Candidate Experience

Lately, you are finding it difficult to onboard talented candidates. You notice a lot of candidates are dropping off at the job application stage, some have stopped replying to you after the interview, and some more have simply ghosted you, post rolling out an offer letter.

If this continues and promising talent keeps dropping out of your hiring process, you know the answer. It’s 2 words—candidate engagement.

Your candidate engagement strategies are not at par with what modern candidates will tolerate in hiring. Indeed, a recent report by Appcast shows that a whopping 92% of candidates do not complete filling out online applications. Now the burning question is why?

While the application flow and hiring life cycle are not as clunky as before and have improved over the years, they still make candidates jump through too many unnecessary hoops. Understandably, candidates look for quick, easy processes and if you can’t provide that, they will move on to someone who does.

Recruiters, how would you feel if we told you that it is possible to treat your candidates better? And to have:

• better candidate response rates
• increased candidate engagement in recruitment
• reduced ghosting from both ends
• fewer hiring managers breathing down your neck?

You’ve come to the right place. Let’s go!

Candidate experience vs. candidate engagement in recruitment

What is candidate engagement? And how is it different from candidate experience? While both these terms sound similar, candidate engagement is actually the subset of candidate experience. Both together make for a successful hiring strategy.

Candidate experience is how prospective candidates feel about an employer’s recruiting, hiring, and onboarding processes. Is it positive or negative? Was it memorable or frustrating? Did the candidate feel valued or neglected?

Candidate engagement is the process of communicating with your candidates across every single touchpoint in your recruitment journey. Application status, interview stages, real-time updates, feedback, interview prep, etc. If a recruiter takes care of the candidates, keeps them in the loop, and regularly communicates with them, how would the candidate feel? They would feel encouraged, supported, and seen.

Consequently, the candidate would leave with an unforgettable hiring experience!

Also read: 5 Reasons For Bad Candidate Experience In Tech Interviews

Why is candidate engagement important?

Candidate engagement can have a negative and direct impact on your company’s bottom line, if not taken seriously.

• If candidates feel undervalued or mistreated, the word will spread. Potential candidates will read those bad reviews and decide not to apply. Consequently, your employer branding will take a hit
• A badly structured application process will lead to greater drop-off rates and increase your time-to-hire metric
• Disengaged candidates make for disengaged employees leading to higher attrition rates

Now that you know the consequences of not treating your candidates right, head on to the next section on how to improve candidate engagement.

Tips to improve candidate engagement during the entire recruitment process

1. Simplify the application process

This goes without saying but the first thing to take care of is your application process. Is it long? Is it confusing? Why are candidates abandoning it midway through? Are there any technical glitches to make candidates drop off? Are there any unnecessary steps that could be cut out?

The easiest way to find out is to attempt filling out your own job posting and see what might deter a candidate from completing it.

2. Be clear and upfront about recruitment process details

Make sure you and your candidates are on the same page by setting clear expectations about your company’s hiring process. Provide a timeline for all the steps involved in the hiring lifecycle. In case of any potential roadblocks or delays like postponing a scheduled interview, let the candidate know.

For instance, Google updates its candidates with detailed information about what to expect in each stage of the interview process, and it also offers feedback and support throughout. This may come across as a simple thing that anybody would do to respect their candidates’ time but that is unfortunately not the case.

More importantly, hiring managers should consider if their candidate hiring process is inclusive and accessible to all. Is it easy for those with disabilities to participate in the selection? How best can you provide alternative solutions to help them take part?

Also read: How You Can Leverage Candidate Experience To Attract Top Talent

3. Don’t prolong the screening stage

If you take days to review new candidate applications, you risk the chance of skilled candidates being recruited by your competitors. In today’s digital age, it is strongly a candidate-driven market and lengthy technical screening processes only lead to your candidates shopping for quicker, better offers.

Use candidate engagement tools like advanced ATS platforms to recruit faster and keep your candidates interested in working for you. You can also craft personalized, time-saving experiences for your candidates, which helps in boosting candidate engagement to a large extent.

4. No ghostly activities…Follow through on promises

Do you feel a twinge of annoyance and desperation when a good-quality candidate doesn’t show up for an interview? That’s also how your candidate feels when you ghost them and do not provide timely feedback, important updates, etc. Two-way communication is key to providing a positive candidate experience.

If you say you will call them at a certain time, follow through on that. In case of any unforeseen delay, make sure to let them know. Respect your candidates’ time, give clear instructions for any assessments or tests, and be responsive to any questions they may have. You are halfway there to nurturing a healthy, trusting relationship with them.

Also read: 3 Ways For Recruiters To Deal With Professional Ghosting By Candidates

5. Use technology to make better hiring decisions

As an extension to screening candidates faster, allow technology to help you further shortlist candidates much more quickly. Invest in other contemporary tools akin to candidate engagement tools like online coding assessment tools and video interviewing platform for conducting interviews. This will enable you to provide a personalized experience and speed up the hiring process.

Coding assessment platforms like HackerEarth help recruiters and hiring managers screen the most talented candidates with ease. You get to make use of our rich library of 17,000+ questions across 900+ skills.

Remote coding interview platforms are designed keeping in mind a candidate’s experience. They come with a code editor, built-in code libraries, and simulate a realistic day on the job. Our online coding interview platform, FaceCode lets you easily set up, invite and conduct coding interviews on a collaborative, real-time code editor that automates your interview summaries.

