The best time to recruit is when you don’t have job openings.

That motto reminds me to constantly work ahead, focusing on building pipelines and connecting with passive candidates.

The hard part is making the switch from open jobs dictating your time to filling your plate with “real recruiting activity,” which is hard work but ultimately longer lasting.

Here are my recommendations to get started.

Peek at Your Competitors: Pretend to be a job seeker. Search job boards to learn how other companies advertise jobs and what compensation ranges are being applied (by the company or the job board algorithm). Look at Career pages to gain insight on how competitors recruit the types of people you also target.

Test New Job Advertisements: Tap into the creativity of your team using platforms like Canva to design new job ads (print and video) for social media.

Do a Three-Year Look Back: History repeats itself, right? Review recruiting and hiring data to see where and why you missed opportunities to interview candidates, secure offers, and what led to short tenure. This insight is a healthy way to learn from past failures to improve future success.

Review Data Analytics: The older I get the less interested I am in wasting time and money. Recruiting metrics like time-to-fill and cost-to-hire reveal how you can make your process more cost efficient.

Systems Upgrades: Successful recruiting starts with great technology. Configure your ATS/HRIS systems with meaningful skill codes, templates and workflows that make job and candidate management easier. If you don’t like your system, use this downtime to migrate to a new platform.

Sponsor Employee Referral Competition: Employee referrals aren’t dependent on specific job openings, more so just positive word-of-mouth. If your employees are willing to say good things about working for you, incentivize them to do so with friendly competitions that reward them for great referrals.

Job Connection Partnerships: Recruiting non-traditional candidates falls by the wayside when you have skilled openings that require specific experience. In slower times, get involved with local colleges, veteran’s organizations, and job fair partnerships to tap into diverse candidate pools.

Trim Down Resources: If the slowdown is your new hiring norm, then reduce your job postings, LinkedIn recruiter seats or InMail allotments. It’s always better to closely manage fewer resources than be sitting fat with underutilized tools.

Clean Up Old Candidate Files: I remember a time when Capstone stored thousands of paper copies of old jobs and resumes. What a waste; no one ever went back and looked through them. The same can be said for digital files. Determine what makes a record incomplete or obsolete. Archive or delete them in your ATS, so they never show up in search results that you must comb through on future hiring projects.

Organize a Recruiting Workshop: Many times, I’ve led Lunch & Learns and breakout sessions for insurance agency hiring leaders. An in-house event is so much more productive than the same content at an industry conference. It gives your hiring leaders the chance to discuss all things talent acquisition. Invite outside speakers to present on key topics, provide critical updates on legislatives rules and regulations, and handout hiring toolboxes, so managers and executives leave with an understanding of the company’s hiring standards.

*This article was originally published in Insurance Journal, CM’s sister publication.