Companies that streamline hiring with recruitment software have been more effective in speeding time to hire and providing a more consistent candidate experience that bolsters their employer brand. With tools like candidate texting or chatbots to improve the responsiveness and quality of conversations with candidates, employers that recognize the importance of engaging candidates and ensuring a seamless experience are more effective in finding candidates in a challenging labor market.

Remember, It’s Still A Candidate’s World

With record-level rates of unemployment, more than 10 million open jobs, and significant turnover, companies have been left to rapidly fill positions with qualified talent. Because employers are competing for top employees, they often still encounter candidates in the driver’s seat who are looking for more in every aspect of their employment.

Candidates currently have their pick of opportunities when it comes to roles. In fact, companies of all sizes are seeing candidates entertaining multiple job offers during the recruiting process. They’re looking for an employer that can provide the best hiring experience as well as more competitive benefits than in previous roles.

The challenge and opportunity to succeed in recruiting requires delivering a standout candidate experience by flawlessly engaging with candidates at every touchpoint in your hiring process. Because when you make it as easy as possible for candidates to interact with your employer brand and apply for your open roles, you can elevate your recruiting function and ensure you deliver a high quality of candidate that outpaces your competitors.

The Most Terrifying Part of Recruiting: Employers That Ghost Candidates

Even in light of the current hiring environment, one of the most frightening parts of recruiting is that employers are leaving candidates hanging. Known as ghosting candidates, it seems that some employers believe that not engaging or offering a streamlined candidate experience is acceptable. Employers should not take candidates for granted and cannot afford to turn off applicants for open roles. Yet many job seekers still regularly experience ghosting from employers.

Connecting the right candidates to the right job, providing an engaging career site experience, offering an easy application process, and ensuring obstacles are removed is essential in streamlining the hiring process. If you are not agile to respond to the challenges in the current labor market, if your hiring team is unresponsive, or you take too long to interact with candidates, you are doing damage to your own company and face an uphill climb in filling roles and hiring talent for your business.

“What is the most frightening part of recruiting? Employers that ghost candidates and think it is acceptable. ” -Jobvite

Stressed recruiters with inadequate tools are far more likely to let candidates fall off in the process with outdated hiring practices, making it even harder for companies to fill roles with qualified talent. So what are the top reasons that recruiters and employers ghost candidates? Let’s take a look:

Here are some of the top reasons candidates are ghosted by companies today:

• Lack of automated messaging tools to engage candidates and keep them informed in the hiring process
• Slow internal communication between the hiring team and decision makers
• Unable to keep up with the volume of candidates for open roles
• Employer expectations are not aligned with candidate expectations
• Inability to re-engage silver medalists to keep them informed of other hiring opportunities
• An out-of-date ATS that doesn’t allow recruiters to effectively track and manage applicant flow

In today’s competitive labor market, recruiting teams need to create the best possible experience to capture and convert top candidates during the early stages of the hiring process. This means that they must keep communications with applicants and hiring teams efficient, helpful, and transparent.

With the labor market continuing to favor candidates, each moment counts in the fight to convert candidates into applicants. Leveraging the right tools, having the right strategy, and ensuring you follow best practices when it comes to your career site and application process can increase your candidate conversion rates significantly.

Keep Candidates in the (Shorter) Loop

Companies that recognize ghosting candidates is a scary proposition instead adopt recruitment software to help with the heavy lifting of communicating with candidates. They’re avoiding candidate ghosting by setting up automated messaging at all points of the hiring process to ensure timely responses, accurate answers, and efficient meeting scheduling. Because without it, companies will lose out on the ability to attract talented candidates that will move their business forward.

One of the ways you can stop ghosting candidates is to leverage communication tools that keep candidates in the know. Some of the top tools businesses of all sizes are using include:

• Chatbots: Applicants can engage with a chatbot early in the hiring process to learn more about a role and even apply with a few simple clicks.
• Candidate texting: Automated messaging saves recruiters hours per requisition by automatically engaging with candidates during the application, interview, and onboarding processes.
• Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) software: Advanced recruiting teams are adopting a CRM platform to centralize their talent pools and easily set up automatic communication campaigns for passive candidates.
• Asynchronous video: Video interviewing is a favorite tool of busy recruiters who are hiring in high volumes. Allow applicants to record interview answers and submit on their own time, avoiding the need for a live meeting to screen every candidate.
• Automated interview scheduling: No more manually coordinating schedules between hiring teams and candidates. Automatic scheduling tools allow candidates to pick a meeting time from a pre-selected list of times that work for everyone.

Start Making Your Candidate Experience Less Spooky, More Engaging

Looking to improve your candidate experience and stop scaring job seekers in the process? Get more insights on how your company can respond to the current labor market. Be sure to download the Employ Quarterly Insights Report for strategies your business can use to better connect with and nurture candidates.

The post Here’s Why Ghosting Candidates Is So Spooky first appeared on Jobvite.

You keep hearing about record job openings as the country heads back to work. Yet here you are, sitting at your desk, looking at your ATS and wondering why it isn’t overflowing with applicants. You’ve exploded your budget for ads, slapped a new banner on your company home page, and begged staff to refer past colleagues. This all should be working. Your career site visitors are up. Candidates were interested in your jobs, but why didn’t they apply?

Sounds like you have a candidate conversion problem. It’s time to put yourself in your candidate’s shoes and see what your candidate experience is like firsthand. Here’s how:

Show your Employer Value Proposition

Now that job seekers are on your career site, are you showing them a place where people would want to work? They’ve seen the job description, but before they apply, they want a glimpse into daily life as an employee. And with the increase in hiring this year, they can wait to choose a flexible employer that takes care of their needs and promotes diversity, equality, inclusion, and belonging.

