Candidate experience during hiring has a direct impact on the joining ratio, brand value as well as reduces risk of early attrition as well.

Change! Change! Change! The 21st century is all about adaptability and agility. And this can only happen if candidates and employees feel engaged and motivated.

Did you know? The candidates that are actually relevant to you stay in the market only for ten days, while the hiring process lasts for about 24 days . Hence, the call for candidate engagement is almost intuitive. Ideally, candidate engagement should be maintained throughout the process.

According to LinkedIn, only 49% of new hires receive a call from a hiring manager prior to their start date. CareerBuilder’s “2016 Candidate Behavior Study” states that almost 52% of the candidates that they interviewed were frustrated most by the lack of response from potential employers during their job search process. This confirms that not only is there a serious lack of a robust candidate experience system in most companies but it can be the most frustrating thing a candidate experiences.

Candidate engagement

Candidate engagement involves communications between job seekers and recruiters . A glad tiding is various communication channels, including email, text and even face-to-face (video or in-person). In today's world, conversational AI is playing a big role in keeping candidates in the know.

The essence is to keep applicants intrigued throughout the application procedure and even assist them in getting the desired information personalised to their need. In the end, a connection shall get forged with prospective employees. The more the communication, the more prospects put interest into the job. Note that candidate engagement even benefits employers in the following ways:

• Prospects can spread the message about the brand and company to other job seekers
• Curbs the issue of applicant dropouts
• Grooms newcomers into starting work on a happier note

Hiring: A supply chain problem

Employers tend to seek top talent while there is a serious lack of it. Hence, scouting for appropriate candidates costs not only time but also money. According to one report, it costs employers about 33 per cent of an employee’s yearly salary to find their replacement .

The candidate’s growth mindset has become extensive and is no longer money-only driven. This mentality is a fossil of the past. The new approach includes showing candidates their potential growth trajectory, insights into the company culture or other unique employee benefits offered to new joinees. It is time to say goodbye to the fuddy-duddy hiring practices.

Post-offer engagement: What is it, and why does it matter?

Dispensing the offer letter is no longer equivalent to the final recruitment step. According to a Career Builder survey, about 51 per cent of candidates continue to seek job opportunities even after receiving an offer letter.

To this end, a post-offer engagement can help  improve candidate engagement.  Simply put, post-offer engagement involves investing toward nourishing a candidate’s experience with the company. Doing so shall help increase the chances of acceptance of the offer.

Next up are the ways to keep candidates engaged with the organization.

Post-offer Bundle

This includes continuous and regular communications with the candidate. One way of doing this is by nudging them regularly with content that matters to them. AI is playing a great role in ascertaining content that proves most influential to a candidate. Companies are rapidly exploring new ways of doing the same through a personalized interface or an AI bot. Sharing such content that matters to them, shall help keep the candidates engaged and deter them from pursuing the job search, after all, they are seeking the right organization that matches their growth needs. Another upside is, it renders flexibility to check the contents at their convenience and feel invested in the company.

Meet-and-greet with current employees

A candidate with a job offer is practically an alien to the company. A great idea here is to arrange an interaction with a couple of current employees. This will help them feel comfortable and groom them into the company culture. Additionally, this can do one more thing. It shall create an enriching environment for getting to know one another virtually. People can discuss, not just organizational culture, growth stories etc but also share interests, hobbies and backgrounds. The tone of such meetings shall be casual. In his book, ‘Let Me Hijack Your Mind’, Alyque Padamsee regards a company as a collection of people with a common purpose. Also, such interactions spring up the natural human tendency - the notion of sharing. Reiterating the adage, ‘teamwork makes the dream work’.

Career development

Now this marks the crux of one’s work-life balance. Once a position is offered, the candidate might have queries about the role, company and other aspects. Most commonly, the questions concern career growth and trajectory or specific training in a domain. A way around this is to put forth channels to connect to buddies in the company or an intelligent bot to answer FAQs, thus providing a holistic picture to the candidate. You can also create a learning path to start aligning your candidate with the job requirements; whether it's a specific tool that one uses or getting them to enrol for a course to make them ready while they’re on their notice period.

Communication and Feedback

Today, communications about candidacy do not end at the mere job description or salary negotiations. It extends to feedback . According to a retention report, candidates and recruiters must have clear communications. This fulfils the needs and expectations and even helps make improvements.

Regular communications about the candidates’ feedback must be encouraged. This helps you acknowledge points of concern where adjustments may be an inevitable task. Feedback on the interview process also allows the organisation to pinpoint the breakdowns in the recruitment process and how they can curb the same.

At the end of the day

Candidates and prospects should get pursued as customers. Essentially, they are subscribing to growth opportunities and career advancements through learning curves, skills training and other avenues. Hence, ensuring a stellar experience for prospective employees is absolutely essential.

If you want to elevate your employer brand, increase candidate experience, and most of all, increase your offer to joining ratio, then Personifwy is your companion to do the same. You can experience it yourself! Personifwy leverages the power of AI through a personalised digital assistant. This nurtures your prospective employees right from hire to retire. The platform engages each candidate through a series of interactive modules which ensure knowledge exchange as well as recruiter task completion like generating an offer letter, collecting documents etc. This actively happens across various channels such as WhatsApp to reach them right where they are and our analytics engine enables your HR personnel to get the probability of joining for every candidate. The end result is a real-time metric that allows recruiters to close the gap between a candidate’s expectations and the company’s requirements.

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