Dive Brief:
- A bad candidate experience can quickly undo the best recruiting and hiring efforts, according to a new study of Fortune 500 companies by Phenom People, a talent relationship marketing firm. Companies in the study were ranked on their candidate experience strategies.
- The annual State of TRM report found that employers whose candidates have a bad experience consistently fall behind in three categories: attraction, engagement and conversion. A bulk of companies (84%) fail to personalize the talent experience throughout the recruiting process. More than half (59%) neglect to explain their employee value proposition. And 98% don't communicate with candidates about their application status.
- Companies that ranked high in providing a positive candidate experience offered dynamic and personalized career site content, used powerful and tailored language in job descriptions and had an easy and user-friendly application process. These companies also fared better in the competition for talent. Low-ranked companies lacked an easy application process, career site information, a simple application process and a centralized hub for submitting applications.
Dive Insight:
With all the tech tools available to them for a variety of functions, HR managers who humanize the recruiting process can expect candidates to have a better experience. And that's important because today's candidates want and expect more from the recruiting process, Ben Slater, VP growth at Beamery, previously told HR Dive. The key: use tech tools to personalize the experience. For example, another expert recommended, segment candidates into behavioral buckets using recruiting tech to make communication a little more personal.
Incorporating branding into the recruiting process — much the way marketing professionals do in selling consumers on their organizations' products or services — is now an imperative. Candidates will interact with a company brand long before they ever come in for an interview. In fact, recent data showed that only one in five candidates will submit an application to a company that has a negative online reputation.
As an added bonus, Beamery's "State of Recruitment Marketing 2018" showed that recruitment marketing receives more funding than the traditional process.