6. Deliver hiring as an experience, not a run-of-the-mill process

Any good tech recruiter will know that rolling out the offer letter does not mark the end of the candidate hiring process. It is what comes after that is important. Laying the groundwork for long-term retention of your employees begins once the offer has been given.

Until the candidate has officially joined the company, you need to ramp up your candidate engagement strategies to ensure they do not jump ship. Be it AI-enabled onboarding systems to help new hires fill out paperwork quickly, or sharing useful welcome videos through online hiring platforms, infuse a level of excitement in your new hires!

Pro tip:

Always, always provide relevant and timely feedback, and thank the candidates for their time, even those who were not shortlisted. Also, ask your candidates for their feedback. Create a short survey and ask them to share their thoughts. Not only does this show you care about them but you will also gain valuable insights into your recruitment process and identify the gaps.

BONUS: 3 unique examples of how recruiters can continuously keep candidates engaged

1. Tailor candidate engagement strategies to specific personas – The Salesforce way

Candidate engagement cannot be one-size-fits-all. Just as copy/pasted job descriptions do more harm than good so do generic candidate engagement strategies. To truly connect with a diverse set of candidates, your strategy should be persona-focused. Tailor your communication and social media posts to target specific candidate personas.

Salesforce actively reaches out to underrepresented groups to encourage them to apply for job opportunities. Additionally, they partner with organizations such as the National Society of Black Engineers and the Hispanic Alliance for Career Enhancement to promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

It doesn’t end there. Salesforce also has numerous employee resource groups (ERGs) that provide support and resources for underrepresented groups within the company. This goes a long way in making employees feel like they really belong and leads to better retention rates. Moreover, these ERGs play a role in recruiting and hiring by helping to attract diverse candidates to the company.

Also read: Guide To Creating Candidate Personas For Tech Teams

2. Send newsletters to candidates – The HackerEarth example

As any B2B marketer would agree, we mainly rely on newsletters to capture the attention of clients by showing off the company’s products and services.

But it can also be a great way to get promising candidates (who may be looking for jobs or not) to think of applying to your company! Create your own talent community and work on keeping them engaged so that when the time comes to hire, you have a warm talent pool to fall back on.

Design and curate a newsletter specifically for candidates both active and passive. Send them regular updates on job opportunities, events, viral tech-related news, and relevant blogs.

We, at HackerEarth, take immense pride in our community newsletter, titled “In A Nutshell”, which is aimed at developers and coders. Recently, our newsletter saw a whopping open rate of 90% so believe me when I say, this is a proven way to connect with your candidates!

Want to stay in the orbit of “all things tech” and uncover hidden gems from the developer universe? Here’s where the magic happens 🙂

3. Love in the times of “VR tech”

Get creative with your hiring!

We all know, conducting a coding assessment is the go-to method of testing a candidate’s technical skills. It is mundane, it is routine, and it can be tedious.

But what if we told you it doesn’t have to be? A few good ways to do so are using gamification and virtual reality to assess your candidates and make it more enjoyable in the process.

• Take Deloitte, for instance. It uses virtual reality simulations to test candidates’ skills. The hiring team creates VR simulations of real-world scenarios that candidates may encounter in their roles and accordingly solve those challenges.
• Cisco makes use of gamification to assess candidates’ technical skills and problem-solving abilities. Their game-based hiring platform is called “Cisco Mind Games.” It sounds fun, right from the start!

You can use VR technology in more ways than just candidate screening. A fool-proof way of getting your candidates excited about working at your company is to let them in on what goes on behind the scenes! Give them a juicy taste of what it’s like.

• Amazon turns to virtual reality technology to provide candidates with an immersive tour of their fulfillment centers, giving them a glimpse into the company’s operations.
• So does Walmart. It even goes so far as to provide candidates with an interactive experience of what it’s like to work in Walmart stores with virtual reality simulations.
• PwC’s “career preview” program allows candidates to explore different roles and experience different scenarios through virtual reality. It truly makes for an immersive experience of what it’s like to work for the company.

Take your candidate engagement to the next level with VR tech. As tomorrow’s workforce is mainly Gen Z, who are rather tech-savvy, they will appreciate you doing so.

Also read: 6 Must-Track Candidate Experience Metrics To Hire Better

The way to your candidates’ hearts!

As a recruiter, ask yourself—what do you look for in a candidate’s application? Is it a clear and simple resume? Good communication skills? Timely responses to your emails? Joining the scheduled interview on time?

Now, let’s turn this on its head. You say you want a clear resume. Is your job posting clear or is it confusing? Does filling on the job application take up a lot of the candidate’s time? Is the candidate worrying about the next steps since they did not hear back from you? Did the interviewer make the candidate wait?

You see where I’m going with this. Treat your candidates the way you want to be treated—with care and respect. Invest in whole-hearted candidate engagement practices and you will leave them with a superlatively memorable experience.

Moreover, with all the examples of how candidate engagement looks when done right, we hope the path to your candidates’ hearts is a little clearer.

As always, happy hiring 🙂

Imagine this: You went to a restaurant for lunch.

There is a 30 min wait period and you decide to wait since you heard great things about their food.

After 45 minutes, you get a table but there is no waiter in sight to request a menu card.

A waiter finally comes up to you, looks disinterested in taking your order, and doesn’t even get you a water bottle.

