Improve Candidate Engagement with AI & Automation

July 11, 2018 at 9:27 AM by Sydney Cohen

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The hiring tables have turned. We are now in the era of jobs finding people rather than people finding jobs. With unemployment at a 17 year low, top candidates find themselves bombarded with emails, calls and direct messages all offering them new opportunities. When passive candidates have so much opportunity when it comes to their next job, recruiters are put in a position to entice candidates to their open roles and away from the next shiny thing to enter their inbox.

However, from personalized email outreach, to scheduling interviews, to answering questions in a timely manner, to fostering a relationship with candidates, recruiters have a lot on their plates when it comes to candidate engagement. With so much to do, they may not have the time it takes to provide the candidate experience they wish they could. Fortunately, busy recruiters don’t have to make sacrifices when it comes to candidate engagement anymore. By augmenting current hiring processes using recruiting automation, recruiters can automate the more manual and time consuming parts of candidate engagement so they can spend their time bringing a human touch to the hiring process. Here are 3 ways you can improve your candidate experience using automation:

1. Outreach
Crafting a personalized and thoughtful outreach email is often the first step engaging a candidate. Because passive candidates receive an onslaught of outreach emails everyday, optimizing the messaging is critical breaking through all the other noise in a candidate’s inbox. Using tools like Entelo Outreach Insights, allows recruiters to harness the power of data in the form of real-time recommendations, so they can craft outreach that is more likely to garner a response. Entelo Track also allows you to schedule an email to be sent at a time the candidate is likely to read it, as well as schedule a follow-up in the event the candidate doesn’t respond to the first message.

2. Scheduling
Taking too long to schedule an interview or engaging in a lot of back and forth can look sloppy, and leave a candidate with the wrong impression. To streamline scheduling and save time, employ a tool like Clara or GoodTime.io. These tools use AI to schedule complicated interview loops so recruiters can spend more of their time setting the candidate up for success, like sending the candidate prep materials like a list of folks they’ll meet with and more information about the company. Not only can these details make the candidate feel at ease, they also help build rapport between the candidate and the recruiter, which will pay off when it comes time to close them.

3. Timely Status Updates
The average time to hire in the U.S. is 42 days. That period of time can mean long periods of waiting on the candidate’s end. That downtime can leave the candidate nervous or allow them to entertain other job opportunities while they wait for your company to make a decision. A great way to stay top of mind and ease a candidate’s nerves is to give timely status updates. However, this can be time consuming. Employing chatbot technology can help candidates get questions answered quickly as well as deploy updates on their status within your hiring process.

All of these tools can be extremely helpful in freeing you up to provide the candidate experience top candidates deserve. The most critical part of engaging candidates is connecting and fostering a strong relationship with each candidate. These bonds are what make the difference between an offer accepted and an offer rejected.

Related posts:

Using AI & Automation to Improve Candidate Quality 

Reduce Cost-Per-Hire with Recruiting Automation 

The Best Recruiting Software of 2018




 

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