Hire the "Unicorn" candidate

You know who they are, the go-getter, the one that people in an organization turn to for tough answers, they stay late getting ahead of their workload, and they always tend to have a positive outlook - The Performers. This is the unicorn employee - in the recruiting world, we call this the “passive” candidate. Passive candidate, rockstar, high performing employee, whatever you want to call it - fast growing and competitive companies desperately want these types of candidates on their teams and apart of their cultures

So how does one go about a strategy that finds, engages and adds these types of employees to their organization? Tough question yes, but, there are some tips, strategies and best practices that fast growing organizations are doing right to lure these types of candidates. Let’s explore some of these strategies:

1. a GREAT career’s page. Passive candidates go about their search very different than your typical job candidate. Think push/pull here. The behavior of a “passive” candidate is discreet in their job search. For the most part, they do NOT engage recruiter’s. They DO research on potential companies that could be a fit for THEM. The first page on a website they typically visit, is the career’s page. Passive job seekers want to know about a lot of things rather than just the specific role offered through a description. Believe it or not, they look at actually how many roles are open and displayed - this tell’s job growth and that the company is aggressively expanding a team (also builds slight urgency that the candidate should apply soon). Having video also does a great job of capturing your company culture, which is a huge factor in the unicorn’s decision criteria. Additionally, providing a very clear path to submitting candidacy is a MUST. Forcing candidates to jump through hoops by creating log in’s prior to submitting information, significantly lowers the conversion rate of said candidate actually completing the candidacy process.
2. So, you got a killer careers page and you’re starting to see more candidate flow. Whats next? a GREAT employee referral program! Often, your best hires come from employee referred interactions. HR and hiring teams often message their org’s with incentives like cash to up the volume of employee referrals. While this is definitely a big factor, it’s also hugely important to make it easy for your employee’s to drive these referrals. Many Applicant Tracking Software systems provide out of the box easy to refer job roles to employee’s. Many times, mass emails to a workforce, while read, take little action on. Sending a link of a new job role to employees (and more specifically to Top performers) goes a long way in making the employee feel needed and promotes them to actually send it on. It’s also much easier to track these referrals on compensation pay-out for successfully placed candidates.
3. Monitor your Social Media! you HAVE to know what people are saying about your company. Passive candidates do a ton of research on companies and watch Twitter, Glassdoor etc to truly understand what customers are saying about potentially interesting companies (because they have the time). One bad comment or a series of negative strings on glassdoor can have a great candidate running for the hills. If you do not have a dedicated person watching these sources closely, think of implementing this asap. No feeds or comments? Start having your employee’s tweeting or posting on Glassdoor about how glorious your company is to work at. This small strategy can pay big results on GREAT candidates coming into your hiring funnel.

There you have it, a game plan to implement today to start achieving more Passive and Unicorn candidates in your company today.