There’s little mystery as to why top talent is in the driver’s seat. There are 8.6 million people considered out of work in the U.S. and nearly 10 million job openings. Supply and demand aside, people’s mindsets have changed about their jobs. Many Americans have questioned what really works for them at work over the course of the pandemic. The answer of more flexibility, more money and more fulfillment has fueled The Great Resignation—in April alone, 4 million people quit their job setting a new record.
Candidate expectations are more sophisticated than ever, making things even more complex for talent acquisition teams. Fortunately, with the right technology in place, recruiters can realize significant gains in efficiency and effectiveness, all while improving the experience of candidates.
Proactive teams are leveraging automation to realize three essential candidate experience objectives to help ensure that they can improve their hiring journey and successfully compete for the best talent on the market:
Objective #1: Move applicants through the hiring process quickly.
One positive outcome of the pandemic’s affect on talent acquisition has been the adoption of virtual recruiting. Many teams found that virtual recruiting solutions allowed them to not simply keep searches moving forward and connect with candidates for future hiring needs but hire much faster due to the format’s convenience and the ability to build in automated functionality like pre-screening questions and self-scheduling.
This transition has benefited both TA teams and candidates tremendously, yet it’s also important that recruiters take advantage of every available opportunity to let automation do the heavy lifting for them, such as:
- Setting up automated reminders for hiring manager feedback within the applicant tracking system at either the workflow or system level so that notifications are triggered as soon as established feedback deadlines pass.
- Using automated self-scheduling functionality, which proved incredibly valuable to virtual recruiting programs, universally. This eliminates the delays caused by back-and-forth communications while giving candidates the self-service features they have come to expect in our digital world.
- Implementing candidate relationship management software with automated talent pools to deliver lists of qualified, interested and available candidates to recruiters. Having ready-access to talent that’s already been vetted goes a long way in moving applicants through the hiring process quickly.
Objective #2: Keep candidates informed of their status.
Automation is talent acquisition’s friend when it comes to keeping candidates informed of their status, too. Given how easy it is to automate candidate communications, it’s surprising to learn that only 66% of candidates responding to a recent Talent Board survey say that they received an automated thank-you message after applying for a role. Here’s how to close the gap with communications across the entire hiring lifecycle:
- Set up immediate thank-you notifications within the ATS that are triggered on apply. If possible, include a timeframe for the next steps of your organization’s selection process within your notifications.
- Schedule automated updates at each subsequent step of the hiring process, such as a recruiter accepting a candidate or reviewing an application. You should also make sure that, if at any point the candidate is rejected, a notification is triggered immediately.
- Look to automated communications to ensure the organization stays in touch with candidates who are selected for interviews but not extended an offer and, especially, silver medalists. These individuals should receive an automated invitation to join your Talent CRM for ongoing engagement until a new opportunity arises.
- Leverage text recruiting, ideally with a solution that’s integrated with your applicant tracking system, to send updates and receive responses from candidates in minutes, compared to hours or even days. When you’re trying to keep the hiring momentum going, using a channel that has open rates as high as 98% can really add up in terms of time saved and hires gained.
Objective #3: Use insights for continual improvement.
Finally, don’t underestimate the value of gathering meaningful insights that can be used to continually improve the candidate experience. Your recruiting software should provide clear visibility into where candidates are in your hiring process, including their nurture status within the CRM. This helps teams see where candidates may be sitting for too long, as well as other barriers that are getting in the way of hiring success and, by extension, good candidate experiences.
You should also gather feedback directly from candidates regarding their experience as this will provide additional insights that your team can use for continual improvement. One way to do this is to create an online survey and then establish triggers for when to send candidates an invitation to provide their feedback.
While the automation functionality outlined above should be available regardless of the current tech stack that your team has in place, the implementation of a talent platform makes these efforts seamless and results in the operational excellence that leaders want to see across the entire organization—and especially for talent acquisition.
Learn how Teradata leveraged automation for hiring manager notifications and candidate communications to reduce time to fill by 25%.