redefining passive talent recruitment strategy.

Irrespective of the industry they belong to, one of the top strategic priorities for recruitment in business is to ensure quality and speed of hire, improve the candidate experience and leverage marketing for employer branding. Extending this philosophy to passive talent recruitment calls for a greater shift to data-driven decision-making and adoption of automation in the talent acquisition strategy.

How can organisations adopt data intelligence in their passive talent recruitment plans to gain competitive business advantage?

A game-changing approach to recruitment

Adopting a data-driven approach to talent acquisition has significant advantages. Accurate and comprehensive mapping of sources to specific skills and capabilities that passive candidates possess is one. Recruiters can have a clearer picture of passive talent communities to make smarter moves and bring the right talent in faster.

Intuitive sourcing systems, smart data analytics for discerning recruiting metrics, and predictive modeling for recruitment trends and succession planning initiatives will play vital roles in niche talent acquisition. Data tools can align passive candidates to the ideal roles, assess behaviors and values, and minimize hiring bias. With passive candidates willing to disturb their status quo only for reasons that truly motivate a higher calling, this taps their right chords.

When intelligence and automation combine, talent wins

Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and bots may currently focus on just process automation and efficiency, but recruiters need to be prepared to leverage them for greater advantages very soon.

Going forward AI will be expected to analyse job descriptions (using machine learning and algorithm intelligence) and proactively invite the right fit candidates to apply. Passive candidates will clearly see the reasoning of alignment to be impressed and convinced of their fit. Machine learning and bots can significantly enhance the candidate communication experience, and they will get better as they continue to learn. This will free up recruiters’ time for more qualitative interactions with passive candidates.

Technology, the friend to hyper-personal recruitment

The focus has swung to providing a consumer-quality experience to candidates in an extremely personalised manner. And this is exactly what grabs the attention of passive candidates. When recruiters deploy an omni-channel mode of talent search and offers (combined with AI and data analytics), the result is a more relevant and individualised experience.

Imagine persona-based content delivered through segmented career and talent community sites to reach the right passive talent. Imagine cookie-based targeting for behaviours that indicates openness to specific jobs. Imagine embedded mobile recruitment strategies to increase talent acquisition efficiencies. The result is an unerring achievement of quality hiring.

The social handshake of recruitment technologies

HR technology will need to leverage the social space to reach out the multitude of passive talent who communicate and interact through the social media. By embedding social capabilities into HR platforms, recruiters can find more relevant and connected talent communities.

Zappos, for example, has totally adopted social media recruiting since 2014. They invite job seekers to be members of ‘Zappos Insiders’, their proprietary social network. Members can learn about Zappos, interact with their employees, and are given priority for any openings.

It is a technology-driven and intelligent future that recruiting faces. With passive talent being the fulcrum of quality recruitment, HR leaders must ensure that they add a winning competitive edge to their recruitment strategy with the right technology. Recruitment technology must minimize lag in talent sourcing, assessment and offer management to make the process speedier, smarter and quality-driven.