Recruitment engagement done well will lead to more jobs and better placements.
But many staffing firms and agencies we speak to, big or small, don’t have a rock-solid strategy in place.
Even though teams are tasked with reaching out to hundreds of contacts each week, best practices haven’t been established leading to inefficient workflows and inconsistent results.
What is recruitment engagement?
In today’s competitive market, it is important to establish relationships with prospects quickly.
This requires human interaction, building rapport and taking care of the candidate and client experience.
Enter recruitment engagement, a process that helps to humanize the hiring process by facilitating a two-way conversation between the recruiter and the target individual.
Utilizing multiple channels, recruitment engagement means continuously communicating with contacts via a series of touchpoints across email, LinkedIn, phone and more.
This multi-channel approach combined with hyper-personalized messaging helps to drive better responses and build long-standing relationships.
What are the benefits of doing it well?
Businesses that prioritize their recruitment engagement strategies will gain a competitive edge in their chosen market.
Why? Well, recruitment is a people business. Target individuals want to feel like a human and not a number. They want an experience that is personal to them, they definitely don’t want to be forgotten about and most importantly, they want to feel valued.
If this is the reality of your outreach you will benefit from a more robust pipeline to support your sourcing and business development, as well as:
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Higher response rates
This part’s pretty simple. If you choose to optimize the way that you engage with contacts, you will improve your outreach and drive better results.
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Better connections
By facilitating two-way conversations where you increase your engagement with candidates and clients, you will naturally build better, human relationships.
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Improved brand reputation
The way that you communicate with prospects directly impacts your brand. If you provide a positive, engaging experience you will improve your reputation and increase the likelihood of referrals.
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Better experiences
By refining your engagement strategy you will provide better recruitment experiences. This has become particularly important if you wish to stand out from the competition and earn repeat business.
What does a robust recruitment engagement process look like?
We know that achieving a quality, targeted approach whilst maintaining the high volume outreach that businesses need to drive growth can be a challenge.
However, there are some sure-fire methods teams can use to improve their outreach to drive better engagement, such as:
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Hyper-personalized messages
Dig deeper when tailoring messaging to your target individual. Do a bit of background research by looking at their LinkedIn to see if there is anything of value you could comment on.
Whether it’s a great recommendation or a recent post they have written, there will be plenty of information you can use to your advantage.
Remember, the whole point of your outreach is to get engagement. By engaging with something that is unique or personal to them, you are half way there.
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Using multiple channels
These days everyone uses multiple channels to communicate. Everyone will have their favorite, so by spreading your messaging across LinkedIn, email, phone and more, you are boosting your chances of getting a reply.
You are also working your way into the target individual’s subconscious so that after the third, fourth or fifth touchpoint they are aware of your name, brand and purpose.
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Providing 4-5 touchpoints
One message is simply not enough. It’s important to create a series of tailored steps in your outreach to provide multiple opportunities for engagement.
Many contacts won’t reply after the first, second or even the third message. Consistency and persistency is key if you’d like to drive better results.
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Never missing a follow-up
Granted, manually keeping track of follow-ups can be impossible when reaching out to such a high number of people.
But they are incredibly important. Nobody likes being forgotten about or even worse, ignored, and it can be highly detrimental to your reputation.
Tools do exist that can support this part of the process so that your team is able to maintain a consistent level of communication and provide excellent experiences.
Automating follow-ups will also create more time for teams to spend on optimizing their recruitment engagement.
