TalentBin Blog The Top 5 Reasons You're Failing at Passive Candidate Recruiting

Ok, so failing might be a bit of a harsh word. But we all have room for improvement sometimes, right?The members of the TalentBin Customer Success Team interact with many different recruiters on a daily basis. These recruiters come from incredibly diverse backgrounds, work for a wide array of companies and each have their own distinct recruiting styles. The one thing that ties them all together is that they are hunting for unicorns (or purple squirrels, if you prefer). Meaning they are tasked with finding candidates with high-in-demand skills and exceptional backgrounds, whether it's in software development, healthcare or finance. Any recruiter in this situation knows the struggle is real.It is clear from the many articles, blogs, tweets and forum posts we see that creativity is now an essential part of recruiting. For most recruiters that means adopting a passive candidate recruiting strategy. This is more of an art form than the soft science that is posting jobs and sifting through resumes. It takes practice. Even recruiters who do almost exclusively passive candidate recruiting sometimes have their weaknesses. That is why we have compiled this list of the 5 most common failure points we see in passive candidate recruiting.1. Your emails look just like everyone else'sWe spoke to our own engineering team to find out how many recruiting emails they get each month, as part of our Ask a Developer webinar. The answers varied, but they told us this number could be as high as 80 per month! When candidates are getting bombarded, it can be tough to stand out in the crowd. The key is to make the subject line of your outreach as compelling as possible. The easiest way to do this? Make it about the candidate, rather than your company, your needs, your open role. Instead of "URGENT NEED .Net Developer" or "Android Developer - New Jersey", try something more like "Hi Ted, ever used your Objective-C skills to make a casserole?" or "Hi Jean, saw your Github profile and was impressed by your Java knowledge". You can bet that in an inbox filled with subjects like the first two, the latter two are going to stand out.2. You're not personalizing your outreachWe know. Passive recruiting is time-consuming. And the lack of interested responses (and occasional rude responses) can make you want to throw in the towel. But we've seen over and over again that a little bit more time spent on meaningful personalization can pay off big time. While sending generic bulk messages to a few hundred candidates at a time certainly saves time, the return on investment is very low (we typically see less than 10% response rate). Candidates want to know how you found them and what was it you saw that made you want to reach out to them. Taking a minute or two (or even less) to add this information proves to a candidate that you care who they are as an individual. It also proves your humanity and makes you that much harder to ignore. And when you enroll these passive candidates in a customized automated follow-up campaign, you're getting the dual advantage of personalization and automation.3. You're not selling the position enoughLet's say you're already sending personalized messages and telling each candidate what about their background caught your eye. How can a candidate tell you they are interested in what you're offering if all they know about the position is the title? We know that sometimes recruiters' knowledge of a position can be limited, but do what you can to highlight the most important aspects of the role. Providing a link to the job url is another great way to see who is taking the time to read the job description. At the very least, include a few sentences about the primarily responsibilities (never, ever paste the entire job description). If you can, include other unique features of the opportunity, like exceptional benefits, in-office perks, stand-out location, freedom to innovate or make a difference in a community. Even better? Answer this question: What problem would they be solving? This has the power to stop a candidate in their tracks and make them start to picture themselves in the role. 4. You're not following upHave you ever received an email, skimmed it, told yourself you would reply later and then completely forgot about it? You're not alone. Your passive candidates do that too. Even more so because they are likely gainfully employed and not currently looking at new opportunities. They may see the email on their phone or tablet or laptop and have every intention of following up but we all live in a fast-paced world filled with distractions. This is why having a solid follow-up plan in place is so important. You can use a tool made specifically for this purpose (like TalentBin's Automated Follow-up Campaigns) or you can use something as simple as a calendar reminder or sticky notes. Whichever method you choose, it is never a waste of your time. We can't count how often we have seen our users get replies to a second or third follow-up message. Yesware evaluated their own data and found that you have a 21% chance of getting a reply to your second email if the first goes unanswered.5. You're relying too heavily on one toolWe have one tool in particular in mind here and we're betting you know which one it is. ;-) While we would never discourage any recruiter from using LinkedIn (many of our customers use it in conjunction with TalentBin), the reality is that it has developed some significant limitations. The biggest of which is that virtually every recruiter uses it, often as their only passive tool. This oversaturation increases competition drastically, especially for the most sought after candidates. You are also limiting yourself to the type of people who are interested in creating a profile, which is not everyone. Whether it's with a tool like TalentBin or simply joining local networking groups via MeetUp, it's never too late to branch out.If any of the above is a weakness of yours, not to worry. We all know recruiting is a constantly changing landscape and everyone needs to make changes every so often in order to survive and stay relevant. The most important thing is to stay open minded and test new strategies when the tried-and-true methods fall short.And now for the obligatory, self-serving marketing pitch: If you aren't already a TalentBin user, we encourage you to request a demo and find out if you want to add it to your passive recruiting arsenal. With a yearlong license of TalentBin, you get more than just a tool. You will also get a dedicated Customer Success Manager whose sole purpose is to help you find the candidates you're looking for and make hires.Written by TalentBin Product Specialist, Brittany Lockwood