September – you’re back from your holidays, you sit at your desk and ask yourself the question “Am I still happy in my role?”

Maybe you decide that you don’t want to actively seek a new role, but if a new role comes knocking – you could be persuaded. This makes you what we call a passive candidate, or in many ways, the ‘hidden treasury talent’ who we love to talk to.

We build individual relationships with all levels of treasury professionals, as we know it may be years before we find them their perfect job.

So, what’s the best way to communicate with passive candidates who aren’t looking for a new job without becoming boring and being unfollowed or even worse blocked?

The answer is to become a trusted advisor who contributes to their working life whenever they need treasury career advice, not only when they need a new job.

Maybe they need a friendly bit of advice about how to deal with a challenging boss?

They want to ask for a pay rise, but they don’t want their boss to feel threatened by thinking they are about to leave.

Don’t worry; that’s where we come in.

As a recruiter, rather than an industry peer, we can be more open and honest on social media. This way clients and candidates know they can trust us to tell them like it is, rather than how they think it might be.

We try to keep our content regular, relevant, concise, and interesting – with the odd slice of humour, here and there!

We also try to keep our blogs and posts on LinkedIn original, thought provoking and well written so that passive candidates feel they would be able to have an open discussion with us when they need to.

Another consideration is when approaching passive candidate, we should make sure that they will have a reasonable chance of being considered for a role, if they do decide to throw their hat in the ring.

How annoying would it be after a cold approach to someone, they apply, they get excited, only to be told: “Sorry, we need someone with xxx many years’ experience and expertise so we cannot progress your application now.”

You could lose them as a potential candidate forever.

Taking care of candidates and clients doesn’t come easily to some consultancies but believe us when we say that it does yield results.

Anyone can post a job on LinkedIn, but you need to attract the candidates who aren’t seeking a job; not necessarily those who need a new role.

A directly relevant message / email to a member of our LinkedIn or Twitter group often leads to a far more interesting and fruitful conversation. Even if a role isn’t suitable for someone today, at least you understand what will fit their profile next time.

No matter what social media platform you use, content should be regular, reliable and generate conversations so that you can grow your network and earn trust.

This is what makes the difference between some pushy sales based recruiter and a trusted treasury recruitment career consultant.

Without the trust and respect of our candidates and clients we simply wouldn’t have a business, thanks once again to you guys for the faith you place is us we appreciate it.