Remove Barriers to Apply

If you’ve done this well, candidates will next look at how to apply. Candidates want application processes that are easy from start to finish and without barriers to entry. Some of the most frustrating career sites make candidates:

• Search through too many job postings to find the one they were interested in
• Create a login (with a complex, unique 8-character password) and create a profile
• Go through an overwhelming amount of clicks to access the application
• Manually enter their resume into text boxes (despite uploading a pdf copy)

If the application process isn’t quick and straightforward, candidates will not complete their applications. Industry averages show that only 30% of applicants who start the application process actually complete it. That’s seven of every ten candidates that you have already invested in who are choosing to walk away and not complete the application. Successful organizations should break down the barriers of entry for job seekers. Eliminating registration requirements as the first step when a candidate applies is an easy way to improve candidate conversion and give your employer brand a boost while you’re at it.

Eliminate Technical Issues

Next, think about what a candidate would do if they encountered a technology issue or had a question about the application process. Companies spend so much time and budget on driving candidates to the career site to apply only to lose those job seekers to technical issues and a lack of help options, leading to lower conversion rates and increased candidate frustration. Think about adding a chatbot to answer frequently asked questions or elevate the issue to someone who can help the candidate and, therefore, your candidate conversion rate.

Optimize for Mobile

Are you mobile-optimized? Jump on your phone (we know it’s near you) and look at your application process via mobile. Mobile phone usage has been steadily increasing over the years, and you should make sure your application process is smooth on any platform. Better yet, remove more barriers to the application by providing text options to apply and communicate with candidates.

Shorten the Feedback Loop

Lastly, think about how it feels as a candidate to hit that submit button and wait for a response. Think about how often you need to wait for the status of anything today. We expect to know, almost demand, to be kept informed on where we are in the process of fulfilling a purchase or inquiry. Whether that is tracking where your Lyft driver is in real-time, what stage of delivery your Amazon purchase is in, or even when your Grubhub food delivery will be at your doorstep. This is the expectation candidates have as well with employers.

Provide a Better Experience

The bottom line is, if you want to hire top talent, it doesn’t matter how pretty your career site is or how many available jobs you’re offering if your candidates are frustrated and left in the dark. Are you providing an experience where they can easily apply for positions? Or are you forcing them to jump through unnecessary hoops? Are you keeping them informed of their application status? Or are you letting them wait by the phone until they give up and apply elsewhere?

Let Jobvite Help

Whatever hiring challenges you’re facing, from candidate conversion and beyond, having the right tools and technology in place will help you streamline workflows, increase operational efficiency, and improve the candidate experience. Looking to learn more about what Jobvite’s Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite can do for your team? To see Jobvite in action, watch the on-demand Jobvite Product Tour or request a live demo.

The post How to Solve Your Candidate Conversion Problem first appeared on Jobvite.

The key to creating positive experiences for the recruiting trifecta is to leverage technology and streamline communication to create a cohesive experience. To learn more about how to do this, we were joined by industry experts as they shared the importance of focusing on the whole picture of the candidate, hiring manager, and recruiter experience at the Talent Acquisition Experience Trifecta webinar. If you missed the event, don’t worry. We’ve recapped it and shared our top three takeaways on how you as a leader can encourage your talent acquisition function to focus on incorporating these strategies within your organization.

#1: How to Optimize the Candidate Experience: Focus on Consistency and Timeliness

Kevin Grossman, Talent Acquisition and Human Capital Strategist at Talent Board, mentioned the following true difference-makers when it comes to improving the candidate experience:

• Consistent and Timely Communication
• Consistent and Timely Expectation Setting
• Consistent and Timely Feedback
• Consistent and Timely Transparency

Clearly, there is no silver bullet for talent acquisition teams, and the positions in highest demand in each industry may differ, but these four core ideas are the same. Make sure that as candidates move through the application, screening, offer/rejection, and onboarding processes, they’re getting enough clarity to understand which stage they are in, what’s needed from them, and what they can expect.

While technology and automation can help in the early stages through FAQ, chatbots, or AI, candidates who are making it further into the process should feel the additional investment that is being made at those stages. At the end of the day, while these are details that drive many decisions on our end, candidates are generally not that interested in our people, processes, or tech stack; candidates are interested in getting the job, and it is your duty to empower your teams to guide candidates through the talent journey.

An important additional note on the candidate experience, especially when considering lower volume hiring, is to request some sort of feedback from candidates regardless of where they end their recruiting journey. Ensure that your recruiting organization is as unbiased as possible. Understanding which points in the journey were pleasant or painful for candidates can help your recruiting function pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses in the hiring processes.

#2: How to Optimize the Recruiter Experience: Focus on Empowerment and Automation

Madeline Laurano, Founder and Chief Analyst at Aptitude Research, presented a number of perceptions that recruiters have regarding their jobs and why they joined the recruitment industry as well as how those perceptions can differ from their leadership teams.

From the value of their tech stack to the availability of talent, recruiters, by and large, see their situation as more desperate than do business and HR leadership. Whether this is accurate, perception is the keystone of experience. This means that either:

• Business and HR leadership must invest more time in enabling and empowering their recruiters to make full use of their current toolset, OR
• Business and HR leadership must invest more into the tools available within their firm’s recruitment team

Regardless of which option fits your organization better, the value of the investment will be the same – your recruiters will be happier. Remember, one thing you should know about recruiters is that they look forward to the people-facing aspect of their jobs. They enjoy meeting new people, learning about them, supporting them through the candidate process, and, ultimately, seeing them thrive in a new community.

It turns out, however, that most recruiters are spending most of their time on technical tasks like finding applicants, reviewing applicants, and scheduling interviews. These mundane tasks could be streamlined and automated with better technology or a better handle on the technology available to them. A reduction in manual technical tasks by increased investment in automation or enablement allows for an increase in time recruiters can devote to that personal aspect of their job. This means a better experience for not only the recruiter, but the candidate as well.

#3: How to Optimize the Hiring Manager Experience: Focus on Expectations and Communication

The importance of clear communication between recruiters and hiring managers is essential in supporting a positive hiring manager experience. Yet hiring managers must often have their expectations checked on what a good candidate should look like. From a recruiter’s perspective, this almost requires over-promising and under-delivering, and that defeats supporting a healthy talent acquisition function.

Instead, the solution is to widen the communication channels between your recruiters and hiring managers, and to empower your recruiters to give push back a little when hiring managers expect a candidate to exceed or meet al the job requirements.

