Job growth remains solid, with 800K+ jobs opened between January and February 2023. The bulk of the new roles opened up in the hospitality, retail, and health services industries, but other businesses are ramping their hiring again, too.

However, concerns from the pandemic and subsequent recession still linger in candidates' minds. They want simple hiring processes, and they want know that the next job they take aligns with their professional goals and personal priorities.

So how do you hire efficiently when your top prospects are getting swiped before you’ve made an offer? The best way to truly ensure a qualified hire right now is to recruit passive candidates. In other words, you cannot solely rely on inbound, active candidates to come to you. Instead, you need to build a pool of passive candidates, or those who are already employed, but who may jump ship to work for you if the culture, mission, price, and perks are right.

Why Are Passive Candidates So Important?

Surprisingly, a whopping 70% of the global workforce entered their current job as a passive candidate, meaning they were approached about the open position by the hiring company vs. applying directly. And while these passive candidates do take more time and resources to find upfront, they are 120% more likely to make a strong initial impact on your business. Well worth the effort.

Sourced candidates are not only more likely to make an impact, but are also more qualified upfront. 1 in every 72 sourced candidates is hired compared to just 1 in every 152 non-sourced candidates. This is more impressive when you consider that the non-sourced candidates are interested and actively applying to your role.

How could this be? Well first, not every active candidate that applies through a job board or your career page is qualified, making the pool larger and more cumbersome to sift through. On the passive side, nearly all sourced candidates will be qualified. After candidate sourcing, it’s a matter of aligning your interests with the candidates' and determining if they're a fit with your company culture.

Passive candidates also help diversify your talent pool. Are you trying to hire more women or underrepresented minorities but aren’t getting many active applicants that fit these goals? Opening your search up to passive candidates expands your talent pool, increases your diversity metrics, and allows you to take control of your full candidate pool vs. relying solely on inbound applicants that are often more homogeneous.

And don’t be afraid to engage passive candidates! 85% of people are open to switching jobs, and from our experience, most passive candidates would actively be looking for new positions, but just haven’t had the time or energy to do so, making your outreach to them ever more appreciated and intriguing. After the year we’ve had, many people are looking for a change, whether it’s a change of pace, switching to a role where they’ll have more impact, or moving to a remote-first organization after realizing the benefits of working from home.

How Do You Ensure a Robust Passive Candidate Pipeline?

Fetcher’s full-service, recruiting automation platform can help you maintain a consistent, strong, and robust pool of passive candidates. With Fetcher, you can locate passive candidates faster and more efficiently than ever before. You’ll truly source while you sleep! Simply input the qualifications you’re looking for into the platform, and Fetcher’s sourcing and outreach automation tools scour the internet to bring the best candidates directly to your inbox. Best of all, you don’t have to worry about bots or unqualified profiles sneaking through because Fetcher’s human-in-the-loop qualification step reviews profiles before they land in your inbox.

If you happen to be perusing LinkedIn and see a stand-out profile, Fetcher’s one-click web extension will add that candidate’s contact information directly to your outreach sequences, quickly adding more qualified candidates into your funnel. Fetcher allows you to create personalized automated outreach & follow-up emails, saving you time and energy, while optimizing your touchpoints, cadence, and engagement.

How Do You Intelligently Source for Passive Candidates?

If you’re sourcing intelligently, your talent pool is never empty when you start a new search. How? Let’s say you have 50 passive candidates that look right for a role. You reach out to all, and 10 respond that they’re interested in learning more. From there, 3 make it to final round interviews, but, as always, only one gets the job. Three months from now when a similar role opens up, you aren’t back to square one. You have 49 passive candidates to start with, 9 of which you’ve actively engaged with and hopefully kept warm.

Always remember to keep relationships strong, communicating why they didn’t get the job, explaining when new positions might open up, etc., especially if you think they’d be a good fit for another role down the line. Make sure your silver medalists are on email lists for new product launches, research, and services. This way, when a new role opens up in the future, they’ll be more interested in engaging.

As much as we want them to, the perfect candidate likely isn’t going to stroll into your office unexpectedly. In this competitive market, they may get scooped up by a competitor before they can even interview. Whether active candidates are many or few, it’s important to always prioritize passive recruitment because of the impact they can have on your business. Try Fetcher to boost your passive pipeline today!