Before you adjust your recruiting strategy, identify key data related to your short- and long-term hiring efforts that matter most to your growing business. Even in a smaller company, having the people, processes, and technology to monitor these recruitment and hiring metrics is essential.

Let’s review the basics of recruiting metrics, tips for collecting data, and useful recruiting benchmarks to track and explore.

What are Recruiting Metrics?

Recruiting metrics are data points used to track business recruitment and hiring success. They cover various aspects of the hiring process, from time to fill to cost to hire, allowing you to track the effectiveness of your business’s recruiting efforts—how efficient hiring is and whether you’re hiring the right people for your open roles.

Why Tracking Recruiting Metrics Matters

No matter how many people you need to hire or your business’s challenges, ensure you use data-driven insights to guide your hiring efforts. Recruiting metrics enable you to determine whether you’re engaging and onboarding job seekers effectively or if you need to adjust your approach.

Tracking talent acquisition (TA) data regularly isn’t just important for your HR team—it can also help your business leaders make more informed decisions about adding resources in the company. After all, your leaders want to know which processes are efficient, effective, and contribute to long-term growth, so they can allocate resources accordingly.

When you know where recruiting bottlenecks exist, you can make changes that drive down recruitment costs, streamline the application process, and improve candidate outreach. 

Best Practices for Collecting Recruiting Metrics

Here are a few best practices for simplifying recruitment data collection:

• – Use an applicant tracking system (ATS). Regardless of your SMB’s size, an ATS like JazzHR can help your company source qualified candidates, provide a positive application experience, and improve your employer brand.
• – Set detailed goals. Ensure your team’s goals follow the tried-and-true SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound) framework, so you can easily pinpoint relevant metrics.
• – Ensure consistency and correctness. Maintain consistency in your collection methods and criteria, and regularly audit your data to correct any discrepancies.
• – Know industry benchmarks. As you start setting recruiting metrics, research within your industry to see which metrics have worked for similar businesses.
• – Gather qualitative metrics. Don’t just focus on the numbers. You can gain valuable, nuanced insights by asking for qualitative data, such as comments about your recruitment process or perceptions of your employer brand.
• – Respect data collection laws. Thoroughly research and implement practices that align with data privacy best practices and regulations, such as transparency and security.

As you start collecting, analyzing, and acting on recruiting data, it might take some time to fall into a natural cadence, especially if you’re working with a small team. Regularly audit your processes, so you can bridge any gaps and work better together.

Let’s explore key recruitment metrics that can give you insight into the strengths and weaknesses of your SMB recruiting efforts.

Critical Recruiting Metrics Your Hiring Team Should Monitor

Let’s explore key recruitment metrics that can give you insight into the strengths and weaknesses of your SMB recruiting efforts.

Average Cost of Hire

• – Basic definition: The measure of how much money your business typically spends on recruiting a single hire.
• – Why it matters: Tracking the expenses designated to promote an open position can ensure you don’t waste any resources. Also, this is one of the most important recruiting metrics for SMBs, given the limited budget you might have for paid recruitment marketing activities. Your internal and external recruiting costs can add up quickly if you don’t pay close attention.
• – Suggested next steps: Compare your cost to hire with other industry benchmarks, which take into account your industry, job level, company size, geographical location, and more. Based on this comparison, consider which parts of your hiring process are more costly and how you can adjust them.

Time to Fill

• – Basic definition: How quickly it takes you to find and hire a new candidate for an open role.
• – Why it matters: You may not have more than a few total open positions at any given time. However, that doesn’t mean you should take a long time to source, nurture, and interview talent. Instead, move with a sense of urgency to drive down your average time to fill to ensure you can fill roles in a timely manner.
• – Suggested next steps: If your average time to fill is longer than you’d like, take a closer look at which parts of the hiring process may be dragging. Identify key blockers to the recruiting funnel and work to streamline them—for example, does your recruiting team take a while to start conducting outreach once a new role opens up? Or maybe your team takes a while to initially screen candidates based on their resumes?

Time to Hire

• – Basic definition: How quickly you move a candidate through the recruiting funnel, from the moment they are approached to the moment they accept an offer.
• – Why it matters: Similarly to the time to fill metric, moving with a sense of urgency shows your business’s leaders that you can fill roles in a timely manner. However, time to hire also reflects a key part of the candidate experience. If it takes you a long time to send an offer to a candidate, they may grow impatient or frustrated with your application process.
• – Suggested next steps: When onboarding new hires, survey them about their experience during the application process. Ask them how they felt about the speed of your recruiting team’s responses and the general pace of your hiring. If they indicate that they felt the process was too long, then you may need to make adjustments to improve your time to hire.

Application Completion Rate

• – Basic definition: The measure of how many candidates started an application and finished it.
• – Why it matters: Clunky or complicated application processes that require account setup and log-ins lead to few completions by active job seekers. Conversely, simple, user-friendly application processes that take just a few minutes often lead to higher application completion.
• – Suggested next steps: If your application completion rate is low, take another look at your application. Consider how you can simplify it or if there are any fields that you could remove. For example, for a lower-level position, you could remove the requirement for a cover letter to remove a large barrier to application competition.

Applicants Per Opening

• – Basic definition: The number of applicants that apply to any one opening at your business.
• – Why it matters: This recruiting metric provides a way to measure how enticing your job openings are in the market. If there are many applicants, many individuals want that specific job or to work at your specific organization. If there aren’t many applicants, your job opening may fall short of similar roles in other organizations.
• – Suggested next steps: The number of applicants per opening is impacted by various factors, from your employer brand to the compensation you offer. Use this metric as a signal to dig deeper into your other recruiting metrics to determine if there’s an issue with your hiring processes, or if it’s just a sign of greater economic patterns.

Offer Acceptance Rate

• – Basic definition: The measure of how frequently the offers you extend to applicants are accepted. 
• – Why it matters: You need to know the rate at which candidates you interview and advance to the offer stage decide to join your business. If your offer acceptance rate is low, you must find out why your offers are lacking to ensure that hiring continues to go efficiently.
• – Suggested next steps: Direct feedback from potential hires through post-interview candidate experience surveys can reveal why they did or didn’t accept an offer. This can be used to change your recruiting approach for certain roles.

Sourcing Channel Effectiveness

• – Basic definition: The platforms or channels that yield the most and best new hires. 
• – Why it matters: Not all sourcing channels provide the same return on investment. That said, you won’t know whether you should continue looking for passive or active prospects on certain channels if you don’t keep tabs on how many leads you secure and how far they advance in your hiring process.
• – Suggested next steps: Look at high-performing recent hires (within the last two years) and explore which channel they were sourced from. If you see any patterns (for example, if most of your best hires are from LinkedIn), then focus your hiring efforts on these channels for better results.

Sourcing Channel Cost

• – Basic definition: The cost of using and maintaining a sourcing channel.
• – Why it matters: Certain sourcing channels may cost more to utilize than others. You want to make sure that you’re using your money wisely, not spending on less effective sourcing channels.
• – Suggested next steps: Consider a sourcing channel’s cost against how many applicants it brings in and how many of those applicants end up hired. If there are any channels that you’re heavily invested in but that aren’t working for your needs, consider pulling back the spend on it. Conversely, if a sourcing channel is extremely effective but you’re not spending much on it, consider upping your investment to bring in more top talent.

