Active Candidate

    What is an active candidate?

    Active candidates are people who are actively seeking a new job opportunity by reaching out to their professional networks, searching across social media, searching across job boards, applying to job ads or attending interviews. When you have an active candidate, it’s important to ensure they have a good experience with their recruitment. 

    An active candidate may be someone who was recently unemployed, but that doesn’t make up all of the reasons that a candidate may be actively seeking new opportunities. A candidate may be looking for new potential employers as they’ve grown dissatisfied with their current position, have concerns about their employers future, are seeking a new opportunity with additional responsibilities, their employer went out of business, are looking for a career change, or there have layoffs in their sector.

    Many active candidates will begin their job search through job postings, social channels, career sites, attending job fairs, and will often try multiple job boards. However, job postings may not deliver qualified candidates, which is why many recruiters have begun more proactive sourcing of candidates.

    Actively searching for qualified candidates can help supplement job posting and can deliver both active and passive candidates. Active candidates can be easier to find as they are putting themselves out there more regularly, so they can be found on social media and through search engines. Recruiting passive candidates on the other hand can be a bit trickier, but can be found through past job vacancies, boolean searches, social media, etc. These kinds of candidates require proactive sourcing as they’re not currently looking.

    Active vs Passive candidates

    The main differences between active and passive candidates are that passive candidates aren’t actively seeking for new job opportunities on job postings and that while both could be open to new positions, active candidates are looking for a job in the very near future. Passive candidates will be employed and likely not looking for a new opportunity, but can be convinced with a good value proposition. Even super passive candidates can still be turned into an excellent candidate by building a passive candidate pipeline into your recruitment strategy.

    Tip Toe Candidate

    In between active and passive candidates, you have candidates on the cusp, often called tip toe candidates. These candidates aren’t actively seeking, but are open to a new job opportunity. Tip toe candidates will typically begin their job search by asking their networks about opportunities. They’re not as open as an active candidate, but will be looking for new employment as long as the value proposition is something they’re interested in. A tip toe candidate be looking for a new job gently, so outreach messages and an employment referral program is the best bet for recruiters to turn these tip toe candidates into success stories.

    Strategies

    A big part of the hiring process is proactively sourcing the passive and active candidates that are interested in the open positions you have available. Top talent can be hard to find as there is a finite number of people that will fit the job posts you have available. But, hiring active candidates and passive candidates should all be a part of your recruitment strategy. It’s important to build in a hiring process for each of these types of candidates.

    Positive Experience

    While building out strategies for hiring candidates, the main thing to keep in mind is that candidates have a positive experience with your recruitment agency. Even if they may not be looking for a new job now, they will likely be looking in the future and when they are, they’re more likely to think of you to help if they have a good experience with you now.

    In order to create a positive candidate experience, it’s worth looking at the interview and application processes. Put yourself in the candidate’s shoes, if the application process is lengthy, you’re likely to miss people out of the talent pool. Go through the process yourself and discover what works and what doesn’t for all types of candidates.

    Keep in mind that employed candidates may not have the flexibility of an unemployed candidate, making it difficult to commit to an interview in the middle of the day. If possible, try to schedule over the phone, video chat, or during off hours so that they feel their time is taken into consideration.

    It’s also worth bearing in mind how often you’re communicating and how you’re communicating with candidates within your talent pool. Be sure they understand what the next steps are, when they might hear back, any feedback that’s been given, and where they may stand within the process.

    At the end of the day, the goal is to fill the role and ensure that all candidates, whether active or passive, don’t have a negative experience with your recruitment agency.

    Job Posting

    Another important aspect of your recruitment strategy should be to write job posts that attract active candidates. Job postings are an effective way of recruiting active candidates, meaning that you will be able to quickly fill positions. We also recommend having an employee referral program so that your recruiters will be encourage to grow their network with potential candidates and employers.

    Eclipse Recruitment Software helps to manage active candidates. It tracks their applications, automates communication and helps to schedule interviews. Another thing the software does is help to match candidates to open positions, posts jobs onto multiple job boards and provides reports on open positions. An applicant tracking system is incredibly useful for recruiters and is an effective way of keeping candidates engaged.