Infographic: Ace Your Candidate Experience With Interactive Recruiting

In a world of talent shortage, passive candidates and LinkedIn inMails with low response rate, it is obvious that we are in a candidate-drive market. However, many employers are slow to adapt to the trend. For example, many HR & recruiting professionals don’t track any meaningful data beyond the old-school recruiting metrics such as time to fill and cost per hire.

With all the talks about candidate experience, the so-called talent strategies and recruiting technology are still reactive and limited by the design of applicant tracking systems.

How do we move away from reactive recruiting to interactive recruiting? How do we reverse the impersonal, transactional job search experience via applicant tracking system? How do we leverage the power of software without discouraging meaningful conversations & interactions? We know the recruiting process is broken and frustrating.

See the infographic and my proposal below on how to ace your candidate experience and apply recruiting analytics to your talent acquisition strategy.

• Attract talent with great contents, UI/UX, & interactions.

First, find out if your branded, career-related pages are attractive to potential candidates. Second, update and create landing pages with great UI/UX design. Last, encourage conversations and interactions between recruiters and general visitors, including candidates, referrers, and brand followers.

• Are your career-related contents relevant, educational or entertaining, and timely?
• Are those career-related pages easy to find, use and navigate?
• Do you encourage conversations and interactions on and beyond those pages?
• Which websites or pages refer the most qualified candidates and the most loyal brand advocates to your site?
• How friendly or unfriendly is your applicant process? Does it take more than 30 minutes?
• Convert page visitors into candidates and/or referrers and/or followers.

Depending on the nature of your business, your website may attract mostly customers, vendors, partners or even competitors. However, it is crucial to optimize your branded pages and convert your visitors into your brand advocates on every degree possible: a brand follower on social media, a job referrer, and/or a candidate. Make it easy for people to apply for jobs, refer someone for a job, share a job with others, and follow your brand on social media and beyond.

• How many people visited your page and became a candidate and/or referrer and/or follower on social media?
• How many people clicked to apply for a job but never finished the application?
• Do you send follow-up or reminder emails to candidates who abandoned the application?
• Do you drive the target audience to visit and share your career-related pages?
• Do you have call-to-action buttons for site visitors to apply for jobs, subscribe to job alerts, or follow your company on social media & niche sites?
• Engage target communities with integrated campaigns.

People are tired of relentless cold calls and unsolicited emails about job openings. Employers are trying hard to connect with potential candidates by talking at them, not having an open conversation in a timely manner. Engage talent with activities, conversations, causes, and events that matter to them such as healthy contests, charity or community outreach, and purpose-driven sponsorships.

• Do you actively monitor and manage your employer brand with open communications & public relations efforts?
• Do you address candidate’s feedback and questions with respect and transparency?
• Do you evaluate, validate and improve your recruiting campaigns and processes based on data?
• Do you integrate your recruiting campaigns on multiple platforms and websites?
• Do you know what each candidate segment is looking for and customize your recruiting campaign for each group?

Please share your thoughts and continue the discussion on candidate experience! Together, we can make the candidate experience better.