How to Engage Passive Candidates for Hard-to-Fill Roles
- Kimberly Wilson
- Mar 12, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Sep 24, 2025
Updated September 24, 2025
The best candidates aren’t always looking, so your outreach has to give them a reason to look twice.
TL;DR - Engaging Passive Candidates
▌Passive candidate outreach is one of the most overlooked levers in modern recruiting. ▌The best candidates aren’t job hunting. They’re doing great work elsewhere.
▌To reach them, you need more than a job ad; you need an outreach strategy that aligns with their values, goals, and impact in energy and chemicals.
▌This guide breaks down how to engage passive candidates by personalizing outreach, building relationships, and creating a workplace worth leaving their current role for.
At TLR Search, we’ve spent 15+ years helping energy, oil & gas, and chemical companies engage hard-to-reach engineers, leaders, and specialists. We know how it feels when urgency rises, leadership is watching, and the right candidate still hasn’t surfaced — because the best candidates aren’t always looking, and it takes the right outreach to get them to respond.
You’ve posted your job opening, checked the resumes rolling in… and the right candidate still isn’t there. Why?
Because the best candidates—the ones who bring fresh ideas, drive results, and elevate teams aren’t waiting for a job post. They’re busy excelling where they are. But that doesn’t mean they’re unreachable.
Many of today’s top professionals aren’t actively searching, yet they’re open to the right opportunity, one that aligns with their ambitions and values. So, how do you engage talent that isn’t actively looking? It takes a passive recruitment strategy that goes beyond standard recruiting. It requires strategic hiring practices that are aligned with both performance and potential.
To connect with passive candidates, you need an outreach strategy that aligns with their goals and builds long-term trust.
Why This Matters:
Most hiring efforts focus on active candidates, limiting the talent pool to only folks on the market. This excludes top performers in the industry who aren't seeking, but would consider. Engaging passive candidates early gives your company a competitive advantage by accessing talent others overlook and being able to assess the full talent landscape.
Here’s How to Attract Talent Before They’re Even On the Market:
1. Understand the Passive Candidate Mindset
Passive candidates aren’t scanning job boards. They don’t need a new job; they need a reason to make a move. To connect with them, focus on:
Career Growth:
How does this opportunity stretch their skills and future potential?
Long-Term Impact:
Can they see themselves making a meaningful difference?
Transparency:
Passive candidates don't want a pitch. They want the real picture, challenges, and all.
💡 Your first conversation shouldn't be about filling the role; it’s about starting a dialogue.
2. Candidate Experience Matters for Passive Talent
Hiring managers often devote more energy to passive candidates, assuming they’re harder to win. But here’s the reality: every candidate, actively searching or simply open to the right opportunity, evaluates how they’re treated.
Top talent pays attention to communication quality, clarity, and follow-through. The impression you leave can impact not only the current opportunity but also your employer brand in the long term.
Passive candidates, in particular, ask sharper questions. They’re not just comparing job offers, they’re weighing whether the opportunity is worth disrupting their momentum. That means showing up with clarity, curiosity, and a genuine interest in their goals.
A high-touch candidate experience isn’t just a best practice. It’s a competitive advantage in today’s talent market.
3. Personalize Outreach to Passive Candidates
A vague “Let’s connect” won’t catch a high performer’s eye. Tailor every message:
Do your research:
Acknowledge their background and expertise—what makes them stand out?
Engage, don’t recruit:
Instead of “Are you looking?”, try “Have you ever thought about…?”
Tap trusted networks:
A trusted connection makes outreach more compelling, personalized, and easier. However, hiring teams need to be mindful that referrals, like active candidates, limit the talent pool if you don't reach out to passive candidates.
On that last point, ensure a fair process by considering multiple candidates, not just one strong referral.
If you’re spending too much time chasing active candidates, you may be missing the 80% of the market who aren’t applying at all. This is where a retained recruiter helps — engaging the passive talent others can’t reach.
4. How to Keep Passive Candidates Engaged
Engaging a passive candidate is just the start. Initial interest can fade quickly if the "relationship: isn't nurtured. Check in consistently:
Are they seeing what they need to feel confident in making a move?
Have their goals shifted or motivations changed?
