There are two types of recruitment that can be used to fill open positions: proactive and reactive.
In all candour, we don’t think posting a position and hoping for the best is the most effective method of finding qualified candidates. Similarly, waiting until a crisis has occurred inside your organisation before attempting to bridge talent gaps is not a good idea. Candidates should benefit as much as possible from your recruitment approach as your organisation does.
Typically, a company’s recruiting team is pressured to fill open positions as quickly as possible. In all honesty, this isn’t the best use of their time and resources. In order to attract top talent and exert control over the applicant experience, businesses need to develop proactive recruiting strategies instead.
But what exactly is proactive recruitment, and how does it differ from “regular” recruitment? What are the benefits of this recruitment style, and how can recruiters or HR managers deploy an effective proactive recruitment strategy? In this article, we talk about everything you need to know about proactive recruitment and why you need to implement it within your company’s recruitment strategies ASAP.
What Is Proactive Recruitment?
Proactive recruitment is a strategy organisations use to actively seek out and attract top talent before a specific job opening is even available. As opposed to the common practice of placing an ad only when a position opens up, the proactive strategy actively seeks potential candidates whether or not a position is actually available.
Companies can adopt a more strategic and long-term approach to growing their talent pool by using proactive recruitment strategies. Locating and cultivating long-term relationships with prospective employees with the most desirable talents and expertise is essential. Attending networking events, contacting possible applicants via social media, and establishing a talent community or talent pool are all viable options.
An organisation’s ability to attract and retain top people and save time and money in filling open positions can be improved through proactive recruitment strategies. By adopting this method, these companies might benefit from taking a more strategic approach to hiring, which calls for a mental shift from reactive hiring to proactive talent management.
Difference Between Proactive and Regular Recruitment
The key distinctions between standard and proactive recruitment techniques are the timing and technique used to discover and entice suitable applicants.
Employers that rely on the standard recruitment method wait till a position is open before aggressively pursuing candidates. This often involves placing employment adverts on job boards like Indeed or company websites and waiting for applications to come in. The focus of regular recruitment is generally on addressing immediate requirements rather than creating a long-term talent pipeline.
Proactive recruitment, as we’ve mentioned, is a method whereby businesses actively seek out and cultivate relationships with possible applicants before there is even an imminent employment opportunity. This entails discovering and engaging with passive job seekers who may not be actively looking for a new job but who possess the talents and experience that a company might appreciate. Participating in networking events, contacting potential applicants through platforms like LinkedIn, and establishing a talent community are all examples of proactive recruitment strategies.
The Main Benefits of Proactive Recruitment
When compared to regular or “reactive” recruitment, proactive recruitment strategies can provide tons of benefits to the companies that utilise them. Not only is it simply the more effective recruitment tool for businesses, it’s also the one that provides higher quality results.
With that said, here are the five biggest benefits of using proactive recruitment:
1. Cost Savings
Overall, businesses can save money through proactive hiring practices. Organisations can save money on recruitment by minimising the time it takes to fill a post and by decreasing their reliance on external recruitment agencies through the development of a talent pipeline.
The longer a position goes unfilled, the less productive your company will be. On the other hand, you might be adding stress to your current teams, and they might not appreciate the added work.
2. Reduced Time-to-Hire
Let’s face it, every company wants to find ways to speed up the hiring process. Searching for, interviewing and evaluating potential new hires takes time, which is in short supply when you need to fill a position urgently via reactive hiring.
Companies may create a talent pipeline of engaged and evaluated candidates through proactive recruitment. If a company has a list of suitable applicants already assembled, it can contact them more rapidly when a position opens up than if it had to begin the search for people from the beginning.
3. Better Quality of Hires
Reactive hiring doesn’t allow for in-depth consideration of each applicant. Your company’s HR or recruitment team is suddenly under pressure and needs to find a qualified worker quickly. As a result, you might not be able to find the cream of the crop since there just isn’t enough time to carefully go through each candidate’s application.
Thanks to proactive recruitment, companies may find and contact outstanding talent who aren’t actively looking for work. These individuals are not actively seeking employment, yet they may have the relevant skills and experience that an organisation seeks. This way, businesses can portray themselves as an employer of choice and attract high-quality prospects who might not have considered the organisation had they not built relationships with these candidates over time.
