Tailor your recruitment solution to keep top talent engaged

April 24, 2024

 

Rachel Findlay

4 min read

Recruiting software often comes packed with a lot of features, most of which we hardly touch. We’re busy, so we default to the same, simple ways of doing things. We have routines. Imagination goes out the window – but, hey, at least we get the job done.

You don’t have to completely overhaul how you recruit to make an impact. Small optimizations can have big results, potentially saving both time and money. For recruiting teams, configuring your recruitment solution to engage candidates over time is a cost-effective way to secure the talent you need. Doing so doesn’t require a big investment of time up front.

Read on to discover how you can use your recruitment solution to tailor content, personalize recruiting journeys and build a strategy that engages the top talent in your database.

Building a career site with your candidates in mind

Your career site is more than a place to showcase jobs. Often, it’s the starting point for talent looking for a first glimpse of what it’s like working at your organization. And top talent today is looking for authenticity. Employers should not underestimate the importance of a good career site.

What makes a good career site? It’s less about one specific aspect as it is how the career site comes together as a whole. For some candidates, strong accessibility features may be most important, or video content showcasing diversity. For others it’s features that help guide them through the job search and interview process.

iCIMS Career Sites helps employers create custom-made career sites, then add on the recruitment solutions that engage their candidates best. For instance, adding a digital assistant to your career site can help candidates advance themselves through the application process via assessments. Meanwhile, an AI-powered job matching tool lets candidates instantly view open roles that fit their unique skills and experience.

In a world where information is at our fingertips, building a career site with your candidates in mind is key in engaging top talent to apply for your roles.

Nurture candidates with hyper-personalized campaigns

Want access to candidates who are already familiar with your organization and have interested in working for you? Nurture the candidates already in your database.

Too often, we source the same folks over and over. Recruitment marketing isn’t cheap, and it takes time. Nurturing talent you’ve already interacted with makes most of your resources.

By automating nurture, you can track the content your candidates interact with most and hyper-personalize the recruiting journey. For instance, with iCIMS Marketing Automation, if a candidate clicks on a link that’s tagged as diversity content, they can then be automatically added to a diversity campaign in which they’ll receive videos, articles and other related content that they are interested in.

Editor’s note: Discover how you can get started with candidate nurture in our toolkit for reactivating disengaged talent pools.

Engage silver medalists with employee video

Sometimes it can be tough choosing between our top candidates. Your second or third choice made it to the final round of your recruiting process for a reason. They know about your company, they clearly left an impression on leaders. We sometimes refer to these candidates as “silver medalists”. They didn’t get the job but had great skills and experience that would be an asset to your organization – maybe in a different role or department.

That’s why it’s so important to engage these candidates beyond the recruiting process, keeping in touch with them soon after the rejection. It’s crucial that candidates feel valued even though they weren’t hired. After all, they gave up their personal time to complete the steps in your recruiting process.

Video is a strong tool in letting your silver medalists know that they are still valued beyond the recruitment process. Tools like iCIMS Video Studio make it easy for employees to create low cost recruitment marketing videos. This is a great format to share advice from employees who applied to your organization more than once, or those who had an unconventional career path before taking their current role.

Nudge candidates with incomplete applications

When recruiting for a new position, it’s easy to jump into action putting up job ads and searching far and wide for new talent. But what if your top candidate is already in your ATS? Depending on your application drop off rates, there may be a whole pool of untapped talent sitting in your system. These are folks who started an application and, for whatever reason, didn’t finish.

It’s easy to have the mentality that only the serious candidates apply. But things happen and sometimes would-be candidates get cold feet. Something had these candidates interested enough to start an application; it’s worth giving them a second chance.

This doesn’t require a big budget or new recruitment solutions. In your ATS or CRM, search for people with the status “application incomplete”. Set up an application incomplete campaign, add these candidates and start your proactive outreach. Often, all it takes is a small nudge to get candidates to finish applying.

Proactive outreach shows candidates how supportive you are as an employer, and a bit of genuine interest can go a long way in removing hesitation for candidates. Learn how you can tailor your recruitment solution to work for you and engage candidates beyond the application process in our handy toolkit.

Engaging talent with your recruitment solution

Whether you use an entire suite of recruitment solutions, or one standalone product, tailoring your recruitment solution to work for you is key in engaging your best-fit candidates.

Discover how you can jumpstart your sourcing in 2024 with our plays designed to turn lukewarm leads into applicants. This recruitment marketing playbook is your go-to for email, video and text templates designed to attract and engage top talent already in your database.