Earlier this year Clinch and Talent Board –who share the goal of empowering talent teams for the next phase of talent acquisition –conducted a global survey of 350 recruiters and talent acquisition/HR professionals. The collaborative research report that resulted showcases the strategies leading organizations are using to build high quality candidate pipelines in 2022
Kevin Grossman, President at Talent Board, and Kerry Gilliam, VP of Marketing at Clinch, teamed up to share key findings of the report in a webinar a short time ago. Here’s what they discussed.
The most effective sourcing channels
Did you know different sourcing channels have different levels of effectiveness? Gilliam framed the conversation by sharing candidate conversion data through various sourcing channels. For example, social media requires 67 applications to result in one successful hire. Comparatively, job boards require 36 applications for one hire.
Gilliam explained those numbers drop drastically when we start to examine channels where a relationship is already established. For example, it takes four applications within internal talent pools to hire one person. And when using talent pipelines —that’s pre-existing talent relationships —it takes only 2 applications to equal one hire.
Realizing the high number of activities that go into attracting and sourcing quality candidates, Clinch and Talent Board wanted to better understand the activities, tactics, and technologies they’re using to attract and engage new, high-quality candidates in 2022.
From the research, recruiters identified their top attraction and sourcing challenges:
Specifically related to the biggest challenge – Candidates accepting other offers, Gilliam was able to support this with a statistic from Lighthouse research: two out of three workers would continue to consider other job offers even after accepting an offer. This begs the question: How can teams continue to engage candidates after they accept a position?
The answer is simple: utilize employee generated content (EGC) to allow candidates to interact with current employees and gain buy-in to the organization.
Coca-Cola Europacific Partners engaged candidates even after they accepted their job offer through a combination of EGC and direct communication with employees. By leveraging their CRM to automate text and email communications, Coca-Cola was able to keep candidates excited and engaged with the process.
While candidates may hesitate to ask a hiring manager or recruiter certain questions, they can feel empowered to ask employees anonymous questions through the Clinch suite. The most common questions surrounded topics like: role flexibility, expected number of working hours, how realistic and achievable goals and benchmarking are in day-to-day roles.
Here is just one example of candidate asking questions directly to brand ambassadors, and strengthening the candidate relationship.
Gilliam shared the importance of having a strong career site with content that is current and authentic. Based on a previous report by Clinch, 57% of respondents reported that candidates of color, women, and other historically marginalized candidates, chose not to apply after visiting an organization’s career site. This further clarified that no matter what stage of recruitment a candidate is in, the career site is a vital recruitment tool.
Gilliam shared some recommendations to ensure career sites are optimized including:
- Make sure the messaging and photos are authentic – do not use stock photos
- Let candidates engage directly with employees
- Own your company culture, be proud of it, and be sure it comes through on the career site
These are just a few suggestions.
The Talent Board found that companies with above average candidate experience ratings have more information available on everyday life, career development and pathway opportunities, as well as people and diversity.
Grossman shared that those companies have a 50% higher net promoter score on point of research pre-application. It’s important to note that the top “want to know” varies by industry. Breakdowns can be found in the report.
Gilliam shared the example of Toast’s carer site, a point of sale technology platform. Toast uses Clinch to activate their world-class talent attraction strategy. Noelle Holdsworth, Senior Manager of Employer Brand at Toast said:
“We’re sharing with jobseekers who we are, what we offer, and what kind of impact they can have. We will be able to create more transparent conversations with potential candidates about the full picture of life at Toast.”
The Toast team is able to edit pages, create blogs, and keep Toast branding consistent —all without having to write a line of code or rely on IT. This has put the ownership of their career site back in the hands of the TA team.
What are organizations doing to engage talent?
When asked which talent attraction and engagement activities they used, the webinar audience responded widely with “job boards” and “LinkedIn”. This generally aligned with data found in the report. However, in the 2022 research report the number one answer respondents gave was “employee referrals”. Research also shows that if a candidate has a positive recruitment experience – even if they aren’t hired – they will continue to make referrals.
When polled about proactive outbound sourcing activities, attendees reported “LinkedIn messaging” and “sourcing via internal and external databases” to be their top strategies.
Gilliam and Grossman also highlighted a growing outbound sourcing activity – text-based outreach. Grossman shared these messages have a nearly 100% open rate. As email outreach becomes harder, both companies and candidates are embracing text engagement. The benefits are clear: when implementing candidate communications via text, teams can be more proactive by segmenting CRM databases to run separate campaigns for targeted talent pools.
The final question asked of the audience was, “how do proactive sourcing strategies positively impact your organization?” Respondents relayed that the quality of applicants and quality of hire had risen. The report had similar findings, with hiring manager satisfaction rate also at the top of the list. Especially for tech talent, a short time to hire is vital to ensure top talent stays engaged.
The importance of employer brand awareness
Gilliam highlighted how important it was to establish employer brand awareness early in the recruitment funnel. Giving the example of Equinix, a tech company working to convert career site visitors into applicants, Gilliam shared how automation plays a key role in upholding brand awareness. Equinix leverages automation to connect past candidates to talent communities, job alerts and referral opportunities. Of those who joined the Equinix talent community, 50% signed up for job alerts. By driving qualified leads to specific roles and nurturing talent communities, Equinix is achieving real results.
In closing:
The importance of proactive sourcing strategies and recruiting technologies can’t be emphasized enough. By being authentic and transparent about your employer brand, and implementing technologies like recruitment marketing platforms, candidate relationship management systems, and EGC platforms, your team can act with greater knowledge, speed, accuracy, and efficiency. This will have a true impact on hiring success.
