or on the phone. Often times, they’ll be willing to speak with you, even if they aren’t currently looking for a new job. The key here is to be personal and to be genuinely interested in the person you’re speaking with. You may not get them to come to your company right way, but you could end up having a good conversation that will lead to a hire-on later down the road.
5. Targeted Email or Mobile Updates
Provide potential candidates with job updates through email or on their mobile devices. The key here is not to annoy every passive candidate by showering them with updates about jobs that aren’t relevant to their skill set or interests. Instead, target job updates so that they only go to individuals who may be truly interested in the jobs that have come up at your company.
6. Offer Presentations
Finally, you can continue to make yourself valuable to employees in your industry by offering free certification, training, or presentations on industry-related topics. This can be a good way to get passive candidates in your door, where you can have face-to-face conversations with them about the benefits your company has to offer them in exchange for their work. Your business can seek to run federal or state certification courses, or you can just host experts to present on industry topics in an informal environment.
7. Use a Recruiter
Does this sound like too much to do and run your business? Recruiting is a specialized field and the talent management experts specializing in your business sector can take the weight off of your shoulders. From actively recruiting talent to maintaining an ongoing relationship with thousands of passive candidates, recruiters can find and bring on-board the valuable human assets that your business needs, when you need them.
About the Author
Daniela Baker is a small business blogger and social media advocate at CreditDonkey, a credit card comparison website.