As a leader within the organization, make it a known expectation that recruiters should bring honesty and market expertise to the table in any conversation with a hiring manager. Remind hiring managers that they should bring flexibility, an open mind, and a realistic compensation budget.

Make the Recruiting Trifecta a Priority in Your Company 

Focusing on the experience of candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers offers a competitive advantage to your company. Set the tone to your recruiting and hiring teams that each audience is important and delivering positive experiences is essential to drive a well-performing talent acquisition function. Understanding the expectations of candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers supports cohesiveness and consistency in hiring, and will make you a differentiated leader if you can support and find the balance of meeting expectations of all three groups.

For more information and insights on the recruiting trifecta, check out the Talent Acquisition Experience Trifecta webinar.

The post Why Leaders Should Care About Candidate, Recruiter, and Hiring Manager Experiences first appeared on Jobvite.

To help you identify important touchpoints within your candidate nurture funnel, we asked HR experts, leaders, and practitioners this question for their best insights. From sending newsletters about company events to creating a smooth onboarding process, take a look at 13 ways you can better nurture candidates through their talent journey.

Here are 13 important touchpoints in a candidate nurture funnel:

• Be Transparent 
• Impress Candidates with Employer Branding
• Send Newsletters About Company Events
• Incorporate Video 
• Leverage Social Media Interactions 
• Communicate After Application Submissions
• Automate SMS Updates 
• Write Engaging Email Subject Lines
• Ask Candidates How Interested They Are
• Follow-Up Immediately 
• Emphasize Why Candidates Should Apply 
• Be Cognizant of Negative Touchpoints
• Create a Smooth Onboarding Process

Be Transparent 

In working in multiple sectors of recruitment, from agency to high volume, the best touchpoint I have found is to be transparent with candidates about the process. Whether that is moving forward through the process or being pipelined for future opportunities, I have never received negative feedback from a candidate when I am direct about feedback. As cliché as it sounds, it has always been a focus of mine to treat candidates as I want to be treated and being communicative is something that goes by the wayside with many in talent acquisition. Communicating about current and future opportunities only builds trust between a recruiter and a candidate.

Dave Lupus, Senior Recruiter, Johnson and Johnson

Impress Candidates with Employer Branding 

The pre-application stage is a crucial touchpoint in a candidate nurturing funnel because it is where their journey begins. The candidate’s journey does not begin with their application, but rather in their first impression of the company’s employer branding. The pre-application stage spans from their perception of the company, to their first interaction with the brand, and so forth.

A well-thought-out pre-application campaign entices candidates to take the first step down the candidate funnel. They can pull from their prior experience as a customer or from their experience navigating the company website. These experiences must first motivate them to be part of the team in order for them to even start processing their application.

Brogan Renshaw, Director, Modelers Central

Send Newsletters About Company Events

Giving candidates a sneak peek into your company culture and ongoing events keeps their interest piqued, which works particularly well if they resonate with your core values and ideals. Moreover, it gives them a good idea about what their life at your organization could look like, nudging them towards reaching out to you. At the very least, even if they aren’t in a position to seek out a job at your company just yet, they’ll still keep you in mind should they begin another job hunt in the future.

Harry Morton, Founder, Lower Street

Incorporate Video

Use videos in your recruitment campaign to increase awareness among job seekers. Apply this when creating job advertisements, then post the content online to draw people’s attention. Videos are essential touchpoints that boost job posting views. Potential candidates find it more exciting and relatable compared to ads that only display texts and static images.

Moreover, videos are great tools to showcase company culture. Your content must reveal how your business operates daily and how employees interact with each other. Showing clips of actual office scenarios allows the applicants to have a glimpse of their careers. It also ensures they understand their future job roles and helps them assess if the workplace culture aligns with their values.

Lilia Tovbin, Founder and CEO, BigMailer.io

Leverage Social Media Interactions

The funnel begins long before a job prospect applies for a role. Your first significant touchpoint with most recruits is on social media, where they’re interacting with your brand and, if they’ve moved into the interest phase, possibly vetting your culture to see if it’s a good fit for them.

Every interaction on social media is an opportunity to impress potential candidates or disappoint them. By crafting posts that describe your brand without over-hyping it, regularly interacting with followers, and quickly responding to comments and DMs, you’ll find better-quality candidates ready to apply for your latest job postings.

John Li, Co-Founder and CTO, Fig Loans

Communicate After Application Submissions 

During the application phase, candidates are often reaching out to dozens if not more opportunities at the same time. Timely responses help your organization to stand out and keep the momentum for any future communication. Even if it’s just a short acknowledgment of receipt, a fast and thoughtful response can make a big difference. Fortunately, many applicant tracking systems allow for this type of automated response after submissions.

Ben Travis, Founder, HR Chief

Automate SMS Updates

SMS offers a great way to add more touchpoints to your sequence, moving the process along quickly and maintaining candidates’ interest without tying up your hiring manager’s time better spent elsewhere. Automate interview requests and timeline updates so that candidates know they’re not slipping through the cracks of your hiring process. Though some businesses automate these messages via email, they can often be caught in spam filters or missed in a full inbox. By harnessing SMS to send these messages, you’re creating more engaging and personalized touchpoints and guaranteeing your messages are seen faster than ever.

Anthony Martin, Founder and CEO, Choice Mutual

Write Engaging Email Subject Lines

If your subject line is not engaging, interesting, or enticing enough, the email may be deleted without even being opened. Additionally, if your subject line is not properly crafted, recipients may be turned off and hesitant to open the email, which could lead to them unsubscribing. This can lead to a low open rate, and wasted effort and resources. It is important to ensure that your email subject lines are both engaging and concise so that you can connect with your potential candidates, as well as stay on their radar.

Farhan Advani, Co-Founder, BHPH

Ask Candidates How Interested They Are 

At the end of the phone screen, it is vital to establish the interest level of the candidate and go over the next steps. By asking the candidate how interested they are in the opportunity and inquiring about other opportunities they may have, you help them prioritize your opportunity.

Explaining the next steps and their importance allows you to create an understanding of your timeline and the patience necessary to go through it. Directing the candidate to more materials about the organization and opportunity engages them and increases their interest.