Funnel Conversion Rates

• – Basic definition: Metrics that reveal how far prospects advance from stage to stage in your recruiting funnel, such as application to interview rate.
• – Why it matters: Tracking funnel-based metrics to see how far the average candidate makes it in the recruitment lifecycle can help you pinpoint areas for improvement in your candidate relationship management approach.
• – Suggested next steps: Explore if there are any parts of the funnel that candidates tend to stop at. Then, discuss with other hiring team members to brainstorm ideas that will help candidates continue moving forward from that funnel step.

Nurture Engagement Levels

• – Basic definition: The open, click, and response rates of candidate nurture messaging.
• – Why it matters: Whether you deliver emails, texts, or a mix of both to candidates, you need a mechanism to easily and efficiently analyze your candidate engagement across channels to see which approaches work best and should be used most often.
• – Suggested next steps: If your nurture engagement levels are low, look at specific messages where engagement rates were higher than average. Analyze them for what makes them more engaging and effective than your other messages. Take these insights and apply them to future messaging to boost engagement levels.

Candidate Feedback Scores

• – Basic definition: Ratings provided by candidates about your recruiting process.
• – Why it matters: Compiling candidate feedback can give you rich insight into the external perception of your SMB recruitment model. Aside from securing general comments from prospects, it’s equally important to collect specific ratings from candidates, so you can quantify your work—and make the necessary adjustments to provide a better candidate experience over time.
• – Suggested next steps: If you aren’t already, send surveys to candidates and ask them about their experience with your hiring process. Based on their responses, make the necessary adjustments to ensure you deliver a great candidate experience during your hiring process.

Hiring Manager Satisfaction

• – Basic definition: The measure of how satisfied the hiring manager is with the outcomes of the hiring process.
• – Why it matters: Feedback is essential for understanding the nuances of your recruiting process. As with candidate feedback, it’s helpful to gather feedback scores and qualitative comments from your hiring team that help you tangibly measure your effectiveness.
• – Suggested next steps: Have your hiring team fill out a survey about how satisfied they are with your process. Then, schedule a team meeting where you discuss the survey responses and how you can make improvements to talent acquisition.

Quality of Hire

• – Basic definition: The ratings of new hires by managers several months into the job.
• – Why it matters: A high quality of hire indicates an employee you hired is performing well in the job. However, a low-quality hire who has poor reviews and misses target goals can greatly hinder your company’s success.
• – Suggested next steps: Evaluate candidate profiles for high-quality and low-quality hires for any commonalities or shared characteristics that might explain why they were high- or low-quality hires. Use that information to develop your talent acquisition further. For example, if most of your low-quality hires have little to no prior experience in the industry, begin adding an industry experience requirement to your job listings.

Employee Retention Rate

• – Basic definition: The measure of how many of your employees remain at your business over time.
• – Why it matters: Employee retention rate is another post-hiring metric that reflects the ROI of your recruitment team’s strategies. A high retention rate indicates members of the workforce you helped hire are satisfied and want to stay, meaning your recruitment efforts are reaching the right audience.
• – Suggested next steps: If your retention rate is low, evaluate your workplace culture, benefits, and engagement programs to ensure you’re delivering a quality work experience. Conduct exit interviews to understand why employees are leaving, and consider their feedback as you adjust your talent acquisition process.

Tracking Recruiting Metrics with JazzHR

To properly track recruiting metrics, you need a robust ATS that caters to the unique needs of growing companies like yours. One of the best options available today is JazzHR. With affordable pricing tiers and a comprehensive, intuitive interface, JazzHR makes it simple for SMB teams to track relevant recruiting metrics.

To learn more, explore our solution’s capabilities with your free trial today. 

From partnering with specialized recruiters to providing relocation assistance packages, discover how these leaders tailor their recruitment efforts to bring in the best talent.

• Target Fresh College Graduates
• Engage Local Expat Communities
• Optimize Job Listings for SEO
• Create an Employee-Employer Charter
• Host Virtual Open House Events
• Sponsor Local Project Contests
• Publish Free Listings on LinkedIn
• Market Company Culture on Social Media
• Showcase Company and Candidate Value Alignment
• Provide Relocation Assistance Packages

Target Fresh College Graduates

At KIS, we’ve been looking for fresh college graduates who are willing to work. These young, enthusiastic people may lack certain skills, but with a willingness to learn and educate themselves, they can quickly catch up on the hard skills.

We are as transparent as it can be with how we work and what our core values are. We have realized that many Gen Z employees care much more than older people about DEI, about the company culture, approach to modern problems, and it’s something we find extremely valuable. Candidates who do their research, candidates who know what they want, and what they expect from the company, show great dedication towards their work hygiene.

Susan Andrews, HR Consultant, KIS Finance

Engage Local Expat Communities

A small yet widely international business like mine is always a bit tricky when it comes to recruitment, simply because the needs are diverse enough to make having one single source of talent not feasible, especially without a massive recruitment budget.

Something that has worked quite well in the past for me, however, has been turning to the local expat communities on various social media and local meetup platforms. These groups are usually absolutely packed with experts in various fields who are receptive to being snapped up for the right offer, since they’re in the country to develop their careers. This isn’t a very formal process, and you do need to spend time chasing people, but it is an excellent way to find rare skill sets in my experience.

Dragos Badea, CEO, Yarooms

Optimize Job Listings for SEO

We attempt to rank for job titles related to our open positions on Google. Localized SEO also offers the option for targeting potential candidates close to your area of business.

For example, our job descriptions are SEO-optimized and show up on Google for things like “Email Marketing Strategist” near me. SEO can be a free way to garner talent that is localized and niche-specific as well.

Erin Siemek, CEO, Forge Digital Marketing, LLC

Create an Employee-Employer Charter

We created an employee-employer charter, signed by myself as the CEO. It has two sides: for every promise we make as an employer, there is a reciprocal side we expect from employees. What that does is it takes away this idea that employers get to make all the demands.

In fact, it’s a two-way street. We say, ‘We create a workplace where you can be your authentic self,’ and your obligation, as an employee, is to simply ‘be yourself.’ We say, ‘We don’t tolerate bullying, in any form, for any reason,’ and the other half of that promise is, ‘You are kind, avoiding the pitfalls of office politics, cliques, or ganging up. This is a grown-up workplace, not a playground.’ We send this charter in emails to prospective candidates, and we have it linked on our website. It also forms part of our onboarding, in case people missed it the first time around.

This attracts the type of candidates who are willing to engage beyond the paycheck and who want to make the absolute most of their time at Articulate.

Matthew Stibbe, CEO, Articulate Marketing

Host Virtual Open House Events

One effective strategy we’ve employed is hosting virtual open houses that showcase our studio’s culture, projects, and career growth opportunities in 3D animation, game art, and character design. These events not only provide a transparent view of our creative environment but also allow potential candidates to engage directly with our team and understand our commitment to pushing creative boundaries.

We tailor these events by incorporating interactive demonstrations of our latest work and offering insights into upcoming projects. This approach not only attracts top talent but also fosters a community of passionate artists eager to contribute to our innovative storytelling ventures at Pixune.

Mohammad Goodarzi, Co-Founder, Pixune Studios

Sponsor Local Project Contests

Running a small locksmith business isn’t exactly known for attracting a massive pool of applicants. Most folks wouldn’t think of it as a hotbed for talent! But you know, security is a growing concern, and keeping up with the latest technology in locks and access control systems is pretty darn important. So, we’ve got to get creative to find the right people.

One thing that’s worked wonders for Keyzoo is sponsoring local tinkering contests. These events bring together tech enthusiasts, inventors, and just plain curious folks who love taking things apart and putting them back together—sometimes in really ingenious ways. It’s a fantastic way to meet people who are naturally handy and have a knack for problem-solving.