You wait 20 more minutes after placing your order and decide you had enough. You get up and leave—without even tasting the food.

Now, the figurative restaurant is your job application process. If the process is slow, lengthy, and complicated, candidates will not have the patience to see it through.

If you as recruiters do not show an interest in them, keep them in the loop proactively, and nurture them, your candidates will go elsewhere for a job.

Moreover, even if your organization has a reputation as a great place to work, candidates will never find out because getting in itself is so problematic.

Good employer branding and robust corporate culture mean nothing if the candidate experience you provide is not up to the mark. It is a large part of your business and even if you are doing all the right things, there will always be improvements to be made.

By improving candidate experience, you can increase conversion rates and reduce cost per hire. The best way to do so is to collect and use candidate experience metrics and insights.

Use the data you gather to see how candidates interact with job postings, h ow they click through the application form, and what their profile looks like at different stages of the application process.

Shift your focus to improving your candidate experience! Let’s start with the basics and discuss how hiring metrics and insights can help create an awesome candidate experience.

Candidate experience metrics: Which are the most relevant?

#1 Time-to-hire

Time-to-hire is the length of time it takes to fill a vacancy. This is one of the most important candidate experience metrics because if you’re unable to fill positions quickly, you may be losing valuable resources in terms of productivity, morale, and revenue.

Time-to-hire is a metric that measures the average length of time it takes to fill an open position. You can measure this in days, weeks, or months, depending on your industry and how quickly you need to fill the vacancy.

For example, if you run a fast food restaurant with long lines of hungry customers waiting for their lunch orders and only one person is working the register while another employee is off sick with the flu, it would be important to find someone new as soon as possible.

If you can improve or make your time-to-hire metric quicker, you’ll be able to hire new employees faster. This will allow you to fill positions more quickly, increasing productivity and revenue.

Also read: Data-Driven Recruiting – All You Need To Know

#2 Interview-to-offer ratio

The next metric to track is the number of interviews it takes before you make an offer to a new employee. This is the number of interviews you conduct divided by the number of offers you make.

For example, if you conduct 10 interviews and hire only one new employee, your ratio is 10/1. This will help you determine whether your interview process is thorough enough or needs more work.

For example, if it takes, on average, three interviews for every hire in your company and there are only two people interviewing candidates at any given time, then you’re not going to be able to fill positions as fast as possible.

You can improve this by adding more interviewers or by training existing employees to conduct interviews. Once this metric is enhanced, your candidate experience will also improve because you can fill positions faster and more efficiently.

The speed at which you can fill a position is an important metric because it has a direct impact on your company’s bottom line. If you have to fill 10 positions and each position takes three months to fill, then that’s 30 months of lost productivity.

#3 Interview experience

This is a measure of how well you’ve trained your interviewers. You want to make sure that your interviewers are aware of their biases and that they work hard to eliminate them from the interview process. If an interviewer is biased against women, for example, this will show up in their interviews with female candidates. This is also an important candidate experience metrics.

Automated tools are a great way to reduce bias in the interview process. By using these tools, you can ensure that your interviews are more consistent and fair. Automated tools also help with candidate screening by allowing recruiters to quickly identify candidates who don’t meet the company’s requirements.

If you don’t have a structured interview process, it can be easy for bias to creep in. The best way to prevent this from happening is by hiring a professional recruiter who knows how to create a structured interview process that will help you identify the most qualified candidates.

Also read: 5 Steps To Create A Remote-First Candidate Experience In Recruitment

#4 Net promoter score (NPS)

NPS is another metric that can help enhance the candidate experience. It’s a simple question that you can ask at the end of an interview: “On a scale of 1-10, how likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague?”

The answer will give you insights into how your company is viewed by candidates. If your score is low, then there are areas where you must improve. You may need more training for interviewers or offer more information about what life at your company looks like.

On the other hand, a high NPS score doesn’t mean there’s no need for you to improve your candidate experience. It’s a good indicator that there are ways that you can make the process more seamless, and it will help you identify them. A LinkedIn study found that 78% of candidates say that their entire candidate experience is a clear indication of how a business values its employees.

For example, if many candidates say that they didn’t have all of their questions answered during the interview, then consider creating an FAQ page or providing more information about what life at your company looks like.

#5 Offer acceptance rate

A good offer acceptance rate is a strong indicator that candidates are satisfied with your interview process. If you have a low acceptance rate, then it’s likely that there are ways you could improve candidate experience.

For example, if many candidates didn’t feel like they had enough time to prepare for their interviews or weren’t sure what kind of questions they’d be asked, consider creating an FAQ page or providing more information about what life at your company looks like.

This metric is especially important to large companies that receive a lot of applications. It’s easy to ignore the candidates who aren’t right for your company, but if you want to improve the candidate experience, it’s important to find ways of making the process more personal.

For example, consider inviting applicants who were rejected back into the process as mentors or interviewers. You could also send them thank you notes and other forms of recognition for their efforts even though they weren’t selected. Remember, a study found that 73% of candidates say the job search is very stressful, so give it your best to make your candidate experience stress-free.

Also read: Joel Soucy’s Roadmap To Creating A Seamless Employee Experience

#6 Candidate drop-off

A bad candidate experience directly contributes to a high candidate drop-off rate. The candidate drop-off rate is the percentage of applicants who visited your career site but didn’t apply or those who abandoned filling out an application midway.

