How to Communicate with Job Candidates
Harver and Meet & Engage recently hosted a webinar to explore the do’s and don’ts for creating an awesome candidate experience.
Using the latest in recruitment technology and advanced automation, how do you move potential candidates from interested to invested in what you’ve got to say? Here are our do’s and don’ts for in-house recruiters.
DO Engage with people on their terms
Create touchpoints across a variety of channels. This could include live engagement touchpoints, such as live chat, 1:1 chats, and group chat with polls. Candidates also want to be able to find answers in their own time, so channels like video enable them to carry out research outside their own working hours. You need to provide a number of ways to engage and bear in mind that people expect instant answers. Especially for hourly roles, candidates aren’t prepared to wait weeks or even days.
DO Create dialogue not a monologue
Provide an opportunity for candidates to talk to their peers – they trust them more than they trust the corporate brand. Meet & Engage’s research shows that candidates want to be part of a conversation (rather than just being broadcasted to) regardless of the stage of the hiring process. To feel inspired, candidates want to be shown things, not told. Candidates need to interact in order to be able to connect, which builds rapport and loyalty and is proven to reduce drop-outs between offer and day one.
DO inform and empower
To be informed is to be empowered. Candidates who are well informed can be their best when they get to assessment or interview stage. Remember that your audience wants to hear from you, and this is especially true when it comes to under-represented groups who need honest approachable employees to talk from their experience.
DO use technology to make the experience more human
When the essential processes have to be done by recruiters, the value add is lost. By optimising their hiring process with automation, organisations buy back time for recruiters to work on candidate engagement. This builds connections and buy-in, bringing the human touch when it’s most needed. Technology has the potential to free up recruiters to make your recruitment process more successful.
And the don’ts…
DON’T create hidden blockers to your recruitment process just because it’s the norm.
Consider what you really need to know and when. Are you collecting irrelevant information that increases the risk of drop-outs? Do you really need to use psychometrics? One Harver customer collects only first name, surname, email address, salary expectations and location at the first stage of recruitment. Additional information is collected after initial screening and assessment.
DON’T assume communication has happened.
Just sending out emails isn’t communication. There needs to be an opportunity for a dialogue with your candidates. 84% of candidates feel that regardless of whether they chose to join a company, how they were treated during the recruitment journey was a very important factor in influencing whether they’d recommend that organisation.
DON’T assume your candidates understand the whys and hows of your process.
We like to understand why we have to do something so make sure you share the process with your candidates. Remember that 60% quit recruitment processes due to their complexity.
Return on Engagement
Candidate engagement doesn’t have to be time consuming. By using technology to build in a variety of touch points and ways to communicate, you can ensure your candidate journey is engaging. And automating steps of the journey means recruiter’s time can be freed up to bring the human touch where it’s needed.
