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Finding Passive Candidates Through Talent Sourcing is Absolutely Critical
According to LinkedIn, 70% of the global workforce is made up of passive talent who aren’t actively job searching. In fact, we estimate that the number is now even higher given that unemployment has reached 50-year lows. That puts professionals in talent acquisition in a bind.
If companies want to reduce their time to fill and make better hires, they need a talent sourcing plan for passive candidates. In this blog, we’re going to walk through some essential tips for sourcing candidates who aren’t actively searching for a new position.
Use Different Social Media Platforms for Talent Sourcing
Let’s face it, LinkedIn has become a little oversaturated. In-demand candidates on LinkedIn can expect all sorts of spammy messages from recruiters. As a result, many candidates now ignore InMails as a habit or neglect to log onto to LinkedIn entirely. While it’s still an essential resource, it’s no longer the end-all-be-all for talent sourcing passive candidates. Active candidates may spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, but many passive candidates do not.
Intrepid recruiters and sourcers are now turning to other social media platforms to find passive candidates. For example, Twitter and Instagram are both great places for talent sourcing if you know where to look and how to use them. If you’re only on LinkedIn, you’re fishing from the same pond as everyone else in talent acquisition…it’s time to look elsewhere.
Personalize Your Message for Each Candidate When Talent Sourcing
As previously noted, in-demand candidates receive a lot of spam from recruiters bugging them about their new position. It’s become all too easy for candidates – especially passive candidates – to ignore recruiters entirely. If you’re looking to target passive candidates with your talent sourcing, you need to personalize your message for individual candidates.
Of course, you can automate this process to a degree. Oftentimes, we can use digital tools to automatically insert someone’s name and current company into a field within our message. However, if you’re still struggling to make contact or want to really make sure one candidate responds, take the time to go deeper with personalization. Talent sourcing works best when you reference specific details about the candidate and explain why you’re interested in them personally. It’s easy to tune out a message when you know the recruiter is contacting everyone in the tri-county area who has the right keywords.
Lastly, don’t oversell while talent sourcing passive candidates, because they’re not even looking for a job. You have to pique their interest first!
Work on Your Employer Branding
Like it or not, every candidate will research your company before taking the next step. In fact, most candidates will research the company before even deciding whether to respond to a message from a recruiter. It’s a big life decision for a candidate, and there’s never been more information online about potential employers. They can find information about your benefits and compensation on your career page and explore an inside look at company culture through Glassdoor.
If you want to get serious about finding passive candidates with talent sourcing, make sure your employer brand is on-point. Your marketing team should be working to promote your company as an awesome place to work and build a reputation as a great employer. Lastly, building a great culture will naturally go a long way toward great reviews on Glassdoor and more employee referrals.
Encourage More Employee Referrals for Talent Sourcing
Speaking of employee referrals, these are one of the best methods of talent sourcing passive candidates and active candidates alike. Referrals save you time and money on the recruiting side and statistically lead to much higher quality hires. Altogether, they’re one of the best ways to make hires. To get as many employee referrals as you can, start a referral incentive program by offering money or some other perk.
Of course, the downside to referrals is that they are often insufficient to meet all your talent sourcing needs. In these cases, you may need to look elsewhere to source more passive candidates…
Consider Third-Party Sourcing Services
Some companies are now offering “sourcing-as-a-service” (in reference to software-as-a-service). This lets you use sourcing when you need, how you need it to bolster your talent pipeline. Here at Qualigence, we help our clients with talent sourcing services that identify and qualify candidates.
We confirm their qualifications as well as their interest in the position so that your recruiting team can focus on what they do best, recruiting candidates. Furthermore, we can leverage our own in-house recruitment research team to identify large groups of candidates that other companies won’t find.
Passive candidates are the key to successful recruiting today. How does your talent sourcing strategy factor in passive candidates?
