The best candidate for your open position may already be employed, but it is much harder to find these passive job seekers. Many, however, are willing to move to another position if they receive the right offer. Learn what it takes to find them, and what kind of offers are the most relevant.
16% of all people in the workforce are actively seeking new positions, according to the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. These people aren't difficult to find. They respond to your ads and come to the career section of your web site.
The other 84% of the workforce is made up of the so-called passive job seekers, and despite the fact that these people are contentedly toiling away elsewhere, you'd like to find some of them too.
According to the theory, the most desirable passive job seekers are too talented, too valued, and too content to be wooed elsewhere. This isn't exactly borne out by the numbers. They're as willing to jump at a valuable offer as the next one in order to escape a bad boss, a depressed market sector, or even a cold climate.
However, you have to find them first, and their standards and expectations for switching are markedly higher. They take a long term approach to career change; passive job seekers hold onto jobs three times longer than active job seekers.
This only makes them more attractive, inasmuch as they demonstrate loyalty and an immunity to being terminated. They need something extra to make them move. It's natural to think of extras in terms of salary and benefits, but you aren't trying to buy them, you're trying to attract them, so what are these extras?
How do you go about finding these people, and what motivates them to change? Here are some guidelines to consider.
The economy may be weak, or your resources may be limited, but you can't stop recruiting. Every day, passive job seekers are passed over for promotion, or they may see a treasured colleague move on to another company. They decide that they are tired of winter and want to live in sunnier climes. They may fall in love with someone in the city where you have a presence.
There are a hundred reasons for a passive job seeker to become an active one, and you have to be recruiting on that day. If the passive job seeker goes to CareerBuilder.com this afternoon as the result of a disagreement with his or her superior, you can't afford not to be there.
Passive job seekers tend to hunker down in difficult economic times, so you may have to frame economic and market issues for them. Are you good at positioning your client's positions as a positive move?
The weak dollar is lamented in the media, but the relatively weak dollar is a boon for companies that sell overseas. If your client sells products that sell well in Europe, you can frame the weak dollar as a positive for your company. Selling twice the number of earth movers in Asia as you did two years ago is an inspiring story to tell a recruit.
Your client might not benefit directly from increasing exports, but they may support that trend through transportation, or insurance, or shipbuilding. If your client benefits in any way from recession, inflation, or tight credit, turn it into a narrative. Everyone with a business degree knows that a hedge fund makes money on upticks and downturns, so the concept is familiar. If they can benefit from hard times, let them know.
As with any other part of your product, you have to be aware of new forms of distribution and new ways of meeting the candidate. In the case of recruiting, if they aren't coming to you, you have to go to them. Here's one example of where to find them.
Internet blogs are one important place to find and address new generations of passive job seekers. You may think of blogs as ill written rants by kooks and semi-literates, but there are many serious, intelligent professionals in all fields who write blogs on a weekly basis, and invite responses.
This kind of dialogue is highly valued by many young professionals, and you will find blogs for almost any field of business. Blogs about marketing are huge, as are technology blogs, but insurance and health care and finance and retail also have their bloggers.
Blogs aren't a sales opportunity, but they are a shot at representing your company in subtle and indirect ways. Even if you do blogging right out of your corporate PR office, you need to participate in a way that isn't explicitly PR. For example, if you are a recruiter in the retail industry and participate in a retail blog where they are decrying the level of customer service in big box stores, your best approach is not to join into the fray with a commercial message. Instead, make an actual contribution to the discussion.
Avoid disagreement and confrontation. Don't volunteer negative ideas or information – keep it positive. Reference your company if it makes sense to do so, but always remember that you are positioning your company as a potential employer, not arguing a point.
Bloggers don't appreciate people commercializing their sites, so stay on message and keep it adult, thoughtful, appreciative, and polite. Don't dominate, but have a presence. Wait for your best chance, and eventually the discussion will come to a point where you can make an impression.
Blogs are a highly fragmented form of communication, but they speak in a very direct way to the types of individuals you try to recruit. Once you have experience in blogs, create your own and draw potential recruits to you through dialogue.
In an era in which salaries and benefits are increasingly commoditized, issues that address employee wellness and morale are not only attractive to recruits, but actually decrease lost time and increase productivity. One good way to frame this discussion in 2008 is via green issues, which now go well beyond compact fluorescent light bulbs and recycling.
Going green is a conscious effort to improve the healthfulness and atmosphere of the work environment, driving costs down and productivity up. Energy savings are the most visible part of this picture, but the ability to attract and provide the best employees will increasingly involve the work environment.
Especially in tight labor markets where competition for the best and brightest is fierce, companies want to be on the leading edge of environmentally safe and efficient office space, not just for the highest paid producers, but for those who support them.
These workplace issues can be an important selling point in branding your client for potential employees. Studies increasingly show that there are real gains in wellness, morale, and productivity from environmental improvements, and even if you are not yet a believer in these things, you may be a believer in the placebo effect. These are benefits that you can sell to candidates, and these improvements in workplace environment are great fodder for public relations and recruitment campaigns.
Green issues are but one way to devise a separate brand for recruiting. If the corporate identity you use for clients and potential candidates is substantially the same, you may be missing out on a significant recruiting advantage among passive job seekers.
When looking at your options for hiring the best talent, do you choose to hire an intern or not? Consider these reasons why internships are a valuable way to find talent and qualtiy work for your organization, both immediately and in the future.
Interviewing should be taken seriously and anyone giving an interview must be prepared. Learn ways to run a more effective interview, asking great questions that can keep candidates on their toes, and allow you to learn more about your prospects.
According to a recent report by hrseo.com, 80% of job seekers begin their search on a search engine. How your organization's career section or career site is retrieved by these search engines determines the quality and quantity of candidates applying to your positions.