Passive candidates are people in work who are not actively looking for a new job, but who are open to a relevant opportunity if one comes their way.
A role that is only marketed on traditional job boards reaches the candidates who happen to be job hunting right now. That is a limited slice of the candidate market. Passive candidates have to be reached through outbound marketing.
Passive candidates are not looking for your role. To reach them, it has to appear where they already are, and showing interest has to be easy.
Why do passive candidates matter?
Passive candidates make up a large share of the candidate pool for almost every type of role. They are usually employed, which is part of what makes them attractive, and they are not applying out of necessity.
They also do not use job boards to find work. They are on social media and on news sites, and they come across relevant opportunities through the ads they see in an ordinary day, not by going looking for a job themselves.
How to reach passive candidates
Be where they are: Passive candidates spend their time on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and news sites, not on job boards. Paid advertising on those platforms is what it takes to reach them.
Use behavior-based targeting: Traditional demographic targeting on age, location and job title is not precise enough. Behavior-based targeting identifies the candidates who have recently shown interest in similar job ads, which gives a far more relevant audience. With digital twins you also reach the people who resemble them.
Lower the threshold for showing interest: Passive candidates will not spend 45 minutes on an application for a role they are only mildly curious about. Frantz Lead Generator adds a show-interest button to the campaign page: one click and an email address turns the candidate into an active lead, with no CV and no cover letter.
Get the timing right: Passive candidates are more receptive around natural career transitions, such as after pay reviews and around the turn of the year. Monday and Tuesday mornings work well too. Automated campaigns can favor those moments without any manual effort.
What we see in practice
Based on feedback from customers using Frantz Lead Generator, more than 50 % of the candidates who click «show interest» are worth following up. For many roles, the final shortlist includes people who used the interest button rather than people who submitted a full application.
Read more
Read more about job marketing in general, how to advertise roles on social media, what to do about too few applicants, or how data-driven recruitment uses behavioral data.
Frequently asked questions
Passive candidates are people in work who are not actively looking for a new job, but who are open to a relevant opportunity if one comes their way. They make up the majority of the workforce and are often the most sought-after candidates, because they are employed and not under pressure.
Passive candidates matter because many of the best candidates for a given role are not looking for work at the moment you advertise. Reaching passive candidates through paid advertising widens the candidate pool far beyond the people who visit job boards on their own.
Passive candidates are best reached through paid channels where they already spend their time, such as social media and news sites. Combine that with behavior-based targeting, which finds candidates who have recently shown interest in similar job ads, and with a low threshold for registering interest without applying.
A show-interest button lets a candidate signal interest in a role with one click and an email address, without writing an application or uploading a CV. That lowers the barrier dramatically for passive candidates who are curious but not ready to apply formally.