Joseph Steckmann Jr, Hiring Manager, Keystone Law Firm

Follow-Up Immediately 

The most crucial touchpoint in a candidate nurturing funnel or sequence is timely follow-up. Once an applicant becomes a candidate, follow-up is everything. From acknowledging the candidate’s application to coordinating the next step expeditiously; it’s the most vital task throughout the candidate’s journey. Failure to act on timely follow-up will impact your candidate funnel negatively and could tarnish your company’s brand.

Nakeisha Martinez, Talent Acquisition Manager, Zendesk

Emphasize Why Candidates Should Apply

Notifying candidates that your organization is hiring is crucial, but you should do much more than that. Provide value and demonstrate why they should apply to you. The consideration stage is when candidates evaluate why working for you would be wise. It is a critical touchpoint in the candidate nurturing process since it influences the candidate’s decision-making process. Make it simple for them to decide by emphasizing why working for your organization is the best option. 

Create enticing and persuasive material highlighting critical areas demonstrating your company’s excellence. Consider what candidates are seeking that you provide. Are they aiming for a forward-thinking company? Do they want a good work-life balance? Examine industry trends and widespread public sentiments. Investigate these points so that you can highlight relevant benefits that will resonate.

David Bitton, Co-Founder and CMO, Doorloop

Be Cognizant of Negative Touchpoints

When people focus on the candidate nurture funnel, they tend to think of the positive touchpoints. Things like top-of-the-funnel career website postings and interview scheduling come to mind. However, it is equally as important to be mindful of possible negative touchpoints with candidates.

A perfect example of this is a candidate reading a bad review of your company on Glassdoor. That is a touchpoint that can be disastrous to your recruiting sequence. So as you assess your funnel, make sure to include steps to mitigate such negative touchpoints. For my example above, that may mean monitoring reviews on websites like Glassdoor and responding in kind to the poor review with a helpful comment. That way, after reading the negative review, the candidate will likely also read your response and perhaps have a quick change of opinion.

John Ross, CEO, Test Prep Insight

Create a Smooth Onboarding Process

Ensure a smooth onboarding process to positively condition the minds of the new hires. Onboarding is as vital as the rest of the recruitment funnel stages. This is when all qualified candidates are introduced to their respective roles, including their workstations and the people they will be working with.

Remembering the names and faces of all employees is challenging for someone starting a new job. That said, schedule short meetings for the newbies during their first few days. Let them use this time to introduce themselves to their colleagues and get to know other employees, especially those with whom they will work closely in the company. Doing so makes the onboarding experience more memorable and engaging, giving new hires a sense of comfort working in the organization.

Adam Garcia, CEO and Owner, The Stock Dork

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The post 13 Important Touchpoints In a Candidate Nurture Funnel first appeared on Jobvite.

They also expect recruiting teams to provide a seamless candidate experience. In fact, 47% of job seekers today want great communication, prompt feedback, and timely follow-ups, while more than one-third look for a fast hiring process, according to the 2022 Job Seeker Nation Report.

To source and nurture talent at scale, the most strategic recruiting teams use candidate relationship management (CRM) software, specifically designed for recruitment to engage candidates and build stronger talent pools.

But how do top talent teams use recruitment CRM to create targeted campaigns and connect with the best candidates? Take a look at these tips and learn how you can get started to source, engage, and hire top talent for your business.

A Closer Look at Recruitment CRM

Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) is a recruitment tool that empowers recruiting teams to easily find and engage their talent networks at scale. A recruitment CRM allows you to meet candidates where they are, turn passive talent into engaged applicants, and ensure you have the right talent identified and engaged before your business needs them.

CRM tools help automatically manage communications, send proactive campaigns, and even broadcast your open roles to job boards. By improving efficiency in the sourcing and recruitment process, you can maximize your hiring results, while reducing your hiring costs and manual effort.

5 Ways to Use Recruitment CRM Tools to Create Targeted Recruiting Campaigns

#1: Create custom invite lists for specialized recruiting events

With qualified candidates in short supply, recruitment marketing has become a priority in attracting and converting top talent. One tactic for expanding your candidate pools is to participate in recruiting events. Whether virtual or in person, use recruitment CRM tools to automatically invite candidates to upcoming events they might be interested in. CRM software can match candidates based on profiles that would benefit from the event. These niche recruiting events can help talent teams source candidates for specific roles or even expand DEI within their organization.

#2: Broadcast job requisitions across talent networks

Sourcing qualified applicants can be one of the most time-consuming and frustrating parts of the recruitment process. Reaching an entire talent network with the right job at the right time can seem impossible. But CRM tools are making this easier than ever. Automatically broadcast an open job role across specific talent networks with recruitment CRM and start sourcing qualified applicants right away.

#3: Engage candidates on the channels where they’re most active

Today’s job seeker is busy, so it’s crucial for recruiters to meet candidates where they are. By using the channels that candidates prefer, you can easily engage candidates where they will be most responsive, whether that’s email, text or social media. According to the latest Job Seeker Nation Report, 76% of job seekers are open to receiving email, 70% are open to phone calls, and 50% prefer text messages. The right recruitment CRM enables you to engage with candidates quickly as part of your outreach strategy to improve candidate response and conversion rates at each stage of the talent journey.

#4: Send personalized messaging campaigns to passive talent

No recruiter wants to start from scratch every time they have to fill an open role. That’s why it’s important to keep talent networks engaged, especially between opportunities. Keep quality candidates warm and nurtured in the pipeline by sending targeted messages through your recruitment CRM. Leverage candidate profiles to send relevant updates or even future job openings that might be of interest. These customized campaigns can keep candidates informed and engaged even when they are not actively looking.

#5: Segment talent pools for efficient sourcing

As recruiting programs get more complex, and more roles open for hiring, segmenting talent pools becomes increasingly important. Some roles require specific skills or certifications, and others may need relevant experience or expertise, or some positions may need to be in specific geographic areas. Each of these can be criteria for sorting and sourcing talent pools in your recruitment CRM to help you segment and target specific candidates, especially for hard-to-fill roles.

