Meet & Engage

The Right Way To Engage With Candidates

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Narinder Hammond, Partnerships Director at LaunchPad and I, recently teamed up to host a webinar revealing the best ways to create an engaging candidate experience, especially considering new technology and automated processes.

Technology can make life easier, it’s true what they say, but often, we see technology and automation being integrated with a defined purpose.

So, it’s more tech for tech’s sake.

Human beings lie at the core of recruitment and if we plug in a piece of new technology to replace them and expect it to work smoothly all in the name of candidate experience, we’d be disappointed.

People engage with people. But that doesn’t mean technology and automation don’t have a place in the recruitment process.

In our webinar, Narinder and I shared our top Do’s and Don’ts for creating a truly great candidate experience with all this in mind. Here’s what we came up with:

Engage with people on their terms

There should be touchpoints across a variety of channels.

You need to provide a number of ways to engage and bear in mind that people expect instant answers – they aren’t prepared to wait days or weeks.

That’s a lot to ask of a recruitment team who can hardly find the time to breathe!

That’s where introducing the right technology cuts down recruiter time, giving your team more time to focus on personal engagement.

Live chat events and 1-2-1 chats are a great example (see how our clients have used live chat to create a great candidate experience) but also, adding video to enable candidates to carry out their own research outside of working hours.

Dialogue NOT Monologue

Talk rather than tell. Provide opportunities for candidates to talk with their peers – they certainly trust them more than they trust the corporate brand.

Our research recently showed that candidates want to be part of a conversation rather than simply being broadcast to, regardless of the stage in the hiring process.

They need to interact in order to connect and this is key to building rapport and loyalty and in turn reducing reneges (drop-outs between offer and day one). It’s something that our clients have seen time and again, seeing a huge drop in reneges and a much better-received candidate experience.

Inform and Empower

Candidates who are well informed can be at their very best when they go to the assessment or interview stage.

Many of our clients have hosted live chat events in the run-up to assessment days to do just that.

Remember that your audience wants to hear from you – and this is particularly true when it comes to under-represented groups who desire honest, and approachable employees to shares their experiences.

Use Technology to Keep It Human

By introducing advanced automation, organisations can buy back time for recruiters to work on candidate engagement – building connection and buy-in to the company and bringing the human touch when it’s most needed.

Integration of technology should not replace but, should instead enhance the process, allowing recruitment teams to have more time doing the things that they enjoy.

Remove Hidden Blockers in the Process

Consider what you and the team really need to know and when.

Make sure that you are collecting the relevant information at the right time. Filling out long and painful forms to access a live chat event is going to turn more people away than you might think.

That’s why the Meet & Engage platform allows attendees to hit a one-click social sign in that lets them join the chat using any of their social media accounts with a single click of a button.

Ensure Communication Has Taken Place

To assume is to make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’. Unorthodox perhaps, but the sentiment is spot on.

Don’t assume that communication has happened. And for the record, sending out emails isn’t communication – communication should be 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 an important factor in influencing whether they’d recommend that organisation as an employer to others.

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. Automating steps of the journey means you can free up recruiter time to bring the human touch where it’s needed.

But be aware, technology should be implemented with a purpose, rather than a ‘fix-all’ silver bullet.

Missed the webinar? You can view the webinar Recruitment Automation: The Do’s and Don’t’s for Candidate Engagement here.

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