Now, these contests aren’t exactly filled with applicants with ‘Locksmith’ on their resumes. But what they do have are passionate, quick learners who are eager to get their hands dirty. We can train the technical aspects of lock repair and key cutting, but that tinkering spirit and dedication? That’s hard to teach.

So, we set up a booth at these events, show off some of the higher-tech locks we work with, and chat with folks about the challenges they love tackling. We even offer a special prize—a paid internship at Keyzoo, where they can learn from our experienced locksmiths and see if this path is a good fit.

It’s a win-win. We get to meet some truly talented folks who might not have otherwise considered a career in locksmithing, and they get a chance to explore a new field with a growing company. We’ve found some absolute gems this way, people who bring fresh ideas and a whole lot of enthusiasm to the team. It’s not your typical recruiting strategy, but for us, it’s unlocked a treasure trove of top talent.

Eli Itzhaki, CEO, Keyzoo

Publish Free Listings on LinkedIn

We were surprised to see how many skilled candidates applied to our opening published on LinkedIn. We didn’t pay a single penny for the listings and averaged 73 candidates across five different positions, with the most—183—applying for a junior marketing specialist.

Since a big part of our team is remote, we were open to candidates from across the entire country, which I believe made the biggest difference. LinkedIn has this cool feature where you can automatically reject candidates if they do not meet the criteria. Although we reviewed all the instant rejections manually, because sometimes it was a difference of two months of experience, the vast majority of them were indeed people who had absolutely no chance of progressing in the recruitment process.

Since our employees are one of our biggest ambassadors, they have published these openings and gained thousands of impressions on their posts. Although it was only the first step of the recruitment, we’ve sourced tens of great candidates this way and hired the top of the talent pool, while not spending a single dollar on the promotion of these positions.

Martin Kanaan, Head of Marketing and Business Development, Makolab

Market Company Culture on Social Media

Marketing isn’t just for external users—it’s a great way to attract top talent and viable candidates. One of the best ways to do so authentically is through social media because it gives prospective candidates a genuine peek behind the curtain while attracting even more great people your way. We like to share our team ‘in the wild,’ like candid shots during a team happy hour or product offsite. Highly talented people have plenty of options, so we like to showcase our culture so they can see everything they’ll experience as a part of our team, including camaraderie, fun events, and more.

We also like to use word-of-mouth advertising and let employees advocate for the company, sharing their positive experiences through their own lenses.

Elisa Montanari, Head of Organic Growth, Wrike

Showcase Company and Candidate Value Alignment

One effective strategy that we’ve utilized at Or & Zon to source candidates is direct outreach to individual artisans and studios globally. Given the nature of our business, focusing on luxury handcrafted goods, it’s essential for us to partner with individuals who are masters of their craft. To attract top talent, we tailor this approach by aligning it with our commitment to sustainability and ethical business practices.

I believe potential employees or partners are more likely to be interested if they see that their values align with the company’s. For instance, we discovered a family-owned ceramic studio in the heart of Tuscany using an age-old technique that was at risk of dying out. By directly reaching out and partnering with them, we gained unique products for our lineup, while they received support to continue their craft. This win-win model has not only helped us source top talent but also to preserve traditional crafts and techniques.

Guillaume Drew, Founder & CEO, Or & Zon

Provide Relocation Assistance Packages

To attract candidates from a broader geographic area, we provide comprehensive relocation-assistance packages. This includes covering moving expenses, temporary housing, and helping with the transition to a new city.

By removing the barriers associated with relocation, we attract top talent who might otherwise be hesitant to consider opportunities outside their current location. This commitment to support and ease their transition demonstrates our dedication to employee well-being.

Roman Zrazhevskiy, Founder & CEO, MIRA Safety

From partnering with specialized recruiters to providing relocation assistance packages, discover how these leaders tailor their recruitment efforts to bring in the best talent.

• Partner with Specialized Recruiters
• Utilize Passive Sourcing Methods
• Showcase Authentic Employer Brand
• Highlight SMB Advantages in Messaging
• Leverage Employee Referral Programs
• Conduct 360-Degree Recruitment Sessions
• Invest in Long-Term Employer Branding
• Promote Career Growth Internally
• Offer Remote Work Opportunities
• Recruit Freelancers for Projects
• Emphasize Work-Life Balance

Partner with Specialized Recruiters

One effective strategy we’ve used to source candidates is partnering with recruiters who specialize in tech and SaaS. These recruiters have a deep understanding of the specific skills and qualities required in our industry, and they maintain extensive networks of highly qualified professionals. By leveraging their expertise, we’ve been able to attract top talent that not only fits our technical needs but also aligns with our company culture.

To tailor this strategy and ensure we attract the best candidates, we work closely with our recruiters to clearly define our job requirements and ideal candidate profiles. We provide detailed insights into our company values, work environment, and the unique opportunities we offer. This collaboration ensures that the recruiters can effectively communicate our brand to potential candidates, making our roles more appealing to top-tier talent.

We also stay engaged throughout the recruitment process, offering feedback and maintaining open communication to refine our approach continuously. This partnership has significantly enhanced our ability to attract and retain high-caliber employees, driving our growth and success in the competitive tech and SaaS landscape.

Blake Smith, Marketing Manager, ClockOn Australia

Utilize Passive Sourcing Methods

Passive recruitment is a fantastic sourcing method, if you have the time to wait for the ‘right’ fit of staff who align with your processes and the output required from your team. Passive sourcing means that you’re essentially reaching a talent ‘pool’ that otherwise might not apply directly for a job, so it’s often worth the patience that the process definitely requires to find the right person or people!

Wendy Makinson, HR Manager, Joloda Hydraroll

Showcase Authentic Employer Brand

Unlike enterprise companies, SMBs have a leg up when it comes to building a much more authentic, cheeky, fun, and frankly human employer brand. It’s all about highlighting your culture, the amazing people on your team, and what it’s really like to work with you. Use social media like TikTok and Instagram Reels to showcase behind-the-scenes content, team events, and everyday work life. This helps you stand out from the big players and engage with potential candidates on a more personal level.

While enterprise companies tend to be very buttoned-up, SMBs can create a more intimate, friendly, and welcoming atmosphere. Share stories, celebrate successes, and show the human side of your business. This approach not only attracts top talent but also makes them excited about joining a company where they feel they can make a difference. After all, people care deeply about who they are working for and why. By being genuine and engaging, you can build a strong, appealing employer brand that draws in the best candidates.

Vivian Chen, Founder & CEO, Rise

Highlight SMB Advantages in Messaging

When sourcing passive candidates for our SMB clients, we successfully attract top talent by focusing our outreach messaging on the many strengths SMBs have over larger companies.

Small-to-medium-sized businesses often outshine large bureaucratic companies in terms of career growth opportunities, the ability to have a more significant impact, more visibility from upper management, and many other advantages. Our outreach messaging is short, with the main focus being three to four bullet points that specifically highlight the benefits of joining a smaller organization.

Mike Basso, Founder & CEO, salestalent.com

Leverage Employee Referral Programs

It might not be anything groundbreaking, but in my experience, the most consistently effective method to source high-quality candidates is leveraging the power of employee referrals. This isn’t always the method that will bring you the highest number of applicants, but in terms of the percentage of applicants who meet your qualifications and are likely to not only get the job but stay in it long-term, referrals are the winner.

What I find especially great about referrals is that they’re far more likely to be a fit both in terms of skills/knowledge/experience and when it comes to culture fit and personality. This is because the employees who are making the referrals understand your culture already, to a much deeper level than you can achieve by describing the culture in a job posting. Because of this, they’re able to do some initial selection, only referring those individuals in their network that they see matching the role on all points.

