The Most Essential Tips for Candidate Offer Management
If you are a recruiter struggling to manage the offer for a huge number of candidates, then this blog is for you. Here are some tips on how you can manage candidate offers
While most recruiters have shifted their focus and strategies from the manual and physical hiring processes to automated and more data-driven strategies, a majority of them still face issues when it comes to candidate offer management. As recruiters know that there’s no guarantee that even if a candidate accepts and signs a contract, they’ll show up for work on their agreed-upon start date. This costs everyone time and money and it damages reputations too. For enterprises looking at a rapid expansion curve, a smart recruitment plan is at the top of the list of priorities. Hiring teams are given the task of not merely identifying candidates, but securing them — ensuring a relationship that’s long-term, benefiting both employee and organization. In such a volatile job market, organizations can end up losing highly-qualified confirmed candidates within 24hours because new and better opportunities surfaced. So it is very important to time the offer management process properly.
Candidate offer management involves a combination of processes. However, such processes vary from company to company. A basic process, however, is common in almost all organizations.
- The recruiter or manager creates an offer when the candidate has reached the Offer step. The offer can be created quickly by selecting a template as a starting point. Such details as the salary information on the requisition or the candidate’s current job salary can be included.
- The offer then gets sent for approval or it can be self-approved if the user has the appropriate permission. The recruiters can set up frequent approvers to make this a fairly easy step in the process.
- Once approved, the offer is sent to the candidate in writing via email, letter, or electronically. Verbal offers can also be extended and recorded at this time.
- If the offer is accepted, the recruiter can proceed to any additional steps, confirm the start date, and start the onboarding process.
- If the offer is not accepted, the recruiter has a choice to negotiate new offer terms and do the cycle again or rescind the offer and go back to the workflow.
However, an applicant tracking system can make all this easy for a recruiter to deal with and automate processes while also saving a lot of time.
Candidate offer management strategies that can help in talent acquisition
1. Qualifying and Ranking candidates
Once the jobs have been posted on the job board and applications start rolling in, it is time to start the shortlisting process. Hiring processes vary from company to company, but certain very basic steps are standardized for almost all companies- phone screening or interviews and video proctoring, making the offer, and finally acceptance/rejection letters to be sent to candidates. This process also involves resume parsing of candidates and using the scores to judge whether the candidate is fit for the job or not.
2. Collaborating with the hiring team
Close collaboration with your hiring team will result in more efficient processes for candidate management and hire who fits better. Whether you are an in-house or agency recruiter, it’s a good idea to send regular updates to your clients or the hiring team. Manage user roles and permissions by providing access to different levels of information.
Keep your colleagues in the loop with @mentions. Just like any other tagging functionality, Aviahire’s @mentions sends a push-notification so your team can stay on top of their game. Let your e-recruiting process be data-driven. An applicant tracking software’s collection feature allows teams to archive candidate details for the future and then use them when new jobs resurface in the future.
3. Moving candidates through the process
Using an applicant tracking system can help recruiters manage the huge inflow of applications and move the prospective to the consecutive levels of the hiring process. The typical stages of the hiring process include “sourced”, “applied”, “phone screen” and “interview”. The right system will enable you to disqualify candidates from the process or even move a candidate from one hiring pipeline to another for a different job.
4. Collect online feedback
Communication breakdowns during the recruiting process are detrimental to the candidate experience. Remember, happy candidates will tell their family and friends about their experience, and the unhappy candidates will tell everyone. Now is the time to discard physical interactions and gather interviews from candidates online. Another advantage is that you can collect specific, structured feedback from candidates and not have just open-ended responses to act upon. You can view a list of candidates who haven’t submitted feedback for which interviews from your dashboard and remind them.
5. Digitizing the offer management and Onboarding
Don’t get bogged down with a paper-based offer process once you get verbal acceptance. Seal the deal with your best candidates quickly and efficiently using digital Offer Management techniques brought to you by Applicant tracking software. While offer management is a focus area for nearly all HR technology leaders, it’s usually bundled with a more robust package. This lets HR teams seamlessly move between talent sourcing, interviews, offers, onboarding, and training — without leaving the interface. A lot of organizations have a blueprint ready for onboarding of candidates, which makes it simpler and less time consuming for recruiters to make candidates used to the new workplace and environment.
6. Check availability and schedule interviews
Most of the modern-day applicant tracking software comes with inbuilt features that automate the process of checking the availability of prospective candidates for interviews and scheduling accordingly. It allows you to pick a time that works for everyone by checking the interviewer’s availability. Scheduling email notifications for interviews are an add-on to this feature.
7. Generating offer letter templates
Create an offer letter template that includes placeholders for the details unique to the candidate and position. Common placeholders are the job title, salary, start date, manager’s name, and the candidate’s name. Aviahire provides a referral template to choose from but you can also create your own if needed. Craft an email template for notifying candidates they got the job. Like the offer letter, your email template includes placeholders that are filled with the details unique to the candidate and position.
8. Building relationships beyond the process
Candidate experience can be the difference between a great place to work and a bad workplace. A candidate management strategy allows recruiters and talent acquisition professionals to evaluate and connect with candidates who would have otherwise fallen through the cracks. Candidate management transforms recruitment into a relationship-first strategy rather than a one-off execution-style process and allows recruiters to nurture their relationships with prospective candidates.
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