The employment landscape has changed drastically over the years, and with new and improved technologies coming into the market, hiring and recruiting will continue to change. What better time to start rethinking your talent acquisition strategies than the present!
Jobvite’s recent report, The New Model for Modern Recruiting: Continuous Candidate Engagement, highlights the importance of rethinking your people strategies by covering a new trend: continuous candidate engagement (CCE).
Jobvite says that recruiters and hiring managers need to think more strategically about how to improve the quality, speed, and effectiveness of engagement across the candidate journey in order to hire top talent. “These new market dynamics call for a new approach: a shift in focus from managing requisitions to creating remarkable candidate journeys,” says Jobvite.
Enter: CCE
According to Jobvite, “CCE is a candidate-centric recruiting model that encompasses both technology solutions and strategies to engage candidates at the right time, in the right way, at every single stage of the expanded candidate journey.”
Jobvite claims this new recruiting model creates a competitive advantage and establishes your hiring team as a key growth driver for the company. By focusing on CCE, you are not only driving growth but also improving your company brand, which is key for attracting talent.
Candidate Experience vs. Candidate Engagement
We continue to hear a lot about why candidate “experience” is so important, but how does that differ from candidate engagement? Is there even a difference? There absolutely is!
According to Jobvite, “candidate ‘experience’ and candidate ‘engagement’ are not one and the same. To improve the recruiting process, you need to understand the meaning of each and where you can—and can’t—make an impact.”
Candidate engagement. Candidate engagement refers to your interactions with the candidate. You can determine what it looks like, and you can control it, unlike the candidate experience.
Candidate experience. Candidate experience refers to the candidates’ perceptions about the interactions they have had with your company, but unfortunately, you can’t control this one.
According to Jobvite, “You can only deliver continuous engagement that influences the candidate’s impression of your company.”
Why CCE Is So Important
The candidate “experience” has been a recurring theme for 2018, which makes offering CCE even more important—and for good reason. According to Marketing Week, a poor candidate experience can be costly, as Virgin Media recently learned.
Of the 130,000 candidates who applied for positions within the company, 18% of applicants were current Virgin Media customers. Because Virgin Media had such a poor candidate experience, over 7,500 job candidates canceled their subscriptions and switched to a competitor, which ultimately cost the company $5.5 million.
This example highlights the importance of a good candidate experience, as your potential new hires are also your current customers, and if your job candidates aren’t happy with the experience they had, they’re more inclined to tell their friends and family to spend their money elsewhere.
What causes a poor experience? It could be a lack of communication, a frustrating application process, or a poor or nonexistent career website, just to name a few; the list is endless. However, these are all areas you can control when it comes to keeping candidates continuously engaged.
In order to free up your recruiters and provide CCE, you must adopt new technology tools and methods. In part two of this article, we’ll look at how artificial intelligence and technology are playing a vital role in CCE.