A lot of recruitment strategies focus on attracting active candidates: those who are already looking for a job. However, the bleak reality is that 75% of the workforce are passive candidates, meaning they are not actively looking for jobs even though they might be interested in new opportunities. Objectively, it makes no sense to focus your hiring efforts on just a quarter of the available pool of workers.
On the contrary, an ideal recruitment marketing strategy should take both passive and active candidates into consideration and build around them both. Recruitment marketing automation can help you attract those valuable and numerous passive candidates (wherein lies the best talent), making your recruitment efforts more effective and complete.
Here’s how—
1. Build Passive Candidate Personas
A candidate persona is a fictional profile of an ideal candidate for a specific role that is both detailed and data-driven. To attract passive candidates, it’s best to have a very precise picture of what is keeping them passive so that you can address whatever that is. Creating a passive candidate persona will help you figure out who it is you are targeting, but also whether your business is offering enough to grab their attention.
2. Focus on Remarketing
The thing is passive candidates can shift from being passive to active and back to passive. That means a candidate who is currently passive may have already visited your careers page when they were actively searching for a job. This is where remarketing can be pivotal. Recruitment marketing is an amazing way to remind previously active candidates that opportunities that they may have missed previously are still available to them.
3. Cultivate A Strong Employer Brand
The biggest difference between passive and active candidates is that passive candidates will almost never organically look for you as an employer. That means that it’s your job to reach them and make yourself known to them. A recruitment marketing company can build a strong employer brand for your organisation through marketing automation services. The stronger your brand is, the more noticeable you are to passive talent.
There is no shortcut for engaging passive candidates. It is a continuous process, a long-term investment that demands regular attention, time and effort. It’s all about having the right tools, getting your name out there, establishing your presence as a great employer and putting your hiring efforts to good use. Since passive candidates are an asset to the long-term well-being of your company, it’s worthwhile to attract and nurture them.
