Candidate engagement refers to the ongoing interaction and communication between a recruiter or company and potential job candidates. These days, recruitment is all about building relationships, keeping candidates informed, and creating a positive experience throughout the hiring process, ensuring they feel valued and motivated to stay engaged.
Why Does Candidate Engagement Matter So Much To Us?
For us, recruitment is much more than filling vacancies. Our main goal when we try to build a relationship and earn the trust of our candidates is to create a positive experience that reflects well on your brand.
Getting engagement wrong can be a massive red flag for many candidates, which means losing top talent before they even reach the interview stage. Yet, many talent attraction strategies fall flat because of poor engagement. This can be due to too vague, impersonal, and generic communication, a lack of follow-ups, or failure to customise each interaction to the needs of the candidate and the employer.
In this article, we’ll help you re-think how you approach potential candidates. So, hopefully, after you read it, you’ll be able to analyse and refine your strategy and ensure that each and every one of your candidates feels valued, heard, and motivated to consider your opportunities.
Massive Red Flags in Candidate Engagement You Should Avoid At All Costs
Constant communication, feedback and personalisation are vital for a successful candidate engagement strategy. When your candidate’s journey is full of obstacles, it can be perceived as a red flag for your candidate. So, make sure your hiring process is free from obstacles. Here’s what NOT to do if you want to keep your candidates engaged and happy:
1. Don’t Treat Candidates Like Numbers
Mass emails with no personalisation or boilerplate job descriptions will switch candidates off quickly. Job seekers want to feel like you’re considering them specifically for the role. Even if you want to build your talent pool, don’t just send out a batch email or LinkedIn message to anyone you find on the job boards, telling them about your many job openings, regardless of their background or skills.
2. Don’t Go Dark
Poor communication is one of the biggest mistakes you can make in your recruitment process, especially ghosting candidates after interviews or even after initial contact. Don’t leave your candidates hanging out.
3. Don’t Overpromise
Promising the world but delivering something very different can seriously backfire. Instead, be realistic with job descriptions, role expectations, and timelines. Overselling a role might get initial interest, but it’s not worth doing if it leads to disappointment, high turnover, and negative feedback in the long run.
4. Don’t Overcomplicate the Job Application Process
Lengthy, complicated applications are a huge barrier. This is where most companies fail despite working on exciting projects and offering interesting job opportunities or very competitive compensation packages. Candidates, especially top talent, will simply abandon the process when they feel that someone wastes their time. You better keep the hiring process as smooth and straightforward as possible.
How to Keep Your Candidates Engaged and Happy
So, if you’ve read the previous point, you can probably guess that we will suggest you keep your candidates engaged, nurtured and happy. How do you do that? Be honest, communicative, and professional. In other words, treat your candidates how you would like others to treat you.
1. Personalise Your Communication
Tailor your messages to the person and their circumstances. We get that you’re busy, but a simple reference to the candidate’s experience or skills can show a candidate that you’ve taken the time to consider them properly. You could use their name and current role, mention why you think they’d be a good fit, and outline how their expertise could add value to the role you’re pitching them.
2. Be Transparent and Communicative
Candidates appreciate clarity. We all do, don’t we? So, make sure you keep them informed at every stage of the process. And yes, it also means letting them know you haven’t forgotten them when there’s a delay or no updates. Being friendly, honest and transparent in your communication builds trust.
3. Offer True Value
Great recruitment consultants engage with candidates even if there isn’t an immediate vacancy for them. You can share industry insights, offer tips for CV improvement, or invite them to networking events that might help them upskill. This will create a positive long-term relationship and establish you as a trusted resource, not just a job supplier.
4. Provide Feedback
Constructive feedback, especially after interviews, is highly valued. It shows candidates that you care about their growth, even if they didn’t get the role this time. Plus, it makes them more likely to engage with you and your company in the future.
How to Engage Passive Candidates
With massive talent shortages in Digital and Tech, businesses cannot rely exclusively on candidates actively looking for a new role to fill their vacancies. Engaging passive candidates (those not actively looking for a job) requires a more strategic approach, though. They’re often content in their current roles, so your role is to persuade them with the right opportunity for them. If you’re looking to engage passive candidates, here’s what you should do:
Focus on Building a Relationship Over Time
Passive candidates need nurturing. You can start by introducing your company, sharing relevant insights, and offering value without any direct job offer. Building trust has a positive effect over time, making candidates more likely to consider your roles or your company in the future.
Social Proof Attracts New Candidates
Sharing success stories, particularly from current or former employees, can pique the interest of passive candidates. Some good practices for employer branding include showing case studies and testimonials on your careers page. Being an active voice on LinkedIn can also attract passive candidates looking to work with an industry leader.
Use Social Media for Networking
Social media is a great way to subtly engage passive candidates. Share relevant content on LinkedIn, comment on other people’s posts, and keep yourself on their radar without being pushy. Whether online or offline, networking events can also be a low-pressure way to connect to top talent and extend your talent network.
Candidate Engagement: What Works and What Doesn’t?
Rethinking candidate engagement is vital to attracting and retaining top talent. It’s not just about one single job offer; it’s about the entire journey you take candidates on. It’s about the happy hiring, as we like to put it. So, avoid the common pitfalls, don’t be impatient, take your time to build meaningful connections, and don’t forget about those passive candidates.
If you want to revamp your candidate engagement strategy, our team can review your talent acquisition strategy with your talent team and hiring managers and overcome any obstacles preventing you from connecting with the best talent. Get in touch to start the conversation.
