“We don’t hire people looking for jobs,” says Deepinder Goyal, CEO at Zomato. He inferred to say that the best candidates are often not looking for the job, because they are not unemployed. And it's true. That's why we call purple squirrels as 'elusive'. But there has to be alternative approaches to attract the right talent, who are often passive candidates. This is exactly where companies rely on proactive recruitment strategies to find the right candidate.
Read this insight to understand what's proactive recruitment strategy, its benefits, the ingredients, and 7 different proactive recruitment strategies.
Why Do You Need Proactive Recruitment Strategies?
Many HR departments only start scrambling to fill positions after they become vacant. We get it- you can’t predict when employees will resign. But you can have a contingency plan for when they do.
A contingency plan makes sense because a vacant position in your company does not just hit the bottom line badly, but also the team's productivity, project cadence, employee morale, and employee experience at large.
So, how can your company mitigate these costs?
How can the HR department always be prepared to fill positions, planned or otherwise?
You need a forward-thinking recruitment strategy. A recruiting strategy that goes beyond reactive hiring. You need to have a pool of candidates ready to join your company if any vacancy opens up. They can be active candidates or passive.
Oh, by the way, did you know that 70% of the global workforce is made up of passive talent?
These are people who aren’t actively job hunting but wouldn’t mind jumping ship if the opportunity is interesting to them. If you want to get the best talent in the market, you can't ignore this entire segment.
The question is, if they are not actively looking for a job, and not applying on job boards, then how do you hire them?
The answer is simple- you need proactive recruitment strategies.
What Is Proactive Recruitment?
Proactive recruitment is a hiring strategy that focuses on anticipating future talent needs before a vacancy opens up. The idea is to identify, engage and nurture potential candidates who you would want to hire for your organization at some point.
You achieve this by creating a pool of candidates who are not only skilled and qualified but also fit within your company’s culture and value system. This helps fill positions more quickly and efficiently. Thus, minimizes the disruptions caused by sudden vacancies.
Proactive Recruiting Vs Reactive Recruiting
| Proactive Recruiting | Reactive Recruiting |
|---|---|
| Continuous talent engagement | Hiring only when a vacancy arises |
| Reduces time-to-fill | Leads to rushed hiring decisions |
| Builds a strong talent pipeline | Limited candidate pool |
| Improves employer branding | Reactive employer branding |
| Higher quality of hires | Variable quality of hires |
Benefits Of Proactive Recruitment Strategy
In life too, it does one good to be proactive. So, why not in recruitment? A proactive recruitment strategy will help you fill vacancies faster and benefit your company in multiple ways. Want to know how? Read on.
A Talent Pool That Never Runs Dry
Filling unexpected job vacancies is stressful. But with a proactive recruitment strategy in place, you're always focused on building a pool of candidates who you can rely on to fill new positions in your company. So, next time, whether it's a retail floor manager requesting to amp up the hiring of contract customer representatives for peak season, or whether it's an emergency wherein your senior developers put in a surprise resignation application, be ready to supply some gems from your pool.
Improved Quality-of-Hire
A proactive recruitment strategy saves you from any last-minute scrolling through hundreds of resumes, looking for that purple squirrel. When you’re not rushing to fill positions, you get enough time to conduct thorough assessments and extensive background checks. This leads to higher-quality hires who are more likely to stay with the company in the long term.
Reduce Turnover
Engaging with candidates even before a role opens up sends the message that you are strategic and focused on long-term growth. Plus, it allows you to build a genuine relationship with potential candidates wherein you know their expectations, and they know the culture and values your organization is built upon.
When you hire candidates with a hiring strategy that is rooted in relationship-building, there are high chance that your organizational culture, value system, and the benefits you offer are completely aligned with those of the candidate and his/her expectations.
This may translate into higher retention rates i.e., a low turnover. How much would that save for your org in terms of the costs you spend on finding a replacement, rehiring and retraining?
Cut Costs
With proactive recruitment strategies, your average cost-per-hire will likely be reduced. By keeping a talent pipeline ready, you can fill positions faster and avoid the high costs of last-minute recruiting. Additionally, it keeps a check on the excessive spending on job advertisements and the time spent on manual candidate sourcing.
The Elements Of A Proactive Recruitment Strategy
A successful proactive recruitment strategy involves several key elements. You need to factor-in what resources you have at your disposal in terms of tools, talent, and budget. Accordingly, you need pan out a strategy that can be executed with precision.
Spot Talent Gaps
Start with understanding and gauging your company’s current and future talent needs to identify problem areas.
Audit comprehensively. For example-
- Does that new project need a product manager?
- Is there a disgruntled employee that has been threatening to quit?
- Is there a skill gap that needs addressing?
Maximize Your Brand Visibility
Once you have identified your talent needs, it’s time to cast your net wide and attract potential candidates.
Use every platform at your disposal—social media, job boards, industry events, and award shows—to focus on your company's unique culture, values, and growth opportunities.
Be A Talent Magnet
Next, focus on assessing potential candidates. Develop ways to test their skills and fit. Thoroughly evaluating candidates allows you to make informed hiring decisions that lead to successful long-term placements. For example, if you’re a tech company, hosting regular coding challenges or hackathons can help you observe and assess candidates’ technical and problem-solving skills firsthand.
Engage Aggressively
Once you’ve zeroed in on a potential hire, it’s time to woo them. Show them how an open position at your company can give their career that J-curve boost. Discuss the growth they can expect through workshops and networking seminars to mentorship programs and access to upskilling platforms.
