Have you noticed an increase in candidates ghosting you during the interview process?
If you have, you’re not alone.
According to our 2023 State of Healthcare Hiring Report, 45% of healthcare job seekers admitted to ghosting during the interview process within the last year. This is a drastic increase from the previous year, when just 16% owned up to dropping out of the hiring process without notice.
We dug deeper, asking this group why they opted out of continuing to interview with these companies. The top five reasons the candidates ghost are as follows:
- Lack of communication and transparency from the company
- The hiring process was taking too long
- The company seeming disorganized and unprepared
- No longer being interested in the role once they learned more about it
- Recruiter not getting back to an application fast enough
Looking at these reasons, there is a silver lining to be found — nearly all of these causes are within your control! Read on to learn more about what you can do at your facility to curb candidate ghosting.
Four ways to manage candidate ghosting
There are four primary tactics you can use to reduce the amount of ghosting you experience during your hiring process. While these strategies won’t guarantee that you’ll never have a no call, no show interview again, implementing these methods will ensure that you provide a great hiring experience and thus up the odds that candidates will remain engaged throughout the entire process.
1. Reevaluate your process
Your first order of business will be to reevaluate your current process. You’re going to identify your weaknesses so you can make a plan on improving them. Look specifically for areas that are slowing the hiring process down — are there any stages that are clunky or that could be sped up? Ask yourself how you can reduce the average amount of time that occurs between a candidate’s initial application and when they’re extended an offer letter.
In order to be able to determine your average time-to-hire, you need access to HR analytics and insights. Most applicant tracking systems (ATSs) offer this data for an extra price, so be sure to ask your provider if you can get access to this information. Knowing your average time-to-hire is invaluable in this hiring market if you want to impact your ability to move faster, keep top talent engaged, and minimize ghosting.
2. Use text messages to your advantage
If you’re still using email to contact applicants, you’re behind the times. The majority of respondents (58%) to our recent study indicated that they’re more likely to check their text messages before their email inbox. Building on that, over half (56%) agreed that it is much easier to answer a text than it is an email. In fact, 91% of those survey takers stated that they’d be willing to text with recruiters if it sped up the hiring process — which is good news for employers like you! Speed is of the essence here; we know job seekers will ghost if you’re taking too long, so finding ways to cut a few days off of your hiring process lowers the risk of losing top candidates.
3. Automate steps where you can
Next up in HR advancements is the automation aspect. There are several ways you can implement automation in your hiring process to reduce time-to-hire, keep top talent engaged, and ultimately curb ghosting. As soon as a candidate submits their application, you can use automated candidate communication to confirm that you received it and outline the next steps. You could even use automated candidate communication to request information that is missing from an application and enroll new hires in your employee referral program.
Beyond candidate communication, you could also use automation to qualify applicants before your team even speaks to them. With automated screeners, you can determine if candidates have the necessary skills, qualifications, and more. By using “knock out” questions, you can eliminate applicants from your hiring process who weren’t quite the right fit for the position while saving your team time. For those who would like to move forward with, you can set up an interview scheduler that syncs with your hiring team’s calendars so candidates can easily pick a time for an interview that works best for both parties — all while removing the back and forth game of phone tag.
Take a peek inside the average healthcare job seeker’s mind with Hireology’s State of Healthcare Hiring Report 2023.
4. The ultimate time saver: all-in-one tools
An all-in-one tool that’s capable of performing (or at the very least, integrating with) necessary functionalities of your hiring process can be the ultimate time saver for your team. In the past, having a technology stack that integrated seamlessly was key, but with a modern ATS, you can house all of these key tasks and features in one central location.
As a facility, it is your responsibility to make sure that your employees have the correct qualifications and certifications before their first day on the job, but this can be time consuming and drawn out, which can contribute to ghosting. If you want to get new hires on the floor faster and start training them on your facility’s preferred methods of operating, making sure all of these tasks are completed before their first day is a necessity. When you have background checks, document collection, digital onboarding, and payroll in the same platform, you have all of the information you need in one centralized place so you can save your team’s time while eliminating the possibility of human error or oversight in the process.
The opposite of ghosting is engagement
In this hiring market, the opposite of a ghosting candidate is one that is engaged throughout the entire process. When you have the right functionality available, your team can help curb the amount of ghosted interviews that your facility experiences. With the talent pool shrinking, moving with urgency is a necessity.
Does your current ATS have what it takes to keep top talent engaged in your process? Let’s connect to show you the difference that Hireology, an all-in-one hiring and HR platform, can make at your facility.
