One of the best tactics for improving employer branding is to encourage passive candidate engagement. Yet, I have seen only a few companies that truly understand the importance of building a strong employer brand by engaging passive candidates at the very beginning of selection process.
Companies may have a very sophisticated selection processes, yet, only a few employers are able to use it to the full benefit of their employer brand!
The selection process can be described as a two-way communication process where two sides encounter each other in order to take a decision on entering into an agreement. Sounds much like dating. To some degree, it truly is, because this is the time where impactful decisions are made. Even if you are one of the aware employers who invest great effort in the high-quality selection process, maybe you might get inspired to go back and see what you can improve even more. Yes, it is that important.
Taking into account that most probably the best candidates are in the talent pool of the passive candidates, the selection process rises in importance and impact. Remember, they are not the one who asked you for the date, you were the one approaching them.
Now that you have actually engaged them in the process, a high level of awareness and knowledge is required not to lose them at this stage, but to build their engagement throughout the whole process.
Whoever is part of your recruitment team in the company (various employees, only Human Resources, Line Managers, etc.) – make sure these are people who best depict your company in terms of culture. Basically, these people act as your PR agents during the candidate selection process.
Not convinced?
Check out this infographic of employer branding statistics, and you will change your mind!
With time, I have learned to decide on whether to take an offer or not, based on the people I meet through the process. They tell me more about the company than I could have ever gathered from any other source. It is the point where I question all the other information I have ever received about a certain employer and make new conclusions based on the experience I am having.
A person who has just joined your team is probably not the best person to be responsible for engaging your future candidates. Candidates enter the selection process with the aim to get more clarity about the company, the job, the culture, and they expect to be educated by the employer about these topics.
Thus, building an outstanding candidate experience is a must! It is to your benefit to ensure that the person in charge of the contact with the candidates has very good people skills, negotiation skills, and that is well educated about the company.
Pedro Caramez, one of the LinkedIn book authors and recruiting influencers, released a list of causes for a bad candidate experience.
"In my experience as a candidate, there is nothing more frustrating but a non-competent person to talk to during the selection process – especially the interview."
I have literally declined positions just because the interview was not at a level of professionalism and quality that would have made sense to me. I also sense the level of engagement within the company through those encounters. As you can see, the candidate draws impactful conclusions based on the data that is presented to them.
Yes, you can say that the candidate cannot really draw such conclusions based on only one encounter. But truth is, exactly this happens, and it is completely valid. Because, for the candidate, what they experience is the most valid source of information that is available.
The principle of the simpler the better is especially valid for the recruitment software. Imagine having your full profile on LinkedIn and then the employer asks you to fill in a 10-pages long application form in a non-user-friendly software because his current software does not support LinkedIn upload.
Check out our 2018 Guide for Buying a Recruiting Tool!
In case I am applying for an innovative, customer-focused company, I see this as a discrepancy between how the company presents itself to me and what I experience. Thus, for some candidates, this might be the deal breaker right at the start.
A good recruitment software also affects the quality of the recruiting and selection process. This is why more and more recruiters have started measuring their hiring processes by tracking the most important hiring metrics.
Check out our Checklist of the most important hiring metrics!
The highest impact is on the speed of the process. For example, the time needed to create a list of potential candidates from my database makes a huge difference for me.
Also, it makes a difference if I need to post every job on the job boards separately, if I need to post them grouped by country and if I need to make an additional phone or write e-mails during posting. Posting jobs on multiple job boards with one click is extremely helpful.
Benefits such as – using existing job description templates and posting it with one clicks to multiple job boards, having an easy-to-search comprehensive candidates’ database that gathers profiles from the passive candidates, and online testing software – can improve the selection process by over 50% and save an immense amount of time that can be re-invested. All these benefits make a very noticeable difference in the end.
Writing emails to candidates at different hiring stages can be very time-consuming. Use these HR letter templates to save time.
Many HR specialists avoid using software for recruiting and hiring because they are not user-friendly. Fortunately, modern software have changed that stereotype! There are platforms available that are so user-friendly that you don’t even need a training for using them.
The best ones are online platforms that don’t require months of implementation (so starting to use a recruitment software doesn’t have to be one of the most time-consuming activities as it has been the case 5 years ago). Also, the best solutions don’t charge you if you don’t use them, and they don’t require long-term contracts (or even contracts at all).
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To conclude - the selection process is the decision-making process for the candidate, right from the first encounter. There are many steps in a selection process that are good to take into account, yet, the two most important pillars are the people involved in this process as they have the most powerful impact, and the recruitment software. Once those two pillars are at a level that is beneficial to the employer brand, other details (such as tips and tricks on how to approach a candidate) are to be considered.
TalentLyft is an all-in-one recruiting platform with both ATS and Recruitment Marketing solutions. It is easy-to-use and offers flexible and affordable pricing plans.
Schedule a free, personalized demo and let our experts demonstrate how TalentLyft can help you improve your employer brand and engage passive candidates!
