4 Ways to Personalize Candidate Communication
Recruiters know every candidate is unique, but it doesn’t always feel that way to candidates. It’s easy to lose your personal touch in the constant race against time. Do you personalize the candidate’s name in a bulk email and call it a day? Your candidates have probably noticed. Here are some easy and powerful candidate communication tips for building better, deeper candidate relationships.
Do you have a candidate engagement strategy?
Reference Your Candidate Relationship History
You can’t be personal with your candidates if you don’t remember anything about them, so log all your emails with candidates and take notes. Identify aspirations and personal information that comes up in conversation.
Build upon your history in all of your communications with your candidates. Leverage your ATS or Recruitment CRM to find past conversations and notes about the candidate. Even the smallest details that you remember will remind your candidates that you see them as more than a paycheck.
Don’t have a history with the candidate? Ask new candidates questions that will lead them to reveal more about themselves. It’ll impress them when you remember these details down the road.
Customize Bulk Emails
Bulk email is an inevitable reality of recruiting communication, and it’s unrealistic to do away with it all together. But there are many ways you can customize a bulk email to make it as personal as one written from scratch. Consider personalizing these fields:
- Name: Never, ever send out an email that starts “Dear, candidate.” If you can’t be bothered to use their name, how are you going to convince them that you’ll find them the right opportunity for their unique qualifications?
- Job category/profession: Don’t alert candidate about jobs that don’t relate directly to them.
- Time since your last interaction: Did you last talk to the candidate yesterday or three years ago? Use this to inform your greeting to your candidate.
- Relationship history: Segment your bulk emails into categories based on your history with your candidate. Are they a new candidate? A previous hire? A recently unsuccessful applicant? Your tone and content should differ depending on your history with them.
Provide Value Outside of Job Offers
There are so many ways to assist a candidate outside of sending recent job openings. You can offer terrific career advice, an opportunity to network, interview guidance, or resume tips. Use the candidate profile you’ve developed and your history with your candidate to identify a way to provide value. Get creative!
Contact Candidates How They Like to be Contacted
Every candidate is different. This doesn’t just apply to their skill sets and experiences, but to their preferred means of communication as well. When reaching out to candidates, choose the the method they respond to. Do they prefer a phone call? SMS text? Email? LinkedIn Message?
This is where a candidate relationship management tool comes in handy. With a good ATS, it should take little effort to track your previous engagements to determine which methods have worked in the past. You can also leverage candidate analytics to discover the best time and day to reach someone. Your candidates will be more likely to respond, and they’ll appreciate that you went the extra mile.
There’s never been a better or more vital time to focus on candidate engagement. Get the candidate engagement ebook to discover whether you should focus more on candidate engagement, and if so, which processes and technology you can tap to support your efforts.
