Crafting a Winning Engagement Strategy for Candidates and Employees: Part Two
How do you make sure your talent stays engaged during the hiring process and beyond? Last week on our blog, we shared more information about the importance of candidate engagement and how the pandemic and shifts in employment in 2021 have brought on a Great Resignation that doesn’t show any sign of slowing down as we head into the new year.
This week, we’ll discuss how your organization can improve engagement once your candidates have already started conversations with your hiring team and how to keep those conversations going throughout the first 90 days of employment and beyond.
Increase Talent Engagement with Texting and Automation
51% of candidates admitted to ghosting a recruiter because they didn’t have an easy way to communicate with the hiring team. This is why having an engagement strategy with the correct recruitment marketing tools is imperative to keeping the attention of top candidates.
One way to make sure this doesn’t happen to your hiring team is through SMS texting. With texting, you’re able to communicate with candidates via a platform that they’re already using a considerable portion of the day, with a 98% open rate. Your team can share updates and job details in real-time, allowing candidates a straight shot to get the details they need.
Another solution for interacting with candidates is through an A.I.-powered web chat. A.I. has made great strides in communication for many industries. With the help of Natural Language Processing (NLP), candidates feel like they’re having a natural conversation, which can help put them at ease in those first crucial hiring touchpoints. An A.I. web chat platform allows your organization to extract previously selected question-and-answer pairs containing important information like FAQs, links to support websites, documents, and more. The more your hiring team uses an A.I. platform, the ranking model improves through ongoing use and user feedback, making it a tool that continues to get better as your organization uses it.
Keep Communication Going with New Hires
Congrats! You’ve found the perfect candidates, and they’ve accepted your offer letter. The first 90 days of a new employee’s transition to your company will decide whether they stick around long-term. 1 in 4 employees quit within the first 90 days, citing unstructured onboarding, a lack of expectations and goals from their managers, and little opportunity for ongoing training after the initial training for the job is complete.
With this information in mind, many organizations have extended SMS messaging into their onboarding programs, as candidates are already comfortable communicating with their H.R. teams in this way. Scheduling automated text messages to remind your new employees about key dates like open enrollment for benefits and paperwork deadlines will allow them to quickly and easily add those dates to their calendars. At the same time, they already have their phones in hand. When it comes time to schedule employee reviews, you can use the same technology to send out reminders, ensuring they’re in the loop.
Another way to reach all of your employees with one click is through a campaign management system that allows your hiring team to select multiple records at a time and then broadcast messages based on the information. Your hiring team can further maximize their time with pre-configured templates or choose to craft statements that better speak to the voice and tone of your brand.
Get Ahead in Solving Recruitment Challenges in 2022
No matter what tools you choose to optimize the experience of your candidates and new hires, they will appreciate the opportunity for a different kind of hiring and onboarding experience. An employee who has experienced a better way to communicate with an organization could turn into a great referral source, adding to an overall better recruitment strategy for your organization in the future. If you’re interested in learning more about improving your recruitment strategy in the coming year, reach out to our team to start a conversation. We can’t wait to solve your hiring challenges and help you maintain meaningful connections with your candidates and employees.