How (and why) to reengage your existing talent database

May 24, 2024

 

Alex Oliver

5 min read

It’s expensive to build a talent pipeline from scratch. That’s the bad news.

Now for the good: Unless you work at a brand-new startup, chances are you’re at a company with an already large talent database. It may not be well organized. It may not even be all that up-to-date. But it exists, and that’s a good starting point.

Yet, we often treat each talent search as a blank slate. Sure, we give CRM pipelines a once-over, but fundamentally, we start from scratch and prioritize sourcing new candidates. This means new recruitment marketing ads, new resumes and new faces. It’s time-consuming and expensive.

I can hear the objections – our CRM or ATS is too outdated, too cluttered. We don’t have the capacity to find relevant talent or keep them engaged.

But what if you did?

The benefits of reengaging talent

Sourcing from your talent database of former applicants means building relationships with candidates who are already familiar with your brand. A primary advantage is that these folks require a refresher, not a crash course in your organization. It’s easier to get to “yes” when they’ve already expressed interest or applied before.

When it comes to building an applicant pool, you save a lot of time, money and energy by prioritizing candidates from your ATS database because they:

• Are easily accessible
• Are already familiar with your business
• Have expressed interest in the past

Where and how to reengage your talent pipeline

With iCIMS Candidate Experience Management (CXM), you’re finally making good use of your talent database with highly automated, highly personalized outreach. You get your campaigns set up, and automation handles the rest.

So how does this work?

iCIMS CXM uses behavior-based campaigns to reengage talent on an unprecedented scale. Every interaction a potential job seeker has with your organization is tracked and informs how “hire ready” they are, as indicated through engagement scores. Content is shared that’s appropriate to their interests (based on past actions) and where they are in their job search journey.

iCIMS CXM provides a variety of channels to supplement your email campaigns. Customers can purchase add-ons for text messages, landing pages, videos and even a chatbot on your career site. In marketing, this is sometimes called “surround.” The idea is that most people need to hear a message multiple times, in different ways, before acting on it.

In the past, the difficulty had been measuring those interactions and serving job seekers the right message at the right time. A more common approach is to “spray and pray” – essentially, do a lot of things aimlessly and hope that your collective effort pays off. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. In all cases, it’s needlessly expensive and time-consuming.

Ways to keep engagement ongoing

Once your recruitment marketing campaign is up and running, the key to success is to keep it going. Think of your campaign as a sales process. It’s likely going to take multiple touchpoints to reignite interest in job seekers and get them to reapply. One of the beautiful things about automated campaigns is that they work especially well when you include a variety of content types.

[Editor’s note: Need ideas to optimize your recruitment marketing strategy? We have templated recruitment marketing playbooks for you to use. Get them here.]

Speaking of content, people like to feel like they’re in the know. Your content should make them feel well informed about what’s going on at your organization. Keep whatever you create – whether it’s emails, videos or a landing page – organized and broken down into bite-sized chunks.

Track your candidate activity and other KPIs

When someone who applied to your organization six months ago interacts with your reengagement campaign and asks to speak with a recruiter, do you know what piqued their interest?

Maybe it was a particular email that really resonated. Or maybe it was a video on your career site featuring employees talking about their career growth. With so many potential touchpoints, it’s difficult to say for sure – at least for traditional CRMs.

In contrast, CXM provides candidate activity tracking within the talent profile, giving you insight into just that – what encouraged the candidate to reach out. Recruiters and sourcers can view a trail of activities that contributed to their engagement score (highly engaged, engaged or inactive), so you know what content, event or email had the most impact.

Plus, detailed analytics built into iCIMS CXM removes any mystery about how well your campaigns are performing. Your team can A/B test messages and gauge the success of specific tactics and initiatives in real time. With the power to make data-driven decisions, you’ll be able to optimize your recruitment marketing strategy until it’s just right.

Pro tips for candidate engagement

We’ve touched on a lot already, but here are a few additional best practices to get the most out of your recruitment marketing campaigns:

• Amplify your reach at recruiting events. We may live in a digital world, but sometimes the best interactions we have with job seekers happen face-to-face. iCIMS CXM includes everything you need to capitalize on events, including the ability to collect job seeker information, day of, within an app, then follow up with attendees and no-show registrants in bulk.
• Use employee-generated videos. You’ve already interacted with the talent in your database. But for some, it may have been a while. Using video alongside your email campaigns can be a great way to add that personal touch needed to get talent excited. These don’t need to be created by video professionals – iCIMS Video Studio gives your team the tools they need to turn your most engaged colleagues into brand ambassadors with employee-generated testimonials.
• Ensure brand alignment among your campaigns. Do your email campaigns match your overall recruitment brand? If not, consider adding branded elements to both. You can standardize your look and feel across the career site using the content management system (CMS) in iCIMS Career Sites. The emails in your campaigns should align with those same colors, fonts and other elements on the site for better consistency and brand recognition. No IT or developer assistance required.

Next steps

Want to learn more? Visit our Candidate Experience Management page to learn more about this product’s unique features and capabilities.