Start Nurturing Your Talent Networks with Jobvite CRM

Looking to learn more about using a CRM platform that can grow talent networks and help find the right candidates? Request a live demo of Jobvite CRM or watch an on-demand product tour now.

You can also subscribe to the Jobvite blog and resource library to stay up to date on the latest insights on candidate engagement and nurturing.

The post What Is Recruitment CRM and How Do You Use It? first appeared on Jobvite.

Candidate engagement typically is a continuum that spans recruitment marketing, the hiring experience, and new hire engagement. Simply, engaging candidates means you should focus on interactions from first look to first day.

But before going any further, let’s take time to differentiate candidate engagement from candidate experience. Candidate engagement is about a series of interactions you have with a candidate. You can determine what that engagement looks like. ‘Engagement’ is within your control.

On the other hand, candidate experience is about how a candidate feels about those interactions and the impression they have about your brand. ‘Experience’ is not in your control. In other words, you can’t dictate a candidate’s experience. You can only deliver candidate engagement that influences the candidate’s impression of your company.

Focusing on building your employer brand, streamlining your sourcing function, and building robust talent pools using a CRM all goes into candidate nurturing. But it’s the continuous drumbeat of interactions that can make a difference for your hiring outcomes.

Ask These 15 Questions to Determine Where You Can Improve Candidate Engagement

No matter the level of sophistication of your recruiting organization, you can always work to improve your candidate engagement efforts. Take a look at these 15 questions across the three areas of recruitment marketing, the hiring experience, and the onboarding experience to determine ways you can enhance how you nurture and engage candidates.

Recruitment Marketing

1. Do you have segmented talent pools that you consistently nurture with social and email campaigns?

2. How well do you keep ‘silver medalists’, or those candidates who made it to the final interview stage, but did not receive an offer, engaged with your employer brand?

3. Do you have a compelling career site that showcases what it’s like to work at your company and offers a mobile-first experience?

4. How well are you managing your social channels and promoting employer brand content?

5. Are you leveraging your own employees to recruit new talent and leverage as a source of employee referrals?

Hiring Experience

6. Is it easy for a candidate to apply to your jobs on a mobile device?

7. Is it easy for a candidate to schedule or reschedule interviews?

8. Is your hiring team trained to engage candidates in their interactions and welcome them either by video or onsite?

9. Are you responsive to candidate questions throughout the process? Do you have AI and automated messaging that can answer questions when you’re not available?

10. Do candidates receive timely feedback and do you track overall candidate feedback time?

Onboarding Experience

12. Is your onboarding experience seamlessly connected to your hiring experience?

12. Are all of your new hire forms digital so that new hires don’t have to fill out forms by hand?

13. Do you have an onboarding portal that prioritizes all of a new hire’s tasks?

14. Does your onboarding portal work on mobile?

15. Do you offer preboarding? In other words, is your onboarding portal available to candidates before they start, so they can get a head start on the process?

Nurturing Candidates Delivers Results

To improve the recruiting process, you need to understand that you can make a tangible difference in engaging candidates — whether job seekers are taking an initial look at your business or they are ready to start in their new role. A candidate-centric approach shifts the focus from managing requisitions to creating remarkable candidate journeys that enable you to engage at the right time, in the right way, throughout the entire process.

Companies that have figured this out are seeing increases in social hires, higher rates of referrals that turn into applicants, increased application rates, greater candidate response rates, decreased time to fill, decreased time in screening applicants, and faster time to onboard.

Remember, nurturing candidates is the one area you can actually impact, so it’s important to orchestrate high-quality interactions across the entire recruiting process to create an exceptional candidate experience for job seekers.

Forward-thinking talent acquisition leaders and recruiting professionals need to think more strategically about how to improve the quality, speed, and effectiveness of engagement across a broader candidate journey, and in turn, an expanded recruiting cycle — from recruitment marketing to hiring to new hire engagement.

Take Hiring to the Next Level with Candidate Engagement Scoring

As your organization begins to tackle candidate engagement and identifies ways to improve how you nurture candidates, you may be ready to optimize your hiring and take recruiting to the next level. Candidate engagement scoring offers recruiters the ability to dig deeper into applicant activity and find ways to better nurture candidates in their talent journey.

Download the Candidate Engagement Scoring Guide to find out everything you need to know about candidate engagement scoring. Discover how you can measure and score candidate engagement, how you can save time and better nurture top talent, and how using engagement scores can enhance your recruiting initiatives.

The post 15 Questions to Help Improve Candidate Engagement first appeared on Jobvite.

Or maybe seasonal hiring initiatives are more focused on end of year holiday high-volume hiring, looking for those part-time workers who can help drive sales, support holiday travel, keep shelves stocked, or ship and deliver packages around the clock. No matter where your seasonal hiring efforts take you, there’s one thing that hiring teams have in common. They need to tackle the list of open requisitions to fill those seasonal roles as fast as possible. Check out our top five ways to improve your seasonal hiring efforts and find the best employees for your business fast.

#1: Try Texting with Candidates

Candidates are busier than ever and expect quick, easy, responsive communication from recruiters. Job seeker expectations are high, especially when it comes to the candidate experience during the seasonal hiring process. One of the most impactful ways you can prioritize candidate communication and engagement is by leveraging intelligent messaging. According to Jobvite research, there is a 98% open rate for mobile recruiting texts versus a 20% open rate for recruiting emails. Texting is simply a more effective way to reach candidates today.

For seasonal hiring, try candidate texting and intelligent messaging to automatically engage with candidates, answer questions, provide additional information, and even screen applicants. If they’re hired, automated text-based communications can even help facilitate the onboarding process as well, so new hires can jump into work on day one.

#2: Build Your Employer Brand on Social Media

Candidates want to know what it’s like to work at your company before they start there, even those that may just be there for a short time. Create a communication strategy for your employer brand that includes a social media presence targeted specifically toward seasonal workers. Seasonal hires are bound to check our your social content and see how a company supports temporary hires and features them as part of the organization. Share content and posts that highlight seasonal workers and their impact on the business.

Then make sure you are using social media to expand your talent pool and find qualified seasonal candidates who are engaged and actively looking for their next short-term opportunity. Using social media to source, screen, and engage seasonal candidates can help you better connect with this niche audience even faster.

