Communication Is the Key to a Successful Recruiting

Proper communication is a cornerstone of a successful recruiting strategy - perfect recruiting pitches, fast canned responses to applicants’ questions, clear hiring steps with feedback are all of the things that make your recruitment process more effective. Moreover, the communication process allows you and your company to build long-term relationships with candidates, as a result get more hire recommendations and reliable company reputation in general.

If one were to believe statistics, 75% of candidates would research a company’s reputation before applying for a job opening. And after that, 63% of job seekers will likely reject a job offer because of a bad candidate experience.

This post will talk about what you can do to improve your communication framework and how you can incorporate messaging templates and messaging automation to save yourself time and raise efficiency.

2 Reasons Why Communication With Candidates Is the Key In Recruiting

Candidate's thoughts after not getting response from a recruiter

What use is good communication? It affects how fast you can hire for your open roles and how much it costs you to do so. It also affects candidate experience as they go through the hiring process. The experience is important - because people will share it with their friends and colleagues, and it will eventually turn into your company’s reputation in the hiring market.

Good communication achieves a few important things:

• Keeps everyone on the same page, hence making the recruitment process transparent and predictable.
• Builds stronger and healthier long-term relationships with candidates.
• Makes the recruitment process more pleasant and professional.

Everyone Is on the Same Page

You can make sure everyone stays on the same page by keeping up regular communication with a candidate.

Let's face it, it is frustrating to feel like they’ve been left hanging and forgotten. People might think that you’ve already filled the position but haven’t informed them. Or they could feel the company does not care about them.

That's when they might give up on that job and look elsewhere - since qualified applicants tend to have multiple options to choose from.

So don’t leave them hanging - give the results after each stage and as soon as possible. Contact them at least once per week even if nothing new happened - just to let them know they are still in the game. Use recruiting email templates to make it faster and more efficient, but remember to personalize each of your messages to give a human impression.

This way, whether they end up getting the role or not, you will leave a good impression and it might come in handy in the future.

Stronger Relationships

A solid relationship helps you know more - when the candidate has trust in you as his recruiter, he is more likely to share things like what other potential offers he has. This could make the difference between a successful hire and your perfect candidate accepting a job elsewhere. Because your offer took too long or was missing what is important for them.

A stronger relationship with a potential candidate is useful in many ways. Just to name a few:

• They might share the sensitive rumors your company has going around.
• They might tip you off about your competitors’ salary range or benefits.
• Or they could help you fill your other openings faster by referring their friends and colleagues.

4 Parts of a Good Messaging Framework and How To Automate It to Save Time and build More Efficient Recruitment Process

Your company or client counts on you to hold on to the candidates. Even if the employer has a lot of stages to the process or there are a few weeks delays between them, a good communication framework can help you hold on to the candidates and keep them on board.

1. Acknowledge receipt of application

A candidate’s application is likely to be your first point of contact and it can heavily influence their impression.

Depending on your recruiter tools, there might already exist an automatic notification message that goes to the person after applying. It is better than silence, but nothing to write home about.

Avoid that one-sentence write-off and take some time to craft a message with a human touch.

• Send the acknowledgement within 24 hours of them submitting the application.
• Confirm that they successfully applied for the position.
• Outline the basic steps and timetable of how things will progress, to let the candidate know what to expect.
• Add contacts of the person in charge in case the candidate has questions. Provide a few different contact channels if possible - an email, messengers, a phone number.
• You may have already put the contact details into the job ad - repeat them in the email anyway, it will make it easier to find them.

Let's take a look at good application acknowledgement message template example:

2. Be available for questions

You’ve provided the contact methods. So if the candidates do reach out, make sure you are available.

Pro Tip! If the same question comes more than 2 times, the answer begs to be made into a message template. This one can not be automated fully, but with Templify, you only need to write it once and then reuse whenever you need it.

3. Give status updates

The hiring process can have delays and pauses. It can get stuck, sometimes for weeks.

You may have received too many applications, or your company can not come to a decision. It is possible that hiring was frozen, or that the approach of the company’s management changed, and you need to shift through the candidates from the beginning.

The best way to approach this is to be transparent and communicate clearly to the applicants. Even if you don’t have concrete results, you need to update them at least once a week to keep them in the loop.

Avoid these red flags that would give a candidate a pause:

• Going silent and disappearing until you have “solid” news.
• Ignoring inquiries from applicants.
• Promising things you are not sure about.
• Stalling the candidate and dragging things out for weeks no matter the reason.
• Misleading the candidates in order to keep them in the pipeline.

Humans are beings of emotions - frustrated people will share their frustration with their friends and network, and your company’s reputation might not benefit from it.

4. Send constructive rejections

The rejection message is the most sensitive part of the hiring process. It is so challenging to some that they avoid it altogether - never informing candidates and just ghosting them instead.

That is not the best way to approach the issue. Even a standard auto-reply message is better than nothing.

However, if you are looking to make your communication process better, then take it a step further. Here are a few things that can make your rejection letter less frustrating and, ideally, helpful to the candidate.

• Use a human tone.
• Be transparent.
• Explain the decision.
• Make it clear if you want to keep in touch for future roles.

Let's take a look at good candidate rejection message template example:

Key Thoughts

A good communication framework is relevant, useful, timely, and consistent on every channel your company uses. It guides your potential hires through the process and ensures there are no misunderstandings that could end with people quitting.

Applicants want to receive confirmations, updates, and information that explains and follows up on the recruitment process, and they want to feel a human touch in it - not indifferent automatic replies. Your messaging framework should provide them with all that and more.