You’ll want to track this metric over time to see if it’s decreasing or increasing. If it’s going up, consider what you can do to keep candidates engaged and interested in applying for jobs with your company.

Make sure that your job listings are relevant and current, or create new ones based on feedback from applicants.

If your candidate drop-off rate is declining, you can celebrate this by highlighting the decrease in your recruiting efforts.

Expert tips for a memorable candidate experience

• Consider how the hire will fit in the company

When you begin efforts to improve your candidate experience, you must consider not only what the person will contribute to your organization but also how they will get along with existing employees.

Will this person be performing a specific function? If so, are there any metrics you can use to measure their performance? What is the salary range for this position? How important is it that we fill this vacancy quickly? Can we afford to take our time and find the perfect candidate?

Answer all these questions before you begin the search for your ideal hire.

Also read: Optimize Your Hiring Process With Recruitment Analytics

• Keep candidates well-informed

Make sure that your candidates know how their applications are doing. From the initial contact, until the current status of their application, your candidates should know where they are in the process. Use candidate relationship management software to keep your candidates well-informed.

Send a detailed offer letter that includes all pertinent information about the position to candidates. This can include salary, benefits, and other relevant details.

Give candidates a timeline of when they should expect to hear from the company. This will help them plan their lives around this new job opportunity, which is important to both parties involved.

If you need more time to make a decision about your candidates, be honest about it. This will help them move on with their lives as well as keep your company’s reputation intact.

• Adapt schedules to candidates’ needs

Schedule interviews and assessments so they match your candidates’ needs. For example, if you need to set up an interview with someone who works nights and weekends, do it during their off hours.

This will help keep everyone happy. Sometimes, the candidate can’t make it on time because of a sick child or some other emergency. Let them know that you understand and will reschedule for another day (or week). This can be advantageous to both parties. Because it shows that you care about their needs as well as the company’s needs.

You can effectively address these scheduling requirements by leveraging the efficiencies that HR technology tools offer. To ensure you get to use only the top platforms, ensure to check out the best HR software lists available in reputable review platforms.

• Ensure new hires’ eagerness to onboard

When it’s time for onboarding, make sure your new hire feels welcome and happy about joining the team. You can do this by creating an employee onboarding kit and sending a welcome email that includes the necessary information they need to get started. This could be the company’s mission statement, a list of benefits and perks, or even an overview of their role in the company.

This is the time to educate them on the company’s culture and values, as well as their role within it. It’s also an opportunity to show them what they can expect from you and your team. If they’re new to customer support, example scripts will help them get started quickly.

Be sure to go the extra mile to keep their enthusiasm high. Right from the time they learn they have been hired until they start their onboarding. If you can sustain this, your new hires will likely perform well in their work from day one onward.

• Job simulation

This is a great way to get your new hires ready for their first day of work. Job simulation helps them learn about their job and the tools they’ll use on it, as well as how it fits into the company’s operations. You can also use it to test how well they grasp procedures and policies.

Job simulations are a growing trend among employers, who view them as the most effective way to assess candidates’ abilities. With job simulations, you can replicate the conditions of real-world jobs. They can be used in a variety of roles, from help desk agents to marketers to technicians.

A job simulation can be as simple as walking them through their day with you. Or it could involve a more elaborate simulation that includes training materials and other tools.

Why candidate experience matters

Candidate experience is not just a part of the recruitment process; it’s a critical element that can significantly impact an organization’s ability to attract top talent. The way candidates perceive and interact with a company’s recruitment process can have far-reaching consequences.

The recruitment process is often the first interaction a candidate has with a company. A positive experience can enhance the company’s brand, while a negative one can tarnish it. In the age of social media and online reviews, candidates are quick to share their experiences, and these shared experiences can influence a company’s reputation.

A smooth and engaging candidate experience attracts top-quality candidates. Talented individuals have multiple options, and they tend to gravitate towards organizations that value and respect their time and efforts during the recruitment process.

Candidates who have a positive experience are more likely to accept job offers and remain with the company longer. A negative experience, on the other hand, can lead to declined offers and a higher turnover rate, which is costly for any organization.

The candidate experience is a reflection of a company’s culture and values. A respectful, transparent, and engaging process suggests a positive work environment, whereas a disorganized and impersonal process may indicate systemic issues within the organization.

In industries where competition for talent is fierce, the candidate experience can be a significant differentiator. Companies that invest in creating a positive candidate experience stand out and are more likely to attract the best talent.

Feedback from candidates can be invaluable in refining recruitment processes. Understanding where candidates face challenges or discomfort can help companies make necessary adjustments to improve efficiency and effectiveness.

Use candidate experience metrics to leave lasting impressions

There you have it! The key candidate experience metrics and insights that you must consider to help improve candidate experience.

You only get one chance to make a first impression. Working on enhancing the candidate experience is one way to do it.

It won’t be an overnight change, but if you stay consistent in your efforts, it will pay off.

You are likely to fall back on your recruitment process if you don’t use candidate relationship management software.

When you have the software integrated into your recruitment process, you can:

• send them company updates and messages to keep them engaged
• follow up with them when a hiring opportunity comes up, using tools like an Auto Dialer to automate timely call reminders and outreach.

In this article, we’ll share how candidate relationship management software can help you improve in these areas and strengthen your recruitment processes.

