Re-Active vs Pro-Active Recruitment

What is Re-Active vs Pro-Active Recruitment? Let’s start with Re-active. Re-active recruitment is the most common form of recruitment and how most businesses and recruitment teams approach recruitment. We have a vacancy – we react. Someone leaves, we start the process of filling the vacancy….we advertise, we engage recruitment agencies, we head hunt, we find our candidate (after what feels like a lifetime) we hire…yippee!

Pro-Active Recruitment flips this model on its head. The Recruitment Team are always Pro-Active in looking for Talent. Attrition and growth can happen in any business at any time, a good recruiter will always be prepared for both.

So how do you Pro-Actively recruit? You constantly have a ‘Talent pool’ of potential applicants. Applicants can be a great fit for you and interested at anytime but you might not have the right vacancy. What happens to these applicants? They usually fall in to a black hole because they’re not suitable at this time. However, a good recruiter will respond to them…..Thank you for your application, unfortunately we do not have the right role for you in our business right now. We love your CV and when we have the right role we will definitely be in touch. Two minute email and the candidate is happy- they at least have a response. The recruiter will then store this candidate in their Talent Pool within their ATS, which will of course recorded the communication and there was an easy way for the recruiter to make their notes. This happens multiple times with candidates of different levels of experience, education, skills, attitudes and personalities. These Talent Pools grow and Grow!

In the Pro-Active world the Recruiter now has a role come in, what’s the first thing they do? Search their Talent Pools. Talent Pools are goldmines of candidates who have already shown interest in working with you – first hurdle done! Pro-active recruiters sometimes don’t even go to market, advertise, engage agencies of Head Hunt they already have a pool of potential candidates. They reach out to these candidates (who are happy to talk because they were told this could happen) and move them into the live recruitment process. This saves a huge amount of time, effort and funds.

Pro-Active is of course the most cost efficient, effective way to recruit but you need the tools and skills to do this. Click here to read our In-House Recruiter Tool Kit article.

Contact us for a detailed consultation of your current recruitment processes.