Applicants seek more, not less, information about a company. According to John Harrington of Phenom, a central hub offering FAQs, information about the hiring manager, and what to expect in an interview represent a logical next step in elevating the candidate experience.
My work is at the intersection of transformative technologies and aligning people with their career passion. So it should come as no surprise that I am often asked what the next “wow†feature looks like. How is it going to rock the entire hiring process?Â
Key Developments Driving Change in the Talent Market
We need to look at three key developments in the talent market that will drive the pace of change in talent acquisition.
- Candidates want more transparency and visibility in the hiring process: Despite advancements, fog continues to be an issue for people who need help submitting resumes. They are left wondering: did they receive my resume? Why is it taking this company so long to get back to me? If employers aren’t keeping candidates in the loop on the next steps and hiring status, hiring managers fail to bring the best people on board.
- Recruiters need to drive better hiring outcomes and need new and innovative techniques to engage and better prepare candidates: Suppose this process needs to be more intuitive and simple. In that case, candidates will gravitate elsewhere if it is challenging to find information about a company, get answers to FAQs, receive personalized job recommendations, or know what to expect in an interview.
- Talent marketers require better control over employer branding: Candidates with great experience due to equity and transparency in the application/interview process are more likely to share positive feedback. You could have the best employer branding in the world. Still, when candidates leave your site to find information about your recruiting processes, your recruitment marketers lose control of the narrative.
These challenges dictate that the next big thing talent teams can aspire to a centralized candidate hub that is personalized to the job seeker and where they currently stand in the process. It would be a place where candidates can access critical information related to their application, as well as the next steps in the hiring process pretty much anything and everything a candidate could ever want to know about the current status of their application, learn more about the company, and prepare for the interview.
See More: 5 Employer Branding Tools You Should Use
It’s Still Incredibly Difficult to Find Workers
With millions of posted job vacancies in the United States alone combined with a national talent shortage, employers are competing with one another for a shrinking pool of talent to grow their companies. In fact, nearly three million fewer Americans are participating in the labor force today compared to February 2020, according to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce reportOpens a new window .
That puts a premium on making a good first impression on anyone who visits a career site. Wowing job seekers can only happen today with intelligence and automation that provide fast, intuitive, personalized experiences. A one-stop, centralized hub for candidates is a natural next step in the evolution.
While an increasing number of Fortune 500 companies recognize that value proposition, a significant gap exists between the solutions available and what companies have implemented.
For example, last year, most large organizations didn’t present job recommendations based on browsing history, use chatbots, or recommend jobs based on an applicant’s profile. That’s a missed opportunity.
However, for companies that implement AI in their hiring practices, the benefits have been nothing short of incredible, with some posting triple-digit percentage increases in their ability to attract, engage and convert candidates. Those success stories include:
- A well-known restaurant chain registered over 12,000 candidates through its career site and talent email campaigns in less than a month, resulting in more than 2,000 same-day offers to candidates and over 1,300 hires in the same week.
- A widely known, brand-name retail chain hired 7,000 people in just two weeks using an AI-powered chatbot, career site, CRM, and video assessments to automate routine hiring practices. Time to hire dropped dramatically from weeks to less than a day.
- A large healthcare company saw a 10% increase in nursing hires by speeding up communications with candidates through a conversational chatbot and SMS messages.
- A big financial institution added eight times more candidates to its talent community by creating a dynamic, hyper-personalized career site combined with targeted recruitment marketing efforts.
- A major telecommunications provider increased career site traffic by 220% and increased completed applications by 700% with intelligent tools that provided a more personalized experience for candidates.
The list goes on.
See More: Four Ways to Transform the Hiring Processes with AI
Building On That Success
An applicant hears the news they have been waiting for – an interview! The first question that usually comes to mind is, “What are the next steps?†That’s where a central hub can help. The applicant clicks on a date for the interview and, in the same place, will see who they are interviewing with along with personal background information to familiarize them better. Maybe the hiring manager likes sailing. There’s a topic to kick off the interview with!
Within that same hub is useful information about the company and its mission. Need to reschedule an interview at the last minute? Not a problem. It can be done there too. So can signing a formal offer letter.Â
That’s where the next stage of candidate experience is going – candidates find and choose the right job faster and come better prepared and ready for interviews. Employers, meanwhile, can deliver an unmistakable statement about the power of their brand with a career site that does more – much more – than a static list of job vacancies.
Keeping candidates in the loop is often cited as one of the biggest frustrations of the job search process. It doesn’t have to be like that, not when AI-powered experiences eliminate the guesswork and keep people engaged and excited from applying for a role to the day they show up for new employee orientation.
Have you explored the transformative potential of centralized candidate hubs for seamless, personalized interviews? What was your experience? Share your thoughts with us on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!
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