Recruiters are posting too many bland and generic job adverts in an attempt to catch as many candidates as possible, and the job seekers are posting their basic CVs on 3rd party CV databases in the hope of being noticed. And it isn’t working.
This flood of vague job posts is doing two things – encouraging scores of unsuitable applications that is making life harder for recruiters and overwhelming prospective candidates due to the volume of email notifications thereby decreasing engagement.
Now if this isn’t a colossal waste of everyone’s time!
Throw away weak job specs, reach out to your talent pool
Candidates actively looking out for new roles and better opportunities are no stranger to being inundated with hundreds of unremarkable job specs. Frankly, it can feel annoying to be on the receiving end of incessant notifications that don’t yield any noteworthy results.
Veteran recruiters know there is a huge difference between those ‘unemployed’ and the ‘toe in the water/happy but listening’ types, and they need to be treated differently. We also know the best applicants are not even on the job boards or online CV databases – they’re waiting to be head-hunted via LinkedIn and other social media platforms.
On a personal level, I have many friends looking for their next role in light of the looming recession, and so for me, it’s more about picking up the phone and getting to know both the candidates and clients, and their proper/deep intentions – but wasn’t that always the best way?
Rather than counting emails sent, jobs posted, applicants rejected – the focus should be on ‘calls made to people we already know’.
It is time to put aside the usual recruiting metrics. Concentrate on nurturing your relationships and figuring out how to connect client requirements with what top talents are pursuing in their next role.
Foster deeper connections using your candidate relationship management tools
As a recruiter, you need to put technology alongside your data and work with a CRM that lets you reach out and make friends. Get your recruitment database software to push your communication to a more substantial and intimate space.
Whether it is via phone, email, social media, WhatsApp or Microsoft Teams, there’s always an easier way to connect with your best candidates. All the best software for recruitment agencies should allow you to do that with a mere click of a button.
Take our Voyager Infinity recruitment CRM for instance. We help hundreds of recruitment firms speed up their communication and recruiting process with our software integrations. As an alternative to prolonged typing, incessant clicks and toggling between countless tabs, recruiters get the ability to easily connect with candidates in the shortest amount of time from within our CRM platform.
WhatsApp’s ‘click to chat’ feature removes the need to store every candidate’s contact number on the phone if a recruiter wants to connect with them on the app. Infinity CRM users can generate an outgoing WhatsApp chat by clicking on the mobile number hyperlinks which will continue to show a popup message on screen if a candidate has not been marked as ‘OK to SMS’. But on proceeding further, the link takes users to WhatsApp where they can start a new conversation. With WhatsApp’s prolific use and popularity, it’s become a convenient method for recruiters to interact with candidates.
Infinity also integrates flawlessly with Microsoft Teams. Now managing video calls for all the countless meetings and interviews from within your recruitment platform is super easy. MS Office 365 is almost ubiquitous with modern productivity and communication system. And Microsoft Teams is free to use for every Office 365 user.
Focus on leveraging these tools to connect better with your candidates. Be proactive about reaching out to your talent pool. Find out what they are truly looking for and take the feedback to clients. How about drafting a job advert that is actually relevant to the people who read it? Reading scores of adverts not pertinent to one’s job search only ends up overwhelming the candidate. Your run-of-the-mill job spec is prone to be ignored. Even if you craft a great job advert with all the right details included in it, there is a big chance that your target candidate will miss it due to the barrage of weak postings they are accustomed to seeing.
Now if more recruiters invested time in cultivating candidate relationships, they would have an easier time filling in the vacancies. Vague job postings and lengthy drawn-out recruiting processes are likely (however indirectly) also contributing to the ongoing candidate shortage. Because let’s face it – job hunting is challenging and takes a fair bit of mental exertion. Regularly scrolling through job specs that are mismatched with one’s career aspirations soon depletes any energy or interest in the job search.
Do what recruiters have historically always done best – understand the candidate base. To say it in metaphorical terms, it is time for reaching out and holding hands. Surprise your candidates with a recruiter who truly cares about what they want. The human touch never goes out of fashion.
And the best recruitment CRM software is a handy tool to help you cut through the noise and help your candidates and clients find the best match in each other.
