First time posting on Recruiting Blogs! I'm kicking off with 4 ways to keep passive candidates engaged with your organisation and brand...

Building a talent pool of skilled candidates is an essential part of your in-house recruitment strategy.

Here's how to keep those invaluable passive candidates actively engaged between hiring spells.

1. Keep in touch with relevant job alerts

Consistent communication is the cornerstone of excellent candidate experience. That’s just as true when it comes to passive candidates.

Encourage candidates to register for job alerts based on criteria like location, sector or salary.

When you post new jobs, passive candidates will automatically receive alerts that are relevant to them.

2. Ask passive candidates to update their candidate profiles

Building passive talent pools in your ATS is all well and good – but not if your candidate data is now irrelevant or out of date.

To combat this, email candidates a link which they can use to update their candidate profile with skills, experience, location and more.

There are two benefits of doing this. The updated profile is sent back to your Application Tracking System, meaning you should have more confidence that applicants’ data is up to date. It’s also a clever way of keeping in touch with passive candidates, ensuring they feel valued.

3. Maintain a careers social account

Creating a jobs or careers Twitter, Facebook or Instagram account (depending on your industry and audience) can maintain engagement with passive candidates.

Even if you’re not currently hiring, regular, engaging updates will enhance your employer brand and keep you at the forefront of applicants' minds.

Think ‘behind the scenes’ videos, photos from staff socials and updates from current employees to give candidates a taste of what life is like working with you.

4. Offer candidates an ‘insider view’

If you have an internal newsletter, consider sharing an appropriate version with passive candidates. This will help strengthen candidates’ understanding of your organisation and company culture.

Keeping in touch with passive applicants via a newsletter helps to maintain consistent levels of communication, and will signify that you place value on your passive candidates.

Ultimately, finding ways to communicate regularly with your talent database will help to keep passive candidates engaged.

But ensure that your communications have purpose.

Whether you’re contacting passive candidates with a request to update their profile information, or sharing relevant news across your social channels, maintain focus on the value to your organisation and potential employees.

Hannah Ovenden writes for Hireserve on everything from education and gender in the workplace to recruitment tech and millennials. Established in 1997, Hireserve ATS is trusted by in-house recruiters across the world.