Employees also already have a vested interest in referring people who will excel. For one thing, they know they’ll have to work with this person if they’re hired, so they won’t refer someone who will make their life more difficult by failing at their job. Employees also recognize that their reputation is somewhat at stake when they refer a friend or network contact.

I’ve found an incentive system can be an effective way to promote more employee referrals. A cash bonus is often an effective and simple incentive, though you can also use PTO days or other perks for this. I like to use a system where the referring employee will earn the incentive after the person they refer is not only hired but has been with the company for a specified length of time (I usually make this six months). This way, employees are encouraged to not just refer a lot of people, but specifically to refer those individuals who have a strong chance of being hired and excelling in the job long-term.

Matt Erhard, Managing Partner, Summit Search Group

Conduct 360-Degree Recruitment Sessions

One effective strategy our SMB employs to source candidates is through our 360-degree recruitment sessions. These sessions provide an opportunity for candidates to engage not only with our team but also directly with our clients and partner organizations. By offering this view, candidates gain insights into our company culture, work environment, and the broader impact of our operations. This transparency fosters more enthusiasm and a deeper understanding among candidates, leading to a higher likelihood of them choosing to work with us.

To tailor this strategy for attracting top talent, we emphasize clear communication and highlight our organizational values and mission during these sessions. With the sessions, the candidates can see that we practice what we preach. Personalization is key, as we customize interactions to align with candidates’ career aspirations and interests. By integrating feedback and continually refining our approach, we ensure that our recruitment process is not only inclusive but also compelling for candidates seeking meaningful alignment with our company’s vision and values.

Stijn van der Vat, CEO & Founder, Deepler

Invest in Long-Term Employer Branding

While there are numerous effective strategies for sourcing candidates, an increasingly effective and often overlooked element is the power of employer branding. The clients we work with who have a long-term talent acquisition strategy are becoming a magnet for great, highly motivated candidates who are genuinely interested in their brand. While this is a longer-term strategy, over time it makes sourcing candidates both cost-effective and highly targeted towards the best talent in the market.

Additionally, retention rates of candidates sourced through effective employer branding are often improved as they are emotionally invested in the brand and are already well-versed with the environment and company culture.

Chris Percival, Founder & Managing Director, CJPI

Promote Career Growth Internally

We promote from within whenever possible, encouraging our employees to apply for open positions and advance their careers within the company. This internal mobility program is highlighted in our recruitment materials, showcasing success stories of employees who have moved up the ranks.

By emphasizing our commitment to career development and internal promotions, we attract ambitious candidates who are looking for long-term growth opportunities. This approach not only retains top talent but also demonstrates our investment in our employees’ futures.

Our transparent promotion process and support for continuous learning make us an attractive employer for high-potential candidates. This strategy fosters a culture of loyalty and motivation, driving overall company success.

Shawn Plummer, CEO, The Annuity Expert

Offer Remote Work Opportunities

One powerful strategy we’ve used at GoPromotional to source top talent is offering remote work opportunities. This approach significantly broadens our candidate pool, allowing us to tap into skilled professionals across the UK and beyond. With the flexibility to work from anywhere, we’ve seen an increase in applications from individuals who may not have considered us if a physical presence in our office was required.

We customize this plan by offering flexible work arrangements and providing extensive tools and resources to our distributed workforce members. The use of project management software, video conferencing facilities, and messaging platforms ensures that communication between employees proceeds seamlessly, such that projects are completed through collaboration with each other successfully. Remote staff should feel like part of the team no less than those who work out of an office building; hence, regular virtual team meetings as well as social events sustain strong team dynamics within companies.

Another important element is clarity in communication, as it helps remote employees integrate themselves right from the start by ensuring that they understand how we do things. New hires appreciate openness, which facilitates quick adaptation regardless of their location.

Jessica Bane, Director of Business Operations, GoPromotional

Recruit Freelancers for Projects

We use a strategy where we recruit freelancers by first hiring them for specific projects. This gives us the chance to assess their performance and fit. If everything works out well, we then offer them full-time opportunities.

Recently, we hired a developer on a freelance basis to work on a specific module of our eLearning platform. During this project, we evaluated his technical expertise, communication skills, and ability to meet deadlines. Since this individual excelled in all these areas, we discussed the possibility of him joining our team full-time. Initially, this person was not interested. It took offering a generous salary package, highlighting growth opportunities, and offering him work-from-home days.

This strategy has helped us recruit multiple talented individuals who are great assets for our team.

Farhan Siraj, Chief Executive Officer, OSHA Outreach Courses

Emphasize Work-Life Balance

As an SMB, you need to understand what your advantage is over the larger firms.

Running a bookkeeping company, there are many Big 4 firms that will attract top talent based on brand name and salary alone. However, the trade-off is that work-life balance suffers, and there’s quite a lot of politics involved in getting promoted.

We make sure to put that at the forefront of our interviews, and while we don’t always win out, many long-term and qualified individuals are content, preferring us over the big companies.

Taryn Pumphrey, President, Ledger Lift

That’s not to say your business needs to invest in advanced artificial intelligence (AI). That said, SMBs and companies in non-tech sectors have just as much capability to use these resources as Fortune 500, tech-forward enterprises.

• In short, you manual recruiting process deters your SMB from better identifying potential candidates you can add to your talent pipeline. Similarly, it prevents you from engaging them for open roles across your org effectively.

To address inefficiencies caused by having to conduct so many key TA tasks manually — and ensure your candidate sourcing efforts lead to a stronger hiring process that helps you convert more qualified job seekers with great ease and speed — you need to invest in recruitment automation tech.

The good news? There are SMB-centric ATS solutions that come with automation capabilities right out of the box. More to the point, ones anyone and everyone on your modest-sized talent team can leverage to more efficiently post to job boards, bolster your talent pool, and fill open positions.

Improving your SMB’s candidate sourcing strategies with advanced automation tech

Candidate sourcing tasks can easily pile up.

From carrying out social sourcing activities (i.e., turning to LinkedIn and similar channels to proactively find premier prospects), to assessing employee referrals, to publishing postings to your careers page to get more applicants, there are several sourcing and recruiting tasks on your talent specialists’ plates each day.

With an ATS that has automation functionality, though, you can put some tasks on “autopilot,” including:

• Posting job openings to multiple job boards
• Promoting open jobs via social media ads
• Scheduling interviews with qualified candidates
• Sending messages to recent job applicants
• Following up with engaged talent through email
• Scanning resumes for keywords tied to skills
• Administering skills assessments to job seekers
• Assigning onboarding paperwork to your HR team

Some more specific goals may need higher capability tools, like ones that have AI features built in. For instance, businesses that want to encourage diverse hiring or expand their operations globally for remote applicants may need more intensive resources with broader service offerings.

Given the size of your org, though, odds are you don’t need this kind of sophisticated automation tech. But, having a central recruiting platform that helps your TA team interact with prospects and handle day-to-day duties more efficiently can lead to several hours of work saved weekly.

• As it relates to sourcing, your recruiters won’t have to allocate the bulk of the time scouring various career communities and talent networks to find the “right” folks to fill open roles.

Rather, they can use automation to post jobs universally and connect with the most appropriate audiences, and let the tackle do the bulk of their sourcing work for them.

And with their newfound time in their workday, recruiters can focus on things like optimizing nurture campaigns, rediscovering top talent already in their database, providing and collecting candidate feedback, and improving other core tasks.

