A company's employees are easily considered to be its lifeblood. Without them, nearly all business organizations would still be nothing more than unrealized ideas. It is perfectly understandable then that companies want to attract the most competent and highly-qualified candidates. Identifying top talent and convincing them that it is worth joining your organization and helping it grow and achieve its mission requires a diversified recruitment strategy.

increase your passive candidate recruiting efforts

Indeed, while the most widespread method consists of listing the available open positions on the company's website as well as a couple of online job boards, relying solely on it leaves a significant talent pool outside of your reach. That is why it is worth considering increasing your efforts towards recruiting passive candidates. Finally, adding a background check step in your recruitment process can reinforce the decision that you have chosen the right candidate.

Utilizing a professional Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) solution provides several significant benefits when it comes to recruitment. It allows the recruiters or hiring managers to find any misinformation that the candidate may have submitted in their CV or mentioned during the live interview stages.

Background checks increase the confidence in your new employees and help companies avoid unnecessary risks. Furthermore, while generally not legally required, a background check is needed for jobs that fall in the regulated activities list. These usually include positions that interact with children or vulnerable adults.

Passive Candidate Sourcing

Passive candidates are people that possess all of the desired skills and are a perfect fit for one of your open positions, but, as is often the case with top-tier talent, they are already employed at a different organization. Here is where passive candidate sourcing shows its value. With the right approach and carefully selected methods, you can proactively search for such employed candidates, reach out to them, and try to get them interested in the opportunities you offer.

Sourcing passive candidates is more complicated than simply posting about your open positions and waiting for active job seekers to apply. However, a significant portion of experts and employed candidates show a willingness to switch jobs if they are presented with the right offer. The extra resources and effort put into sourcing passive candidates could prove to be well worth it if you manage to attract the chosen individual.

After all, research shows that passive candidates who decide to come on board are likely to be far more efficient, make a bigger impact, and require less additional skill development training than non-sources candidates.

Use Your Employee Network

A practical method for finding passive candidates and successfully recruiting them involves leveraging the most valuable resource you already have at your organization - your employees. Referral programs have established their place among the modern recruitment strategies, and with a good reason. Recruiters often find their best candidates thanks to referrals from existing employees.

Combining your workers' individual networks and personal connections can give you a massive outreach and access to high-quality candidates. After all, employees won't recommend people they do not wish to work with or stake their reputation on a person with questionable skills or reputation. Another major advantage inherent to referral programs is that experts or employed candidates may not be receptive to offers made by recruiters but could be willing to listen to one of their friends describe how great the company they work for.

To run a successful referral program, you will need to find a way to incentivize and energize your current team to try and recruit new members. Offering a one-time referral bonus or another meaningful reward if the recommended candidate ends up being hired is a great first step. To further boost interest in the referral program, you can offer a group reward or pledge to donate to a chosen charity if certain participation milestones are reached.

Take Advantage Of Social Media

Unfortunately, LinkedIn is no longer as effective a recruitment platform for passive candidates as it used to be due to an oversaturation with recruiters who all compete for the same pool of experts. This fact has caused many recruiters to start looking for alternative avenues to find promising job applicants, including passive candidates, and reach out to them with a higher likelihood of getting a response. Implementing additional social media platforms into your recruitment strategy can yield significant advantages:

• Twitter - Do not overlook the opportunities offered by Twitter. The platform's powerful search features can turn it into an effective recruitment tool. Start by looking for profiles using specific industry-related terms, keywords, or hashtags. You can then proceed to further refine the search results by including other parameters such as location.
  
  
• Facebook - Facebook has been a staple in our society for quite a while now, and chances are most passive candidates have an account with the platform. Identify such high-quality individuals via Facebook's targeted search capabilities and send them a message. Being approached on a platform different from LinkedIn could boost the person's interest in what you have to say and increase the chances of getting a response.
  
  
• Instagram - Instagram offers similar opportunities as Facebook. Its own search functionalities can be utilized to narrow down users to those using specific industry hashtags. You can also discover experienced employees complaining about their current jobs and who might be interested in making a switch to another company.
  
  

Offer Growth Opportunities and Company Culture

Employed candidates or established experts may have little interest in the particular open position at your company, and the offers made by recruiters could fail to attract their attention. A change in the recruitment strategy may be required. Tailor your approach according to the changing priorities of the current workforce. For example, the top three characteristics that potential employees look for in a company are the offered compensation packages, the available growth opportunities, and its culture.

Unsurprisingly, short-term benefits are not enough to get people excited about making a drastic change, such as switching jobs. Instead, take the time to create specific content for passive candidates that focuses on the ways in which joining your company will propel them further on their projected career path. Emphasize your commitment to providing an appealing work-life balance that helps reduce burnout and keep employees energized and motivated.

Showcase your company culture in easily accessible ways. Put a dedicated section on the company's website with pictures and videos from various office events, everyday work interactions, or other similar content. Using video testimonials from your employees can have a far more significant impact as their impressions will appear more genuine and legitimate than simply adding them in text form.

Consider branching out and making a company Instagram or Twitter account where you can highlight any notable achievements of your employees, important moments in their lives outside the company, or various team celebrations.

About the Author: George Griffiths is the managing director of uCheck DBS Checks. In 2013, George came on board full time with the goal of working together to create a fluid and successful business development structure. His focus for the future is to drive the development of the uCheck HR Platform and continue to align his way of working with their mission statement — to always care about getting it right.