Let’s read.

What is candidate relationship management?

Candidate relationship management is the structured process of maintaining a healthy, positive relationship with active, passive, and former candidates that may not have worked out in the past but can be a suitable match in the future.

By keeping these candidates engaged, you can:

• educate them about your company
• get them interested in working with you

Let’s say, a candidate has been interviewed for the role of a web developer. The recruiter ensures to keep them updated. But, they fail to do so. The candidate is likely to assume they have been ghosted. Errr.

In such a scenario, send the candidate an apology/rejection message and feedback on why they were not hired. This helps them understand the key areas they need improvement in and creates a positive candidate experience.

For example, Airbnb rejects candidates via email and invites them to a feedback call. Candidates who pass certain stages before being rejected even get coupons to acknowledge their effort.

Importance of candidate relationship management

Candidate relationship management software fills jobs faster by connecting with current and future candidates through email marketing campaigns, recruiting event functionality, and job recommendation portals. Here are 3 ways why candidate relationship management is important:

Keeps the candidates engaged

When you have shortlisted the candidates to move to the next stage of the selection process, keep the candidates engaged with continuous communication.

Create a wider talent pool

With the recruitment CRM, you can collect the candidate’s information—their name, email address, CV, and other information. You can reach out to these candidates later when a new job role in the company opens up.

Track your talent pipeline

Do you have high-quality talent in your pipeline?As the talent market evolves, the need for skills evolves too. That’s when you need to keep track of your talent pipeline. With candidate relationship management software in place, you can check whether you have candidates in your talent pipeline or have exhausted the best talent.

4 ways candidate relationship management software can solidify recruitment process

Let’s understand how candidate relationship management software helps in improving talent sourcing in 5 different ways:

#1—Keep talent engaged throughout the recruitment lifecycle

A disengaged candidate experience leads to uninterested candidates.Candidates want to know whether their application is progressing or not. Here are some best practices to ensure timely candidate updates:

Respond faster

It is common for candidates to not receive replies to their messages, which triggers their actions. If you don’t respond to candidates’ messages or follow-up emails, they are likely to assume the job application isn’t progressing. Result? They’ll move on to apply to other companies.

The solution? Reply to their messages and emails within 48 hours.

Send updates

Let candidates know the status of their application.

• Is the application reviewed?
• Is it rejected?
• Is it moving forward?

Whatever the status of the application is, create a system that lets the candidates know about it.

For example,

Workello, a candidate relationship management tool, sent an automated email to the candidate telling them about the application’s status.

The email is short, and concise and directs the candidate to take the next steps. When the candidate applies for a job at Workello, the recruiter receives the notifications. On reviewing the application, the recruiter can either reject or approve the application.

Based on whether the recruiter approved or rejected the application, the candidate will receive an email (on behalf of the organization for which they applied).

Upon approval, they will receive an email with instructions for the next steps-for example, an invitation for a video interview or assessment.

Give specific instructions

When candidates get specific instructions from the candidate, they have better clarity on how to move forward with the application.

For example, when you post a job ad on job portals, don’t ask the candidate to attach their resume and cover letter. Ask them specific questions they can answer in their cover letter.

Several companies ask candidates to submit a video resume highlighting the specific questions the candidate needs to answer.

Also read: How to Keep Your Application Process Mobile Friendly?

Give them a hiring timeline

Candidates become disengaged during the recruitment process because of the time-consuming hiring process. By adding a hiring timeline, candidates have clear expectations of how long they need to wait before applying for another job role.

To create a hiring timeline:

• Determine an end date—Review the time taken to onboard past hires. Based on this, decide the timeline.
• Decide when to stop searching—Set a limit on how long you’ll accept new candidates.
• Schedule interviews—Set an ideal date range depending on how many candidates you want to interview.

Also read: How Your Tech Stack Can Help You Hire Top Talent

#2—Focus on active and passive candidates

A recruiting CRM stores information about active and passive candidates—their names, email addresses, the social channels they are active on, and notes of conversations you have had with them in the past.

By leveraging this information, you can reconnect with candidates and keep them engaged.

Active candidates

To maintain candidate relationship management with active candidates:

• Answer their queries. Clarify if they have any doubts about the job role or recruitment process, or while filling out the job application.
• Make it easily accessible for the candidates to reach out to you—via text messaging, calls, emails, or social platforms.
• Update them about their application’s progress at each step.
• Give them feedback after the interview is over. Either send it over email or invite the candidate for personalized video feedback.
• Stay in touch with them via email and social media, and let them know about new job opportunities.

Also read: Improving Candidate Experience During Remote Tech Hiring Interviews with FaceCode

Passive candidates

To keep passive candidates engaged:

• Connect with them on their social channels like LinkedIn and Twitter and interact with them. Engage with their content and start a conversation in the DMs.
• Encourage passive candidates to follow the company’s social channels—to get them to stay updated about the company’s events and know about the work the company is doing.
• Invite them to online webinars—to humanize your interaction with them and provide them with learning resources.

Doing this you can familiarize the candidate with your organization. Once done, communicate with them via email.

When a job role opens up in your organization, send them personalized emails:

• to let the candidate know about it
• to see if they are a good fit for the job

Here’s how Manan Shah, Co-founder of Recruiterflow reached out to a passive candidate with a personalized email sharing about the content writing role in their organization.

