RSS Feeds Provide A Non-Intrusive Way to Recruit Passive Candidates

RSS feeds. Not only have they been around forever, they are the perfect tool for passively notifying potential candidates of your latest job offerings. But you don’t see a lot of employers implementing them in their recruiting strategy today.

This is important to note because the majority of the people visiting your career site are just passing through. About 80 percent are already employed.

They’re coming to your site, taking in the culture, seeing what you have to offer, but more importantly, they are seeing if what you have to offer is better than what they have now.

A few will sign up to your talent community and opt in for email notifications. The only problem is with the amount of email received daily, it’s easy for your notifications to get lost among the clutter. Also, if you are too aggressive with your notifications, you will quickly be dropped.

I can’t help you with the spam problem but the obvious answer to being too aggressive is let candidates set their own delivery schedule. And that brings me to another point.

Controlling the information flow.

In a digital world dominated by real-time information exchanges, putting candidates in charge of the information flow is critical to helping transition visitors from passive candidates to potential hires.

Let’s look at some hard core facts. Of the 80 percent of passive candidates looking at your jobs, only 12 percent are actually willing to make a change in employer right now. But, and this is huge, only 15 percent are opposed to leaving their current job altogether. That leaves a lot of wiggle room for recruiters.

So you want to help facilitate the transition by letting candidates select the information they want and select when they want it.

An RSS feed is such a simple tool, it’s ridiculous to omit it. It puts these candidates one step closer to completing an application. It’s not a guarantee, of course, but it’s silly to omit such a great opportunity.

Keep your email notifications. Keep your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. But add that little orange RSS chicklet to your content delivery strategy as well.