What is Proactive Recruitment?

Proactive recruitment is based on forward planning and constant monitoring of the market. It involves forging relationships and sourcing talent to stay ahead of the demand. Instead of reacting to change, proactive recruitment involves anticipating the changes and preparing for them. It helps businesses deal with inevitable staffing changes.

Businesses employ proactive recruitment strategies to ensure a steady flow of candidates. Methods like marketing the brand and being active in a talent community come in handy when a staffing need arises. Companies that have the foresight to implement these strategies often acquire the brightest talent.

What does a proactive recruitment funnel look like?

Proactive recruitment is about staying ahead of the game. Below are the core components of a proactive funnel:

Sourcing the ultimate talent: Connect with suitable candidates who would also find your organization’s culture appealing. Proactive recruiting requires you to contact passive candidates as part of your outreach. A research survey suggests nearly 73% of potential candidates you encounter are, in fact, passive candidates. They may be employed and not actively looking for an opportunity, but they still glance through job boards whenever they get a chance.
Interacting with potential candidates: This aspect of proactive recruitment can be a little tricky since you are simply connecting with candidates. Nevertheless, it is a vital step for forging relationships in the talent pool. You want your potential candidates to feel like more than just another name on the list, and hence, you must increase your efforts to improve the candidate experience.
Nurturing relationships: The job doesn’t end with simply just adding candidates to your recruitment pipeline. It is crucial that they feel valued as well. You should make efforts to keep these qualified leads warm. Regular messages or calls help maintain their interest.
You could also add them to your newsletter subscriber list to keep them updated about the organization’s achievements and journey. Upping your social media activity and sharing regular company and industry-related posts also does the trick.
Converting candidates to employees: If you’ve been on top of your social media game and have regularly engaged with your talent pool, the candidates would be well-informed and interested in working at your organization. They would have assessed how well their values match with your organizational goals and company culture. Converting them to employees would be faster and simpler.

With modern recruitment software like Freshteam, your organization can efficiently accomplish all of these steps and get the best results.

What are the benefits of proactive recruitment?

Proactive hiring can bring numerous benefits to an organization. It lays the foundation for enhanced hiring processes. Here’s why you would consider it:

Prevents bad hires and high turnover rates: Proactive recruitment gives recruiters and candidates more time to learn about each other. This could result in a better fit as both parties are not in a rush to go through the recruitment pipeline. This could also lead to better employee retention, as candidates make an informed decision after assessing the company values and culture.
Quicker recruitment: Unlike Reactive recruitment which occurs on a need-to basis, Proactive recruitment is an all-year-round activity. It cuts down the tedious process of designing job descriptions, publishing them on job portals, and reviewing resumes. You already have a list of pre-sourced/screened candidates in your talent pool. You simply have to reach out to them and get started with the interviews.

A better understanding of the market: Proactive recruitment allows recruiters to connect with the top talent in every field. Engage them with recruitment marketing activities like email campaigns, newsletters, social media and so on. By doing so, you have created a community you can go to when the need for talent arises.

What are the most effective proactive recruitment strategies?

Build a talent pool: Forming a talent community results in numerous opportunities ready to be utilized when a role becomes available. If you find any potential candidates, record their information and keep it handy for the future.
Enhance your online presence: Ensure your brand is visible to candidates looking for you. Post frequently and create events to become a familiar name for the targeted talent pool. Try creating content that your potential candidates engage with and establish yourself as an industry leader. You can also join online spaces that connect people with specific skill sets and find highly qualified candidates.
Step up your recruitment marketing efforts: Have a neatly designed career page in place and advertise it on your home page. Bring more light to your brand culture and brand values to attract more potential candidates to different business channels. Encourage your employees to speak about your company on channels like Glassdoor and LinkedIn where candidates learn about organizations.
Improvise your application process: Reduce the efforts that candidates put in to find a job and craft a quality candidate experience. Ask for essential information only, instead of forcing them to fill in an hour-long application.
Keep the candidates engaged: You can lose out on your pipeline because of lack of engagement. Send your candidates good quality content and keep them updated with company roles. Keep in mind the engagement channel and decide the best form of content.

What is reactive recruitment?

Reactive recruitment refers to a hiring process initiated only when employees need to join a team. This method often puts too much pressure on the recruiter to source suitable candidates for a position as the requirement is urgent.

In a typical recruiting scenario, this is how reactive recruitment plays out in companies. There is a vacant position because of expansion or an employee leaving, and that’s when the hiring team posts the job opportunity on different channels. Once the hiring team is flooded with applications (or maybe not), candidates are screened, and the interview process begins. But since the clock is ticking, the team managers and recruiters are under pressure to hire a candidate. This isn’t an ideal scenario, is it? It slows down the entire process a great deal.

Disadvantages of Reactive recruitment

Reactive recruitment is time-consuming. Depending on the job opportunity and the experience and skills required, it takes about 6-12 weeks for the hiring process, from posting the job opportunity to rolling out an offer.
On top of that, the candidate might have a notice period of up to three months. During that time, the job may be neglected or passed on to other team members who may end up feeling overwhelmed.
Sometimes organizations even have to hire contract employees at a very high cost to meet their urgent needs. As more and more time passes, panic sets in, and bad hiring decisions could be made due to the pressure to fill the vacancy. The average cost of one bad hire is nearly $15,000!

Proactive vs. reactive recruitment

Reactive recruitment strategies belong to the bygone era. Sourcing for top talent when the need arises is not such an easy task. The way you recruit says a lot about your organizational dynamics and policies. Top candidates seek companies that are growing and making a significant impact in their industry. If you are a future-oriented and forward-thinking company, a proactive recruitment approach is the best for you. It is almost always cheaper, quicker, and ensures you are ahead of the game.
If you’ve been a reactive recruiter till now, there are multiple reasons to transition to proactive hiring.
Proactive hiring is about building a talent pipeline by engaging with suitable candidates even before you have the right opportunity for them. Candidates are very much aware of the employer brands, and if they are keen on working with you, they want to be a part of your talent pool.
The candidates usually look up information about the employer brand before they apply. A great employer brand translates to a reduced staff turnover, cost to hire, and time to hire. It also means higher qualified talent leads. These improvements could also be due to candidates carefully considering the employers they apply for.
We live in a world where technology has enabled us to connect and share information constantly; that’s precisely what proactive recruitment is all about – engaging with talent.
Some of the reasons why you should pick proactive recruitment over reactive recruitment are:

Data tracking, predictive analytics, and real-time analytics keep you better informed. You don’t have to scramble under pressure before making your next hiring decision.
Having an active talent pipeline to look into reduces the time to hire significantly.
You have a lower chance of making a wrong hiring decision under pressure, and you could proceed with the hiring process with more control.
You build on your employer brand by forming a community that loves to engage and know more about your brand. This could also positively impact your organization’s brand image.
Your hiring costs will be much lower, and your hiring team will be much happier.
The quality of hired employees will be better as you’ve taken time to assess them if they are a proper fit, and they have also indicated their keen interest in working at your organization

Turn your hiring process from reactive recruitment to proactive recruitment

A single hub for all your talent records

With Freshteam ATS, you effortlessly build a talent pool and find candidate information in one place. You can create each candidate's records that consist of your communication, notes, resume, and other supplementary documents. If they are previously not hired but were a brilliant fit for the organization, you can access information such as interview feedback to pick up a conversation.