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5 Ways to Communicate With Passive Job Seekers

 

It’s no secret that a shortage of qualified candidates to fill highly-specialized roles has been hurting the IT industry in recent years. In their 2019 CIO Survey, the IT outsourcer Harvey Nash spoke with more than 3,000 leaders in the tech industry and found that a staggering 65% of respondents said that labor shortage is becoming a serious problem for the industry. In such a climate, the competition to source, recruit and hire top-talent applicants can be intense. It is also the reason why employers are beginning to adopt tactics aimed at recruiting “passive” job seekers or candidates who are currently employed elsewhere and thereby not actively seeking a new role.

Here are five tips for communicating with passive job seekers who might be a good match for a role within your company:

Strengthen Your Employer Brand

By building your company’s narrative (in the form of mission statements and the voice behind your copywriting, for example), candidates will be much more interested in learning more about you.

Understand Your Organization’s Needs

The more specifically you can define the skills, expertise, and specialties that you need to add to your company, the easier it will be to identify professionals whose backgrounds align with your needs. If a job description and its requirements closely align with their background and skills, passive candidates will be that much more likely to engage with you.

Partner With a Staffing Agency

Staffing agencies specialize in connecting engineers with companies who are seeking new talent. Once you’ve developed and strengthened your employer branding strategy, partnering with a staffing agency can help spread the message, mission, and values to all quarters of the industry to help attract top applicants.

Maintain Communication

Once you’ve established communication with a passive job seeker – whether that was through a staffing agency or by other means – it’s critical to do what you can to keep them engaged and to keep the conversation going. The fact that they’re currently employed elsewhere in all likelihood means that they’re happy in their current position, so excessive communication can ultimately be counterproductive. Rather, you can establish mutually productive communication by occasionally sending them posts that are relevant to their skills, and asking them questions about what their career goals look like.

Streamline the Application Process

Your goal while communicating with passive job seekers is to have them apply for a role. If, after strengthening your employer brand strategy, getting in touch with them, and maintaining your communication with them, they’ve decided to pursue an opportunity with your company, it should be your priority to make the process as frictionless as possible. Don’t have them submit their CV and application through an automated system; keep up personal communication. When they’re interviewing, don’t spend too much time asking them about their experience. After all, you approached them, so you can speed up the process by dropping those questions and instead of answering any questions that they might have.

Looking to Staff Up?

At RightStone, we’re working with IT candidates and top employers to make connections that last. To learn more about how to get connected with top talent, we’re here to help.


Learn What The Top Employers Are Looking For On Your Resume

Your resume is your first real point of contact with any potential employer, the document that will serve as their first impression of your background and suitability for a role. Everyone’s resumes vary depending on their personal experience and skills, but there are some common features that all employers look for in a resume when trying to determine if a candidate is a good fit.

Here are some tips for organizing your resume to increase your chances of having it catch the eye of a potential employer:

Include Industry and Role-Specific Keywords – Top employers typically receive huge numbers of resumes, which they need to have strategies for sifting through. One of the quickest ways for an employer to gauge how well-suited an applicant is for a role is to look for “keywords” on a resume. These are words describing skills, background experience, and knowledge that demonstrate an aptitude for the specific role and industry being applied to. Before you submit your resume, study the job description, company, and industry you’re applying to so that you can add keywords that will grab a hiring manager’s attention.

Watch Out For Embellishing – Most top employers who are trying to fill a role get inundated with resumes that are exaggerated. When a candidate’s resume includes, to the letter, every single required skill that was listed in the job post, that’s a pretty good indicator that that applicant does not possess those skills. When you’re building your resume, make sure not to include skills or expertise that don’t accurately reflect your professional background. When it comes to applying for a new role, it pays to be honest and to use your legitimate skills and background as your selling points.

Communicate the Progress You’ve Achieved in Your Career – When they’re looking at a resume, employers want to be able to tell that a candidate has accomplished some forward progress throughout their career. This will come across from your past job titles and the companies you’ve worked for, but there are other ways of communicating progress as well. When you’re outlining job descriptions for each position you’ve held, be sure to describe the specific responsibilities that you had and the skills that were required for you to be successful. That way, employers will get a much clearer sense of what you’ve learned, how and when you gained those skills, and how they were translated into you excelling throughout your career.

At RightStone, we’re working with IT candidates and top employers to find connections that last. If you’re ready to start looking for an exciting new role in IT, check out our jobs page.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Top Reasons Why IT Professionals Leave Their Jobs, and What You Can Do to Change It

Finding talented candidates is a struggle that IT employers frequently encounter. But there is another, lesser-known issue that is causing big problems in the IT industry: employee turnover. According to a 2018 turnover report from LinkedIn, IT has a turnover rate of 13.2%, which is the highest of any modern industry. This is leaving tech companies of all sizes scrambling to find new candidates to fill vacant roles, and spending billions of dollars in the process.

The best solution, however, may not lie in replacing employees that jump ship but rather making changes to your organization that will make them want to stay aboard. Here are a few of the big reasons why IT professionals leave their jobs, and some solutions that will make them want to stay:

Lack of Clear Career Advancement Opportunities – The huge influx in demand for talented IT employees in recent years means that our best workers are always being sought after by competing companies. If those companies can provide them with clear plans for how they’ll be able to advance in their career, and you haven’t communicated such a plan, that’s a huge motivating force for them to accept a new position. To encourage employees to remain in your company, work with your team leaders to devise clear and practical roadmaps for how your employees might be able to climb the ladder of success within your company.

They Are Being Overloaded With Work – One of the major reasons why employees leave a position is because they’re overworked for an extended period. This typically is indicative not so much of an employee’s capabilities but rather of the awareness and leadership skills of their managers. As leaders in the field, the responsibility falls on us to delegate tasks appropriately and realistically to our teams. This includes remaining conscious of employees’ workloads and taking steps to lighten them if we can see that someone is overwhelmed.

They Are Not Being Acknowledged by Leadership – Failing to acknowledge someone’s successes or even to provide honest feedback now and again is one of the surest ways to make an employee feel alienated and unimportant. If this is kept up, and someone continues to have his or her efforts seemingly ignored or taken for granted, you can be sure they will fairly quickly start looking into other opportunities that can offer more supportive work environments. Taking the time to provide feedback and recognize an employee’s contributions, on the other hand, can go a long way towards making them feel like an important part of the team.

Looking to Grow Your Team?

At RightStone, we’re working with IT candidates and top employers to make connections that last. To learn more about how to get connected with top talent, we’re here to help.