Recruiting Passive Talent in the Great Resignation

 

How to turn passive candidates into new employees

The Great Resignation has completely reshaped the talent landscape. As more people leave their jobs, organizations are in fierce competition to hire for their open roles.
 

According to iCIMS “2022 Workforce Report,” job openings increased 86%, hires increased 46%, but applications dropped by 11% from Q1 2020 to Q4 2021. What does this mean? Simply posting a job opening and hoping qualified candidates apply is no longer a viable recruiting strategy. These days, recruiters have to think and act more like marketers, leveraging best practices, proven techniques, and technologies to land the next candidate.

The Great Resignation has also been described as the Great Aspiration. Now more than ever, people are thinking long and hard about what they want in their career. Many people believe the right opportunity is out there but aren’t actively applying to jobs. This segment of the talent landscape—called passive talent—is open to new opportunities, even if they aren’t actively looking.

Engaging passive talent can help you overcome today’s hiring challenges. Instead of waiting for candidates to come to you, you can proactively pursue qualified candidates, learn what they want, and share how your opportunity aligns with their values.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to meet your hiring goals with a passive talent engagement strategy and what it takes to land passive talent.

Pre-engagement: Provide a positive employee experience

A survey from Harris Poll and CareerArc found that 32% of people considering leaving a job just haven’t found the right opportunity yet. Since passive candidates are already employed, they’re not going to take just any job. They’ll only move forward with the opportunity that is right for them.

Numerous studies indicate that compensation is not the only factor in determining if someone is willing to accept a new role. People also value work-life balance, flexible work options, career advancement opportunities, and inclusive work environments, depending on the talent segment.

So how can you communicate to passive talent that your organization checks all the boxes that matter to them? As a recruiter, you may already understand how important it is to have an employer brand that highlights the benefits of working for your organization. Before you engage passive talent, you should be clear on your employee value proposition and include that messaging on your careers website and other public pages that candidates may visit to learn more about your company.

But more importantly, your organization needs to deliver on those promises.

Why? Passive talent places far more trust in the employee reviews on Glassdoor, Indeed, LinkedIn, and social media than in your employer brand messaging. Before they commit to an interview, they want to get a sense of what it is really like to work for your organization and they look to your current employees for that insight.

Your employer brand—and the employee experience that supports it—are the foundation of your passive talent outreach. Before you consider engaging passive talent, work with your leadership and people teams to ensure the employee experience is meeting expectations and run an internal campaign to increase positive reviews on employee review sites.

Pre-engagement: Understanding your passive talent audience

Every talent segment you recruit is different from the next. Start by analyzing talent data to learn who makes up your talent audience and what makes them tick. Use this data to create a profile of your ideal candidate and craft messaging that piques the interest of the talent you engage. There are three types of talent data you should analyze—talent market data, talent sentiment data, and internal talent data.

Talent market data

Talent market data provides an overview of the candidates who make up the talent segment. Examples of what you can learn about candidates from talent market data include:
• How many match the role requirements
• Where they live
• The different job titles they have
• The companies they currently work for (aka your talent
competitors)
• The companies they previously worked for
• Their educational background (majors, degrees,
universities attended)
• Diversity representation
• Their years of experience
• Their years in current role

Use this data as the framework for your ideal candidate profile. What skills does your ideal candidate have? How many years of experience do they have? What’s their educational background?