4. Improved Diversity
Did you know that women are much less likely to apply for jobs that they aren’t 100% qualified for? And have you heard of the “resume whitening” tactic used by those from ethnic minorities to gain a better chance at landing a job posted reactively? Through proactive recruitment, companies can boost their diversity and inclusion efforts with some proactive hiring.
Without the stresses of filling up a job position quickly, recruiters can better reflect the communities they serve if they actively seek out and actively engage a wide variety of candidates. In turn, this recruitment strategy has the potential to boost innovation, creativity, and decision-making while also strengthening team cohesion and institutional memory.
5. Competitive Advantage
Proactive recruitment is a people-focused strategy. Companies that proactively hire talent gain a significant advantage in the battle for top-tier talent. A company can establish itself as an employer of choice by cultivating a positive employer brand through sustained engagement with prospective employees.
Potential employees can be enticed to apply to your firm before they’ve even heard what it has to offer through your conversations and connections with them. This tactic has the potential to set companies apart from the competition and entice high-calibre applicants who may be more receptive to employment offers as a result.
3 Most Effective Proactive Recruitment Strategies
Now that you know the great benefits that proactive recruiting can give your company, we won’t be surprised if that’s the direction you want to take your business from now on! However, before you pull that trigger, you need to know and understand some of the most effective proactive strategies so you can ensure that you do things right.
Regardless of whether you’re reading this in 2023 or 2050, here are the three most important things you should do for your proactive recruiting strategy to be effective:
1. Refine Your Company’s Brand
Employer branding refers to improving an organisation’s public perception and credibility as an employer. Through mediums like social media, employer review sites (like Glassdoor) and career portals, you can advertise your business’s values, principles, and perks to potential employees. Keen on playing the long game? Optimising the SEO of your company’s website is another great way to increase the chances of attracting great talent.
There is no better location to showcase the calibre of employees your business attracts than on your website and careers page. Attracting the appropriate kind of individual to your firm can be facilitated by highlighting the work-life balance you offer through several facets of your company culture. Establishing a positive reputation as an employer can help a company recruit and retain talented workers who are seeking a place of employment that shares their personal beliefs.
2. Passively and Continuously Source Candidates
If you’re looking for employees but can’t seem to find any, passive candidate sourcing might be for you. Finding and connecting with passive prospects requires utilising many channels, such as social media, professional networks, and industry events. Once prospects have been discovered, businesses can work to cultivate long-term connections with them by sharing information about the company and keeping them abreast of job vacancies and other pertinent information.
Companies can use this information to create a pool of future hires who could be a good fit for the company. Firms can tap into a bigger talent pool and rely less on traditional recruitment techniques by actively seeking out passive applicants. Passive candidate sourcing works extremely well with the next proactive recruitment strategy…
3. Building a Talent Community
The creation of a talent pool or talent community provides a source of potential candidates for open positions. No matter how you come upon a potential player, you need a mechanism to get their information. If they apply for a different position, you may use this as an opportunity to start a conversation and build a rapport with them by asking if you can keep their information on file for future openings.
But be sure to actually mean it! Plenty of companies out there don’t tend to follow through with that aspect of proactive recruitment.
By establishing a talent network, businesses may interact with prospective employees on an ongoing basis, sharing information about the company and keeping them abreast of job opportunities and other pertinent news. As a result, businesses can strengthen their connections with prospective employees and improve their standing in the eyes of current workers. The organization’s career website, email marketing, and social media accounts are all great places to start building a community of talented individuals.
Final Thoughts
Proactive recruitment isn’t simply an action, it’s practically a way of life. In a world where companies are struggling to find and retain high-quality talent, it’s a great opportunity to change things up to benefit your business’s bottom line and make it a positive experience for the people you wish to hire.
Not sure where to start? Try engaging with an experienced recruitment and contracting agency that knows its stuff. We know change is hard — especially when converting from reactive to proactive hiring practices. So, leave it to the experts and enjoy the same benefits!