Proactive recruitment, or sourcing candidates before you have demand, is a growing trend and may prove vital as our candidate-short market continues. It is a long-term strategy that can take some time to implement but can be incredibly successful, building a talent pipeline to put you on the front foot.
Once you have this talent pipeline in place, you’ll likely save significant time and money in your recruitment, so it’s worth investing up front and getting it right.
The best proactive strategies focus on four core steps:
1. Find candidates (get them interested)
2. Engage candidates (make them want to work for you!)
3. Nurture candidates (keep them interested)
4. Target candidates (hit them with appropriate vacancies)
Where are your future candidates?
The first step in proactive recruitment is to understand where your potential candidates are, and the existing data in your ATS/TAS is a goldmine. The places where you find the best candidates for your active vacancies are likely where you’ll also find them in advance.
Of course, they aren’t likely to be on job boards if they aren’t actively looking, but your social and web data is critical. While many of us assume that professional networks are the best hunting grounds, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram are increasingly important players. Instagram is a particular favourite amongst Millennials, and with this generation set to make up 75% of our workforce in a few short years, it’s something recruiters can’t ignore.
For turbo customers who have access to the REACH platform, recruitment data is at your fingertips. (If you’re not a turbo customer or don’t currently use REACH, get in touch to get started.)
So, you know where they are, but how do you engage them?
To successfully implement a proactive recruitment strategy, you need recruitment channels working for you all year, round the clock, not just when you’re actively seeking talent. Some key areas are your website career pages and your social media channels.
Your career pages are often the first go-to point for candidates interested in working for you, so making the most of them is critical. When it comes to the content, it’s a good idea to ask for feedback from staff outside your HR and marketing teams to make sure they accurately reflect what it’s like to work for you. Another critical point is to ensure you have a channel for interested candidates to connect with you, even when you don’t have an appropriate vacancy, such as an Expression of Interest form that can feed the data into your ATS/TAS.
Company social media pages often focus on engaging customers, but they are an important channel in your recruitment process as well. And not just for advertising vacancies. They are a fantastic place for attracting top talent and showcasing what you have to offer. Use video and employee stories to highlight what it’s like to work for you and showcase employee events and initiatives to share your culture with prospective hires.
Now it’s time to nurture
While you wait for a suitable role to emerge, you must keep candidates interested and nurture the relationship or risk undoing your hard work. You can consider regular personalised communication or even industry-specific market updates via email. Consider wishing them Happy Holidays or a Happy New Year. Personalised communication with candidates highlights the value you place on existing and new employees.
Your tech should be able to help you segment by industry and automate communications, so this can be a largely passive process for your team.
Target candidates when vacancies emerge
You can look to your ATS/TAS to help you with this, particularly those offering talent pooling functionality, like turbo.
Talent pooling uses an AI tool to search profiles in your system, mining the data to screen and shortlist potential candidates. It takes much of the work out of the initial phases of the recruitment, filtering through the candidates you’ve proactively engaged to find the best matches for your role. Job done!
In a candidate-short market, recruiters and HR teams must proactively look for ways to build talent pools. A proactive recruitment strategy combined with the right technology can give you the edge you need. Get in touch with turbo to find out how our ATS/TAS platform can support your recruitment goals.