Implementing the recruitment automation tools to boost your candidate sourcing

Investing in a recruitment automation platform (or, as noted above, an ATS with automation incorporated) is one thing. But, if your recruiting staff doesn’t embrace the workflow and lifestyle changes automation brings, it will feel like a massive undertaking. (Because it will be.)

• That’s why you need to work with the right automation vendor and implement a well-coordinated change management plan to make sure all talent team members can take full advantage of all that automation has to offer and develop their own distinct workflows across the hiring cycle.

When this happens, your TA specialists can (eventually) allocate more time to meaningful work.

Automated tasks will happen faster, more promptly and with greater accuracy than humans could accomplish. (Which is not detrimental to current HR professionals, by the way. Just a fact that automation creates so many new efficiencies for human resources teams.)

In other words? The transition to automation in candidate sourcing, specifically, also signifies a transition to a more productive full-cycle recruiting approach that traditional recruitment technology simply can’t help SMB talent teams like yours realize.

With that in mind, here are some of the most popular types of software available to small businesses today and the specific kinds of automation capabilities they can provide recruiting orgs:

• Job posting management software: This reduces the need to log in, optimize and manage job postings from individual websites, putting it all in a central hub.
• Internal messaging systems: Websites like LinkedIn have internal features that can automatically scan profiles within a radius and directly message candidates that fit particular prerequisites. They can also send follow-ups and scheduling reminders. Third-party applications, like Dux-Soup, can also perform these tasks.
• Applicant tracking systems: Localize info about candidates, past and present, in a single database. Use automated scans to identify candidate strengths or categorize talent into skill-relevant pools.
• Social media schedulers: Use scheduling tools to suggest social media post optimizations and hashtag suggestions for reaching maximum engagement for job posts. When workers spend around 5 hours a day looking for content, it’s no wonder these platforms are so helpful. Advertise automatically based on preset dollar amounts and geo-targets.
• Pre-employment assessments: Platforms like Indeed and programs like Codility can automatically send candidates skills, proficiency and personality tests and rank them to help employers cull applicants based on their application progress.

Your best bet? Onboard an advanced, yet easy-to-use ATS and have that be your single source of hiring truth (i.e., one in which all candidate-related data is stored and dynamically updated). Then, sync other tools, including but not limited to the ones above, to streamline your candidate sourcing and TA efforts.

Just be sure whichever ATS you invest in offers direct integrations with other important recruitment tools.

• Only with an applicant tracking system that enables seamless syncing with other HR tech can you share data “harmoniously” across solutions and have a holistic view of all TA activities.

“By automating high-volume tasks, centralizing candidate communications, and building integrated tech stacks, recruitment professionals can reinvest hours of time and thousands of dollars back into more strategic activities with greater business impacts,” said Employ CEO Pete Lamson.

Best practices for using automated workflows to streamline your candidate sourcing

The best way to successfully use automation systems is to identify and make plans to overcome the disadvantages. The first is the upfront investment, which will easily pay for itself in time — but only if companies seek trustworthy and resilient tools.

Some argue that automation — like a robot sending an automated DM to schedule an interview — feels less personal or human. Creativity and control may seem to walk out the door when a template guides communications.

• However, recruiters and hiring managers can use human-written responses for automated messaging and have multiple options to pick from to keep answers more organic.

It is important to note that, while automation can save teams time, it can’t necessarily guarantee more or less success. Applicants are increasingly aware of the automation tools companies use. Some of these job seekers don’t want to interact with these employers, instead preferring human interaction.

The more the populace educates themselves on these tactics, the more it will impact their responsiveness and attitude toward the strategies. Automation could bring in as many false positives and legitimate resumes. So, it’s vital to stay vigilant.

That means your hiring team shouldn’t immediately set high metric-related goals for new hires or incoming applications. Instead, you should focus on using the tools to meet present expectations and build from there, as automation begins to free up their days for more impactful projects.

Finding the right ATS to elevate your candidate sourcing strategy

Simply put, your SMB should look to automation tech for your candidate sourcing process. They offer more benefits than drawbacks, which are easily worked around with a few adjustments.

Teams can expect the same, if not more, engagement with job postings and higher turnout for interviews. Automating the minutiae of candidate sourcing leads to a constant stream of talent with only minimal oversight required for maintenance.

Consider the benefits JazzHR’s applicant tracking system for small businesses has offered customer Museum Hack. The company has used our ATS for the last decade-plus. During that time, they’ve automated a variety of daily recruiting activities for its meager-size TA team.

• In regard to sourcing, Museum Hack uses our one-click candidate sourcing feature to ensure all new postings are published to the most applicable job boards in — well — just one click.
• Thanks to the automated workflows the org has set up over the years, the business has seen rapid increases in both the quality and quantity of applicants who apply for open roles.
• What’s more, Museum Hack’s recruiters no longer have to store candidate info in spreadsheets and update that data and info manually — a huge time-saver for the talent team.

“I knew we needed a reliable hiring partner to help resolve these issues if we wanted to sustain our growth,” said Museum Hack CEO Nick Gray. And that’s exactly what they got in JazzHR’s ATS.

When your time to fill average drops by 75%, you realize a much speedier hiring process without sacrificing recruiting quality and ensuring an enjoyable experience for each engage lead.

Demo JazzHR’s ATS for small businesses today to discover how it can improve your talent sourcing efforts. (Not to mention make life far easier for your modest-sized talent acquisition team.)

Without knowing what to prioritize, it can be difficult for employers to determine what candidates respond to, what their motivations are, and how to effectively engage with them.

By understanding these four categories of job seekers, talent acquisition teams can better understand their ideal candidates and, therefore, better engage with them.

The Job Seeker Quadrant™: Four candidate personas that exist in today’s job market

Based on Employ’s research, candidates fall into one of four quadrants in their job-seeking behavior. The four types of job seekers are:

• Diligent/High-Volume Job Seekers
• Sporadic/High-Volume Job Seekers
• Diligent/Selective Job Seekers
• Sporadic/Selective Job Seekers

Diligent/High-Volume Job Seekers

Candidates who make up this persona are likely to look internally in their organizations for new jobs and make up just one in 10 job seekers.

They are motivated by job alerts they receive or by overall economic concerns in the current market. Frequently updating their resume, these candidates will apply even if they doubt the employer is hiring.

Most of these candidates are optimistic it will take them less than one month to find a new job and will apply for a job with a large salary range.

These candidates are racially diverse and seek new roles with strong company leadership. Concerned about the company’s financial position, these job seekers often use social media and subscribe to job advertisements.

The way to make a big impact on these candidates is by offering an easy interview scheduling process.

Sporadic/High-Volume Job Seekers

Candidates characterized by this persona are the most satisfied in their current job and make up one-quarter of all job seekers. They are most likely to apply with no intention of taking a new job.

These job seekers are also most likely to look internally for new roles within their current company and to frequently update their resumes.

While these candidates skew younger in age, they are also most likely to apply for a job with a large salary range. Candidates in this group have typically taken a new job in the past 12 months, and one of their primary motivations is looking for career advancement opportunities.

From a job search perspective, they regularly search via job boards, are impressed by easy scheduling, and abandon job applications if they require registration.

Most are acceptable if they don’t hear back from employers for jobs they’ve applied to, but typically receive the greatest number of automated and impersonal rejection notes.

Diligent/Selective Job Seekers

Candidates who fall into this persona make up the largest number of job seekers currently.

They are less likely to look internally within their current organization for new roles and less likely to apply for a new job if they believe an employer won’t hire them for the position. They are more likely to abandon a job application if it takes too long.