#3: Engage Your Talent Network with Targeted Seasonal Campaigns

Maybe some good candidates were recently interviewed for a role, but weren’t selected. These silver medalists have actively engaged with your company before and could be interested in future open roles, particularly those that may be available for a seasonal opportunity.

Consider creating targeted campaigns to engage these candidates specifically, highlighting seasonal roles and keeping them interested until the right seasonal position opens up. Remember, seasonal hiring is all about keeping candidates warm and ready to join your business at the ready, so try some of these proactive strategies to keep talent networks engaged:

• Send surveys out to candidates about their experience with your recruiting process. Ask them specifically their interest levels about working in a seasonal capacity.
• Share seasonal employee stories with your talent network on social media or through monthly newsletters. Keep content fresh and engaging.
• Broadcast job openings to your talent network based on candidate profiles and invite them to apply in advance of seasonal hiring periods.

#4: Update Your Career Site

Your career site reflects your employer brand and company culture. It should show potential candidates what it’s like to work for your company. Tailor sections of your career site specifically for seasonal hires. Share stories of these types of roles, featuring experiences in their own words, and even showcase a temporary hire who went on to join your organization full time.

Share your company values, answers to frequently asked questions, and even give company updates on your career site. Think of it as a strong recruiting tool that gives potential applicants, especially those seasonal hires, the value proposition of working for your company. Be sure to include links to open job requisitions, company social media accounts, and recruiter contact information on the main page.

#5: Deploy Automation and AI Technology

If your talent team is expecting an extra busy seasonal hiring period, make sure that you are leveraging a holistic talent acquisition suite that can help you streamline the entire hiring process. Using automated tools to save time in your seasonal hiring efforts will help your teams find better seasonal candidates. Use automation and AI to perform manual tasks and keep up with high volumes of seasonal applicants. Technology like automated sourcing can help recruiters maximize hiring outcomes and decrease the time to fill open roles.

Start Connecting with Top Candidates for Peak Hiring Seasons

Obviously, the best time to plan your seasonal hiring efforts are before they start. So whether you’re just coming off of the busy summer hiring season or are gearing up for holiday hiring, make sure you have the people, process, and technology you need to tackle the influx of seasonal hires. Want more insights on finding and hiring top talent? Subscribe to the Jobvite blog or check out our resource library to stay up-to-date on the latest recruiting insights.

The post Five Things You Can Do to Improve Your Seasonal Hiring Efforts first appeared on Jobvite.

Here are 12 items to include in your candidate experience surveys:

• Ask How They Feel About the Company’s Mission and Values
• Invite Them to Stay in Contact Via Email
• Ask How You Could Improve Your Hiring Process
• Find Out If the Job Description Matches Reality
• Ask About Recruiter Responsiveness
• Check the Potential for Repeat Application
• Include a Word Association Section
• Make Space for Candidates to Leave Comments
• Find Out How Likely the Candidate Would Refer Your Company
• Inquire How the Candidate Learned About The Position
• Include Recruiter Rating
• Ask If the Candidate Felt Comfortable Asking Questions

Ask How They Feel About the Company’s Mission and Values

One item to include in your candidate experience survey is a question that asks how the candidate feels about the company’s mission and values. This will help you get a sense of whether or not the candidate is aligned with your company’s vision, which is key to finding someone who will thrive in the role.

Ryan Stewart, Webris

Invite Them to Stay in Contact Via Email

At the end of a candidate experience survey, you should always include an offer to subscribe to future offers and opportunities with your business. By entering their email, a candidate can stay informed of happenings in your company and apply again in the future. This creates a larger pool of candidates, benefiting both you and the potential candidate for future endeavors.

David Aylor, David Aylor Law Offices

Ask How You Could Improve Your Hiring Process

Asking this question provides insight into the candidates’ expectations throughout the process and can also help you understand their overall experience. Learn how your organization can continue to enhance the candidate experience and implement these changes accordingly. Listening to your candidates’ feedback will encourage them (and their colleagues) to apply for future opportunities at your company.

Benjamin Farber, Bristol Associates, Inc.

Find Out If the Job Description Matches Reality

One area which the candidate experience survey should attempt to clarify is how closely the initial job description matched the information presented during the hiring process. Some companies can be too eager to attract candidates, leading to misleading job descriptions being posted. The result of this is that unsuitable candidates can be tempted to apply for roles that do not match their experience or qualifications.

Alternatively, they may go into the hiring process with lofty expectations that cannot be fulfilled within your company or the role they will be expected to fill. The job description should read as close as possible to the position you are looking to fill. A misleading description will waste time for both the employer and the candidate and will come with a financial cost. If your candidate experience survey implies a mismatch, action should be taken to correct the description.

Morgan Taylor, Sourcery

Ask About Recruiter Responsiveness

A must-have question on a candidate experience survey is: how responsive were our team members when you reached out to them? One study showed that 50% of candidates said they turned down a job because of a poor recruitment experience. 

Understanding communication between candidates and HR or recruiters is essential to this goal. The great thing about this question is that it is likely to provide a concrete answer, but it leaves room for elaboration.

Soumya Mohan, Poised

Check the Potential for Repeat Application

Find out whether your candidates are open to applying with you again. It matters who the candidate partners with during the recruiting process, so as a company and brand, we do not take that decision lightly. We work with companies and candidates to put our best foot forward, especially since their success is our success.

From applying to interviewing to getting hired, the entire process can be quite daunting, especially for someone who is new to the process or has been in the process for some time without any luck. For them, the experience can make the world of a difference, so it is important for us to know if our candidates had a good enough experience to come back and work with us again in the future.

Ryan Nouis, TruPath

Include a Word Association Section

Candidate experience surveys give companies an insight into the efficacy of their recruitment process. They illuminate which processes are working, and help you identify potential areas of improvement.

One of the most beneficial things to include in your candidate experience survey is a word association section. Simply ask participants to share three words that summarize their overall impression of the experience. For example, you might receive answers like “Fast”, “Difficult”, or “Frustrating”. Participants may choose to elaborate in a separate question. This is easy for candidates to fill out, and gives you a bird’s eye view of how they perceive the experience as a whole.

