Passive candidates represent 57% of the active population in France according to a Linkedin study. But if they are not actively looking for a job, and therefore not on traditional recruitment platforms, how can you attract them?

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Passive candidates are gems

First of all, what do we mean by "passive candidates"? This is anyone in the workforce who is not actively looking for a job but is not "married" to their current company. That is, anyone who could change jobs with a little persuasion.

But then why go after these candidates rather than people actively looking for work who are more approachable?

First, because there are more of them. And in today's "war for talent" or "talent shortage" environment, we're not going to be without additional candidates.

Second, because they are less in need. They will not come to you if they are not really interested and motivated. And then, like love, this makes them more attractive.

Finally, because they are less solicited by your recruiting competitors. You will therefore be less in competition with other companies, which will make it easier for you to get ahead.

But you still need to know where and how to find them. Especially for profiles like developers, more than ⅓ of whom are not even on professional networks like Linkedin!

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Build a community? What does that mean?

Online communities have become a significant part of Generation Z's online life. According to a study conducted by Impero, 67% of "Gen Z" are active members of a community and 82% want to join one. On top of this, 84% of candidates use their phones and social networks when choosing a company.

So when asked the question "where do you look for passive candidates who are not on job boards?", the answer is obvious: via online communities. But how does an online community materialize?

It can take many forms, including Slack groups, Facebook groups, Discord servers, repositories or Github discussions, or simply a group of people who follow the same content (this is the case of influencer communities in particular). As soon as several people are grouped together, online, around a common interest, we can call it a virtual community.

To create your community of passive candidates, do what suits you best and what will speak to the type of profiles you are looking for. Let's take a concrete French example that I think does this very well: Veepee.

You can get an idea by looking at their website dedicated to their tech employer brand vpTech. Youtube, Medium, Twitch, Linkedin, Twitter, they are present everywhere under the name "vpTech" to show the world what being tech at Veepee means. Sounds familiar? This is exactly what Google does with Google Developers or Meta with Engineering at Meta.

Since 2017, the French unicorn has been accumulating several thousand members in its community, especially on Twitter, thanks to content such as their feedback on the #adventofcode challenge followed by the tech team throughout December.

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But for this community to be useful for recruiting, we need to go further, qualify it, engage it, so that the day a recruitment need arises, members of the community take the plunge.

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How to build an effective community?

To build a community of passive candidates in an efficient way, there are 3 key steps: sourcing, engagement and recruitment.

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Sourcing

Sourcing consists in arousing the interest of profiles corresponding to your needs in order to bring them into your community. 

To do this, the first thing to do is to go and look in your existing community. Don't start from scratch when you already have a large number of talents at your disposal! Your alumni, former candidates who were not adapted to your needs at the time, your former interns and apprentices, and so on...

Then, to enrich your community, you have two options.

Hunting (or outbound recruiting) is often the first reflex, and the most used method, but not necessarily the most relevant. It should be prioritized for specific profiles and low recruitment volumes. To improve the quality of profiles and your response rates, make sure you target the right channels. For example, use GitHub or Malt for tech profiles, Linkedin messages for commercial profiles or emails for financial profiles.

Inbound recruiting is often only partially used, rather by obligation than by real interest. Many companies are on Welcome to the Jungle for example, to have a showcase for junior profiles and to be referenced, but with very few qualified profiles. For more efficiency, choose specialized job boards like Hiresweet or Shapr Talent. In order to build your community rather than recruiting directly, you can also target channels where your target profiles are on a daily basis: Stack Overflow or Reddit for developers, Instagram or Youtube for sales and support profiles.

Remember, the goal here is to spark their interest to get their contact information!

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Engagement

Once you've built your community, it's about maintaining the relationship by continuing to capture their attention. Some people will need a single point of contact to apply for your open jobs but often passive candidates require multiple interactions to take the next step.

To achieve effective engagement campaigns there are 3 golden rules:

1. offer value-added and free content
2. have regular contact points
3. always have a next step in the talent journey

For this, you can use the usual online communication channels like email, SMS or Whatsapp, or more specific ones like Telegram or Discord for technology profiles for example.

But don't neglect offline channels! Meet'up, afterworks, Vivatech, create opportunities to meet your community.

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Recruiting

If you have done things right in the two previous steps, you just need to push your offers to profiles you consider qualified within your community to get relevant applications.

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Now it's up to you!

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Reduce your time to hire, reach qualified candidates and enrich your pipeline with qualified talent. If these are your goals,  contact us and we'll help you build and engage talent communities thanks to our TRM.

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