This group of job seekers also typically attributes explaining a company’s mission and values as a good candidate experience. And from a job application perspective, they are more likely to look and use a company’s website in applying for roles than other personas.

Sporadic/Selective Job Seekers

Candidates characterized as this persona are the least likely of any candidate type to apply internally for open roles. They expect to submit the fewest applications to get a new job and are least likely of any group to use social media to update their resumes for an application or apply to a job with a very large salary range.

Candidates in this category are also unlikely to put significant amounts of time into an application or to have learned a new skill in the past 12 months.

While unlikely to be ghosted by a recruiter or to ghost a recruiter themselves, they are also least accepting of not hearing back from an employer. These candidates also believe the hiring process takes too long and want personal rejection notes, emails, or notices if not selected for a role.

Applying personas in the Job Seeker Quadrant

The Job Seeker Quadrant™ and the persona descriptions provided here serve as a guide for companies and talent acquisition teams as they seek to get to know the motivations, triggers, characteristics, and behaviors of candidates looking for new roles in the current labor market.

By understanding the different motivations and needs of each persona type, employers have a better chance of matching their hiring process with those expectations.

Continue exploring new job seeker insights

As employers face unfamiliar territory in the current labor market (and will likely continue to for the foreseeable future), they need guidance and the latest insights to support their hiring efforts.

The Q1 2023 Employ Quarterly Insights Report examines employer data across Employ’s 18,000 customers, while exploring the motivations, similarities, and differences of workers based on a survey of more than 1,500 workers.

Download the report to discover how to better appeal to these candidate personas.

According to the Q1 2023 Employ Quarterly Insights Report, 56% of job seekers dislike the length of time it takes to complete each application. So it’s essential to streamline the application process, especially for hourly workers, part-time roles, and other high-volume positions.

Get to know Text to Apply, the latest addition to our ATS

Text to Apply meets candidates where they already are — on their mobile phones. The average person checks their phone 350+ times per day, and 91% of people say they always have their phone within arm’s reach.

The new Text to Apply feature from JazzHR empowers candidates to start the application process via SMS messaging directly from their smartphone, creating a faster and more efficient application experience.

And that supports your business in expanding its talent pool by using texting as a channel for candidates to initiate and complete job applications. 

Text to Apply allows candidates to complete the application process via SMS directly from their mobile device, creating a faster and more efficient application experience.

The benefits of Text to Apply for talent teams

Text to Apply empowers companies to more effectively communicate with candidates with greater speed and efficiency throughout the hiring process. With an additional application path, your business can generate increased candidate flow to meet its hiring needs, especially in peak seasons.

With the new Text to Apply feature, you can:

• Capture passive candidates who are difficult to reach through other methods and channels
• Create low-pressure, on-the-go candidate engagement
• Increase the likelihood of candidates applying for a job
• Expedite your hiring process and take sourcing to a new level

Breaking down how Text to Apply works

Whether you’re an HR manager who needs to quickly increase headcount during a peak hiring season, an SMB executive who wants to capitalize on in-store traffic and create visibility around current job openings, or a restaurant owner who includes a Text to Apply keyword and phone number on the bottom of a menu, there are so many ways you can leverage the new Text to Apply feature in JazzHR.

In just six easy steps, your business can create an entire “textflow,” including naming and selecting the job type, creating candidate questions, identifying the selected keyword, choosing custom messages, and reviewing then publishing to better engage candidates.

How Text to Apply works for candidates:

• Text to apply enables candidates to send a keyword to a 10-digit phone number to begin the application process. 

• After the candidate sends a keyword, they receive an automated response configured for that specific job. 

• When a candidate provides a response to each question, they will receive automated responses that walk them through the application process. 

• Candidate data then flows into JazzHR for hiring team review.

See Text to Apply in action today

We are thrilled to provide this new functionality to users of JazzHR, included with all Candidate Texting packages. Take advantage of this new, easy tool to modernize the application experience for your candidates. For more information, talk to your customer success representative today.

And if you’re looking to learn more about JazzHR, get started by trying our recruitment software for free. Or, request a live demo to see our small business applicant tracking system in action.

In short, to adapt to the disruptive hiring landscape, your small business’s talent acquisition team must adapt their TA approaches to better identify, engage, interview, and evaluate suitable candidates. And arguably best place to start improvement-wise is with candidate screening.

• Recruiters can spend hours on phone interviews manually screening dozens of job applicants just for one requisition (job seekers they may never see or interact with) and still not find the right person.

Multiply that by the number of open roles across your company, and screening job candidates becomes a time-consuming, repetitive task that prevents your recruiting staff from tackling other important tasks — primarily those associated with their applicant tracking system (ATS).

To get right to the point: Reviewing resumes and conducting phone screens is a laborious endeavor for all recruiters today. But, there is a way to make evaluating candidates based on initial phone (or Zoom) chats a little less painful, a lot more streamlined, and considerably quicker for TA teams.

How to strengthen your candidate screening process

The tight labor market has made it harder than ever for recruiters to help hire high-performing talent. Employers are hard-pressed, though, to rectify inefficiencies with their recruiting orgs’ approaches to ensure they can compete for top candidates and hire premier prospects quickly and efficiently.

Yet, the most agile talent acquisition teams — including and especially those at small businesses like yours — have found ways to save time and find more qualified remote candidates at the same time.

“In the current hiring market, organizations cannot afford long hiring processes, but they also cannot afford to hire indiscriminately,” Employ SVP People & Talent Corey Berkey recently wrote. Sometimes, the wrong hiring decision is worse than letting a position stay open longer. [That’s why] employers need screening processes that identify high-quality candidates quickly.”

• And Corey’s right, of course.

The faster your recruiters assess applicants (not just their resumes and cover letters, but also things like their communication and writing skills and ability to take on certain tasks and projects), the faster they can archive poor-fit prospects and move candidates of interest to the next hiring cycle stage.

Simply put, the below best practices can empower your recruiting staff to deliver more predictable hiring results by enhancing a critical component of your TA efforts: screening candidates.

1) Let your candidates help you screen

A favorite time-saving screening tool of recruiters is asynchronous video. This kind of software lets hiring teams like yours send interview prompts to remote candidates where they can record and submit their answers on their own schedule.

• Live video conference calls are obviously still a must in many instances for your recruiting team, but this asynchronous tech offers another screening avenue.

With an asynchronous video tool in place, there’s no longer a need to spend days aligning hiring manager and candidate schedules for a screening call. Your TA team can even provide a deadline for completing the video screening, allowing the automated system to send out reminders.

2) Limit the deal-breakers for hiring

With today’s highly competitive labor market, candidates have their pick when it comes to employers and job offers. Long gone are the days when recruiters could screen out hundreds of applicants with a job description’s wording or long lists of required skills for a role.

So, encourage hiring managers to limit their list of “essential” skills that they list under requirements when screening candidates. This helps keep the candidate pool larger and more diverse past the screening stage and all the way through to the offer, background check, and onboarding stages.

3) Save time with skill-matching

Candidate skill-matching is an increasingly popular assessment strategy that helps companies to find the right qualified talent without eliminating too many prospective hires early in the TA process.

It’s an efficient way to ensure applicants have the necessary skills or certifications for a role — and recruiters are focusing more than ever on hiring for soft skills like leadership and communication.

• “[Human resources] should partner with the business to discuss critical skills required to be successful based on the jobs to be done and then define the assessment approach to match candidates to the role,” a quartet of talent management experts wrote for McKinsey & Co.

