Candidate Relationship Management

Candidate Relationship Management

Your organization likely has a customer relationship management process in place. I’ll bet you have access to a PowerPoint presentation or two that talks about the importance of customer relationship management with your sales and success teams. But do you have a candidate relationship management strategy and do you know why it’s essential to your hiring process?

Proper candidate relationship management is one of the most important success factors recruiting marketing has. When it comes to candidate relationship management, it’s more than just sending an email to schedule an interview or extending an offer letter. You want your candidates to feel welcome even before they’ve come on board your team, so creating a dialogue between your candidates and HR managers is essential. But it’s easier said than done, especially without a candidate relationship management tool. 

So how should you maintain communication with your applicants? What’s the best way to stay organized? How often should you contact your candidates? This blog will answer these and other burning questions about candidate relationship management, as well as offer insight into great softwares that make the entire hiring process go smoothly. Read on to learn more about the importance of candidate relationship management and how to master it. 

What is candidate relationship management?

You may be wondering what is candidate relationship management or what is candidate management? The answer is simple: it’s all about keeping your candidates engaged throughout the hiring process by developing a relationship and continuing to nurture it. This is often done through frequent candidate communication and follow-up, and a candidate relationship management system can help to streamline the process and keep you organized. 

In order to really connect with candidates throughout the hiring process, you have to put in more effort than simply providing the next steps in the process and sending an automated email. You should be checking in regularly on their job search, alerting them of any changes to your recruitment process, and filling them in on what to expect as they move through the hiring process. It’s intimidating going through an interview, so having someone continually reaching out to you to make sure you know your time is valued creates a great candidate experience. 

A great candidate relationship management system can also track documents submitted by applicants, keep the hiring process organized, and allow hiring managers and HR team members to rate interviews in one centralized system. 

If you don’t currently have a candidate management system in place, it’s a good idea to consider getting one at your organization. You don’t have to opt for a stand-alone system but rather can improve your overall hiring efforts with an all-in-one option. As we go more in-depth into what a candidate management system is capable of, you’ll be able to see what your organization’s needs are and what type of software would best support your company. 

Candidate management system

When selecting a candidate management system, you should look for a platform that improves your time to hire as well as your candidate experience, because while you want to remain in contact with your applicants, you don’t want to spend all of your time doing so. Look for candidate management systems (CMS) that offer in-platform texting, email, and calling. That means no matter what avenue your applicants prefer to communicate through, you’ll be able to meet their needs and make their experience stand out. Additionally, text messaging can increase your time to hire by up to eight days, so it’s not a bad idea to enlist this type of communication. 

Free candidate management systems may slow down your overall process. Unfortunately, many platforms advertised as free are clunky, hold hidden fees, or have contracts that make switching platforms a nightmare. So while free software options may sound appealing, you’re risking a lot just by trying it out. Invest your time and money into a system that won’t create chaos on your HR team. Look for a cost-effective solution that prioritizes speed and candidate experience, and integrates with your other softwares already in-house. 

Don’t be fooled by advertising that claims to offer an all-in-one system without seeing a demo, either. Many platforms and softwares claim to have all-in-one capabilities, but few are able to actually do all that they say they can. Carefully vet each platform before making a purchase so you don’t have to switch softwares again and waste hours and hours of administrative time. 

One last consideration when choosing a candidate management system is the support team that works with the software. This will truly distinguish good platforms from great platforms because you’ll have someone to help you along as you learn the software, as well as answer questions along the way if you ever run into trouble. 

Candidate management in recruitment

You should be measuring the success of your candidate engagement and entire hiring process to make sure that you’re staff is adhering to procedures and processes and candidates are receiving the great experience you hope to provide. Some candidate relationship management success factors include:

• The amount of time it takes your team to respond to applicants once they’ve applied
• The amount of time it takes to schedule a candidate for an interview
• The response time following an interview
• Your overall time to hire (the time from application submission to a signed offer letter)
• How long a job is posted for

These and more analytics can be tracked in a great candidate management platform. Hireology lets you see these numbers across locations and teams, as well as in regard to individual managers, so you can streamline your hiring process and provide a positive candidate experience company-wide. 

Candidate management in recruitment requires consistency, so by monitoring these metrics, you’ll be able to make improvements to your process where necessary. 

Candidate management tips

When you consider what it takes to run an effective hiring process, following these candidate management tips can come in handy, because you’ve got enough to worry about. 

Here are some candidate management tips to follow when recruiting: 

1. Always engage with candidates before interviews and provide all necessary information
2. Ask candidates what their preferred communication channel is and use that as often as possible when engaging
3. Have a single member of your HR team do the follow-up communications so that a relationship can be established
4. Try to follow up immediately after all interviews for candidates that you’re especially excited about. This lets them know they are in demand.
5. Don’t be afraid to tell a candidate that they are a top contender. It means a lot to hear that you’re doing well in the interview process and it could cause the candidate to forgo other offers in order to work for your organization. 
6. Keep all candidate documents organized and labeled so that your other team members can easily reference them.
7. Don’t forget to follow up with candidates that aren’t quite the right fit — they may be great for another role in the future. And providing a good candidate experience can be the difference between a positive review and a scathing one. 

These candidate relationship management examples will help you keep your hiring process moving while still ensuring that you’re connecting with top applicants and giving all candidates a great experience. 

Candidate relationship management best practices

It takes more than a text message or two to engage with candidates and build a relationship that actually puts your organization a step above the rest. Some candidate relationship management best practices include: 

• Rate all candidates using your candidate relationship management platform so that your other HR team members know whether or not a candidate will be moving on to the next round.
• Take notes to let your team members know what you thought of each candidate. Some platforms have integrated interview questions so you can take notes on each individual question. 
• Personalize communication as much as possible and give feedback to applicants you don’t choose to move forward. This will go a long way for the candidate experience because it shows that you value their time, even if they weren’t selected. 
• Provide honest feedback to applicants that you really liked but weren’t exactly the right fit.
• Continue to communicate with candidates throughout the process, and ask if they are in the final stages with other companies so that you can continue to check in on their interest in the role. 
• Give a timeline to each candidate so they can anticipate communication and process length. There’s nothing worse than waiting days or weeks to hear back without any indication of what’s to come. 

Your relationship with candidates matters. It makes people want to work for you, increases your chance for employee referrals, and will allow you to better serve your customers as you’ll have a team that knows they’re valued and is excited to come to work each day. If you’re searching for a candidate relationship management platform that exceeds candidate expectations and can expedite your hiring process, request a demo with us at Hireology to see our platform in action.