These responses can be monitored over time to keep a pulse on candidate sentiment and identify emerging patterns, such as frequently re-occurring words. This feedback can offer a sense of direction as you improve the process, and present a clear idea of how candidates feel about your changes.

Aaron Gray, Agency 101

Make Space for Candidates to Leave Comments

To thoroughly measure the candidate experience, you need to give them space to say the things that they really want to say. Your line of questioning, as thorough as it might be, may still have blind spots. This could leave the candidate without the opportunity to speak candidly about their full experience, which may even warp your final impression of the recruitment process.

You need to give candidates space to voice their concerns, observations, and complaints. Only then will you be able to adapt your methodology and attract more candidates. By including a simple text box at the end of the survey, you’ll ensure that no stone is left unturned in giving the candidate a platform with which to speak. That way, you can make full use of their feedback and discover exactly what your candidates want to see. It’s as easy as asking, “Do you have any other comments?”.

Max Wesman, GoodHire

Find Out How Likely the Candidate Would Refer Your Company 

One of the most important items to include in a candidate experience survey is to ask the candidate how likely they are to recommend your company to other candidates or to other people in general. Candidates who have had a negative experience with your recruiting process are unlikely to recommend your company. Of course a deeper understanding of why or at what point the candidate developed a negative opinion of the organization but asking if they would recommend your brand gives you a general overview.

Sharon Terera, Afrolovely

Inquire How the Candidate Learned About the Position

A candidate experience survey is important to understand exactly what you’re trying to accomplish with each one of your questions, as well as with the survey as a whole. However, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach you can take, but there is one thing that you need to ask on each candidate experience survey to determine your brand awareness.

To get insight into how a candidate feels about your brand, simply ask from which channel they heard about the position. This question will give you insight into how your brand is perceived, as well as whether or not that perception is positive or negative. If a candidate mentions multiple channels, then you’re hearing a variety of opinions about your company. 

To explore more you can ask “What made you most interested in applying for this position?” This can help you determine how you position your brand in the candidate’s mind as well as how you can better communicate it to them.

Adina David, Paperjobz

Include Recruiter Rating

One item you can include on a candidate survey is a “Rockstar Rating”. This question measures how well your recruiters are providing great candidate experiences. 

Here’s an example of this in action: “On a scale of 1 to 5, which of the following would best describe your recruiter overall?” 

5 – “My recruiter was the best I’ve ever worked with! They really went above and beyond.”
4 – “My recruiter was great! They were helpful and responsive.”
3 – “My recruiter was okay, but they could have been more helpful and/or responsive.”
2 – “My recruiter was not great. They seemed inexperienced and/or might need coaching.”
1 – “My recruiter should not be recruiting.” 

In addition to evaluating candidate experience, this question can also be a morale boost. Recruiters who often achieve high ratings will take pride in being “the best recruiter their candidates have worked with.”

Preston Sharpston, Parallel

Ask If the Candidate Felt Comfortable Asking Questions

One item to include in your candidate experience survey is a question on whether the candidate felt like they were able to ask questions during the process. It’s important for candidates to feel like they can ask questions about your company, its culture, and the role you’re hiring for. This can help them decide if it’s a good fit for them, which is important for both their happiness and yours!

Anup Kayastha, HeightComparison

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The post 12 Things to Include In Your Candidate Experience Survey first appeared on Jobvite.

Really, the candidate experience includes all the feelings, impressions, interactions, and activities a job seeker encounters and considers along their candidate journey. It’s how a candidates feels they’ve been treated throughout the recruitment process, and how that treatment makes them feel about your organization. Whether positive or negative, they all contribute to the candidate experience.

Think of the candidate experience as the interaction between a candidate and your employer brand. Anytime a potential candidate visits your website, reads content, applies to a job, texts with a recruiter, or interacts with a chatbot, they are engaging with your company. And your goal is to create an optimized, engaging experience to quickly recruit and hire the best talent for your organization.

How Do You Provide an Outstanding Candidate Experience?

A great candidate experience means providing active and passive job seekers with engaging content, a fast application process, streamlined communications, consumer-grade technologies to quickly answer questions, and prompt feedback throughout their experiences. Top candidate experiences include:

• Consistent employer brand messages
• Tailored content and experiences
• Personalized job recommendations
• Mobile-optimized career sites
• Easy job application process
• Easy to schedule interviews
• Automated messaging with recruiters
• Artificial intelligence and chatbots
• Feedback loops at each hiring stage
• Easy to find information

Whether it’s making them feel valued during the application process, providing helpful feedback or communication, or treating them with professionalism and respect after their candidacy has ended, the candidate experience encompasses every interaction a candidate has with an employer.

Why Is Candidate Experience Important?

Candidate experience matters to the success of your organization more than you think. Providing a quality candidate experience allows you to find and recruit top quality talent to impact the success of your business. A solid candidate experience also ensures you can build a robust talent pipeline and employer brand that will strengthen your reputation relative to competitors.

But the problem in today’s recruiting climate is that positive candidate experiences are declining, and candidate resentment is on the rise, spiking 75% in 2021 to more than 14% of candidates. According to Talent Board, the decline of positive candidate experiences “impacts whether or not candidates are willing to apply, refer others, be a brand advocate, and/or make purchases from a consumer-based business.” The impact of candidates having negative experiences not only influences your ability to attract top talent, but can also leave a lasting effect when it comes to wanting to spend money at your organization, too.

So when it comes to achieving better hires, how can you leverage the candidate experience to positively impact your business outcomes? Let’s look at three ways here:

#1: A Great Candidate Experience Helps Build a More Robust Applicant Funnel

Companies typically spend significant time promoting their brand in the marketplace. But if they fail to pay the same attention to the candidate experience, they can erode their ability to attract new talent to the business and convert them to the application stage. Yet with strong employer brand messaging, personalized job recommendations, tailored content, and automated or intelligent messaging, companies can successfully broaden their talent pipeline and better convert candidates into applicants.

