The recruitment market today is fiercely competitive with no shortage of talent.
However, attracting and hiring the right talent is still challenging for organizations.
This is because candidates choose to engage with organizations that appeal to them by offering an excellent recruiting experience.
A poor candidate experience can have adverse consequences such as losing qualified talent, wasting precious time and resources, hurting a company’s brand image, invariably affecting their ROI (Return on Investment).
A strong recruitment process is essential to attract top talent and critical for meeting business objectives and accelerated growth of the organization.
A robust recruitment process is integral for the success of any business.
Creating a hiring experience that would have a lasting positive impact on others is no mean feat, and it requires a lot of planning, strategizing, and implementation.
While many factors contribute to offering an impressive recruiting experience, organizations must adopt these top 7 strategies to create a great recruitment experience.
1. Build your employer brand
Employer branding is the most important element for attracting, hiring, and retaining top talent. Companies worldwide are constantly working on developing their brand to create a unique identity and remain competitive in this ever-evolving job market.
In fact, according to a LinkedIn study, 72 % of recruiting leaders worldwide agreed that employer brand has a significant impact on hiring.
In simple language, employer branding is those factors that make people want to associate or work with you. A strong brand has a clear vision and mission, identity, and consistent brand voice that helps the organization position itself as an industry expert.
2. Write an effective job description
Your job description is the first impression candidates will have of you as an employer. A carefully crafted job description will consider what would motivate a candidate to apply for your job role.
A description that mentions the function and responsibilities of the role in a professional, organized manner aligned to your brand’s voice would make it stand out from the rest.
3. Leverage digital technology & social media
Digital technology and social media have been game-changers in the recruitment process.
Automating core recruitment processes from viewing and submitting a job application to being offered the job role has helped create a seamless experience for job seekers.
Organizations increasingly rely on functional service providers to streamline the recruitment process, enhancing efficiency and candidate experience through specialized technological and strategic support.
As an organization, you can leverage the power of recruiting automation by ensuring that the entire process from ‘apply to hire’ is simple, accessible, and mobile-friendly.
Incorporating a self-scheduling interview feature where candidates can schedule interviews at their convenience can go a long way in improving your recruiting process, thereby creating a better experience.
Social media is huge when it comes to searching for top talent. With 91% of employers relying on social media to source and hire talent, it’s only prudent that your organization uses this to its advantage.
Posting your jobs on your social media channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook can help you identify, connect, and eventually hire high-quality talent.
Why is that? Because 79% of job seekers use social media to search for jobs.
4. Make decisions based on data
The process of screening and hiring top talent should be based on solid data and analysis.
Great hiring decisions hinge on what aspects of talent are assessed and how it is measured. Acquiring, collating, and analyzing data should be a continuous process to enable organizations track their success over time.
A few metrics to consider in this regard are:
- Application completion rate
- Candidate response rate
- Number of qualified job candidates per hire
- Time and Costs involved in hiring
Adopting different technology platforms to streamline the hiring process and using smart strategies (integration of ATS or AI Chatbot) for screening candidates will also facilitate better data management and a streamlined hiring process. Here’s how:
- Applicant Tracking System (ATS) quickly and effectively screens many candidates and filters out the most promising.
- AI Chatbot ranks applicants based on their knowledge, skills, and abilities to give relevant results enabling organizations or recruiters to identify the best candidates within shorter time frames.
5. Hire without bias
As human beings, we have unconscious biases that influence our thinking and behavior.
However, when biases govern recruitment decisions, it can have a detrimental effect resulting in imbalances in the hiring process leading to uniformity rather than diversity.
Diversity is essential as it strengthens the organization’s reputation, enhances employee experience, and directly impacts the businesses’ bottom line.
A completely bias-free hiring process may be challenging to implement.
However, recruiting bias can be significantly minimized with the help of technological solutions such as ‘blind screening’ where personally identifiable information such as gender, race, age, location, etc., are hidden, and candidates are assessed purely based on merit.
Organizations should also take a keen look at their business and organizational functioning to identify inherent biases and take corrective action to mitigate them.
6. Engage better with candidates
Regular and transparent communication is vital for keeping candidates engaged throughout the recruitment process.
A candidate who applies to any organization expects some form of communication about the status of their job application. They feel dejected when they don’t hear back from companies and search elsewhere for opportunities, leading to a loss of qualified talent.
Hence, organizations must engage with candidates to help deliver a positive experience.
Informing candidates about the status of their application or their progress in the hiring journey via a branded candidate portal with real-time data, a personalized email, text message, or call can do wonders in making them feel valued, in turn creating a good recruitment experience.
7. Revamp your interview process
The interview is a crucial stage in the hiring process.
It’s important to be aware that any interview is a two-way process – while you are interviewing the candidate, the candidate is also assessing the interviewer, getting a glimpse of the organization and its people.
Having a structured interview that tests applicants according to set parameters makes the process unbiased and gives scopes for candidate benchmarking.
For a more humane-based and unbiased approach, consider establishing panel interviews as part of the recruitment process.
A diverse interview panel in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic background, etc., is better equipped at ensuring that unconscious biases are mitigated.
Applicants would thus get a chance to be viewed from a broader perspective leading to better-informed decisions.
Also, including interview questions that reflect your company’s culture is a good strategy. For example, if your organization’s culture is driven by diversity, creativity, and humor, including those elements when interviewing will help you find individuals who would be a great fit for your organization.
It would also create an impression in the candidate’s mind that your organization wants to build a strong culture and a diverse workforce, thereby enabling a positive experience.
Final thoughts
Creating a great recruitment experience is no easy task and requires an open mindset, a proactive approach, being creative, and thinking out of the box.
Being fearless in critically evaluating your organization’s recruitment strategies and sincerely working towards making necessary enhancements will eventually strengthen your recruitment process and help to deliver an excellent experience for all!
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Learn how Testlify can improve your recruitment experience by signing up for free!
