Active and Passive Candidates

Demand and Supply

One of the challenges facing Human Resources industry is the demand-supply mismatch.  Organizations should find ways and means to balance supply and demand of talent for its success.  They need to equip their HR Managers with effective tools to identify the right talent for the right positions.

Labor supply analysis identifies the availability of staff required and determining supply begins with the identification of the capabilities of the current workforce.  Balancing supply and demand is met by developing tailored HR programmes to expand or reduce the workforce. Control and evaluation procedures provide feedback on the success of HR programmes in meeting labor demand.

Active and Passive Candidates

Some may simply define an active candidate as “one who is ‘pro-actively’ looking for a new job”, while a passive candidate is “one who is not ’pro-actively’ looking for a new job”. In practice, though, there are “degrees of passivity” which must be considered in order to label a candidate appropriately (please refer to diagram below). An individual, for example, who keeps an updated profile on a job board or a social network may be considered to be somewhere between the two extremes.

DIAGRAM: Degrees of Passivity

Truth be told, Active Candidates will apply for positions. The most active will visit a corporate website and register an interest. Slightly less active may register a resume on a job board, or via a contingency recruiter.

Why Care About Passive Candidates?

 Typically, a passive candidate will be harder – and more costly – to recruit. Passive candidates are highly skilled, happily employed individuals who are not actively seeking new job opportunities. And because most are happily employed, these candidates are also considered more loyal and more stable (on average passive job seekers stay with a company three years and seven months, compared to only 15 months for active job seekers1), therefore more valuable, than active job seekers. They have a job in which they have already demonstrated ability to make a contribution, potentially translating into a higher chance of success within your organization. As a result, they are extremely hard to target.

¹ Source: Recruitment Marketing Strategies: Building Employer Brands That Attract Talent © 2000 WetFeet.com

Means to attract Passive candidates

Passive Candidates need to be identified and approached. They will not apply for jobs, nor register on job sites. Therefore, recruiting technology is required to support the Sourcing Process (Name identification) and to build relationships with those individuals who are targeted.

Building a talent pipeline involves identifying where a corporation might need to hire in future, identifying those competitors which over perform in those areas, and then mapping out the individuals and teams responsible for that over performance at those competitors. A true talent acquisition system will allow Sourcing teams to do just this. It will do this in part through research techniques which allow users to search corporate websites, social networks, and news sources to identify names, and partly through the ability to record and understand the structure of these targets – through organization charts and relationship diagrams.  Social media sourcing is one of the most effective tools to attract passive candidates.