The recruitment process involves sourcing and selecting individuals who might be qualified enough to fill in a position in your organization. It requires the participation of various people in your company and includes several, quite lengthy, steps.
Sometimes, because of the tedious and long screening process, candidates may lose interest in the open position. They can drop from the application process and seek opportunities elsewhere. This may be a big loss to your company, especially if that candidate has shown great potential.
If you want to ensure that your talent pool is full of qualified individuals, you must keep your candidates engaged and motivated enough to push through with their applications. You can accomplish this through effective candidate management.
What is Candidate Management?
Candidate management is an important part of every recruiter’s duty. It is mostly about supervising, establishing, and maintaining relationships with both active and passive candidates and guiding them through the recruiting funnel.
One of the most effective ways of building a positive relationship with your applicants is through one-on-one time. The more your recruiting officer spends knowing about and talking to each candidate, the more chances they have of establishing significant relationships with them.
Another important thing you should do is to keep applicants informed about their progress regarding the application process. Doing so will help them realize that you acknowledge how important this process is for them.
With proper candidate management, applicants will feel that they are supported, helping them develop a positive feeling about their recruitment experience. It can also improve your company’s reputation as a recruiter and employer.
Additionally, you can enjoy the following benefits through exceptional candidate management in recruitment:
- Develop a diverse pool of talent
- Have more insight when placing candidates forward for job vacancies
- Exercise great judgment in matching candidates and clients or departments
Effective Candidate Management Strategy
Candidate management is not an easy task. You need a strategy to ensure that you are not leaving any applicant behind. Some of the techniques you can include in your approach are the following:
Be Transparent
Trust is one of the most important building blocks of any relationship. To make applicants trust you as a recruiter and your company, you should be transparent about the role and your organization. You should also be honest in what you expect from the applicant.
Keep Them Engaged
Normally, you will be screening several applicants at a time. As you go through various resumes and interviews with different candidates, you might have to make some of them wait.
Although most applicants understand that you are screening many prospective employees, making them wait for any update regarding their progress is not ideal. Committing this mistake may cost you qualified individuals who have lost their interest in your company after being made to wait for a long time.
To avoid this from happening, you should ensure that your applicants are engaged throughout the hiring process. You can do this by providing them with regular updates regarding their progress in the recruitment process. You should also inform them if they are still in the running for the position or if you have decided not to consider them.
Acknowledge Every Applicant
Make sure that you allot enough time to engage with every candidate. Take the time to talk with them one-on-one and learn more about their personality.
Doing this will help in providing applicants with a pleasant recruitment experience. When this happens, these candidates may recommend your company to other professionals as a great recruiter.
Be More Human
Although hiring is a systematic process, you are still screening people at the end of the day. Remember to bring some humanity into the recruitment process to make your applicants more comfortable and to provide them with a positive experience.
Upon your first encounter, do not forget to thank them for applying to your company. Then, if you decide not to go through with their application, you have to “courteously decline” them. It would also be helpful if you provide them with feedback and suggestions on how they can improve their resume or develop their skills.
Keeping Up With Candidates’ Needs and Expectations
Nowadays, candidates want to experience the same level of speed and convenience during their application process as they do in their everyday lives as consumers. As much as possible, they do not want to experience any delays and hassle when applying to a company. They also expect to be updated regarding any developments on their application status.
To address this need, you have to improve your talent acquisition approach. This means being able to match your method to the ever-changing candidate needs and expectations.
Accomplishing this might be challenging, especially since applicants’ expectations are constantly evolving and may change in a snap of a finger. Keeping track of all these changes might be impossible for an HR team with limited members, making candidate management tricky.
Luckily, there are systems that you can use to make your job easier. One system you can utilize is a candidate relationship management (CRM) or applicant recruitment software.
What is CRM?
This refers to a recruitment software that you can use to start and preserve relationships with candidates. A CRM software can keep applicants engaged throughout the recruitment process without requiring your HR team to manually send messages to each individual. This software can send timely and relevant messages to applicants once they have gone through a stage of the recruitment process.
It can also be used to keep track of candidates’ data efficiently. By using a CRM software, your recruitment team does not have to use confusing spreadsheet files and sticky notes. All your applicants’ data can be stored in the software and accessed easily.
A candidate management system usually consists of various functionalities. Some of these are the following:
Job Portal Development
Through a CRM software, you can easily create a career page for your company. You can use this newly developed portal to post job openings. Job portals can also contain pages to introduce your company to applicants, such as an overview of your organization.
Online Applicant Tracking Software
CRMs can have an applicant tracking software that can make the recruitment process more efficient. Through this functionality, you can easily rank, track, and discuss candidates with other recruiters.
An online applicant tracking software also allows you to get rid of repetitive tasks that may be involved with recruitment. Through this functionality, you would not have to screen through various resumes just to come up with a few qualified individuals. This system will be able to pre-screen candidates’ resumes on your behalf and weed out candidates who do not have the necessary qualifications for a job.
Interview Scheduling Software
After screening and shortlisting applicants, the next step you need to complete is interviewing each one. Scheduling an interview for several applicants may be tiresome, especially because you have to consider the availability of all parties involved.
Before coming up with a final interview schedule, you might have to deal with back-and-forth emails and time-intensive phone calls. You can eliminate this obstacle through an interview scheduling software.
This system allows you to sync interviewers’ calendars, so you can determine when they are free to talk to a candidate. It also has a communication and RSVP management function, which you can use to send automated invites, confirmations, and reminders to applicants.
Most importantly, the interview scheduling software provides you with a more efficient way of setting up interviews. With this functionality, you can schedule an interview in seconds without having to worry about overlapping times and double-booked interviews.
Social Media Recruiting Software
If you want to reach more qualified candidates, posting your job openings on social media platforms, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, is ideal. Doing this will allow you to source applicants from sites where they spend most of their time.
Using a social media recruiting software allows you to automatically publish a social post on Facebook and LinkedIn, saving you time and effort. All you need to do is prepare the post and schedule it for posting to various social media networking sites.
How to Use a CRM Software for Your Recruitment Process
There is no doubt that a CRM software can make your recruitment process more efficient. To ensure that you are making the most of this system, use it for the following:
Communication
The primary goal of candidate management is to build relationships with applicants. This is only possible through effective communication between both parties.
You can use your CRM software to provide candidates with more information regarding the open position and your company. You should also use it to update them about their application status regularly.
Improve Your Recruitment Process
Through a CRM software, you can gain insights into how well your recruitment process is working. This system can provide you with direct and indirect candidate feedback that you can use to start your optimization. For example, if you notice that not enough people are staying on your career page, then maybe you should enhance it by improving its loading speed and making it mobile-friendly.
Keep a Talent Pool of Promising Individuals
You do not always have to count unsuccessful applicants as losses. There are still some chances that you can work with them in the future.
A CRM software can help you keep information on applicants who did not get the open position but showed great potential, leaving you with a talent pool filled with promising individuals. You can use this system to contact previous applicants if you ever have a job opening that you think will suit them well.
Invest in Candidate Management
As a dedicated recruiter, it is understandable that you only want the best candidates to work for your organization. You do this to ensure that every employee can work to bring the company to success.
To ensure that you are attracting only the best and most qualified applicants in the field, you should invest in excellent candidate management. You should also consider using a CRM system to make the process easier and much more efficient.
