Keepin’ a Line in the Water for Unemployed Passive Job Seekers: Part 3
This is the final part of a three-part series on how your organization can attract and hire top talent by targeting Unemployed Passive Job Seekers as part of your overall talent recruitment strategy. Warning: The fishing references are thick.
Even if you write the most motivating, enticing job description and job seekers are excited about an opportunity with your organization, there’s no guarantee that they will take action–especially if they are the elusive Unemployed Passive Job Seekers. This doesn’t mean that they won’t return to you on their own some day, but you can increase the chances that they do by staying connected. In today’s digital world, there are countless ways to do this. Here are three effective ones:
Employee Referrals
You’re probably familiar with the good ol’ fashioned Employee Referral. It goes something like this:
- Management representatives decide to hire for a new position
- They send an email out or drop by your desk to say: “Hey, we’re hiring for a new Office Paper Coordinator. If you know anyone who’d be a good fit, let us know, or tell them to apply.”
- You likely forget to share the news, or you overlook a great candidate.
Obviously, you can see the flaws inherent in this ol’ fashioned method…Enter Digital Employee Referrals.
Some of the more sophisticated Applicant Tracking Systems offer a feature that greatly simplifies and enhances the process of Employee Referrals by taking the process digital. And let’s face it, even Sig Hansen of The Deadliest Catch and the rest of the Alaskan crab fleet use fishing technology these days.
Digital Employee Referrals work by providing each employee with a custom URL to the open position (For example: http://exacthire.hirecentric.com/jobs/20138-11900-Bob-The-Builder). They can create this link by visiting the organization’s career portal. Then, from that same location, they can instantly share the position to their networks via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and email. Now, when any applicant applies via an employee’s unique link, the application is automatically populated with that employee’s name as the referrer.
And when an employee incentive program is built around this feature, employees are further encouraged to reach out to their network. The results are impressive!
Learn the concept by checking out how ExactHire’s HireCentric ATS handles it!
Job Notifications
Many job boards provide this feature for organizations. The idea is that an interested job seeker creates a profile with the job board, and then the job board pushes out an email or text with links to new job opportunities based on criteria the job seeker sets. This is a nice feature that gets the job done, but there’s one issue: it’s “junky”.
By junky, I mean that many times these notifications only contain one or two listings among twenty that actually appeal to the job seeker, and it requires effort to parse through the murky waters and find them. You can’t afford to rely on this approach alone with an Unemployed Passive Job Seeker. You need to grab their attention.
Fortunately, some applicant tracking systems–like ExactHire’s HireCentric platform–provide job seekers the opportunity to sign up for job notifications from your specific organization. In fact, the notifications sent regarding your company’s jobs can even be filtered by job category and state, according to the job seeker’s preferences. This is important because it ensures that your passive job seekers need only filter through your jobs that are most likely to bait their interest…not ALL of your jobs. No junk here.
Social Media
As you know, Social Networking Sites have transformed the way the world communicates. Information has never traveled so fast–a good thing as it relates to facts, a bad thing, often, as it relates to opinions…but I digress. The point is, that through social media, organizations have the ability to update followers and friends in real-time. They even have the ability to interrupt…if they do the work to build trust with their followers. What do I mean?
You, as a Twitter user, can follow 5,000 businesses. You can check your feed once a day and scroll through all their updates; it’s an open relationship that doesn’t require anything from either side–an “all you care to eat” buffet. Now, let’s say that from the very beginning an organization promised you something in exchange for following them. For example:
“Connect with us on LinkedIn to be the first to learn of new job opportunities with ExactHire!”
“Follow us @goExactHire for your chance to win 1 of 52 prizes that we’ll be rewarding to our most active followers each week this year.”
“Like the Exacthire page and earn the chance to receive exclusive promo codes for the purchase of your favorite beer.”
With a simple promise–it doesn’t have to be beer discounts–an organization can increase their chances of earning a crucial thing: followers who enable notifications for your account. This means that the followers value your content so much, that they want to be interrupted by it. This is the holy grail for social media marketing, and it can be nicely leveraged for recruiting through the use of an applicant tracking system, as well.
Imagine the unemployed passive job seeker who’s having lunch when a notification flashes on her phone via Twitter:
“Can’t Miss #JobOpp. Family Friendly Company Offers Flex Hrs. Benefits. Part or Full Time. Students, New Grads, Unemployed–All should apply btly.exacthire”
You’ve interrupted and intrigued her. She’s back on the hook. Now reel ‘er in!
Heading Back To Port
Competition for top talent is fierce. Everyday there are countless organizations looking to land the big catch. As hiring professionals, we must be willing to go to new places and try new techniques to hire top talent. This includes: going after individuals who are not actively seeking a job; leveraging technology to cultivate interest in your organization; and staying connected with job seekers who express interest in your organization.
By expanding your view of where talent exists, and then using creative tactics to go get them, you will outsmart your competition and position yourself to land the big catch–along with all the rewards that come with that. And that’s no fish tale!
