As the economic outlook improves, companies will need to rethink their hiring strategies in order to maintain their current quality of hire, as well as fill an increasing number of open positions. Much of this will require an increased emphasis on passive candidate recruiting, and less on active candidate sourcing.

In a survey conducted in collaboration with LinkedIn in late 2010, we discovered that 22 percent of the fully-employed workforce was absolutely not looking. Another 44 percent were open to considering something if contacted by a recruiter. Sixteen percent were discreetly looking, networking only with former associates. Only eight percent were actively looking, with the remaining 10 percent casually looking using search engines and job aggregators a few times a week, at most.

Surprisingly, most companies, even those using social media and Web 2.0 techniques, are only reaching the 16 percent who are considered active. This leaves 82 percent relatively untouched. This will have to change if companies want to maintain their competitive edge in a growing economy.

Over the course of the past 10 years I’ve identified eight core strategies for hiring top talent.