5 High Touch Techniques You Should Use to Recruit Passive Candidates
Recruiters need to recognise they’re facing an existential threat when it comes to sourcing and hiring active candidates. On one level, automation is rapidly identifying candidates ready to look for jobs and matching them with the most appropriate opportunities. In addition, hiring manager do-it-yourself (DIY) models are now starting to appear. Both trends will accelerate and minimise the role of recruiters for anything other than administrative and transactional purposes.
However, these driverless and DIY trends will be less useful for attracting high-quality passive candidates who are only interested in changing jobs for true career reasons. This is the reason I advise recruiters to shift their efforts to using a high-touch consultative recruiting approach like Performance-based Hiring because it generates higher quality of hire and will give you better results.
[bctt tweet=”A high-touch consultative recruiting approach can give you a better hiring result says @LouA.” username=”ATCevent”]
Now, it’s hard to follow this method when you have 15-20 heads to recruit, which in my opinion is a clear indicator that a company is more interested in efficiency and cost metrics than quality of hire. But, The ROI of a great hire is more than 1000% when you consider the increased profitability generated over multiple years to the modest one-time marginal cost increase required to hire the person. However, it takes a visionary talent leader to make the case and skilled recruiters to deliver on the promise.
At LinkedIn’s Talent Connect 2016, I presented a high touch process for sourcing and recruiting top tier passive candidates. As part of this, I briefly mentioned the following five high touch recruiting skills as critical. Here are some more details:
1. Offer a 30 percent non-monetary increase
Early in a conversation with a passive candidate, I suggest the only reason the person should change jobs is if it offers a minimum non-monetary increase of 30 percent in comparison to his/her current job. The 30 percent is some combination of job stretch (a bigger job), more rapid growth, more impact and a more satisfying mix of work.
One recruiter at Talent Connect came up to me and thanked me for describing this approach in The Essential Guide for Hiring and Getting Hired. By using it he is now able to double the number of passive candidates who agree to engage in exploratory discussions.
2. Control the conversation
This article first appeared on LinkedIn Talent Blog on the 19th October, 2016.
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