How Can Your Candidate Engagement Cut Through An Over-Saturated Internet?

In this economic downturn, many companies are letting employees go to reduce budgets and keep costs low. As a result, the workforce is flooded with the recently unemployed.

While the future looks bleak, research from Recruiter.com suggests that the job market is improving.

With the gradual resumption of economic activity, employers are looking to capitalize on the growing number of available workers. As of May 2020, 60.4 percent of recruiters expect their workloads to increase in the next 90 days in comparison to 38 percent in April.

The increase in job openings means that candidates’ inboxes are being bombarded with recruiters’ emails. But just because there are more people in the job market, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be easy to hire or even have candidates interested in hearing from recruiters.

It takes a solid engagement process to get people to notice your company.

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Here are 4 tips on how to engage with your candidates and rise above the noise.

1. Contact Candidates Directly Over Email and Phone

Sending messages over LinkedIn can only take you so far when every single other recruiter is sending the same message.

This excessive emailing has led to information overload, discouraging candidates from sorting through all the messages in their inbox. Many recruiters fall victim to “burn-out messaging” by using current events such as COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement to “personalize” emails. However, we need to refocus the conversation on the candidates and what is most relevant to their career search.

Reaching out to candidates over phone or email directly is more efficient and more likely to elicit a response. Tools such as Hiretual can scan the open web to compile phone numbers and emails all into one easily accessible list. The list will refresh periodically so you’ll never be contacting an outdated number or email.

2. Establish Sequenced Emails to Improve Response Rate

Repetition can be a double-edged sword. Use it too often and you come off clingy and a nuisance.

But use it just enough and you can get your message to stick in someone’s mind, causing them to take action. Sending follow-up messages can increase your response rates as follow-up emails often have higher response emails than previous emails.

Hiretual’s data shows that open rates are at 60% for single emails and 67% for sequenced emails over the months of May and June 2020.

Creating customizable email sequence templates that are shareable with the rest of your hiring team is a great way to help automate the process. Follow-up emails should be scheduled and sent out if candidates don’t reply to previous emails.

3. Break from the Cookie Cutter Template and Personalize Email Content

Personalization means everything when every other recruiter is using a cookie cutter email template. If you want 15 minutes of a candidate’s time, you must show that you’re willing to put in 15 minutes of effort to learn about them.

Browsing social media platforms can help you tailor email content to candidates’ backgrounds. This means taking the time to look through a candidate’s LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest and including relevant information in outreach emails.

For technical candidates, take a deep dive of their profiles on platforms like GitHub, Stack Overflow, Kaggle and more. A candidate’s repository information and their activity on these sites are a great indicator of projects that they are interested in. Although it can be a time-consuming process for recruiters with little technical background or knowledge, HR technology like Hiretual do wonders to help hiring teams overcome this hurdle.

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4. Use Engagement Insights to Perfect Your Email Strategy

 At a time like this, it’s time to remember some of the more basic pro tips to candidate outreach. While being creative and standing out is key these days, it’s easy to forget the simple things that make the biggest difference in your candidate engagement.

Details matter. The timing, subject line content, message length, and even the recruiter name attached to an email can make a difference when it comes to getting a candidate to respond.

Keep the following in mind the next time you send an email:

•  Have a stand-out subject line.
  First impressions matter. Subject lines should be creative and catchy. How are you going to get candidates to stop scrolling through their inbox and click on your email?
• Keep emails easy to read and respond to.
  Like the subject line, be concise while giving enough details for the candidate to make an informed decision. The most important details such as the role, who you are, and why your company values the candidate should be in the first few lines of the email.
• Email candidates at the right time of day.
  Certain times of the day and week are more likely to elicit a response from candidates. Strategic email cadence can help ensure that your message doesn’t get lost in the hundreds of emails candidates get each day.
• Send messages from a decision maker.
  While hiring managers themselves may not handle the day-to-day recruiting emails, members of the hiring team can send these messages on their behalf. Candidates are more likely to respond if they know that their qualifications were reviewed by potential colleagues rather than recruiters.

As companies get back on their feet and have the budget to hire more people, inboxes are only going to get more crowded. Remote recruiting is the new normal. How are you going to reform your candidate engagement process and embrace the change?

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