How to Create a Communications Strategy to Engage Candidates
Are you doing enough to engage your candidates? Thanks to a rebounding economy and a well-documented skills shortage, candidates have more choices than ever before. A first-class candidate experience may be the difference-maker in an increasingly competitive recruiting environment. Use this checklist to develop a communications strategy that addresses every angle of candidate engagement.
Build Candidate Engagement into Your Agency’s DNA
- Commit to candidate engagement
- Appoint an executive sponsor
- Brand your candidate engagement plan to build excitement
- Set aside time for it during the working week (ex.; follow-up Fridays, 2:00PM – 3:30 PM)
- Incentivise success (ex.; create competitions and/or a rewards structure)
Develop Your Strategy
- Identify which audience segments you’ll engage (ex.; current contractors, top candidates, recent applicants, etc.)
- Determine how frequently you’ll engage with each group
- Figure out which methods you’ll use to communicate at each step
- Build your content plan (i.e., develop a general idea of what you want to say to each group at each step)
- Evaluate necessary partners (This may be one of your first steps after determining you’d like to build a candidate engagement strategy. They should be able to help you develop your strategy and execute on it.)
- Review your job application follow-up process and investigate how well recruiters are currently following up
- Define success, identify clear metrics you’ll use to determine your ongoing investment in candidate engagement (*Important to note: the original source of a candidate will rarely come from ‘Candidate Engagement’ – be sure to track appropriately.)
Execute Your Candidate Engagement Plan
- Develop or source content for each audience segment you identified
- Build emails and phone scripts (aim to create enough to cover the first 3 months)
- Segment your audiences using your Recruitment CRM’s filter/search/sort/list systems
- Create the necessary workflows in your Recruitment CRM and partner systems
- Optimise your follow-up strategy for difficult-to-reach candidates
- Teach recruiters the process so they’ll know exactly what to do and what to expect
- Provide clear instruction on timing and priority for recruiters (ex.; call people coming off contract first, then top candidates, etc.)
- Teach recruiters how to easily personalise messages and provide them with examples
- Direct each recruiter to find an online and offline networking group to join
- Teach recruiters the importance of conversations over promotion
Coordinate Your Marketing Efforts
- Review your employment brand and look for opportunities to improve it
- Review your Glassdoor ranking and regularly track it
- Review your website to ensure it contains candidate-focused messaging and resources
- Evaluate your job search and apply process: Is it mobile friendly? Is it quick and easy? What do your automated response(s) to applicants say?
Analyse Your Results
- Review responses to your candidate engagement efforts
- Look at metrics from each segment and each message
- Talk to recruiters and candidates to get their feedback
- Review your success metrics (these will be different for each recruitment company)
Remember, your candidate engagement strategy is an investment in the future of your agency. You’ll see some early wins, but candidate engagement is a long-term strategy that requires consistent commitment. To see real success with your candidates, develop your communications strategy and enhance it on a quarterly basis.
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