You want to find the best Cloud & IT Infrastructure talent on the market.

These individuals will add real value to your IT solutions or managed services provider business.

They need to have niche cloud skills, a great personality fit and passionate about their niche.

So you put out a job advert, and wait for the applications to come in.

But the candidates you’re receiving aren’t relevant, missing key skills and not the quality you need to provide a great service to your customers.

So how can you find better talent, increase ROI in the recruitment process and build the best teams in the industry?

By engaging with passive candidates.

Passive candidates offer an exceptional opportunity for IT solutions providers who are looking for the best Cloud & IT Infrastructure talent on the market.

But what are passive candidates? And how do you attract them?

Here at InfraView we know all about not only how IT solutions providers work, but also what candidates are looking for in today’s cloud jobs market.

If you’re in need of quick, personalised advice you can give us a call on 020 3617 1040 and one of our team can give their insight.

But for now, let’s learn more about what you need to know about passive candidates.

How to engage with passive candidates

Passive candidates offer an important opportunity to your business.

But what are they? And how do you engage with them?

Our Co-Founder Tim Davey has all the information you need:

“Passive candidates are candidates who aren’t actively looking for work.

They are generally doing well in their current role and therefore aren’t active on the market.

Generally, the best Cloud & IT Infrastructure talent is gainfully employed, doing well in their current position.

Sometimes great talent is actively looking through no fault of their own, but generally speaking passive candidates are stronger in terms of their talent.

Passive candidates won’t be applying to job adverts, sitting on CV databases or actively interviewing for Cloud & IT Infrastructure jobs.

So how as an employer do you access this rich pool of Cloud & IT Infrastructure talent?

You have to invest the time into building your own network, building your personal and company brands, creating great content for people to engage with and general advertising.

You could look at attending networking events and meetups, securing top cloud talent through that pool of engaged professionals.

However, the number one way to engage passive candidates is to work with a specialist recruitment agency such as InfraView. We have a large network of high quality Cloud & IT Infrastructure passive candidates, recruiting only within the IT solutions and managed services provider space. 

By doing those things, you will give yourself a better chance of finding the top talent your business needs to flourish.”

The benefits of engaging passive candidates

So now we know what passive candidates are.

But why not source your talent purely with active candidates?

By doing that, you miss out on the top Cloud & IT Infrastructure talent who may move if the opportunity is right.

Our Co-Founder Tim Cazemage takes you through why passive candidates offer an excellent opportunity:

“We know that active candidates are people who are actively looking for new cloud job opportunities.

They are available immediately and applying for jobs as and when they come up.

Passive candidates are people that are employed, and not actively looking for work.

However, this doesn’t mean they’re not interested in moving position.

Any business within the IT solutions and managed services provider space that are hiring or going through a fast scale-up should be looking at both active and passive candidates.

They should also be working with a specialist recruitment consultancy that offer a strategic recruitment model offering passive candidates.

Active candidates aren’t active for long.

There’s a huge number of active candidates in the Cloud & IT Infrastructure market, making the competition to find the best of the best within that pool ever more intense.

Most candidates that you speak to will be interviewing at multiple business for various cloud jobs.

If you blink, you could miss out on the best talent.

Market intelligence shows that top talent is only available for around ten days. This could be more extreme for difficult roles to fill with in-demand skills. 

So passive candidates offer a huge opportunity!

If you have a compelling job opportunity, most people will be open to a conversation.

No matter how satisfied an individual is at work, the grass could be greener on the other side.

People move jobs averagely every few years, rarely spending their entire career in one organisation.

This means the bulk of the market is passive.

If you are only evaluating people who actively apply to your positions, you are missing out on a huge opportunity.”

How to secure the best Cloud & IT Infrastructure passive candidates

We know what passive candidates are, and the value they can bring to your business.

But how do you secure the best Cloud & IT Infrastructure passive candidates?

Will Martin has some great ideas for you to implement in your recruitment strategy:

“An active candidate will be sending their CV to multiple job openings, engaging with multiple agents to find their next role.

A passive candidate is someone who is a doing a great job in their current company, who will think about moving if the right role comes along.

In terms of value, if the skill sets are equal then their potential to work well in your business is the same. However an active candidate may be looking at multiple opportunities, therefore the competition for their signature is significantly higher.

A passive candidate would be more measured, and would only entertain an opportunity which fully suited their personality and ambitions.

Active candidates are easy to find, applying to positions as and when they become publicly available.

Passive candidates however take a little bit more work as they tend to be harder to find.

So where do you go to find these passive candidates?

LinkedIn as a fantastic place to find great Cloud & IT Infrastructure talent. You can get talent from connecting, sending out messages, responding to posts on your news feed. 

There are other ways of unearthing these gems.

Here at InfraView we have a lot of success using video advertising. You can offer passive candidates a snapshot of the opportunity on video, which is more engaging that a simple written post. You can also get a lot more information into a one minute video than you can on a long post.

You can also pick up the phone. There are various AI tools where you can draw phone numbers from job board profiles. Too many people send message after message instead of calling a candidate. Calling a candidate enables you to build a relationship immediately. You can speak to them about what it is they are actually looking for in a role. If the messages you are sending are irrelevant, people tend to delete them without even reading it. 

Referrals are a great way of finding passive candidates. No one would recommend someone they thought would be a bad fit for the business as their name is associated with that referral. Referral fees also help to encourage your network to provide passive candidates who can add instant value to your business.

Within the Cloud & IT Infrastructure space there are a lot of GitHub and technology-specific groups online. You can go on to some of these groups, you may be able to find someone who isn’t actively looking who would be a good fit for your latest position.

The best place to find Cloud & IT Infrastructure passive candidates is by working with a specialist recruitment consultancy such as InfraView. We have a vast network of specialist candidates who are open to opportunities if the timing and specifics of the role are right for them.”

Conclusion

Passive candidates offer a great return on investment on your recruitment process, and an excellent opportunity for your business to grow and develop.

They’re not actively looking for job roles, so attracting them may seem difficult.

But using the tips and tricks above, your IT solutions or managed services provider business will be on the way to building a network of candidates for your job openings.

The best way to engage and source passive candidates is to speak to InfraView. We’ve got years of experience recruiting within the IT solutions and managed services provider space, so our network is one of the warmest and far reaching technology-focussed candidate databases in the UK.

We can help you find the passive candidates your business needs to succeed.

Need help today?

Give us a call on 020 3617 1040 or email hello@infraview.co.uk