How to Improve Your Candidate Engagement During the Pandemic

One of the best ways to attract talent to your brand is through good relationship management and candidate engagement. When you take the time to treat your candidates with genuine human connection and consideration, you eventually gain their trust.

A relational approach can work wonders compared to a detached, procedural candidate experience because you communicate to them that you are an employer who is mindful of your employees. After all, your reputation management begins even before you hire, and excellent candidate management will naturally draw highly skilled employees with minimum effort due to growing brand awareness.

In such a time as this, companies that deliver a strong message and make a good first impression will stand out. Optimizing your current recruitment procedure to develop a more engaging and empathic recruitment process will allow your brand to continually make valuable connections with prospective candidates even with a remote setup.

Here are six helpful tips to help your recruitment team handle candidate engagement better during the COVID-19 pandemic.

1. Use social media platforms to reach a bigger audience.

One of the smartest moves you can do in this digital age is utilizing social media’s power. With more than 3.8 billion people using social media globally, huge talent pools have never been more accessible. Using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn to interact with potential candidates can significantly benefit talent acquisition, especially at the onset of the lockdowns where social media use has increased exponentially.

One of the first steps to boosting your employer brand on your social media platforms and website is to let candidates know that you are up and running by keeping your accounts updated and filled with important information about your business activities.

You can further this by creative engagement strategies like posting about the latest career opportunities, giving a rundown of your company culture, promoting relevant Q&A sessions, and even helpful pandemic work tips to help catch your audience’s attention.

The goal is to maintain a consistent social media presence to engage with candidates online and raise awareness about employment opportunities in your company.

2. Communicate your hiring criteria clearly.

One of the main challenges of recruiters in the pandemic is the volume of applications received from candidates. Reports show an increase in applications from an average of 100 to a staggering 300 per day at the pandemic’s onset. This volume creates a challenge in hiring that goes both ways: candidates don’t have a clear picture of the required criteria, and they submit their application to as many companies as possible; while, recruiters end up with a needle-in-a-haystack situation in search of the right talent that fits the position.

You can minimize this by clearly communicating your hiring criteria and defining the metrics for qualifications, so candidates will know if they fit the position or not. The role expectations must be explicitly expressed in the job description and are void of vague descriptions. Although this will not 100% diminish the chances of blind applications, but it can decrease it to a much more manageable number. A declared metric can help filter many candidates and save you time once they learn that the qualifications are beyond or below their skill.

3. Make sure to acknowledge the applications you receive.

It makes a difference when you check-in with your applicants and take the time to acknowledge receipt of their application. By doing this, you give the impression that you actually spent time considering their qualification for the position and provide a more personal candidate experience. Adding this little step can easily set you apart from competitors, with reports showing that 52% of applicants find the lack of response from employers as their biggest disappointment.

You can further this by informing them of the recruitment process timeline for them to consider when applying for other positions. Moreover, including additional attachments can help better inform them of the skills needed for additional roles available in your company and allow them the opportunity to assess and apply for the right fit for them. This approach can also help boost your brand awareness as candidates can find similar jobs and possibly share them with fellow job seekers.

4. Optimize your online recruitment procedure.

Reports show that 57% of job seekers lose interest if the recruitment process is lengthy. During the pandemic, the last thing candidates want from a potential employer is to experience a complicated hiring process. If you’re still using old-fashioned documents and management procedures, now is the time to digitize. Investing in recruitment tools can make a whole lot of difference in achieving an improved candidate experience.

You can start by going over each step of your recruitment process and identify areas for automation. Tasks like collecting candidate resumes can be automated through special recruitment tools to process repetitive administrative functions. On top of this, these tools can help increase efficiency as they help ease moving a candidate between different steps in the recruitment process. These efforts can speed up the overall procedure, make administrative functions more efficient to execute, and ultimately, allow recruiters to focus more on the candidate.

5. Digitize your interview procedure.

Amid a health crisis, ensuring both employees and candidates’ safety should be the priority, and companies who keep this in mind will set themselves apart from the competition. Adopting a humanized employer brand and utilizing a more digital approach to talent assessment processes like virtual interviews is vital in establishing a positive candidate experience and make a lasting impression. There’s nothing more attractive to a candidate than the image of a highly adaptable and emphatic employer.

With the normalization of remote work, many HR management software are already made available in the market. Some of these already include features like video calls and online assessment tools designed to help drive recruitment efficiency while also ensuring the safety of your employees and the candidates.

6. Show them you care through updates and by asking for feedback.

When it comes to digital recruitment, consistent communication will go a long way. When employers go the extra mile in following up and giving candidates an update about their application status, they feel valued and have the impression that you genuinely care about them. On top of this, asking for their feedback about the recruitment process will demonstrate that you value their opinion and welcome open communication. This makes a considerable difference in candidate engagement, with 75% of candidates saying that employers never asked for their feedback.

Using reputation management software like Great Recruiters can help recruiters solicit feedback from candidates easier. With reviews curated into a single system, sharing testimonials on your social media platforms and website is easier. You not only improve candidate engagement but also build your brand reputation at the same time.

Take the first step in enhancing your candidate engagement now.

Great Recruiters is designed to help you improve your reputation by helping automate your talent acquisition.

Want to find out how we can help enhance your candidate engagement and help you attract more talent?

Request a demo today.