Did you know? The average time to hire takes up to 9 weeks — an interminably long time when you consider that the best candidates are on the market for only 10 days. As an employer, how do you strike a balance between selecting the right candidate and keeping quality talent interested?
Let’s take a look at the factors that contribute to great candidate engagement, and find out how to build a recruitment process that brings in employees who are ready to hit the ground running.
What is candidate engagement?
Candidate engagement refers to the relationship between jobseekers and the organisation they’re interviewing with.
We’ll be honest, candidate engagement sounds like an oxymoron — shouldn’t jobseekers already be ready and engaged when they’re applying for a role? However, the way you treat applicants during the hiring process makes all the difference in how a candidate views your company.
Why is candidate engagement important in today’s job market?
Potential employees aren’t just another cog in the machine. Job applicants are one of the very first customers of a business, regardless of whether they get hired or not. The candidate experience at your company affects candidate engagement, your employer brand and your overall image as an organisation.
We already know that talented candidates are less likely to apply for a position or accept a job offer if the company involved has a bad reputation — 65% of job applicants are also less likely to buy from a company if they don’t hear back following the interview. Effective candidate engagement strategies are key to securing great employees who are invested in your organisation’s success and keeping quality talent from ghosting you.
How does high candidate engagement lead to quality hires?
Before we get happy and engaged employees, we first have happy and engaged candidates. Applicants who have a positive experience when they’re applying for a role at your organisation are more likely to be engaged throughout the hiring process and beyond.
A great candidate experience doesn’t just help with recruiting and retaining employees, it also builds your employer brand, making it easier to find and connect with quality talent that is engaged and willing to stick around in the long run.
Are candidates happy with your current candidate journey?
We’re usually focused on filling the role when we think about recruitment, but here’s some food for thought: are you also providing a fulfilling candidate experience and meeting their needs?
While you aren’t going to be able to hire everyone interested in an open position, you can still put some thought into the candidate journey. Jobseekers double as potential employees and in the future, possibly even customers.
Since hiring is a two way street and jobseekers spend time and energy finding out whether they’re a good fit for an organisation, it’s worth paying attention to how you’re engaging with future team members. Treating them well is how you boost engagement, keep potential candidates interested and attract quality applicants.
Building a positive candidate experience across the recruitment process
Investing in candidate relationship management starts from ground zero: a great first impression starts you off on the right foot when it comes to creating a positive candidate experience, and it continues all the way through the employee life cycle. Sourcing talent is a high touch affair — you’ll have chances to score brownie points every step of the way.
While each hiring stage is an opportunity to invest in your employer brand, that also means an equal amount of chances that you might miss the mark. Before you implement any changes in your talent pipeline, map out the steps and stakeholders involved so you get a complete picture of what you’re working with.
Pre-application process
Let’s start from the top. Curating a candidate experience with engagement in mind means that you’ll be looking at your organisation’s image as a whole. Even if a candidate hasn’t applied to your company’s job postings, they’ve already got an impression of you in their minds.
Building a strong employer brand
One of the easiest ways to get started with candidate engagement is to generate excitement through your organisation’s social media or recruitment page. You’re not just selling your products and services, you’re also selling yourself as a great place to work.
Get potential employees excited by showing them what it’s like to be a part of your organisation — think videos featuring the working environment, the benefits that you offer, or even a day-in-the-life type of snippet. Any information you provide about your company’s workplace experience will be great to whet their appetites and keep them coming back for more.
Creating a talent pool
Many job boards have a nifty feature where anyone can keep tabs on an organisation’s page and be notified when there’s an open role. When your organisation seems like a great place to work, interested candidates will naturally opt in to be considered, even if you don’t currently have any positions you’re hiring for.
Proactively investing in your employer brand keeps you top of mind when potential candidates are in the market for a new role. In essence, creating a talent pool is an inbound recruitment marketing strategy that could save you from scrambling to fill an urgent position later.
Application process
Inefficient and ineffective hiring processes don’t just cost time and money, they also cost us valuable and talented candidates. Enthusiastic and engaged candidates can be put off by lengthy and cumbersome application processes, despite fulfilling the requirements for the role.
Simplifying the application process
Think about it this way: hiring for a role takes three to six weeks and involves multiple interview rounds, while jobseekers take up to 80 applications for a 30% chance of receiving a job offer — that’s a lot of forms to fill out! While most prospective candidates are ready and willing to interview, 41% say that two should be the maximum number they’re subjected to.
Trim the excess from your organisation’s hiring process and keep it simple. Perhaps you could implement an autofill function in your online applications process so jobseekers don’t have to manually fill in information that’s already available on their resumes, or get multiple interviewers to sit in on candidate interviews to reduce the number of rounds they have to go through.
Screening qualified candidates
Did you know that people often don’t apply for a position simply because they don’t hit all the requirements listed in the job opening? It’s sound logic to not waste time and energy interviewing for a position that they might not get.
Before you start hiring for an open role, adjust your screening and interview process to focus on the must-haves and pay attention to any unconscious bias you might have. Don’t rule out candidates that don’t have the specific experience you want — certain skills are transferable, and other skills can be acquired on the job.
Interview phase
Now that we’ve laid the foundations for a great hiring process, it’s time to take a look at how your organisation gets to know its future employees.
Enhancing the interview experience
First encounters are usually a nerve-wracking experience, especially for interviewees who often have to fly in blind. Take some of the guesswork out of the equation and help your candidates prepare in advance with details like how long the interview process will take, the number of interview stages and some background information on the interviewers.
