Most of the time, the people you’re looking to fill those critical jobs are already employed. This means that they aren’t actively searching for a new role and don’t have any inclination to constantly update their online profiles.

Even so, passive candidates are desirable because it’s unlikely that they are interviewing with other companies. They tend to be more honest about their capabilities and experiences too.

Identifying and engaging these experts is going to be a huge challenge since they are content with their current work. There’s no guarantee that they’ll respond to your outreach. Even if they do, it may be to tell you that they aren’t interested in your offer or that they don’t like your approach.

If you don’t know how to properly source these types of workers, you’ll only end up wasting your resources as these professionals slip through your fingers. It’s going to be even more frustrating if you find out that they really ended up leaving their job but for another recruiter.

Learn how to persuade these top talents to join your organisation instead and grow your candidate pool. Here are proven strategies to gain and keep the attention of passive candidates.

Use Facebook and Twitter

LinkedIn has long been used as a recruitment tool by companies that it has become oversaturated. Facebook and Twitter are good alternatives with billions of users to choose from.

The former allows you to manually search for people through creative queries like “writers who live in the Philippines”. Meanwhile, the latter has an advanced functionality that enables you to look for profiles using industry-related hashtags like #webdesign.

Leverage Newer Platforms

Increase your chances of finding a quality candidate by being on more social networks. Platforms like Snapchat, Reddit or Instagram aren’t as popular for headhunting so there are fewer recruiters to compete with.

While they don’t have the search capabilities of LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook, they’re useful for showcasing your company culture to attract the attention of prospects.

Initiate a Referral Program

Your current employees are always a good source of new talents. Maximise their personal connections and networks as they might know the perfect people for vacant roles. Essentially, it turns your entire team into recruiters, thereby taking some of the burden off your brand and outreach.

Although you might think providing rewards and incentives increases costs, it actually diminishes them as it speeds up the onboarding.

Build Up Your Brand

Professionals will only leave their job if they believe that the grass is truly greener on the other side. So, provide a look into what the average workday is like in your organisation.

Here’s a fun suggestion: have your best workers record the things that they do and the aspects they love about working with you. You can post these on social media with industry-related keywords, as mentioned above.

Check Online Job Boards

Online job boards are excellent tools for finding both active and passive candidates. Applicants often upload their resumes or create profiles on these websites and neglect to take them down even after accepting an offer.

Scour through these databases for those who meet your standards for education level, skills and experience. Focus more on the course of their career if it doesn’t look like they updated their resume recently.

Create a Talent Pipeline

Having a pool of candidates who are ready to fill key roles is a good idea. It reduces the amount of time and money needed for hiring. This will be the first place you look for passive candidates next time that you have a vacancy.

For the meantime, list down the qualified and experienced candidates you have decided to skip due to limited slots. You might have also stumbled on a great find but don’t have the right position for them yet.

Browse Niche Communities

Are you looking for specific skills? Niche social networks are the places to go for your needs. Unlike the platforms that were mentioned previously, these are targeted towards certain audiences.

Behance, for instance, gathers creatives whose specialities range from music to advertising. Some of the designers here work full-time and use the site as an online portfolio of sorts. You may discover experts who match the style of your brand.

Maximise Automation Tools

Make headhunting more effective and efficient through the use of programmatic recruitment. Make no mistake, manual sourcing is still relevant as technology is still unable to replicate the human element.

Innovation, however, frees up time to dedicate towards interviews, briefings, training and leadership. How this works is that artificial intelligence is used to gather and analyse candidate data all over the Web.

Outsource to an Agency

When you think that performing the above strategies requires too much work, turn to an offshore staffing agency for help. They’ll assist you in crafting better job descriptions; ensuring that they perfectly emphasise responsibilities and rewards.

If desired, the agency will conduct screening for any candidates who catch your eye, but you’re not sure about as well as provide a brief overview before an interview.

Start Sourcing Passive Candidates

By this time, you’ve probably realised how sourcing passive candidates is different from checking active applicants. The strategies we’ve discussed are proven to be useful so we hope that you’ll apply some, if not all, of them.

Being an offshore staffing agency, Remote Workmate is more than ready to help you in your endeavours. Begin persuading top talents to transfer to your organisation today!