What worked: In the email, words like content writer and marketer, LinkedIn, and Contensify help the passive candidate understand the extensive research the person has done before reaching out to them.

They introduced their company and gave reasons why the candidate should work with them—an opportunity to learn and grow quickly. They closed the email with a question to make sure the candidate responded to the email.

How to implement: Before writing a personalized email to a passive candidate, do extensive research on the candidate and their expertise. Go to social channels they are active on, and read the work they do and have done in the past. Take notes and use these pointers while crafting your email.

Highlight:

• What does your company do?
• Why should the candidate accept your offer?
• Why should they work with your organization?

Weave in at least one factor into your email and end the email with a question.

To improve your relationship with passive candidates, stay in touch with them even if you haven’t hired them.

#3—Set up drip campaigns

The recruitment CRM helps you streamline the communication with the candidates with a series of automated recruitment emails.

A drip campaign is a series of touch-point emails delivered automatically to highly targeted prospects at predefined intervals. When you send these email campaigns to ideal candidates to keep them engaged with your organization, it is termed a recruitment drip campaign.

Here’s a recruitment drip campaign template provided by Dmytro Kondratiev, CEO and Legal Advisor at LLC Services.

Email 1: Introduction and Interest Check

Subject: Opportunities at Acme Corp

Hi [Candidate],

I hope this email finds you well. I came across your profile on LinkedIn. I’m impressed by your experience and skills in the [industry] field. I’m reaching out to see if you would be interested in exploring career opportunities at Acme Corp.

At Acme Corp, we are a leading [industry] company that is constantly innovating and looking for top talent to join our team. We offer a dynamic work environment, competitive salaries, and opportunities for growth and development.

Would you be open to discussing potential job opportunities at Acme Corp? I would love to learn more about your career goals and see if there might be a fit for you at our company.

Best regards, [Your Name]

Email 2: Follow-Up and Value Proposition

Subject: Acme Corp – A Great Place to Work

Hi [Candidate],

I wanted to follow up on the email I sent last week regarding potential job opportunities at Acme Corp. I hope you had a chance to review some of the information I shared about our company.

At Acme Corp, we pride ourselves on creating a positive and supportive work culture where our employees can thrive. In addition to competitive salaries and benefits, we offer a range of perks and benefits, including:

• Flexible work schedules
• Professional development opportunities
• Employee wellness programs
• Social and team-building events

We believe that our people are our most valuable asset, and we are committed to creating an environment where they can grow and succeed.

If you are still interested in exploring opportunities at Acme Corp, I would be happy to schedule a call to discuss this further. Let me know if this works for you, and we can set a date and time that is convenient for you.

Best regards, [Your Name]

Email 3: Final Follow-Up and Next Steps

Subject: Acme Corp – Let’s Talk

Hi [Candidate],

I’m reaching out one final time to see if you might be interested in discussing career opportunities at Acme Corp. We are always on the lookout for talented professionals like yourself, and I believe you would be a great fit for our team.

If you are still interested in learning more, I would be happy to schedule a call to discuss potential job openings and how your skills and experience might align with our company.

Please let me know if you are available to chat, and we can set a date and time that works for you. I look forward to connecting with you and discussing how Acme Corp can support your career goals.

#4—Integrate with social media

Your candidate relationship management software should integrate with multiple social media channels. When a potential candidate provides their email address, the CRM should be able to find social accounts created using the same email address. By looking at the candidate’s social media profile, recruiters can learn more about the candidate’s background, personality, and additional details making the hiring process simpler.

Take a look at this LinkedIn About section. When the recruiter scanned the candidate’s LinkedIn profile and read the About section, they found out about candidate’s career transition they made.

The profile highlights:

• industry—B2B SaaS
• work experience—writing social media copy, newsletters, e-books, and how-to guides

By studying these highlights, the recruiter understands whether the candidate is the right fit for the role or not.

Also download: The Social Recruiting Cheatsheet

The connecting dots

To make sure you yield the best results for your recruitment needs:

• Send drip campaigns to candidates.
• Integrate the candidate’s social media profile for social screening.
• Update the candidate on each stage of the recruitment process.
• Save additional conversation notes along with each candidate’s details to refer back to later.

Are you ready to streamline your recruitment process with candidate relationship management software? The time is now!

In 2025, the one thing on top of the mind of any tech organization should be aiming for happier employees. Happier employees are more productive and more likely to stay longer in their current jobs. You may argue that this has nothing to do with the bad candidate experience faced by developers who are not even your employees yet.

But it has everything to do with making a good impression on developers who may or may not become a part of your company, someday. The ramifications of providing a poor candidate experience during the hiring process will have a domino effect on your brand.

If you are known to treat potential candidates poorly, it will be a direct reflection on how you treat your employees, post recruitment. A bad candidate experience will damage your brand’s reputation within the developer ecosystem, word will spread, and soon enough, not many people will want to work with you.

As much as 83% of developers say that a negative interview experience can change their minds about a role or company that they previously liked. Seeing that tech interviews play a major part in being the deciding factor, let’s look at some of the areas that hamper candidate experience during the interview segment.

Recommended read: How You Can Leverage Candidate Experience To Attract Top Talent

Pitfalls most interviewers fall into during tech interviews leading to a bad candidate experience

Misleading job descriptions

Hurriedly copy-pasting job descriptions of similar roles serves to deter candidates from applying. They could be too vague, too generic, or unclear about what is required of the candidate for the job.

