According to LinkedIn report, 70% of the workforce is passive talent. Companies are using various strategies to attract passive talent. However, what is important is how you nurture passive talent so they look at job opportunities with more interest.

There is a lot of buzz around passive candidate sourcing. Also, as per LinkedIn’s report, 70% of the workforce is passive talentOpens a new window , meaning they are open to better opportunities but not actively looking for jobs. It totally makes sense to tap into this huge passive talent pool than solely focusing on active candidates.

Once you know how to source passive candidatesOpens a new window , it is equally important to know how to engage passive candidates or how to nurture passive talent once they become part of your talent pipelineOpens a new window . Here are a few ways in which you can nurture passive candidates.

1. Engage Passive Candidates With Personalized Call

Once you received a reply from a passive candidate to your personalized email campaign, it’s time to gear up for the next step which is a personalized telephonic call.

Candidate’s response to email could be “Let’s discuss” or “I would like to know more” or as exciting as “Yes! I am interested”. Post such email response, you could be talking to this passive candidate for the first time. You need to make sure you hit the right notes to take this further.

Find Everything About The Candidate

Just like cold emails find the place in the trash bins, cold calls are often ignored. If you are going to talk to someone, especially if you are going to discuss a new job opportunity, you don’t want it to sound like a cold call. Find more about the candidate on social media profiles like Facebook, Twitter, Quora, etc.

Find their interest beyond work. Check if they write blogs or follow any. Check if they travel often. Find things that are more personal to the candidate.

Once you identify the candidate’s persona you would know how to start the conversation. For example, if the job is in a different city, let’s say in New York City, then talk about how NYC life is fast-paced. It is important you engage candidate into the conversation because it makes them listen more carefully.

Use Referral

Use a network like LinkedIn to find if you have any common connection with the candidate. If you do, ask your common connection for the introduction. Engaging a passive candidate using a referral connection will make sure you get the right attention of the candidate.

Sell Opportunity. Not Job.

They already know about the job description as they had decided to talk to you. Also, they might have visited the company website to find more about the company. They probably will have more insightful questions. You should listen to those questions carefully.

Prepare yourself before the call. You should be able to explain how this career move could benefit the candidate. What is the candidate going to gain? How the company is contributing to their employees’ growth? What are some of the latest technology that the company is working on? All these questions would help you answer most of the questions candidate might have.

Closure

Once you convinced the candidates to take on the opportunity, it could go either way. They may get hired or rejected in the process. Hiring is also a very subjective process. No matter what the outcome is, you need to maintain the thread with your candidates. It is natural for a recruiter to congratulate candidates if they get hired, however, most recruiters don’t seem to follow up with candidates if they are rejected in the process.

Passive candidate hiring is all about building relationships. You should find ways to stay in touch with all these candidates. LinkedIn is one such great way. This way you can share all future opportunities with these candidates.

2. Share Insightful Content To Nurture Passive Candidates

Not always passive candidates would respond to your personalized email affirmatively. They may not be interested in the current job openings but they could be interested in other opportunities in the future.

One of the ways to nurture passive candidates is sharing some insightful content. How many times we have heard, “Content Is King!”.

Here are some examples of the kind of content you can share to engage passive candidates.

Industry Salary Trends

Salary is one of the most driving factors for people to change their current jobs. You could gather data by researching into different portals like Glassdoor, LinkedIn to share salary trends in various industry sectors.

If you could get more specific with one particular industry and particular job function, then that information is gold! For example, if you share insights on how Data Scientist salaries fare in product companies vs service based companies then it would get maximum attention from the candidate. Make sure you have already segmented your candidate database based on their job functions so that you send right information to right people.

Insights On Trending Skills

As per Upwork’s Future Workforce 2018 reportOpens a new window , 59% of hiring managers believe that skills have become more specialized. Today, we see pay variance if a candidate is working on niche skills vs candidate working on popular skills.

You could share reports on skills that are in demand vs skills that are rare along with the kind of salaries it could fetch.

You could add links to free video tutorials from Youtube or from other e-learning platforms for some of the skills.

Few more ideas for content sharing

• Top Companies To Work For
• Companies That Offer Best Learning Programs
• Companies That have R&D Wings
• Top Merger & Acquisition Stories

Use email campaign services such as MailChimp, SendGrid, etc to deliver such content. Such solutions help you track how many people are actually looking at your content. This will help you nurture a passive candidate with engaging content.

Summary

Everybody is tapping into passive talent pool simply because it’s a huge pool. To Nurture passive candidates is a long term investment. You cannot expect immediate returns. It is all about building relationships. You need to keep working at it. However, passive candidate hiring is turning more and more successful. Methods like personalized emails, email campaigns help you measure the success of these hiring strategies.