Candidate experience has been a hot topic in the recruitment industry for a while now. But watch out, because it surely is a lot more than just a buzzword or trend.
As a recruiter one of your biggest challenges and one of your top priorities is to keep the talent pool filled with the best candidates. Well this is not as simple to accomplish as it used to be. I’m sure you’ve heard about the “war for talent” that is going on. The competition is fierce and there’s a shortage of talent in the market, making it harder and harder to attract good candidates.
Surviving and thriving in this industry can be really stressful for recruiters, who constantly need to assess the market to meet its needs, keep up with new trends and identify growth opportunities. Which means rethinking the recruitment strategy: what to do, how to do it and why do it. But, despite the difficulties, there are some steps which can help you to succeed in this candidate-driven market. Start by acknowledging that things have significantly changed for recruitment in the last few years and most of the changes are related to technological innovation.
Take a look at our Top 5 Tips on how to improve candidate experience and thus attract the best talent.
1. Build an easy to find Career Page
Your career page must be accessible via your website's header, footer, or both. If a job seeker enters your website, it must be easy for him find your career page and browse your open positions. To increase your visibility in search results, your career page must also be SEO-friendly. Don’t list job titles that are too complex or funky like “Chief Creativity Officer” or “Happiness Consultant” etc, or your results will be bad.
You should also try to make the career page appealing to a large audience. To do so, use rich content like videos, detailed career information, blog posts and graphics to help your site look up-to-date and attract more candidates.
2. Work on your job descriptions
Job descriptions are extremely important when it comes to attract the right candidates. They must be written in a clear and concise manner and be as accurate as possible. A good job description must contain a list of the key responsibilities, including a breakdown of tasks by percentage and the amount of time expected to be dedicated to each task.
It must also explain how the role functions within the company, to whom the candidate reports, who reports to him and which people and departments the candidate will be in contact with. Don’t forget to underline what makes your company unique, what are your company values and what is the culture like. Tell job seekers why they should want to work for you!
3. Deliver a short and simple application process
Did you know that 30% of all job seekers and 57% of more experienced job seekers will drop-off applications that take longer than 15 minutes to complete?
According to job search engine Indeed, the more qualified a candidate is, the less likely he is to finish extensive job applications. That’s why your application process must be intuitive, simple and fast to prevent drop outs. To be able to deliver such a short but efficient process, you must rethink your recruitment strategy and consider the advantages of AI and HR Tech solutions.
4. Enable mobile-friendly job applications
Mobile-friendly job applications are now essential for successful recruiting. Mobile is completely imbedded in our day-to-day life. We use apps to shop, to manage our bank accounts, to take learning and training courses and, yes, to search for jobs too.
Not surprisingly, 9 out of 10 job seekers conduct their search from their mobile devices and 70% of job seekers want to apply to jobs directly from their phones. So, it’s important to have a career page with a responsive design and a mobile enabled application process. And don’t forget about social media too!
5. Follow up on every candidate to make a real difference!
Most candidates never hear back from employers after submitting a job application. If you give feedback about application status to every single candidate, whatever the result of the application is, you are automatically improving their experience with your recruitment process.
Use HR tools to easily communicate with candidates and send personalised emails at every stage of the recruitment process. Not only will you improve candidate experience, but you also strengthen your employer brand.
As you can see, there are many aspects that can improve your recruitment strategy and you should start working on them straight away. Don’t forget, when it comes to attract the best talent, candidate experience really matters!
Skeeled offers you the perfect opportunity to bring innovation and digitalisation to your hiring. Check our website or our LinkedIn and Facebook pages for further information.
Thanks for reading and see you next time!
Your team here at skeeled
