• 3 min. read

How to Engage and Retain Candidates During the Recruitment Process

How many times have you experienced having your best candidates accept offers from other companies? Retaining top talent during the recruitment process has never been more important. Learn how to keep your candidates engaged during the recruitment process.

Written by Daniela Costa

To engage and retain top talent during the recruitment process has never been more important. How many times have you experienced having your best candidates accept offers from other companies? And when that happens, do you wonder what is it that you might be doing wrong? Maybe you should be asking: what is it that those companies are doing right? Let us help you figure it out!

First, it’s time you realise that the job market has dramatically changed in the last few years. It has become candidate-centric. What this means is that, today, candidates feel more empowered to demand transparency and better engagement throughout the recruitment process. Today, candidates are not afraid to reject a job offer if they feel that a company doesn’t treat candidates, and consequently employees, considerately. That’s why the candidate experience and employer branding are so important.

Hence, companies need to sell themselves as employers and their vacancies have to be marketed to candidates as any other product. The most qualified candidates won’t stand being kept in the dark while the recruitment process unfolds and they will quit for sure. Are you sure that your company’s recruitment strategy is up-to-date and aligned with these new priorities?

The Importance of Assessing Your Recruitment Process

According to Glassdoor, a recent research found that the number one pain point for 52% of the candidates surveyed was slow feedback from prospective employers about their status in the application process. Also, 44% of the candidates said that poor communication regarding the next steps of the process was another top frustration, as well as delayed decision making from potential employers for 39% of the surveyed.

This clearly helps understanding why your top candidates accept offers from other companies. Prospective employers that provide follow up at every stage of recruitment are more effective when it comes to keeping candidates engaged and retaining top talent in their funnel.

You need to take a step back and evaluate your recruitment process in order to verify where you’re failing communication-wise. This requires also that you have a clear recruitment cycle and that you are aware of how it works at every single stage.

How You Can Successfully Engage and Retain Your Candidates

  1. Sell your company and your job offers

    Start by making sure that your job offers are attractive. Present candidates interesting and valuable information about your jobs and about how it is to work for your company. If you need some tips on how to do that, check our article on employer branding.

  2. Create a feedback system

Your candidates want to be updated throughout the entire recruitment process. Sending an email when they submit their application is definitely not enough. By defining the key moments of each stage of the recruitment process you can create email templates and phone call scripts for you and your team to use on those key moments.

A great way to ensure personalised candidate communication without wasting too much time is by using an Applicant Tracking System that allows you to create and manage email templates, as well as sending emails to multiple candidates with just a few clicks.

  1. Provide follow-up upon rejection

Your focus mustn’t be set exclusively on the candidates that are moving forward on the recruitment process. Candidates that get rejected at any stage are also entitled to feedback, so they shouldn’t be neglected. Otherwise, chances are that they won’t apply to your company again and they’ll share negative candidate experience with other prospective candidates, hurting your employer brand.

  1. Offer a simple and transparent recruitment process

Offering candidates an easy way to apply for your company and involving them in a selection process that is clearly objective and job related will increase your chances of retaining top talent on your funnel. You also need to run a swift process, for good candidates are not willing to wait indefinitely for assessment results and decision making.

candidate experience statistic (1)

Skeeled offers you the perfect opportunity to bring innovation and digitalisation to your hiring. Check our website or our LinkedIn and Facebook pages for further information.

Thanks for reading and see you next time!

Your team here at skeeled

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