4 Factors Impacting Candidate Engagement

October 14, 2014 at 12:00 PM by Kathleen de Lara

improve candidate engagement
Building appeal to your open opportunities takes more than a few good perks highlighted in a well-written email and job description. To get talent hooked on potentially working for your company, recruiters need to focus on driving long-term connections after their first contact with talent and through all stages of the hiring process.

How does your company take into account these four factors when engaging with potential employees? 

Connecting the company’s mission to your employer brand and the employee experience. 

Engaging talent with your open reqs means to approach recruiting with a goal to market the role and to nurture candidates with multiple communication points. Candidates want to know what its like to work for the company and when they visit a careers page, they’re gauging the role fit, company culture, and their engagement as employees.

“Meaningful work” is an essential factor of building a compelling employee experience, according to Katherine Jones, VP of HCM Tech Research at Bersin by Deloitte. What’s the company’s vision? How is the team connected to that mission? How is that communicated through employees’ stories and affirmations? Is the team happy with their role at the company?

Employees are an organization’s brand ambassadors – candidates have access in their networks and sites like Glassdoor to learn if a team’s recruitment marketing lines up with employees’ take on the company. Recruiters and hiring managers should be constantly communicating with the team to understand how to make better hires and to boost retention. The internal sense and connection to the company mission is the most powerful driver of employee engagement, Jones said.

Establishing a social media presence.

Following the company website, one of the first places candidates will likely go to to learn about your org is one of your social networks, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. In many cases, having a decent following (the more, the merrier) and a mixed media feed of frequently posted status updates are two key factors of demonstrating your online credibility. These days, a Like, comment, or retweet can be the equivalent of a customer endorsement. It also communicates the team is tech savvy and is familiar with using tools applied by today’s companies and their competitors.

Consider your favorite brands. Take GoPro, for example.

gopro facebook
Their page has nearly eight million fans and the last status update, a picture, as of this post was from seven hours ago. The video post before that, 10 hours ago. Depending on the size of your company, eight million likes could be a lofty goal. Keep in mind who you’re targeting online and engage that audience with frequently posted quality content.

Ability to meet with their future boss and colleagues.

Accepting a job without meeting a manager has been called a one of the most common mistakes made by job seekers. Wouldn’t you want to meet the person you’d be reporting to and interacting with who has a direct impact on how your career develops? Upper level management in larger companies may be more limited with their available meeting times, but getting to know a future boss (and even colleagues) can give candidates a more accurate understanding of a role’s tasks and expectations, which can save recruiters the time and cost of a bad hire if candidates end up deciding the job may not be compatible with their communication or work style. On the other hand, meeting a future boss and colleagues could get candidates excited about the role, visualizing their fit within the company and how their role plays a bigger part in helping the team reach their goals.

Opportunity for growth from role and ability to transfer skills

New tools and tech are a sign of a more streamlined, efficient workforce. Tasks become automated when possible and data, rather than tradition or assumptions, drive decisions, marking some roles unnecessary or irrelevant in this machine age. Candidates know that to stay employed, their skill sets must be able to adapt to emerging tech. How will the role help employees scale their talents as the industry changes? Does the job give its team members the chance to advance within the company? How does the organization manage how employees learn new tools and tech?

Get more tips on improving engagement through outreach and be sure to download our eBook on effectively messaging candidates. Don't forget to save your spot for our tech recruiting webinar series here! how to recruit top tech talent

comments