Having a clear set of interview questions can also help hiring managers keep an eye out for red flags, reducing the chances of mishires and mitigating issues that might pop up further down the line.
Providing constructive feedback
This applies to both successful and unsuccessful candidates — in the spirit of leaving things better than you found them, let them know how well they did and how they can do better next time. You don’t have to provide feedback for the first round (especially if you have hundreds of candidates), but at least thank them for taking the time to apply.
Post-interview engagement
Interviews aren’t just one and done: there’s plenty to do if you’re interested in future opportunities and relationship building.
Keeping candidates in the loop
We preach about maintaining open lines of communication within organisations — this also extends to potential additions to your company. Keep candidates in the loop by continually communicating through confirmation emails and let them know what the hiring timeline is so they know when to expect a response.
Even better: tell your candidates about the steps involved in your recruitment process and the expected time frame. The fastest way to lose a candidate is to make them feel ignored or rejected, so make sure they know you’re thinking of them especially if you’re still in the process of making a decision.
Building long-term relationships
It’s not always the end of the journey for unsuccessful candidates when they don’t land the position they were applying for. You can keep their details on file for future openings, just let them know that they’ll be added to your organisation’s candidate pool and ask them to keep in touch through social media.
Providing timely feedback is a fantastic way to nurture positive relationships — candidates who received this were more likely to share their positive experiences, refer friends, purchase from the company and reapply for other positions.
Leveraging technology
With so many touchpoints in the recruitment process, it’s impossible to respond to every single communication and manually screen each candidate, especially if you have hundreds of applications for one role.
Tools and platforms
Applicant tracking systems (ATS), recruiting software, AI integrations and automated processes can make hiring easier. If the job you’re hiring for tends to generate a lot of questions about the position during initial outreach, consider having a FAQs page or even a chatbot that can direct candidates to the information they need. You can even implement psychometric testing to pare down the pool of prospective employees ahead of time.
Meanwhile, tedious processes like interview scheduling, internal communications, following up with candidates and collating data can be made easier with automations and a HRIS platform that keeps everything in one place.
Data-driven decisions
Technology can also help in decision making — having a system that lets you rank applicants, log test scores and keep track of other metrics will reduce the friction involved in selecting a candidate that suits the role. When used correctly, qualitative and quantitative data can be distilled into spreadsheets and reports that give you a comprehensive view of what’s in store for the position.
Managing a high-volume candidate engagement programme
While a bespoke application process is the best way to boost candidate engagement, it’s difficult to scale when you’re faced with a high volume of applicants. A high-volume candidate engagement strategy is the perfect strategy to keep candidates engaged in a way that grows with the number of applications and communications involved.
As you’re working through your recruitment process, ask yourself if there’s an easier, more effective way to go about each step without compromising the quality of the result in question.
Feedback is crucial here, whether it’s from the recruiters handling the hiring process or the candidates involved. Implement regular reviews and surveys to find out how you can do better and iterate until you find that sweet spot for optimising candidate engagement and developing your employer brand.
How can the success of candidate engagement efforts be measured?
Using analytics can help improve your recruiting process and measure candidate engagement: here are some key metrics to consider.
- Time to hire
- Cost per hire
- Quality of hire
- Conversion time
- Active/passive ratio
- Time to fill a position
- Applicant conversion rate
- Candidate response rate
- Top sources of hire
- Top reasons for decline
- Number of applicants for a position
- Number of applicants in alternative placements
- Number of applicants redeployed through interview process
- Feedback and survey responses
- Online engagement metrics like likes, comments, shares and mentions
- Online interaction metrics like click through rates and email open rates
While this is not an exhaustive list of hiring metrics, they’re a great starting point for gaining insight into your candidate engagement programme.
Can smaller companies compete with larger ones in engaging candidates?
Even with a global talent shortage, SMEs have an edge over larger companies when it comes to hiring — some candidates prefer a smaller organisation where they might have more autonomy, lateral leadership and a flat organisational structure. Since smaller companies have fewer people weighing in on a hiring decision and lower organisational inertia, they can capitalise on this agility and consider a values-driven approach to talent acquisition, which emphasises candidate career development.
Small organisations can set themselves apart from other employers by having a clear, well-written job description that provides relevant and useful information to potential applicants. They can also personalise their recruitment communications by tailoring messages to highlight specifics, which is something a large employer might not have the luxury of doing.
Streamline your candidate engagement process
Continuous candidate engagement can be tricky when you’ve got your hands full trying to fill a position. Let Employment Hero make life easier for you and your new hires with our all-in-one HR and payroll platform.
Never lose an applicant again — automate, streamline your employee lifecycle and boost your organisation’s candidate experience with our applicant tracking system (ATS) and AI-enhanced features.
Did you know that apart from the comprehensive suite of features on our platform, Employment Hero also connects you with great talent through SmartMatch? In essence, we’ve introduced a smarter way to recruit.
Using AI, SmartMatch analyses a candidate’s skills, experience, and certifications to find a perfect match for every role in your business. You get a list of work-ready candidates delivered directly to you, which means you’ll always have talent waiting in the background. Say goodbye to expensive job boards and wasted hours sifting through piles of resumes.
When it’s time to hire, you’ll have a list of top candidates ready to go. Kickstart meaningful conversations straight away and fast-track the hiring process. It’s an absolute gamechanger.
Book a demo with one of our business specialists to find out more about what Employment Hero can do.
