Recruiters will agree with the fact that it's not that tough to find the right talent, but the real challenge is in fact drawing the interest and time from applicants - candidate engagement is what can actually turn things around and streamline the hiring process. In this blog, we discuss why candidate engagement is an important part to any recruitment process.
What is candidate engagement?
Candidate engagement is the part of the process where recruiters can initiate and maintain these relationships. It contributes towards keeping candidates from dropping out the process and ultimately building trust throughout.
Continuous candidate engagement is now extremely important within recruitment, especially since there are endless ways to now communicate with each other - whether that's via text, phone calls or emails. It helps to ensure an applicant's interest and motivation level is always at its optimum, right from where they check out a job role - to when they're settling into the new role in their first few days. It naturally helps to improve talent management and build a stronger brand, which maximises a hiring teams performance potential.
Candidate engagement is about being consistent with your interaction every step of the way. Although it may seem similar to candidate experiences, the engagement is a simple yet effective part of the experience.
Why Should You Maintain Engagement?
Recruiters believe that if job seekers aren't engaged enough on their own, they won't be motivated enough to join the company if given the opportunity. It's vital to understand that these candidates are most likely sending many applications per day and only getting to know the companies briefly during the application process. As a recruiter or hiring team, you should show the candidates that you care, make them interested in the brand and motivate them to get through the different stages of the hiring process - this will give all candidates a positive experience and will likely entice them to stick around for the future.
It's highly important to improve your candidate engagement, as 65% of candidates tend to lose interest in the job opening after a negative experience during previous processes - meaning you could lose a lot of talented people simply by the lack of communication and mindset.
An issue we see fairly often is a delayed response to inform candidates that they weren't successful. This was a lot more common a few years ago, to the point that some recruiters wouldn't even send the rejection letter and would leave the candidates waiting for the answer. It's said that 80% of candidates don't consider relevant job openings at a company that didn't notify them about previous applications, where as they're a lot more likely to apply for roles again with a company or recruitment agency that keep them updated.
Having good candidate engagement, no matter if they were successful or not, increases your 'loyal' talent pool along side of excellent recommendations for your brand.
How To Boost Candidate Engagement.
Here at Talented Recruitment Group, we believe that candidate engagement is highly important and effective through out the entire process. Here are some of our top tips to help boost candidate engagement.
Review Your Applicants Quickly.
Research shows that 52% of job seekers have said that the lack of a quick response is a significant challenge during the job application process. Candidates apply to numerous positions with many different companies, so if you don't act fast, you are at risk of losing qualified candidates.
Utilising automation software to help set up replies for these applicants that adhere to your requirements - this will update them about their status whilst also saving you more time.
Communicate.
After reviewing candidates, this is where the communication becomes essential. Whether you're an employer or a recruitment group, you should always keep in close contact to ensure all information is correct and understood - or simply to make sure the candidate is feeling ready and confident during the process.
We believe that communication is key, especially when candidates reach an advanced level in the interview process - making it essential to have more personal conversations, whether that's via emails, texts, or phone calls.
Studies have also shown that clear and concise communication during the entire hiring process means that even if the candidate does not get the role they were hoping for, they will maintain a positive experience of the company/recruitment group, which can benefit your company with recommendations.
Honest Feedback.
Here at TRG, we believe that feedback is crucial. It's not often that you receive detailed feedback after interviews, when this is something that is extremely important as it helps a candidate to gain an understanding of why certain decisions were made and what they can do to improve. Providing feedback to the rejected candidates can also be great for a company's image as a lot of candidates don't think that highly of organisations that send rejections containing nothing but the dreaded "Unfortunately,".
Feedback can also apply for the employer, asking the candidates for feedback can help towards learning about your own interview process and can give you unique insights from a candidate's perspective, giving you the opportunity to develop/improve your hiring process if it's needed.
Discuss The Company.
Research shows that 47% of candidates in fact fail their interviews as they don't have enough information about the company so can't tailor their responses and relate the company to their skills. When someone applies for different job openings alone, it's unlikely that they will be able to research a lot of information about the company other than the basics, where as a recruitment agency will have access to more relevant information that they can communicate across to the candidate - whether it's a short description with the essential details or about the company's working culture and policies, it will help a lot.
It has also been shown that candidates are more likely to show up to interviews if you provide more information about the company they're applying to as they are inspired by the company's mission and values - or even positive feedback from the current employees.
Candidate engagement proves to be essential if you want to build a better brand image and to draw in the best clients and talent pool. Ensuring that you engage and build relationships during the recruitment process is a little but effective step that we stand by here at Talented Recruitment Group, and we truly believe in it as it creates such a positive and helpful outcome.
There are many different tips that can be extremely helpful, if it's something you want to try out - start off by implementing them one by one so you don't get overwhelmed and drop the practice altogether. You can tailor the tips to make them more relevant to you and your candidates, and remember, honest feedback will help to determine if it's working out.