There is no denying that the competition in the market is fierce. Every company is trying its best to attract the most talented candidate. It is directly related to how you manage candidate experience.
A survey revealed that 90 percent of candidates want to hear back some feedback from the company after applying for jobs. And 77 percent didn’t hear back anything from the company, which made them think less of the organization.
It showed them poor candidate management. So how to improve it?
The easy solution is making good use of the candidate management system (CMS).
Before we delve into the details, let’s first understand what candidate management is exactly.
What Is Candidate Management?
The recruiting system is changing. It has now become a candidate-driven market.
When we use the term candidate-driven, it means focusing on providing a pleasant candidate experience so as to attract the right talent to your company.
Candidate management is the process of creating and sustaining relationships with job applicants to improve recruiting outcomes. It aims at enhancing the overall candidate experience, which will directly affect the employer brand.
Better Hiring Management Using Candidate Management System
If you want to attract the top candidates, the traditional approach to talent acquisition is not going to work anymore.
Candidates today expect speed and simplified recruitment processes. That’s why you need to take into account the candidate expectations and the recruiting KPIs.
The first step is to streamline and automate the whole recruiting process. Many companies have started to implement various recruitment tools that help them with it. One such tool is the candidate management system.
A candidate management system is a set of tools and applications designed for hiring managers to help them manage the candidate experience. It guides recruiters and employers on how to nurture candidates and keep them engaged.
How Does the Candidate Management System Help Recruit Quality Applicants
Let’s look at the different ways a candidate management system improves the hiring process.
● Source and Attract Candidates From Different Platforms
Using a candidate management system, you can post jobs on various platforms, including social media, career pages, job boards, and much more. It then automatically captures candidate data from all sources into a single database and organizes them into an effective pattern for the recruiters to easily understand it.
Once the data has been collected and organized, the system then segments into different categories based on specializations, qualifications, and much more. Thus, it ensures that recruiters don’t miss out on any important talent.
● Design and Execute Personalized Communication
When you have more than 50 resumes lying on your table, you need a candidate management system.
As a recruiter, you might find various reasons for not responding to those who have applied for the job opening — less manpower, not enough time, an influx of candidates, and much more. However, it might still not justify failing to communicate with the talent pool, which might ultimately affect your employer brand name.
A CMS helps recruiters in planning and executing personalized communications to walk applicants down the recruiting funnel. The system automatically updates the status of each lead and keeps them in the loop so that a hiring manager doesn’t miss any communication.
Furthermore, you can schedule calls, emails, and text messages to keep them informed about their progress at each stage of their recruiting process.
In fact, many advanced CMS offer calendars for scheduling interviews so that recruiters can easily schedule and conduct interviews for active applicants.
● Getting Feedback and Improvising the Whole Process
In today’s time, you can’t afford to stay complacent with your hiring process. If you want to manage your candidate experience better, you need to continually evolve and take into account their thoughts and opinions.
Feedback is one of the critical parts of the whole process. It helps everyone involved, including stakeholders, employers, recruiters, and candidates, make informed and smart decisions.
A candidate management system comes with feedback management functionality, whereby it allows easy collection of feedback surveys from candidates, interviewer, and hiring manager. It then documents them and runs an analysis to provide certain insights on the same.
Based on the feedback, employers can redefine their recruitment process if required.
These insights can be beneficial for companies trying to build an excellent talent community.
How Candidate Experience Manages Your Talent Pool
Candidate experience plays a vital role in the recruiting process. It can either build your employer brand or completely break it.
Positive Candidate Experience Can Build Your Brand Image
Regardless of the fact that the candidate got hired or not, if they had a positive experience during the recruitment process, they are more likely to re-apply in the future or also recommend your company to other people.
In a survey by CareerBuilder, it was revealed that candidates with a positive experience in your recruiting process would readily accept the job offer. And it also increases the retention rate as positive candidate experiences also imply high employee engagement.
Thus, positive experiences help grow your talent pool. You will get more influx of applicants, good quality of candidates, and also reduce cost per hire.
Mind you, these positive experiences are often shared by candidates on social media platforms like LinkedIn and Glassdoor, which can be a huge advantage.
Similarly, Negative Experience Can Destroy Your Employer Brand
If a positive experience can build your employer brand, the same way a negative experience can have an adverse impact.
Your candidates might turn unhappy and may spread bad reviews about your company. In fact, they even start to boycott your company’s product and service and also ask others to do the same.
Candidates even reject job offers and never reapply for the job openings if they weren’t happy with your recruitment process. Thus, companies that fail to deliver a smooth and quality recruitment experience suffer severe consequences.
And in this digital world, where words spread like wildfire, you can’t afford to take that risk.
Final Words
Now you know why you need a sophisticated candidate management system to streamline every recruitment process.
It enables recruiters and HR professionals to implement and build candidate relationship strategies in a much more personalized and effective manner.