Aside from partnering with your executive staff on developing a skills-matching process, you also need to ensure your talent team has the requisite software to compile and analyze prospects’ skills.

Leading recruitment software (i.e., an ATS that was intentionally built for SMBs such as yours) enables hiring teams to screen this way, while reducing unconscious bias in the process too.

4) Use automated sourcing in candidate screening

Imagine opening your laptop in the morning and having dozens of applications ready to review. Employers looking to streamline candidate screening do this with automated sourcing software.

• The top ATS with automated sourcing capabilities make it easy to scan a list of job requirements and actively recruit qualified candidates in the background, so to speak.

These platforms can save recruiters countless hours per requisition, leading to improved recruiting metrics tied to speed and efficiency — and the advancing of only high-quality prospects in one’s hiring process.

5) Remember to stay engaged with passive talent

The first kind of candidate screening approach that may come to mind for your and your talent team is active job seekers who submit applications via your career site or a job board like LinkedIn.

However, chances are some of the best candidates in your talent pool and network at large are ones who haven’t previously interacted with your company. That is to say, passive candidates whose backgrounds, skill sets, and experience match those in job descriptions for open roles.

• Knowing that, make sure to keep interacting with these individuals along with previous applicants or prior talent you engaged and interviewed for past positions.

These candidates’ resumes and cover letters may not have resonated with your hiring team for the initial roles they applied or were sourced for. However, today, they may ultimately be a more ideal fit for a completely different job.

This is another use case for recruitment automation. You can send automated email and/or text messages to communicate with these leads (e.g., set up phone screens and eventual video and/or in-person interviews) in addition to automating the resume screening for them, as mentioned above.

Outside of leveraging automation, you can also send manual messages to “passives” via various career communities and social media channels on which they have profiles. (Think LinkedIn InMail).

Enhance your candidate screening process — along with the rest of your recruiting strategy — with JazzHR’s purpose-built ATS for small businesses. Schedule a demo with our team today.

Getting a steady stream of active job seekers applying for open roles across your business via your careers site and job boards certainly plays a pivotal role in the success of your recruitment process.

But, don’t forget about the need for a passive recruiting strategy — one in which your talent acquisition team regularly recruits passive candidates who “fit the bill” for job openings.

4 reasons why passive recruiting is so important

Passive recruitment (a.k.a. proactive sourcing) targets passive candidates (as you might’ve suspected).

Applicants will enter your talent pool on their own (so long as you have a strong employment brand and recruitment marketing approach). And you’ll likely get a lot of recommended prospects via your employee referral program. But, that doesn’t mean you can afford to “skip” passive recruiting.

It’s a long-term strategy to keep non-active candidates engaged — via a mix of personalized nurture emails and phone calls — until a job opening that aligns with their skill set and expertise emerges.

More than 80% of passive job seekers say they would entertain a career change if the right opportunity came along (i.e., an employer with competitive pay and a strong company culture) .

This shows that it’s important to build your talent pipeline with passive candidates and make engaging these individuals a focal point of your small business’s talent acquisition strategy.

Here are four reasons your recruiters (and even hiring managers) should focus on passive recruiting today.

1) Smarter candidate sourcing

Passive recruiting works best when you are proactive about it. Instead of waiting for a vacancy to arise, you can kickstart your recruiting efforts ahead of time and work on building your talent pool.

Scout for suitable profiles on social media, and begin a conversation with them. You may discover they are dissatisfied with their current job and might be interested in a new opportunity.

• Another great way to add qualified candidates to your pipeline is when you have hundreds of applicants for a single role, but only one is selected. Keep the remaining candidates engaged until a new role opens up.

Just because they weren’t hired for this role does not mean they won’t be a good fit for the next one.

When you do need candidates for a new position, you have your fresh talent pool to start with, instead of beginning entirely from scratch. If you’re hiring for niche roles, this is especially true.

2) Skills, skills, and more skills

A passive candidate who is currently working at an organization will likely have the skills and expertise required for the role you were looking for. You can also vet their skills by speaking with colleagues or teammates, or checking their portfolio that outlines projects they’ve worked on.

Passive candidates have a higher employability rate as well as greater chances of being successful hires. For instance, if you’re looking for a skilled Java developer, and they’re currently employed as one, then you know they’ve got just what you’re looking for.

3) Edge on your competitors

It is no secret top talent that is actively looking for a job are off the market quickly When you set your sights on “passives,” there’s no race to close that one talented candidate who everyone is vying for.

You don’t have to worry about counter-offers because you know a lead is interested in your company. Also, there’s a strong chance you find candidates your competition may not even be looking for.

Instead, you can spend time building and nurturing strong relationships with candidates who will not only be an asset as employees, but can serve as a great referral source for future potential hires as well.

4) Stronger employer brand

Credibility and authenticity go a long way in this profession. Enter your company’s employer branding.

If you focus on cultivating a strong relationship with your passive candidates and showcase a robust employer brand, they will reach out to you first when they begin looking for a new opportunity.

What if you pursue a passive candidate, and — despite your best efforts — they aren’t prepared to switch jobs just yet? Well, you can simply look on the flip side. If you’ve created a good first impression and ensured they had a positive candidate experience, they’ll remember your company, be more likely to apply for roles there in the future, and even refer people to your company.

Implementing a dedicated passive recruiting approach

Passive recruiting focuses on the long term. It’s all about routinely identifying staying in touch with passive candidates to keep them engaged and interested until the right opportunity surfaces.

While the “lift” of sourcing and nurturing is heavier on the front end of your recruitment funnel, the result is invariably a steady increase in your overall quality of hire and a decreased time to fill.

Want to improve your passive recruitment? Learn how JazzHR’s powerful ATS for SMBs can help.

However, building a robust pipeline of strong-fit prospects by proactively reaching out to passive candidates across career-centric channels (in addition to enticing active job seekers to apply on their own, of course) is a tried-and-true approach to bolstering one’s talent pool and, over time hiring high-quality candidates who can have a positive impact on one’s business.

The trick is knowing how to find passive candidates — both externally (via job boards and social media) and internally (through employee referral programs and using the search functionality of your applicant tracking system to identify previously engaged “passives” already in your database).

6 tips to improve your passive sourcing

Looking to enhance how your TA team sources candidates? You’ve come to the right place. Here are some proven ways to recruit passive candidates and fill critical roles at your business faster.

1) Embrace sourcing on social media

Let’s be honest: Social media platforms are a gift for the modern recruiter. After all, tools like LinkedIn provide more information about passive talent than recruiters were ever able to get a decade ago.

Now, you can quickly start your passive sourcing by looking for your industry’s top performers and reaching out directly with almost no effort. Then, with a few clicks and keystrokes and you can put a message directly in the passive candidate’s pocket via LinkedIn’s messaging feature.

Posting content on social media platforms will also help your passive sourcing. It provides an excellent opportunity to engage with potential hires who follow your brand. You can show off your employer brand, and encourage them to apply for roles.

Don’t be afraid to get creative too. For example, post a quiz or contest to gamify the experience. You can then follow up on people who engage and demonstrate the right knowledge or skills.

2) Build candidate relationships — patiently

Active candidates want to find work as soon as possible. Passive candidates, on the other hand, can afford to wait until a compelling opportunity appears. Because of this paradigm, the hiring cycle is typically more drawn out with passive candidates.

As hiring managers, it’s therefore important to develop strong relationships with potential candidates. This helps usher passive hires along the longer hiring process.