Also, simply using the bait and switch tactic by stuffing job descriptions with keywords can be misleading to the actual requirements of the role. Asking developers to solve questions related to A when the job description says you need skills related to B is not the correct way to assess them.

This could lead to mistrust among the developer community when it comes to interviewing with your company. You would ostensibly make a bad hire, which could be an expensive mistake to make.

Further Reading

It's time to fix those broken job postings. Download your copy of our CHECKLIST for writing job postings that actually work!

Not enough communication

Most candidates are kept in the dark about the progress of the interview. Be it the outcome, or what to expect next, developers are used to not receiving any kind of communication from recruiters. Ghosting your candidates or leaving them hanging occurs more often than you think.

In fact, a major peeve of candidates as stated by 40% of the respondents of HackerEarth’s Developer Survey 2021 is lack of feedback post-interview. Bad communication leads to broken interview processes and you do not want that.

Long, archaic interview processes

A complicated application form, unclear instructions, and no timely updates lead to a tedious tech interview process; they are also massive turn-offs for candidates. Filling out complex application forms results in 60% of job applicants quitting midway through as found by a CareerBuilder survey.

Recruiters miss out on setting timelines and expectations with potential hires, and the end result is an especially long-drawn-out interview process. You will lose talented developers to competitive organizations because a developer is not just going to sit around and wait. They are actively looking for suitable roles with different companies while you have an archaic hiring process in place that delays everything.

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Unprepared interview panel

Candidates put in a lot of time and effort preparing for the interview. Also, it is a widely-known fact, interviews are an anxiety-inducing experience. Imagine a candidate invested hours studying for an interview with your company that went awry because the interviewer or the panel of interviewers were not prepared?

Not knowing what skills the candidate possesses or what their resume says shows a clear lack of interest in the candidate. It leaves them feeling undervalued, which can affect their performance in the interview.

Poor technology used for interviewing

Asking candidates to write code on a piece of paper or a word processor is akin to asking someone to bake a cake without an oven. That is not what the real job looks like. Besides, such manual interviews leave a lot of room for error, bias, and unstandardized evaluation.

Coding interviews require appropriate interviewing tools that allow developers to code, compile, and debug while providing an objective assessment of each candidate. Poor technology can cause skilled candidates to either drop out of the running or fall through the cracks. And worse, this is simply a bad look for your company.

Recommended read: 5 Steps To Create A Positive Remote Interview Candidate Experience

Say NO to bad candidate experience

Don’t skimp on being prepared for the interview, the remote tech interviewing tools you use or the feedback you provide. 63% of job seekers will likely reject a job offer because of a bad candidate experience, and you definitely don’t want that.

The tech interview is the first chance candidates have to actually see you, hear you, and interact with you. Candidates spend a considerable amount of time and effort preparing for the interview process, which is more often than not a nerve-wracking experience. You, as a recruiter, owe it to them to take the interview just as seriously and make sure that they have a memorable candidate experience.

Hiring in the post-pandemic world is harder than ever. As recruiters, you would have already heard about the Great Resignation, and how tight the job market is. Given that this climate is unlikely to change anytime soon, recruiters still need a surefire way to sift through the clutter and find the right candidates. In such times, maybe it’s not a bad idea to go back to the drawing board and redefine ‘who’ you are looking for. Why? Because knowing your audience is a critical factor in any recruiting strategy, especially when it comes to tech. And we all know that the audience has changed in many ways since the Big C happened to our world. Also, writing down goals has been shown to be intrinsically linked with higher success rates, making you anywhere from 1.2 to 1.4 times more likely to accomplish said goals. So, if you are looking to hire the best and the brightest, writing it down in words (or candidate personas) could actually help you hire better. All on board? Let’s begin!

What is candidate persona?

A candidate persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal job candidate. It’s developed based on a combination of data and research, encapsulating the skills, experiences, motivations, and attributes of a person who’d be a perfect fit for a specific role within your organization. Much like customer personas help marketers identify their target audience, candidate personas aid recruiters in streamlining their hiring process, ensuring that their efforts are directed towards attracting, identifying, and engaging the most suitable talent for the role.

By understanding and defining a candidate persona, companies can craft more effective job descriptions, target their recruitment advertising more accurately, and enhance the overall hiring experience to appeal to their ideal candidates.

Characteristics to include when creating candidate personas

Demographics: This includes details like age, gender, educational background, and experience level. While these aren’t definitive indicators of a candidate’s fit, they can offer general guidance about where to find potential candidates or what life stage they might be in.

Skillset: Detail the technical and soft skills that the ideal candidate would possess. This not only includes job-specific skills but also transferable skills that might be beneficial to the role.

Professional background: Outline the industries, roles, or companies where the candidate might have previously worked. This provides context to their experience and familiarity with certain work environments.

Motivations: Understand what drives the candidate—whether it’s career growth, work-life balance, a passion for a particular kind of project, or values alignment with a company’s mission.

Career goals: Highlight the aspirations or long-term objectives that the ideal candidate might have, helping to align the role’s potential with their personal and professional growth.

Cultural fit: Describe the cultural attributes or company values that resonate with the ideal candidate. This could relate to collaborative tendencies, innovation, work ethics, or other cultural facets.

