A successful recruitment strategy is built upon solid connections between recruiters and candidates. Although there are many ways to do so, recruiters are usually fed up with racing against time to progress while dealing with documentation and backlogging tasks. This prevents recruiters from properly investing their time in building and nurturing relationships with candidates.
A digital tool like Applicant Tracking System was created as a solution to help recruiters eliminate the repetitive activities that distract them from forging solid relationships with the candidates and ensuring the longevity of their business.
Here are some of the effective ways you can establish and maintain strong connections with candidates through an Applicant Tracking System.
Be Clear About Who You Are Looking For
Right from the start, when candidates are browsing for open jobs, they are expecting to find advertisements that clearly describe the details and requirements so they can make a decision on whether or not the job is for them. This is the starting point of the candidate experience.
As a recruiter, you must first be able to communicate the requirements and the responsibilities of the position you are advertising. Be descriptive when it comes to writing job descriptions. Go deep but keep it tight. When searching for jobs, candidates are not only looking at just one advertisement - yours lies among hundreds served to them. Your job posts must stand out and catch attention at first glance.
A job title is the first hook. A clear and tight title would provide candidates with an initial idea of what their responsibilities will be. For example, avoid generic and incomplete titles like ‘Writer.’ There are many types of writers out there - copywriters, content writers, SEO writers - and candidates wouldn't be able to determine if their experiences are enough to fit the role.
Instead, go for a specific and descriptive title, like ‘Travel Writer’ for example. This title informs candidates that the role requires blog writing experience and skill, with a focus on travel.
Further, do not waste candidates’ time by writing irrelevant content in the job descriptions. Get to the point and address specific details about the job. This includes what their primary daily responsibilities are, where the office is, the working hours, and so on.
Do not forget to write the benefits that come with employment, like a medical plan, compensation for overtime, and growth opportunities. These benefits help create a positive perception of your company from the eyes of candidates.
Be professional and go with, ‘We are looking for free-spirited individuals who love to travel and describe their experiences through writing.’
If you still find that it's a challenge to write job descriptions, Let an Applicant Tracking System be your assistant. A well-designed Applicant Tracking System like Manatal comes with ready-to-use job templates that tell candidates right away what the employing company is looking for. Our job description templates cover positions in several industries, from IT to finance, to healthcare, and more.
Open The Door with A Career Page
Once a candidate has shown interest in joining the organization, they are naturally leading their way to a company’s website to find more information. If job advertisements are the preview posters, then your career page is a greeting party that ensures candidates that they are visiting the right place for them.
To lead candidates towards a healthy start of your relationship with them, it is crucial to build a career page that promotes the employer brand while showcasing what it's like to be part of the company.
An excellent way to do it is to upload images of your employees at work, or even stories of employees talking about their growth journey in your company. Avoid an excessively promotional tone and keep it authentic, while infusing it with corporate color codes and fonts.
A powerful Applicant Tracking System like Manatal enables its users to create a fully customizable career page that appeals to both active and passive candidates.
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Break the Ice Through Social Media
In the borderless digital information era, social media is the pinnacle communication channel between recruiters and candidates. Social media acts as another portal for recruiters to showcase the employer brand while taking relationships with candidates to a deeper level.
Sure. But how exactly?
Social media platforms are valuable for recruiters to introduce the company to their target audience - in this case, candidates - and engage with them in a more creative and humanized way. The very fact that social media is based upon personable communications and participation, allows recruiters to do away with corporate-speak and interact with candidates as people. Using a poll feature or posting competitions for prizes allows audiences to take more part in the relationship establishment on their sides and communicate with recruiters in a nuanced way.
Before initiating the engagement with candidates, you need to strengthen your social media presence. Use a proper company logo or image for the profile picture. Reinforcing stories of outstanding employee experience with strong images of your employees at work would give candidates a good gauge of how they would fit in an organization.
BMW has established its employer brand by using a Facebook career profile to connect with candidates. With close to 417,000 followers, BMW Group Careers consistently reaches its audiences by posting three to four times per week. Its posts are the culmination of job advertisements, employee stories, awards, etc.
This example shows that social media is a potent portal to widen your target audience outside job boards. Although publishing job advertisements across several channels sounds tricky and time-consuming, an Applicant Tracking System like Manatal can help you get the job done in seconds. With Manatal, users have the ability to share job advertisements across online channels, including social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook.
Manatal also enables you to leverage social media with the social media enrichment feature. This innovative feature covers more than 20 social media platforms and gleans publicly available social media information to give recruiters better insight into a candidate’s personality and aspirations.
Knowing candidates better, learning more about their capabilities, and understanding their goals will help you make better and faster decisions when it comes to selecting the right talent for the perfect fit positions. The end result would be a smoother candidate experience.
Use Email to Keep the Connection Consistent
Email is a timely communication channel that closes a gap between candidates and recruiters without having direct contact. It is an excellent way to keep the connections alive by providing updates and announcements to candidates in your talent pool.
Keep them in the loop. Send out emails consistently, but not too often. Keep the message short and clear. Also, create email templates that go in line with a company brand. Don’t forget to use a company logo and corporate colors. Make sure that you deliver emails to the opt-in recipients and constantly update your recipient lists.
Struggling with multiple tasks at once, recruiters may not be able to properly organize the recipient list or make sure of the consistency of the email templates. Let An Applicant Tracking System help you make things easier. An efficient ATS like Manatal comes with the mass emailing feature, which allows its users to customize email templates that represent an organized employer brand and save them for future launches.
At the same time, Manatal’s users will also be able to manage the recipient list through the use of folders. Further, Manatal automatically tracks unsubscriptions and updates opt-in status to ensure that your emails are always sent to the right recipients. You can manually modify recipients’ status at all times as well.
It’s a Date
Setting up appointments is also one of the ways that you can strengthen relationships with the candidates. A precise appointment provides a smoother experience for candidates. Finding the available time and date for both hiring managers and candidates is challenging.
Keep in mind that the outcome of a messed-up schedule would be a negative experience for both candidates and your clients. So, properly manage your calendar. Recheck the availability of candidates and hiring managers to make sure that all appointments are not overlapping with each other.
Through the use of an Applicant Tracking System, recruiters can automate the process and minimize the risk of human oversight. With a powerful ATS like Manatal, our activity calendar feature allows users to add activities, tasks, and events like meetings or calls to one platform.
You will be able to precisely manage your schedule and make sure that all appointments are not overlapping with each other within a few clicks. Moreover, you can smoothly manage your schedule by integrating a calendar from platforms like Gmail or Outlook into Manatal.
Click here to learn how an ATS can help you establish solid relationships with candidates.
The Takeaways
Evolving technology, coupled with globalization and digitalization, has made the current recruitment game more competitive than ever. Running against time, it is a challenge to establish and maintain strong relationships between recruiters and candidates today.
A digital solution like Applicant Tracking System has proven to be a valuable asset for recruiters to efficiently nurture relationships with candidates and provide them with the best experience.
An Applicant Tracking System like Manatal is an outstanding tool that is designed to optimize the recruitment process while helping its users to construct solid connections with candidates through innovative features like ready-to-use job description templates, customizable career page, social media enrichment, mass emailing, and more!
Start your 14-day Free Trial now and learn more about Manatal’s capability to elevate the establishment of your candidate relationships while optimizing your recruitment game within a few clicks.
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