Are there concerns they haven’t voiced?
Stay connected to avoid late-stage surprises.
A well-managed passive candidate pipeline is part of a strategic hiring process that avoids last-minute scrambles and ensures you're always connected to high performers.
5. Interviewing Passive Candidates Beyond Skills
By the time a passive candidate agrees to an interview, they’ve invested time and energy they weren't expecting to. Use the interview to:
Showcase the team dynamic:
Give them a glimpse of who they’d work with and how they’d contribute.
Connect their strengths to your goals:
Show them how their past achievements align with your vision.
Align on career aspirations:
This isn’t just about the job today, it’s about the role they can grow into.
6. Showcase Inclusive Culture to Attract Passive Talent
Top professionals want to belong, not just fit in. They want to feel valued and included.
Ways to demonstrate an inclusive culture to passive candidates:
Share how diverse perspectives shape decisions.
Talk about mentorship, advancement, and equity.
Be specific: Show, don’t just tell, what inclusion looks like at your company.
7. Nurture Passive Candidate Relationships Long-Term
Great passive candidates may not make the move today. But if you treat them with care, they’ll remember you tomorrow.
Offer feedback.
Stay in touch.
Check in when a new role opens up.
It’s not just smart networking, it’s a long-term strategy.
Final Thought: Engage Candidates Passively, Attract Actively
Finding the best talent means looking beyond those who are actively job seeking. Recruiting great talent requires creating opportunities for meaningful conversations, understanding what drives top professionals, and building an environment where they want to contribute.
Attracting top talent starts with conversations, not transactions. The best candidates don’t chase opportunities. They respond to them when they feel seen, valued, and inspired.
The best strategy isn’t about chasing candidates. It’s about creating a compelling workplace that even the best talent, the ones who weren’t looking, can’t ignore the opportunity.
Common Questions: Engaging Passive Candidates
1. What is a passive candidate?
A passive candidate is a professional who isn’t actively job hunting but could be open to the right opportunity if it aligns with their career goals and values. These individuals are often top performers who are excelling in their current roles, which makes them highly desirable for hard-to-fill positions.
2. Why should we focus on passive candidates?
Focusing on passive candidates expands your talent pool beyond active job seekers and gives you access to top performers others miss. By engaging them strategically, you increase the likelihood of stronger, more aligned hires who deliver long-term impact and stay longer in their roles.
3. How do you approach a passive candidate without turning them off?
The best way to approach a passive candidate is through personalized, value-driven outreach. Acknowledge their background, highlight what makes them stand out, and start with curiosity rather than a sales pitch. Instead of asking “Are you looking?”, try “Have you ever thought about how your skills could drive impact in [specific area]?” This shifts the focus from filling your role to exploring their goals and potential fit.
4. What if a passive candidate says no?
When a passive candidate declines, it isn’t wasted effort—it’s the beginning of a long-term relationship. Thank them for their time, offer value (such as insights about the market), and keep in touch periodically. Many “no’s” today turn into “yeses” in the future when priorities change. Maintaining a warm passive talent pipeline ensures you’re ready with trusted contacts when the next role opens up.
5. What’s the best way to recruit passive candidates in energy and chemicals?
The best way to recruit passive candidates in energy and chemicals is to combine deep talent mapping with personalized, credibility-rich outreach. Map niche segments (upstream/midstream/downstream; polymers; specialty; water treatment), anchor your message to measurable impact, use warm peer introductions and technical communities, move decisively with a high-touch process, and measure engagement and slate quality—not just volume.
6. How do executive search firms engage passive candidates differently than staffing agencies?
Executive search firms (retained) engage passive candidates by proactively mapping the market, designing role narratives, and using multi-touch personalized outreach. Unlike staffing agencies that focus on speed and active-candidate volume, retained search prioritizes long-term fit, leadership alignment, and candidate experience. For high-stakes roles in industries like energy and chemicals, this depth is what reaches selective talent that isn’t applying.
At TLR Search, we specialize in:
Engaging hard-to-reach talent
Building high-impact passive candidate pipelines
Recruiting for energy, chemical, and industrial companies
Ready to attract the right people—before they’re even looking?
Not ready to build a passive candidate strategy?
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