Challenges & pain points: Identify common challenges or issues that might dissuade them from joining or staying in a role. This could be things like limited growth opportunities, lack of challenging projects, or a preference for remote work.

Preferred communication channels: Recognize where your ideal candidates spend their time, whether it’s on professional networks like LinkedIn, job boards, industry-specific forums, or even at offline events.

Personality traits: Delve into the softer aspects, like whether they are self-starters, how they handle feedback, their preferred work environment, or their teamwork style.

Step by Step Guide To Creating Candidate Personas

Step 1: Understanding Developer Candidate Personas

Marketing and sales divisions have been using personas to define their ideal buyer for a very long time, especially in strategies like B2B lead generation. This approach helps them understand their audience better and tailor their messaging for maximum impact. Developer personas are an off-shoot of this oft-used strategy; with a few tweaks and changes to make it engineering-friendly. Building developer candidate personas lets recruiters visualize a fictional representation of the ideal candidate for each role. Creating personas lets recruiters get into the mindset of the candidate and tailor the hiring process from the applicant’s viewpoint. This has a direct effect on enhancing the candidate experience. Mostly though, creating developer personas is a great way to understand the ‘why’, ‘who’, ‘what’, and ‘where’ of tech hiring.

Sidebar The credit for creating ‘personas’ to identify customers rests with Alan Cooper, a noted software developer. He created ‘user personas’ to predict how different users would interact with software. Angus Jenkinson, a professor of integrated marketing, then took the concept and applied it to marketing. His technique was adopted by OglivyWorldWide and became the gold standard for defining buyer personas as we know them now.

Step 2: Why We Need Candidate Personas

Designing and understanding developer candidate personas helps you do the following:

Create tailor-made JDs: As noted above, once you understand your candidate’s mindset, it becomes easier to tailor your hiring process to attract the right talent. Beginning with the job description.

Optimize recruitment marketing and sourcing: Understanding who you are targeting for a given role will give you better insight into where you can source them. You can curate your recruitment marketing strategies better in this instance.

Integrate diversity hiring initiatives into the process: Building developer personas also helps you identify gaps in diversity hiring, and allows you to build relevant initiatives into your process.

Improve recruitment metrics: Data says that recruiters spend a minimum of 13 hours per week sourcing for a single role. When you have your developer personas mapped out, you can significantly reduce the time spent in sourcing. Over time, you will also see a marked improvement in other recruitment metrics like Time To Hire, Quality of Hire, Offer Acceptance Rate, and so on.

Read More: How Engineering Managers Can Help Recruiters Hire Better

Step 3: Creating A Developer Candidate Persona

The research While you may think you know what a tech role entails, have you ever sat down and done any research to understand what exactly it is your team needs in the next hire to boost performance? Begin by sitting down with relevant stakeholders and learn the details of the role you are hiring for. Understand what a workday looks like for this specific employee, and then add it to your JD. Remember to ask questions about the following:

• • Who is our ideal candidate?
  • Where does this person operate?
  • Why would they want to work for our organization?
  • What kind of experience are we hiring for?
  • What will this employee’s typical workday look like?
  • Are there any specific skills this candidate should have? In addition, what are the core skills and the adjacent skills required for this role?
  • Are there any geographical limitations for hiring?
  • Is it necessary that this candidate have an online presence? If yes, then where should I be looking?
  • Is there a list of competitor employers?

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The skill set It is very important to understand the skill set required for any tech role. We said it above, but it begs repetition. There are some core skills that every developer must possess. Problem-solving, critical thinking, communication skills, and proficiency in the core languages like JAVA and C++ come to mind. There are adjacent skills which a developer can easily pick up on the job, provided they are adaptable and happy to learn new things. Mastering ten different languages is a prime example. It is NOT necessary that your ‘ideal candidate’ be a pro at everything. Your JD should NOT be a dump of requirements that no human can possibly fulfill. Instead, break it down into Must-Haves and Can-Learns and use this to define your personas.

The behavior When hiring someone for a role, recruiters often look at the longevity of the candidate in their company. This can be predicted (to a certain extent) by charting an ideal employee’s behavior traits. Some of these might overlap with the research you did earlier, but it’s never bad to be doubly sure! When adding these subjective elements to your developer persona, ask these questions:

• • What motivated them to apply for this role?
  • Do they have goals this role will help fulfill?
  • How do they best communicate with others?
  • What kind of work environment is best for their work style?
  • What’s most important to them (i.e., salary and benefits)?
  • What’s less important to them (something that often varies by generation)?
  • What do they want from their employer (their strengths, brand recognition)?

The PERSONA Yes! After all that research and brainstorming, it is now time to build your candidate’s persona. Below is a template for defining your candidate persona. You may not be able to answer all of these questions, but the more you answer the better you can adjust your recruiting campaigns and efforts. Click Here For Free Template

And There You Have It!

Once you get the first few personas down, creating additional personas for each new opening will become second nature. You can even get creative with the process. The more candidate personas you are able to define, the easier it will become to navigate the tech recruiting landscape. Personas help not just in terms of bettering your sourcing efforts, but also in shaping other top-of-funnel recruiting activities like advertising, employer branding, awareness, and candidate engagement. We use this persona-creating technique for all our in-house hires, and we can vouch for its effectiveness! We hope this guide helps you create developer candidate personas for your tech team, too. Happy hiring.