In fact, one study from Appcast found an easy to apply process that was five minutes or less enabled companies to increase applications rates by up to 365%. Think if you had this large of increase across your open positions the difference it could make in quickly filling open positions. By acknowledging candidates, companies benefit from an engaged talent pool, thus increasing the number of opportunities for making a great hire. Simply, delivering a positive candidate experience that empowers candidates and makes them feel confident in applying to an open position is a major step in delivering better recruiting results for your business.

#2: A Positive Candidate Experience Enhances Your Employer Brand Presence

Providing a great candidate experience is not that difficult. And that’s why job seekers get so frustrated if they encounter experiences that make them feel unappreciated or robotic. No one wants to spend an hour filling out the same information for an application that was already in their resume to begin with. With the intelligent talent acquisition technology available today, there is no excuse for employers to provide a poor candidate experience. Even companies that receive hundreds of applications per opening can use simple technology solutions to ensure every applicant feels heard.

Remember, when job seekers have a bad experience, they are likely to tell others. According to research from Talent Board, 33 percent of job seekers who have a bad candidate experience will post about it online, where it may come up in search results. However, SHRM reports when you effectively communicate with candidates throughout each step of the hiring process, they’re far more likely to report a positive experience with your company.

Any time your brand interacts with the public, whether with consumers, clients or job seekers, it should seek to provide a positive experience. The Content Marketing Institute reported that 89 percent of B2B marketers believe that brand awareness is more important than sales and lead generation. In short, a poor candidate experience harms the organization by damaging its brand and resulting in lower-quality hires.

#3: A Solid Candidate Experience Helps Improve Your Quality of Hire

So much of the candidate experience comes down one thing — candidates want to be valued. It’s likely that the individuals applying to your organization already feel frustrated, anxious, or stressed. Remember, your candidate experience is not just a process in itself. It is a mechanism for enhancing your relationship with job seekers and also influencing the quality of talent that is coming into your organization.

Engaged candidates also make better hires who will stay longer in your company. One study even suggests more than 9 in 10 senior HR professionals agree that quality of candidate experience directly impacts quality of hire. And the best way to engage them is ensuring they have a positive impression and experience from first look to first day. This is particularly important based on the current labor market with 1 in 3 hires leaving in their first 90 days after joining a company.

Remember, when you communicate consistently, provide a streamlined process, and give candidates what they want and need, you will likely motivate top talent to accept your job offer even before a competitor has a chance to extend one. Simply said, the candidate experience is essential to attracting and hiring better quality talent, and it is within your control to deliver.

Ready to Improve Your Candidate Experience?

If you’re looking to improve your candidate experience, the key is to always keep the candidate at the heart of everything you do. By nurturing each individual and prioritizing candidate engagement at every step of their journey, you’ll be well on your way to building stronger relationships with top talent that will deliver results for your business.

Stay current on the latest trends in talent today when you subscribe to our blog. Or check out our resource library to find more tools that will help you build a more nurturing and supportive candidate experience.

The post Three Ways a Great Candidate Experience Delivers Recruiting Results first appeared on Jobvite.

Candidates are making it clear they want more from employers — and they feel empowered to ask for it. No longer can recruiters and talent acquisition professionals sit back and wait for candidates to come to them. Instead, they must recognize how to best nurture, identify, and prioritize candidate interactions with their employer brand throughout the hiring process. That’s where candidate engagement scoring comes in.

What Is Candidate Engagement Scoring and How Is it Measured?

Just as companies often measure levels of existing employee engagement or sales teams use lead scoring to determine consumer buying readiness, identifying candidate engagement is just as important in the recruiting process.

To measure candidate engagement, savvy recruiting teams leverage candidate engagement scoring to determine a candidate’s hiring readiness all the way from first look to first day. Candidate engagement scoring shows how engaged a candidate is with your employer brand and open roles, and it can even predict their future interest in roles or likelihood of accepting a job offer.

Candidate engagement scores help recruiters maximize hiring outcomes, improve key metrics, and nurture diverse talent pools. The measurement, or score, attributed to candidate engagement can be characterized in different ways. Every recruiting team has a different set of key metrics that tell the story of their candidate engagement, but here are some of the most used metrics when determining a candidate’s score:

• Site visits and activity

• Email engagement (clicks, opens)

• Texting interactions (opt-ins, responses, link clicks)

• Application submissions

• Signup for job alerts

• Response rates to recruiter communication

Save Time and Nurture Talent

While candidate engagement scoring might initially seem like a heavy lift, the long-term payoffs are well worth it. Once your team has mapped out and weighted the various metrics that are most relevant to indicating engagement, you will be able to be more focused in your outreach.

Candidate engagement scoring allows for segmentation by engagement data, and enhancing that by further segmenting by desired skills, certifications, or experience can give you a warm candidate pool to start from as positions open up within your organization.

As the speed of hiring continues to increase, talent teams must be confident they are spending time with the right candidates. Again, according to the 2022 Job Seeker Nation Report, 45% of surveyed workers are actively looking for a new job or plan to look within the next year.

That means nearly one in two candidates are actively looking and you need to be ready to identify which ones are most interested and engaged. Candidate engagement scoring gives you the ability to categorize and target candidates with high levels of interaction with your brand, which, in turn, serves to further elevate your employer brand.

Is Candidate Engagement Scoring Right for You?

Simply put… yes!

Candidate engagement scores are useful for recruiting teams tasked with building a diverse talent network of engaged candidates. With the importance of DE&I and the added pressure of the great resignation, candidate engagement scoring is no longer a nice to do, but is a must-do for any recruitment team.

Candidate engagement scoring is also valuable for teams with highly specialized roles because you can target best-fit candidates who express the deepest interest in your employer brand. Finally, if your recruitment process is already fairly streamlined, candidate engagement scores can further optimize your hiring process, taking recruiting to the next level by adding additional insight into your candidate pools and empowering you to increase effectiveness of nurture campaigns.

Ready to Learn More?

Learn how to take your hiring to the next level with candidate engagement scoring. Get your copy of our latest eBook to dig deeper and find out how to leverage candidate scoring to enhance your hiring process.

The post Candidate Engagement Scoring: At a Glance first appeared on Jobvite.