The most valuable resource you have is your talent pool. Your collection of candidates, and your quality of relationships with them, is essential to the success of your career and business. Good communication with your candidates can help you develop these relationships.
The most valuable resource you have is your talent pool. Your collection of candidates is essential to the success of your career and business. While it is important for you as a staffing or recruiting company to attract the top candidates, it is equally as important that you frequently and effectively communicate with your talent pool.
Candidate communication plays a critical role in identifying, developing, and sustaining long-term relationships with your candidates. Establishing a candidate communication process makes it easier for you to interact with candidates, whether or not they are actively looking to make a career move. However, the ultimate goal of candidate communication is to stop your top talent from leaving your staffing and recruiting company and moving elsewhere; it helps you improve candidate retention so you know you have a candidate to recommend when a client needs one.
Improving relationships with candidates will benefit your company in many ways. First, by keeping candidates up-to-date on what positions you are receiving, what current opportunities you have available, and what training or certification courses they may be eligible to attend, you are more likely to retain more loyal candidates and thus make more placements. The stronger the bond you develop with your candidates, the less likely they will be to consider working with another staffing company. Another benefit to maintaining open communication with candidates is that they are a wonderful source of industry information. The better a recruiter's bond with a candidate, the more likely he or she will be able to get quality candidate references, client leads, and industry knowledge.
While finding an innovative means for maintaining candidate communication is always recommended, there are several time-tested methods you can implement to keep in touch with your talent pool.
The most common and cost-effective way to keep in touch with candidates is to send a weekly or monthly email newsletter This newsletter should contain any upcoming training or certification courses of interest to candidates, success stories, industry employment breakdowns and trends, job forecasts, resume tips, and information pertinent to finding a job. Keeping the newsletter short, informative, and relative gives your candidates something to look forward to reading, and thus establishes your company as a valuable resource of information. It also helps to show candidates that you are interested in not only your clients' success but also your placements' success.
Another candidate communication method staffing is "buddy" assignment. This is when each candidate receives a designated recruiter to contact. The role of the contact person is to call or email their assigned candidates, even the ones already placed by your company, on a weekly or monthly basis. Doing this effectively serves two purposes. The first purpose is to establish a form of open and direct communication with your candidates, one that may have been lacking prior. The second is to gauge your candidates' needs, concerns, and current career situation. It essentially give the candidate a personal contact at your firm so he or she feels more connected to the entire recruitment process. This not only shows you care about finding them a good temporary or permanent fit but also it provides you with feedback on how to improve as a recruiter. In addition, it gives recruiters an opportunity to become specialists in staffing certain position types or within certain industries because it allows them to get more deeply involved within certain segments.
Some staffing and recruiting companies set up phone numbers candidates can call for weekly or daily job opportunities. Some even email opportunities to interested candidates. When sending email or snail mail job opportunities to candidates, it is important to segment the opportunities by industry, location, or job type so candidates don't have to wade through all of your company's open positions. For example, if a candidate is a graphic designer, he or she is sent an email when you need to make placements for either graphic designers or in certain industries such as advertising and publishing. When sending these emails, you can even include an incentive to get candidates to refer other candidates with whom they have worked. This is a great way to increase your talent pool of quality, relevant candidates. If it is easier or more practical for your company, you can send this email out on a weekly basis with all new and currently open job opportunities listed for your candidates' convenience—just make sure they email is segmented by industry or position type so the candidates can get right to the openings that are relevant to them.
Practicing effective candidate communication is the key for sustaining long-term relationships with your candidates. Those companies who can create a reputation for treating their candidates well via simple communication will have an easier time placing qualified candidates in the right positions in the future.
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