The best talent is not only tricky to attract – but tricky to retain. There are multiple points within a candidate’s application journey during which they could ‘drop off’, ultimately choosing a different organisation to work for. Ensuring your application and recruitment process is as simple as possible limits this drop off and guarantees your business pick of the litter when it comes to incredible talent.
Here are Optimum Recruitment’s top tips for ensuring your application process retains as many candidates as possible.
Write accurate and compelling job advertisements
Ensure your vacancy advertisement is equal parts compelling, so as to attract good talent, and accurate, so that you’re able to manage expectations. This is particularly important with regards to remuneration and responsibilities. If the candidate comes to an interview and discovers the role is different to what they had first been told, they are much more likely to become frustrated.
Communicate quickly, regularly and transparently
Candidates appreciate being notified at the earliest possible opportunity about whether or not they’ve progressed to the next stage. It’s critical to project professionalism by outlining to candidates when you’ll be in touch with a decision, and then sticking to those timelines. It’s also helpful to communicate what will happen throughout the process and what you expect from candidates in upcoming stages. Transparency is reassuring and will help to put your prospective talent at ease.
Build a fair interview process
Interviews are meant to be challenging, but should not include an unnecessary number of rounds. Candidates are voluntarily giving up their time to attend your interview and, depending upon how many other positions they are interviewing for, they may have to make a decision about which interviews to attend. Limiting your interview rounds to only the critical number will help to reduce drop offs. You may wish to consider holding video chat or phone interviews to streamline the process, as this is less demanding time-wise for all parties.
Correctly qualify your candidates
One of the best ways to minimise drop offs is to ensure that the right candidates are brought into the process in the first place. Internal recruitment functions and hiring managers must work closely together to discuss candidate requirements in depth and create job specifications that attract the right people. If you aren’t sure where to start, have been experiencing a high drop off rate or simply aren’t getting access to the required talent pool for your roles, it can be helpful to seek advice from external recruitment experts like Optimum.
Our team are always happy to advise on any part of the recruitment process. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Posted By: Abigail Simpson
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