Today, your company is competing for top candidates in a slow labor market. Labor force participation is down, and combined with low unemployment and lots of open positions, most recruiters are fishing in smaller talent pools. It’s time to get creative with your recruiting approach and personalize your hiring process.
A personalized candidate experience can be what sways job seekers toward your job offers and away from your competitors because it speaks to your organizational culture. Build strong relationships with candidates to create a memorable experience and improve the quality of your new hires. Help your talent acquisition team streamline recruiting processes so they can work more efficiently and focus on the candidates.
Keep reading for five tips on how to personalize your hiring process to ensure you stand out from other employers and hire the right person for every role.
Make your company stand out with a personalized hiring process that candidates will love. #CandidateExperience1. Custom Job Listings
Basic job descriptions are no longer the standard — they should change based on where you’re advertising the job. If you use an applicant tracking system (ATS) or other recruiting software, you’re posting to your career site as well as multiple job boards aimed at those looking for work in a specific industry or profession. You might advertise open positions on social media like LinkedIn, too.
You won’t attract top talent if you copy and paste the same job postings to every platform. Make adjustments based on where you’re posting and on the type of candidate you want to attract. For example, imagine you’re hiring for a role where new hires need little experience and will be trained on the job. Your job description should be free of jargon, and you may avoid listing any required skills to avoid driving away inexperienced applicants.
If you’re using a modern ATS solution equipped with AI-enhanced tools, you’re a step ahead of the rest. Artificial intelligence helps your team write job descriptions that will attract a wide range of candidates with the skills you’re looking for —in a fraction of the time. AI can even help find and update language that might alienate some types of candidates.
90% of organizations say their biggest challenge is hiring skilled employees, particularly attracting and recruiting the right people.
2. Personal Communication From Recruiters
If you do just one thing to customize your hiring process, make it your candidate communications. 70% of candidates prefer weekly updates on their applications, and 71% want to know ASAP if they’re no longer in the running for the role.
Personalize your hiring process by tailoring recruiters’ messages to your candidates:Timely, personal messages and updates from recruiters keep job seekers engaged during the hiring process. They also help kick off a positive relationship between your company and candidates, which you reinforce with communication and transparency about where they stand. You also increase the likelihood that candidates will be interested in other open positions at your organization if they aren’t hired initially.
Sending messages that are both fast and personalized is effortless when you use talent acquisition software. Common features include:
- Text messaging tools that enable job seekers to submit job applications and speedy communication between recruiters and candidates
- Dynamic email and text message templates recruiters can modify to add their voice and ensure every message has a personal touch
- Automatic notifications when candidates are no longer being considered
3. Standardized Interview Questions
It may seem counterintuitive, but one of the best ways to personalize and optimize the hiring process is with standardization. This is especially true when it comes to interviews. You want to avoid biased questions and learn why the candidate is uniquely qualified for the position. To do that, it’s helpful to create a standard set of interview questions for every role that leaves room for candidates to elaborate on their skills and experience.
With an ATS, you can create Interview Guides that ensure candidates for the same roles are asked the same questions. Its tools enable you to automate interview processes that used to take ages, like Interview Scorecards that seamlessly compile the hiring team’s feedback. For some roles, your hiring team could use this information to give candidates a detailed explanation of why they weren’t selected.
Recruiting Advice from ClearCompany Experts
Find out how our talent acquisition team schedules candidate screenings 66% faster:
4. Individual Onboarding Programs
Onboarding is the process of getting new employees up to speed on company culture, policies, and procedures and training them on their new job duties. Onboarding usually lasts 30-90 days, though some roles may require more time. Due to the high rate of new employee turnover, these weeks are critical for their productivity and longevity at your organization. An onboarding plan that’s specific to every employee or role turns new hires’ enthusiasm and excitement into long-term engagement and innovation.
Talent acquisition software simplifies onboarding personalization and helps HR work faster:
- Automatically assign onboarding welcome packets tailored to the new hire’s role
- Allow new hires to begin their onboarding journey independently with self-service portals
- Run background checks effortlessly with built-in functionality
- Create onboarding checklists and track task completion internally and for new hires
5. Leverage Recruiting Analytics
Your recruiting data tells a story about how hiring processes work at your company, informs better decisions about how to customize your processes, and allows you to keep an eye on the impact of your modifications. But it’s hard to decipher the story, utilize your data, or monitor changes without talent acquisition software.
The software gives you access to recruiting analytics, which parses the data and presents you with pieces of that story. You might learn that the interview process for a general manager of a retail store involves twelve employees and four to six rounds of interviews, and takes nearly eight weeks — longer than the industry-wide average of 41 days — to complete. Much of that time is spent going back and forth to schedule and reschedule interviews.
With talent acquisition software, you can smooth these bumps in the hiring process. In this case, you might reduce the size of the hiring team and the number of interviews. You can also start including interview scheduling links in the first email recruiters send to potential candidates, speeding up candidate screenings by days. Use multi-interviewer scheduling tools to simplify coordinating interview times among candidates and hiring teams.
After implementing process changes, consult the metrics to see if you’re on the right track: Did your time-to-hire decrease? Are recruiters scheduling screenings in record time with candidate texting? Are new hire retention rates improving?
Pay attention to your analytics to maximize the effectiveness of your tailored hiring processes.
It’s no surprise that the candidate experience is being recognized as an essential part of the employee lifecycle. After all, it’s a reliable indicator of how they can expect to feel as an employee. Personalize hiring processes to show candidates you’re invested in their success and care about them as people —and that’s what they can expect as your employees, too.
Talent Acquisition Software for Custom Candidate Experiences
The secret behind an engaging, impressive candidate experience is modern, award-winning technology. Exceed expectations and win over top talent with a positive candidate experience powered by talent acquisition software. Differentiate your company in a competitive labor market by putting a personal touch on recruiting and executing fast, efficient hiring processes.
Find out how you can design personalized candidate experiences and speed up hiring processes for HR with ClearCompany Talent Acquisition. Sign up to speak with a ClearCompany expert.
