Passive candidates are people who are typically already employed and not actively seeking new roles, but may be open to new opportunities and potential career advancements. You can often find them via social media platforms, LinkedIn, or employee networks and referrals.
Recruiting passive candidates can be valuable to your company, as they often bring experience and skills that make them ideal for certain roles. Once hired, they also tend to stay with companies longer. Keep in mind, however, that you may have to offer passive candidates more to leave their current role for a position in your company.
Passive vs Active Candidates: A Comparison
Recruiters and hiring managers should approach passive candidates differently than active ones. Passive candidates require more personalized outreach and engagement strategies to pique their interest in a new role. This may involve networking events, targeted social media campaigns, or even direct outreach through LinkedIn or email. In essence, you need to sell your company to passive candidates—show them why they would want to work for you.
Active job seekers, on the other hand, are people who apply to open job advertisements, either on a company website, a job board, a local paper, or in person. While your job descriptions should target these job seekers and show them why they should want to work for your company, active job seekers are usually trying to show you why you should hire them.
Although most passive candidates are not actively searching for a job change, many will casually—or passively—look at job boards, network, and snoop around within their industry to see what opportunities are out there. This is important for hiring managers to know, as there is typically more work required to get the attention of passive job seekers.
How to Recruit Passive Candidates
Hiring new employees is always a time-consuming task. However, knowing how to get in front of passive candidates that can fill complex jobs will make your team better. Here are some of our recommended best practices for recruiting passive candidates.
Establish a Strong Company Brand
Most passive job seekers will check out your company once contact is made (even if they have no desire to make a move). Curiosity will demand that they click on your company’s website and social media accounts.
If you have not established a solid employer brand, make that change today. Ensure that you have the following set up before courting passive candidates:
- Your company’s main webpage should promote your company, what it does, and how it is changing the world.
- Your career page also needs to be beefed up with a listing of benefits, its corporate social responsibilities (CSR) initiatives, and other attributes that promote a top employee work experience.
- All your social media platforms need to be dynamic and engaging for multiple cultures and generations.
Source Passive Candidates
Finding passive candidates goes beyond posting your job opportunities on LinkedIn, Indeed, your website, or other job boards. Passive candidates are not monitoring these institutional job boards because most of the time they are not even looking at what is available in the job market.
To diversify your recruiting strategy so you find the right employees, consider implementing the following:
- Use your company’s social media platforms: Even though passive candidates are not looking at job boards, they may be signed up for your company’s newsletters, blogs, social postings, and so on. Social media is also the best method to use to reach out to make a first contact.
- Post your job opportunity internally: Letting your employees in on what is going on and that you have an exciting opportunity to fill will get multiple stakeholders (i.e., your employees) working on your behalf.
- Use LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions tool: This tool allows you to launch a vast search within LinkedIn’s database using artificial intelligence (AI). You can expand your searches beyond your personal LinkedIn connections and have access to over 830 million LinkedIn members. Once you find a passive candidate, you can contact them via InMail.
Limit Application Requirements
If your recruitment ad requires a lengthy application—regardless if it’s online or otherwise—then you may lose the interest of passive candidates that favor companies that don’t require such measures.
Having candidates fill out an employment application helps weed out people who are not truly interested in your company (by requiring them to expend extra effort to fill the two-plus page application). However, if you want to capture passive candidates who may be dynamite opportunities for your company, ditch the employment application or find a way to remove it from the initial step in your recruitment process. Their employment history, skill sets, and overall experience are all listed on their resume, which is all you need to begin assessing them.
Find Their Motivator
In addition to being flattered, passive job seekers will need a reason to give up their current position to come join your team. Having said that, everyone is different and has different needs and priorities—and it is your job to find their driving motivator. What is it that they want more than anything that they are not getting from their present employer?
Typical motivators include:
- Better compensation
- Increased benefits
- Remote work and/or a flexible schedule
- Work/life balance
- Opportunities for advancement
- Better fit for skillset
A survey conducted by Gallup in early 2022 stated that 64% of job candidates are seeking higher pay and better benefits than their current positions offer. In fact, they say it is a critical factor in their decision of whether or not to accept a job offer.
Ask for Referrals
Employee referrals remain the most direct, reliable, and speedy way to hire passive job seekers. If you are talking to an employee who is a great team member and has a wonderful skill set, it stands to reason that any friend or acquaintance they refer for a job would share similar qualities.
Set up a referral program that offers a bonus for referring a candidate that gets hired. Amounts can range from $100 to a couple of thousand dollars for a successful referral (typically a new hire who is still with the company after 90 days).
Get a Jump on Recruiting
One of the hardest things to do is to keep your mind open to seeing amazing talent when you are presently not in need of it (that is, you do not have any open positions). However, this is the best time to seek out and court passive candidates for the future. Think of planting seeds as your goal for your first point of contact.
After getting a referral or finding someone on social media channels, you should reach out to introduce yourself and your company, as well as describe the potential opportunity for them. End your dialog with a comment such as:
“I understand you’re not currently looking to make a career move, but my job is to find the best talent possible for <XYZ Company>. I’ve identified you as someone with the skills and expertise we’re looking for. If you are interested in learning more about our company, please let me know.”
Long-term investment (frequent, no-pressure check-ins over time) is often required to get the passive candidates worth waiting for.
Benefits of Hiring Passive Candidates
Passive candidates are important for your business because they represent more stable, longer-serving employees and often have solid and experienced skill sets. This makes them valued assets for their present employers and appealing additions to your team.
Some other benefits of looking into hiring passive candidates include:
- Larger Pool of Candidates – When you look for passive candidates to recruit, in addition to active candidates, you open your search up to a larger pool of potential hires. Adding passive candidates to your options can more than double the number of qualified candidates you are looking for when filling open positions.
- Easier Screening for Hard-to-fill Positions – Many employers with a position that requires someone with unique skill sets end up experiencing breakthroughs when they focus their best efforts on passive candidates within the industry.
- Higher Retention Rates – Employees recruited as passive candidates tend to remain longer with their company than those recruited through other means. This may be because there was more careful consideration by the candidate (as well as the employer) due to the luxury of getting to remain with their current employer if an opportunity isn’t just right.
According to a 2023 Global Talent Shortage report, nearly four in five companies across the globe find it difficult to locate skilled talent. Over 30% of these companies are looking at new ways to fill their talent pools (which could include passive hiring).
Drawbacks of Passive Candidate Recruiting
Although recruiting passive candidates has benefits, there are also some challenges and drawbacks to consider. These range in scale and can end up costing your company time and money.
For instance:
- You may put a passive candidate through the interview process only for them to decide they want to stay with their current employer.
- Your company may appear to be “stealing” the competition, which could affect your branding if you seek candidates who are employed elsewhere and not looking for a new job.
- A professional employee that is established at their current company may be harder to convert. This could mean having to offer the passive candidate more in terms of total compensation (salary plus benefits and bonuses).
Bottom Line
To successfully recruit passive candidates, it takes work and time to solicit them. It is important to keep in mind that these candidates are not actively looking for a job, so you will need to put in a little extra effort to find them. Utilize all of your resources, including social media, job boards, and employee referrals, to find the best candidates. And be patient—it may take some time to find the right person for the job.
