Tools For Recruiting Passive Candidates | IQTalent Partners

Studies show that nearly 70% of working professionals classify themselves as passive candidates. These candidates are ones currently working at an organization and are not actively searching for a new job. But, these candidates are a golden opportunity for recruiters to grab highly talented individuals.

When recruiters expand their strategies for engaging with and recruiting passive candidates, they widen their talent pools and enable themselves to source from a list of workers who have already proven themselves to be competent and successful in their roles. So it’s clear that your recruiting efforts need to include strategies for attracting and nurturing passive candidates, but how do you get started? Below we’ve broken down three tools you can use to refine your passive candidate strategies.

1. Career Sites

Chances are, most of your top-quality passive candidates are going to be using a few different career sites or job boards to keep their professional portfolios updated. One of the most popular of these sites is LinkedIn, with over 740 million members. It’s no wonder that 87% of recruiters use LinkedIn to engage with candidates for open positions. The broadened talent pool and heightened access to passive candidates means that you and your recruiting team can create connections with talented workers and build rapport even outside times when you are actively hiring.

Aside from LinkedIn, many modern job seekers use social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to research, engage with and apply for jobs. The benefit of leveraging social media for recruitment is that hiring managers can easily get background information about any given candidate. Still, it can be challenging to wade through the clutter. Since a person’s social media profile is the culmination of curated pictures and posts, it can often paint a biased picture of a candidate. While social media recruitment is a cost-effective solution, recruiters should be mindful of this when reviewing candidates.

Take your recruiting strategies one step further — It can be tricky keeping all your conversations and interactions with candidates in order. Consider using a career site engagement bot to help you manage your candidate interaction and outreach.

2. External Recruiting Partners

The hiring process can be lengthy, and sometimes you just don’t have the time, capacity, or knowledge to source and recruit top passive talent. That’s where an external sourcing or recruiting firm comes into play. Bringing expert knowledge and extensive professional networks to the table, a sourcing or recruiting partner helps alleviate the burden of finding and engaging with top talent. This means that your hiring managers can spend less time weeding through applicants and spend more time evaluating and interviewing the best candidates.

One of the biggest advantages of using an external recruiting partner is the amount of time you can save when hiring for open positions. Many of the best recruiting partners not only source candidates for you but will also take the time to run background checks to screen for potential bad hires. This helps you find high-quality candidates and fill your open positions faster. The average time to hire for professional-level positions can be 4 to 5 weeks! Finding a good sourcing partner can cut that time by 25% or more.

However, an external recruiting firm is not the best choice for every single organization. External recruiting firms come as an added expense, and depending on the cost structure of the firm you use, these expenses can quickly add up. Another thing to consider is that an external firm lacks firsthand knowledge of your company culture and employer brand. This means that there could be a disconnect between who you want to hire and who your recruiting firm sources. Before investing in a third-party recruiting firm, you and your hiring team should weigh the costs and benefits to see whether it is a wise investment for your organization.

3. A Talent Exchange Network

Talent exchange networks are growing in popularity. Acting as a one-stop source for passive candidates, talent exchange networks like IQTalent Xchange work to simplify the task of finding top talent. How does it work?

IQTalent Xchange takes the stress of finding top talent off your shoulders. We spend our time finding the best passive talent on the market, leaving you more time to engage with and build relationships with candidates. Drawing upon connections from over 300 million working professionals, IQTX is not just another job board but a talent marketplace built to help you find the best hire for your job.

The IQTX advanced marketplace assists organizations who want to research a list of qualified candidates, or who need assistance with candidate engagement, and those who are interested in support for their diversity hiring efforts. As the only talent exchange marketplace where you provide the candidate profile and keep all the candidate data, IQTX can deliver custom results to your needs within five business days. What’s more, IQTX helps you know which candidates are the best fit by ranking each one according to your specifications.

Need some more help with recruiting passive candidates? We’ve compiled a list of best practices and tips to help you get started on your journey.

Passive candidates are often your best bet for finding highly qualified talent quickly. But it can be tricky to get them interested in leaving their current job and coming over to your organization. However, with the right tools in place and the right strategies for interacting with these working professionals, you can create a hiring strategy that consistently provides you with great hires that mesh well with your organization’s culture. For more information about how IQTalent Xchange can help you research and recruit qualified passive talent, reach out to our team of experts and see IQTX in action today.