Engaging with strong passive candidates who are not looking for a new position is not about making cold calls, describing a position, and hoping someone says yes. It’s about engaging in a career discussion and getting the candidate to agree to proceed if the opportunity represents a strong career move. You can start this conversation by asking the person if he or she would be open to explore a situation if it were clearly superior to the person’s current position. Most people will say yes to this question, but it’s what you do next that will determine your success in recruiting, and ultimately hiring, passive candidates. With this objective in mind, here are some ideas to consider:

1. Handle common objections and concerns without thinking twice. Passive candidates always have concerns and questions that need to be handled smoothly and in real time. Moving forward in small steps is part of this. When a prospect raises a concern determine if it’s short- or long-term. Short-term concerns are tactical in nature – the compensation, the title, the location. While important, these are usually at the bottom of the candidate’s decision criteria when ultimately deciding whether to take an offer or not. For passive candidates, the top of the decision list is generally comprised of long-term issues like career growth, company strength, industry, the hiring manager, quality of the team, and the like. When a candidate balks and raises these short-term concerns, you need to persist and suggest still considering the opportunity if the long-term opportunities far outweigh the short-term issues. Then you need to get the candidate to take a small step forward to gather the correct information. Here’s an article from our 500+ library that describes this technique in more detail. All of these articles are available for members of our Performance-based Hiring recruiters’ community.

1. Be someone worth knowing (SWK). Passive candidates won’t work with a recruiter who’s not a professional. When you leave a voice mail or send an email describing the opportunity, before connecting with you, prospects will frequently check you out on LinkedIn. Your LinkedIn profile is your brand, and if it doesn’t say, “I’m someone you need in your network,” you probably won’t get a call-back unless you work for a highly-regarded company. Passive candidates, especially those in mid- or senior management positions, expect the recruiter to know the job, the company, the industry, and the hiring manager. They also expect the person to act as a career consultant, advising the person on how to get ready for the interview, how to decide which job is best, and to lead the negotiations on the offer. If you’re not someone worth knowing, you won’t get the trust you need to convince the candidate to proceed step-by-step into the process.
2. Use the first five minutes of your call to convert your job into a career opportunity. Top passive candidates are only interested in career moves, not lateral transfers. When you give your short overview of the job, it must highlight areas that demonstrate that your opening is a bigger job and one that offers more upside potential. That’s why you must have the candidate describe his or her background in detail before you tell the person much about the job. During this time (the first 5-8 minutes) you’re looking for gaps in the candidate’s background that your job completes (e.g., bigger team, bigger challenges, more impact, etc.), or areas where you job offers the potential for more growth. If you describe the job before you know much about the candidate, you’ll miss most of these critical details. That’s one of the reasons recruiting passive candidates needs to be a step-by-step process of exchanging information to determine if the position truly is a bigger job and a better career opportunity.
3. Get the candidate to sell you, rather than you selling the candidate. Passive candidates (in fact, few top people whether they’re looking or not) don’t make the decision to take a job by themselves. They need the positive advice and counsel of their family, advisors, co-workers, and close friends. Getting this confirming advice requires the person to describe your position as clearly superior to anything else the person is considering including a counter-offer or competing offer, even those for more money. The candidate will not be able to successfully pull this off unless she can first convince herself the job is worth pursuing. One way to get your candidate to sell you is to suggest that the candidate might be a bit light in one area (one of the gaps identified in the initial review), and then ask for an example of the most significant work the person has done in this area. If the person tries to convince or sell you as to why they’re capable, you’ll quickly understand why recruiting is more about staying the buyer, and getting the candidate to sell you.