Bearing this in mind, not all communication with sourced passive candidates has to be tied to an active requisition. Consider sending an email just to check in on how they are doing professionally. This will allow you to get to know more about their skills and experience.

You can also ask questions and try to build a more friendly relationship with them.

For example, if you know they went to college in a city you like to visit, you can mention that. It’s a way to build a human connection and not just make the interaction feel like a transaction.

3) Hone your sales skills

For passive candidates who may be indifferent or even opposed to the idea of changing jobs, recruiters need to really lean on their sales skills. Building a relationship and personalizing messages are the foundation here.

Play up the benefits of working for your organization. Don’t do this by only trying to dazzle them with compensation and benefits. Yes, this is crucial. But you need to take a holistic approach.

Sell them on a more emotional vision. (Perhaps by sharing your company values with them.) Also, talk to your company’s culture and how you envision the candidate being a great fit.

If you have the time, you can do some extra sleuthing and explore how your offer might improve on their current role. For instance, by looking at job postings on their current employer’s website, you might find that their current role doesn’t offer any flexibility. You might then decide to make this a key part of your sales pitch.

You can also pass on some relevant articles that might be of interest. That way you can engage with them in a less obtrusive manner and provide value to them upfront.

4) Ask your employees for referrals

Did you know many employers rank referrals over any other employment tactic?

That’s right. Your current employees are one of your best hiring resources. Why? Because they already have relationships with skilled workers at other companies who might leave for a better role. And you can leverage that relationship. Your employee can vouch for your company.

Of course, your employee also vouches for your new hire.

Referrals are a great source of high-quality talent that you can feel confident in. You can easily gain clearer insights into candidate history and experience, compared to individuals who come through external channels. What’s more, hiring a referred candidate means you don’t have to spend time searching for hires or building trust from nothing.

Not only will hiring a referred candidate make the process quicker and less expensive, but referral hires tend to have higher job satisfaction, making them more likely to refer new candidates too.

5) Reach out to former employees

Your relationship with a previous employee should not end with their last day. There are many benefits to attracting talent that has previously worked in your organization.

For starters, it speeds up the hiring process as you already know them. When a good person leaves, it’s worth adding them to your applicant tracking system. Note their key strengths and skills, ready for when a similar opportunity arises again.

Former employees will also get up to speed faster as they already know your company and its processes. This will feel especially attractive when you consider it takes several months before new hires become fully productive.

To make it easier for former employees to fill roles, it helps to stay engaged with them when they leave. You can do this by keeping them up to date on events from your business with a newsletter.

6) Maintain a clean, easy-to-navigate candidate database

Finally, you need to support your passive sourcing efforts with a hiring platform that comes with a candidate database. Armed with your candidate database you’ll have access to past applicants and interviews that may not have been the right fit at the time but could be worth reaching out to in the future.

In addition to contact info and experience, these databases should document each candidate’s unique strengths and weaknesses using an applicant tracking system. Then, you have strong candidates to contact for future roles that might look a little different than your current openings.

If you’d like to learn how JazzHR can help you and your SMB’s recruiting team level up your passive recruiting strategy (and talent acquisition approach at large), we’re here to talk. Schedule a demo today.

• Find out where to connect with members of historically underrepresented groups online and offline, then tailor messaging to this talent to recruit diverse candidates for open roles.

Seems simple, right? And yet, too many hiring teams today fail to implement consistently high-quality diversity recruitment approaches that add individuals in marginalized groups to their talent pipeline and advance those individuals in their recruitment process, all the way to the offer stage.

This ineffectiveness with their DEI recruiting leads to fewer potential candidates of varying backgrounds applying for positions and engaging with nurture messaging. And that ultimately leads to less diverse teams at their businesses — a detriment to their culture and bottom line.

The good news? Enhancing your diversity hiring efforts is fairly straightforward. To better source diverse candidates and get them to join your company, you just need to pay more attention to the nitty-gritty details of your day-to-day recruitment processes and refine “weak” areas accordingly.

3 diversity sourcing strategies for SMBs

According to Gartner, only 36% of DEI “leaders” report that their organization has been effective at hiring a diverse workforce. So, what can you do to build a strong diversity sourcing strategy?

The best place to start, per Employ SVP Customer Retention & Growth Jessica Green, is to just begin.

“The first step to making the efforts genuine is to look inward and be honest about where you are so that the [DEI] strategy is built accurately and represents a path to progress,” Jessica told StrategicCHRO360.

With that in mind, here are a few tips that can help you improve the diversity makeup of your talent pool — and get on your way to adding more highly qualified diverse team members to your SMB

1) Use a diverse array of sources (pun intended)

LinkedIn is an obvious choice, but it is, in fact, a great place to start. In 2020, the popular career-centric social media site found that topics like diversity were driving conversation on the platform with posts tied to DEI receiving 91% more engagement than the average company post.

Try joining inclusive LinkedIn groups such as this D&I Leaders group to connect with other HR pros and share ideas. And, of course, reach out to candidates on the platform. You can do this by building a list of keywords that are relevant to candidates, then searching within those parameters.

• Although LinkedIn is a useful place to look for candidates, it does have its limitations.

Thus, there are many other alternatives worth exploring. Specifically, job boards and career communities explicitly meant for different niche diverse groups to find new work opportunities. Platforms intended to align diverse talent with inclusive businesses include Jopwell, Include.io, Hire Autism, and Pink Jobs.

2) Try a variety of candidate engagement methods

Diversity sourcing is best done at a local, community level. So, consider starting a talent acquisition outreach program by speaking to several leading schools, colleges, and universities in your area.

• Partner with student and professional associations at these institutions.

If it’s not possible to meet with these groups in person, or if you’re hiring on a regional or national level, then try attending virtual career fairs. There are plenty of events across the U.S. that are targeted at engaging minority groups.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers offers a wealth of resources and even a support network to help SMBs like yours source top talent within diverse communities and education bodies.

3) Ensure job-related messaging appeals to diverse talent

Sourcing is not just about being where diverse candidates are. It’s also about the message you’re putting out there. So, make sure you’ve built inclusive language into all your job descriptions.

Tools like this free gender decoder tool can catch unintentionally exclusive language that you may have missed. Ensuring only inclusive terms are used can provide a big boost to your employment brand.

Moreover, indicate your support for DEI programs at your business on your careers page and throughout your company website. Lyft provides a fantastic example of how to do this right.

• It’s also important to put your money where your mouth is. That is to say, offer real-world accommodations within the interview process and job role, and advertise that to candidates.

Think along the lines of flexible working hours and job shares, or time-off options that take into consideration a range of religious holidays or short-term leave requests.

These aren’t simply “perks.” By offering jobs with accommodations built-in, you remove a barrier to entry (read: applying) for underrepresented candidates. In today’s hiring landscape, this is really a basic, table-stakes requirement for any business that wants to show they’re truly committed to DEI.

Strategic diversity sourcing is just the start

Address unconscious bias in the candidate evaluation process. Ensure you refer to prospective hires by the correct pronouns. Involve members of your workforce in various DEI initiatives and discussions.

Making progress with DEI at large is a long-term endeavor.

That said, abide by the best practices above, and you’ll see the desired progress with your diversity sourcing strategy — and, thereby, hire more diverse candidates who can fill key roles across your SMB.

Especially during “down” hiring periods when competition for talent is high. As Jessica noted, “a slow hiring season is a prime time to build a more diverse talent pipeline and nurture that talent over time.”

Speak with the JazzHR team today to learn how you can use our best-in-class ATS for SMBs to elevate your diversity sourcing strategy and build a more diverse workforce over time.