Show genuine interest in their career goals, and be genuinely interested too. That ability to communicate 'how your company can support a candidate’s expectations,' is a big plus. Building long-term relationships requires real and personal communication. If you got that, you will get your elusive purple squirrel.
Simplify Entire Hiring Pipeline
But, don’t just stop there. Converting potential hires to successful placements also needs to be as smooth as the first touchpoint itself.
Of course, you don’t want your senior developer to be a bad hire, but do you need five rounds of video interviews? Probably not. Your hiring process should be clear, precise, and focused on what truly matters: smart work. A great candidate experience is worth the effort because it can do wonders for your company’s reputation.
"The application experience is how you make a great or a terrible first impression," says Annabel Youens, Founder and CMO at Appreciation Engine. Nobody wants to be called out on professional platforms. With Gen Z making up 30% of the world’s population, it’s definitely time for change. Being on the same page with this generation that’s entering the workforce means quitting traditional methods to build a more personalized approach.
Be there for your candidate. Give clear instructions and guide them through the application process. Candidates need to feel good about the experience for it to be positive.
Help Them Transition
Your proactive recruitment strategy must also encompass ways to handhold your new hires during onboarding and transition. Many organizations use a buddy system to help new hires adjust better. Such initiatives make the corporate maze feel a little less confusing. It also makes them feel valued.
When a candidate feels valued, you get better results. A purple squirrel is often not born "perfect," they're just proactive in learning what perfection means for them. And you, as a hiring manager, must be able to recognize that.
7 Proactive Recruitment Strategies For A Healthy Candidate Pool
Now that we’ve discussed what proactive recruitment usually involves, it’s time we talk about how you can implement it. How can you involve your employees in the hiring process? What can you do to build a strong employer brand?
Make Recruitment Everyone’s Job
Start by letting your employees know about open roles before publicly announcing them. Ask them to tap into their networks and refer people they think would be good fits.
Set up a referral program with incentives to motivate them. This approach not only speeds up hiring but also makes it more likely to find candidates who match your company culture, thanks to your team’s reach.
Strengthen Your Employer Brand
There is a 50% chance an ideal candidate will reject you if your company has a bad reputation. So, building your employer brand is foundational to getting and keeping top talent.
While it’s easy to get discouraged by negative reviews on sites like Glassdoor, it’s important to pay attention to what your past and present employees are saying about you. When researching their future bosses, candidates often go to the company website and then their socials. So, use it to your advantage. Look at it as an opportunity to show how you can position your values and vision as a company. Talk about your company culture. Encourage your employees to share their positive experiences at your organization.
Social Recruiting
Create social content that celebrates your people, your culture. Be vocal about your values, your happy clients, and new projects/initiatives. Give reasons for people to come to you. Remember, the goal is not to be boasting, but giving your future talent prospects into the experience that they are missing.
Creative Job Advertising
Investing in targeted job advertising can widen your reach and attract more talent. You can use creative job ads, and you may also use the right SEO strategies to make sure your job listings and career pages show up at the top of search results. That way, the best candidates can easily find you.
Maximizing Visibility
To really connect and build relationships, it’s important to be where your talent is. This doesn’t just mean being active on social platforms, but also attending industry networking events and engaging in relevant online communities. Hosting webinars, going to conferences, and being active on social media can keep potential candidates interested.
For example, with Reddit becoming mainstream, conducting an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on a relevant subreddit would be a great idea. This can help you reach a wide audience, engage directly with potential candidates, and answer their questions in real-time.
Tap Into The Candidate Pool Database Your Recruiters Are Sitting Atop
With the right technology in place, you can quickly and efficiently create an evergreen talent pool of prospective employees. Use Skima AI to automate your job application processs. The more you streamline your job application process, the more time you will have to engage and evaluate candiadtes on qualitative parameters. Read the next section to dive deeper into how Skima AI helps with your proactive recruitment strategies.
How Skima Helps You In Proactive Recruiting?
Skima AI help your company excel at both reactive and proactive recruiting approach.
It has 3 core value propositions for proactive recruiters.
One, it helps you save time. This helps you spend more time on qualitative aspects of recruiting, rather than wasting it on boring repetitive tasks. Two, it helps you save money. So, you will have more budget for designing amazing candidate experiences. Three, It helps you build a thriving workforce with best-of-the-breed talent.
Want to know how?
With Skima on board, you don’t need to spend endless hours creating job descriptions on varied job boards, posting them, and scouting for active or passive candidates.
Job Description Generator & Job Posts Management
Skima’s AI-powered platform automates job description creation. Our inbuilt job management tool helps you post jobs natively on your website, boosting your employer brand, and your visibility.
Resume Intelligence Tool & AI matching Score
For effective proactive recruitment strategy, you must have the capability to leverage your existing candidate pool. Spot brown bears and purple squirrels in there, and keep them engaged to hire them in case a relevant opportunity pops up. Skima AI makes this a cakewalk. Our AI Matching Score algorithm processes 10s of 1000s of resumes based on your predefined criterias- ranging from demographical to hard skills, and from behavioural insights to soft skills.
Based on how good a fit is the candidate, our algorithm generates an AI Matching Score for each candidate. The higher the score, the better the match!
Automated end-to-end recruitment
Our platform is configurable to automate the entire hiring process- from generating job description, to publishing/posting the job, accepting and evaluating profiles, communication to candidates about their selection for the interview, following-up with the candidates, to screening them based on set questions/criteria.
Ready to transform your recruitment strategy with Skima AI? Book your demo today. Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog for more HR insights.
