What is an Active Candidate?

A candidate in the midst of the hiring process and actively looking to get a certain job is known as an active candidate. They might be going through the screening process, about to attend an interview, or being considered against one other candidate. The opposite term is passive candidate, which refers to a person who is not actively searching for a job, but an organization is interested in hiring them for a role in the future. They would sit in the organization’s talent pool.

To acquire active candidates, employers have several recruitment marketing strategy options. That includes posting job ads, building a career site, and working on employer branding. Once a person applies and becomes an active candidate, they are usually handled by the organization’s applicant tracking system. This system stores their data and tracks their progress.

An organization’s recruitment process often sees the employer narrowing down a pool of active candidates. At the beginning of the screening process, they might have around 100 active candidates to consider, and then after interviews, it might just be down to about 3 to 4 before they choose the person who gets the job.

As soon as a person applies to a position, they become an active candidate until they either get rejected or accepted. Organizations need to note that just because a candidate is an active one doesn’t mean they will stay consistently interested – all candidates need nurturing throughout the entire hiring process.