It’s no secret that great employer branding attracts top talent. However, most leaders will admit that they haven’t been giving their employer branding enough attention.
When your company’s recruitment process is lacking and candidates have a poor experience, you suffer in more ways than one.
The candidate experience has to be perfected across the entirety of their journey, because the vast majority of those candidates will ultimately not receive your offer. While rejection will sting regardless, adding a negative experience to the mix is sure to bring potentially major issues down the road. Have you been considering the impact your recruitment experience has had on your employer brand?
Here are three tips to help ensure you continue to attract top talent and maintain a positive employer brand.
1. Treat Candidates Like Customers
Creating a candidate experience on par with the experience you deliver to customers is imperative to the success of your brand. A poor candidate experience will last well beyond the current recruitment cycle. The most obvious repercussion is losing a qualified candidate for this and future positions within your company. However, this negative experience could also result in loss of top talent in the future.
72% of job seekers say they have shared a poor experience on job sites, social media, or a friend. Can you afford this kind of negative PR?
In order to create a positive, lasting impression, your company will have to develop a personalized recruitment experience . Even if a candidate does not receive an offer, this will help to establish loyalty and advocacy for your brand. According to IBM, candidates who are unsuccessful in their job application – but have a positive recruitment experience – are more than twice as likely to recommend your company to others.
2. Generate a Seamless Technology Experience
COVID-19 brought about many changes to the talent and recruiting landscape; the biggest? Technology. In an ever-increasing remote world, your brand’s technology has to be up to snuff.
Based on their recruitment technology experience, candidates are making value decisions of what it would be like to work for your company and your employer brand. Millennials, who now makeup 50 percent of the workforce, are used to highly personalized tech-enabled experiences, meaning they expect a seamless, personalized journey from end to end.
There are numerous technologies you can take advantage of to augment the recruitment process:
- Mobile-first sites
- Autofill job application functionality
- Online assessments
- AI
- Automated communications
- Independent video interviews
Want to take it a step further? Try offering 24/7 candidate support with a digital recruiting assistant. Chatbots and virtual assistants not only provide an elevated candidate experience, but also save your recruiters time and energy by not having to answer the same questions over and over again.
Fun fact: Chatbots are the preferred communication tool for candidates when it comes to asking sensitive questions such as salary expectations.
But remember, technology should never be meant to replace human interaction — only enhance it. Not everything can be turned over to technology, sometimes the candidate will need some human interaction. Finding the right balance between technology and human connection is key to setting your company apart from the rest and establishing a strong employer branding.
3. Create a Genuine Employer Brand
It’s simple: People want to work for brands they believe in. Candidates want to find a workplace where they are aligned with the culture and can perform their best work and companies tend to want the same.
After finding a job opening, 64% of candidates said they research a company online and 37% said they will move on to another job opening if they can’t find information on the company. So, it’s interesting that the highest drop-off rate for applications is seen on career sites, as opposed to job boards. So how can you showcase your employer brand to attract the right kind of candidates?
Step one: proactive communication. Let candidates know what makes your company such a great one to work for. Explain your strengths, values and the things that separate you from your sea of competitors.
Your employee value proposition is crucial, so ensure that it is well-crafted and widely broadcast. Candidates want a chance to truly delve into what a day working for your brand would look like. While physically problematic, you can accomplish this feat with excellent storytelling. Share your employees’ stories and encourage them to do the same.
A well-crafted EVP creates a win-win where both candidates and companies find the right fit. Misalignment between what is explained in the recruitment process and the reality of the role leads to turnover and damages the employer branding.
How to Put the Pieces Together
The fastest way to transform the candidate experience? Make the process smoother and easier by taking advantage of technology. Automation can facilitate personalized communications and real-time responsiveness at scale to boost engagement with candidates. Added bonus: It can help you increase recruiting capabilities without adding more recruiters.
Our AI bot, Sofi engages with candidates when recruiters cannot, answering questions, adding transparency to the process, and helping candidates forge a connection with your brand. The result is a more positive experience for every candidate, those you hire and those you don’t.
To see how you can transform your employer branding, schedule a 30-minute demo.