The one comment I often hear from every recruitment and recruitment marketing manager is that they are not chasing active job seekers but want to attract passive job seekers. And as an extension, wanting solutions beyond job sites as they are the resource for the most active job seekers. Some recruitment managers even take pride in the fact that they don’t hire from a job site. With recruiters treating passive job seekers as holy grail, how do we develop solutions that matter to them? Who are these passive job seekers and how do we identify them? How do we confidently say that the applications we get are of passive job seekers and not active? While we were thinking about the problem statement and solutions, we realized we are not asking the right questions.

The right question is “are you looking for passive job seekers or are you looking for job seekers not necessarily considering or applying to your jobs?” With bit of probing, it is usually that clients talk about audience not considering them for the roles. And hence solutions become vastly different, especially in digital marketing. It is then not about finding ways to identify the user who is not looking for a job (I don’t even know how to establish the fact that they are not looking for a job) or looking outside job sites or going to agencies. The solution is in creating the same old fashioned brand ecosystem asking questions within. Do we understand the audience, their needs and aspirations? Do we know what they do, how they behave and what they consume in the digital world? Do we have enough reasons for them to believe that your workplace is the great place to work? And do we have enough ways to articulate this authentically?

EVP is a good place to start to find answers to these questions. Equally important are the media strategy and metrics. While EVP and employer brand gives the messaging framework, it is crucial to create multiple touch points that articulate the message through the job seeker journey of being aware, actively considering and finally making decision to apply. At various points of this journey, the job seekers consume information in various media and formats. If there is one thing the millions of applications Radancy unified platform processes every year has showed us, it is that job seeker journey is complex, takes place through multiple media and across multiple sessions and often across few days. For example, user might discover the brand / opportunity on a blog, then research about the company on LinkedIn / website, read the reviews on Glassdoor, be part of webinars or hackathons, listen to podcasts on iTunes and eventually apply on Indeed or Naukri. All this can happen in one session or across sessions through few days or weeks.

This kind of journey brings us to the most important aspect of understanding the job seeker behaviour, tracking. If one were tracking only the source of application, it says Indeed and the immediate reaction is that it’s the most active job seeker and hence not a valuable application. But if one were tracking and attributing media through the journey, one can look at various touch points, understand the influence media had on the job seeker and realise that source of application was a result of how hard other content and media worked. So, while you invest in creating the brand, make great content and build the presence, make it a point to also invest a healthy part of your budgets on tracking. It is one thing that will most certainly save a lot of money in the future.

In the end, there is no one such as a passive job seeker. There are only job seekers, and one needs to attract, engage and convert them.