Many recruiters made the mistake of ignoring business development when the market was strong.

They are suffering now.

Many more will now neglect proactive candidate sourcing as they perceive ‘candidates are not so important right now’.

That is a big mistake, too.

Proactive recruitment is sourcing and nurturing talent before you need it and building diverse talent pools that you can draw from when you need to place a candidate quickly.

For recruitment agency owners, this needs to be a core component of your agency’s day-to-day activities.

With massive underlying talent shortages and the inevitability of an economic rebound, ignoring candidates is a predictable but foolish approach. The pendulum will swing. The differentiator will once again be access to candidates.

JobAdder CEO, Martin Herbst spoke with Greg Savage about the three things agency owners should focus on heading into 2024.

1. Find the candidates your clients can’t

Proactive sourcing surged during the pandemic but has since declined and plateaued. “The reason employers use agency recruiters is to find candidates they can’t find themselves. So to go back to transitional mechanisms would be a mistake.”

“Job boards are available to everyone, and only a small percentage of people ready to change jobs are proactively applying”. The data supports this, revealing a significant difference in time-to-fill when leveraging the agency’s existing resources compared to starting from scratch.

2. Nurture and engage your talent pools

While you may have built a great talent pool, it’s important to remember that your agency and your recruiters need to stay top of mind so when they get a call from you, it’s not, “Greg who?”

By encouraging your recruiters to regularly reach out to candidates in the talent pool, you know that when a job arises candidates are not only available but also receptive to a conversation because you’ve been in touch in some way. That’s your competitive advantage. Combining smart automation with the human touch, will allow your recruiters to build strong relationships with a large pool of candidates.

3. Reconnect with the candidates you didn’t place

A crucial component of proactive recruiting is making the most of the candidates that came second or third on your shortlist.

“You placed 300 people last year, but there were probably another 600 on the shortlist. They had second interviews. They were good. They just missed out. But where are they? Are you going to run an ad to re-recruit them?”

Searching for talent within your own talent pool (rather than posting an endless stream of job ads) will empower your recruiters to find and place talent quicker than ever before, which means boosted productivity and revenue for your agency.

With 2024 just around the corner, let JobAdder take care of the background noise so you can start building connections with your best talent. Get in touch today to find out more.

This article originally appeared in Recruitment & Co, the excellent newsletter produced by APSCo

For more on candidate acquisition and modern tech in recruitment, check out this short video

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