Understanding The Passive Candidate and How to Recruit Them

Bob Miller

Soft Skills to Look for When Adding to Your Healthcare Leadership Team

“Do you know how to recruit passive candidates?”  This should be the first question you ask your on-site recruiters.   With historic unemployment in the healthcare industry, most effective hiring teams realize that just about everyone that wants a job has a job.   Healthcare facilities across the country are feeling the financial effects of doctor and nurse shortages and if their hiring teams don’t know how to recruit passive talent, it’s a problem.    

When you ignore passive candidates, you’re essentially opting out of access to a massive pool of some of the best talent.  73% of candidates are passive job seekers

Working with a healthcare recruiter will boost your chances of reaching these passive candidates.  Recruiting passive candidates is a healthcare consultant’s “sweet spot.” This is one of the areas where they add the most value. It’s also why job board postings like Indeed and social media sites like LinkedIn will never replace recruiters.

Understanding Today’s Passive Candidate

Active candidates are perusing job boards and sending out resumes. Passive candidates likely haven’t even updated their resume. As they are usually happily employed and not looking for work, it’s likely that the passive candidate is a valued employee making worthwhile contributions to their current place of work.

Passive candidates are often those with in-demand skills and experience.  Their current employer is probably keeping them busy and engaged.  However, they would make a career move for a new opportunity if that opportunity is better than the one they have.

Extending the Search to Passive Candidates

A major benefit of partnering with an external third-party recruiting team is that they spend most of their time building relationships with passive candidates.  At some agencies, this is decades in the making and utilizing a database of tens, if not hundreds of thousands.  It’s a resource that internal teams don’t have access to and a process they rarely have time to focus on or do with any regularity.

Recruiters have the skills, expertise and network to not only identify passive health care talent, but also to encourage them towards making a change.  They know how to talk to a passive candidate and uncover their hidden motivators. 

Equally as important, recruiters will communicate your employer brand in the proper way, being sure to highlight the value proposition of your company and the opportunities for growth that exist there.  They act as built-in marketing spokesperson, raising brand awareness and opportunity. 

In today’s historically low unemployment markets, having a ready-made network of passive job candidates will reduce your time to hire, directly impacting the organizational bottom line. Our leading healthcare recruiters can help.