It can be difficult to define the criteria of a quality candidate experience. The answers will change depending on which recruiters and hiring managers you ask. But there are commonalities among the practices of the best businesses—the industry leaders with sought-after employer brands where everyone wants to work.

In our last post, we covered how to stand out when sourcing, so today we’re going to focus on how to engage candidates from start to finish. And be sure to check out, The Future of Frontline Recruitment, our foundational guide to high-volume hiring, to learn how revamp your hiring strategy and recruit in record time.

Read on for a sneak peek and download the full guide to gain access to best practices and lessons learned from Emi’s own world-class customers. So join the future of frontline recruitment, and let’s jump in!

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The Missing Puzzle Piece: Hiring With Heart
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Every recruiting tool out there will claim to help you hire better people, faster. But speed and efficiency alone aren’t enough if your business is facing a “leaky bucket problem” and suffers from high turnover.

Talent acquisition and retention are equally important, so your recruiting tech stack must solve for both quantity (how many candidates you can reach) and quality (how successful they’ll be in their roles).

Technology won’t make hiring managers more considerate or understanding of the candidate’s experience, but tech is essential to practicing empathy. When job seekers have numerous options on where to work, prioritizing putting them first gives you a competitive advantage. 

Here’s what to keep in mind when building a more empathetic candidate experience.
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For Candidates

Hiring with heart means personalizing each interaction and serving as a guide along the recruiting process. After all, with the right tools at your disposal, you can act as the candidate’s personal assistant, from answering their FAQs to sending calendar reminders.

Other core components you need to increase candidate satisfaction and strengthen your employer brand include the ability to communicate easily and on-demand. Modern recruiting automation solutions will not only offer chatbots via SMS and messaging apps, but also provide multi-lingual support and algorithmic screening to reduce bias.‍

When you’re hiring with empathy, you can speak your candidate’s language on all fronts.

For Recruiters and Hiring Managers

Every company wants to engage candidate with a quality experience, but too often recruiters and hiring managers are distracted by high-cost, low-value tactics. With the right tools, you can streamline the entire hiring process and remove headaches for everyone involved. 

Decentralize and scale your hiring strategy by engaging your future frontline workers where both candidates and managers are—on their smartphones. Leading solutions can automatically screen and evaluate candidates, coordinate 24/7 communication, schedule interviews virtually and in-person across job site, and even assign site locations that align best with candidates’ commute times and preferences.

One point that isn’t discussed enough is how empathy is especially crucial when job seekers are faced with rejection. Candidates deserve to be kept in the loop on the status of their application—even when they aren’t selected for a role—so let technology take the reins on all communication. After all, someone you decline for one position may be perfect for another in the future.

Success Story: Sigma

A global leader in the food and beverage industry, Sigma has a broad portfolio of over 50 brands in the categories of dairy and packaged meats, including Oscar Mayer and Yoplait. Because they sourced all candidates offline via local newspapers and billboards, little of their hiring process for hundreds of distribution centers was digitized.

This meant that no pre-screening occurred and candidates suffered up to three hours in waiting rooms due to a lack of interview coordination. With Emi, Sigma can now integrate with online job boards and social networks, as well as access offline sourcing with QR codes on flyers and distribution trucks.

Today, candidates are engaged 24/7 on their messaging app of choice, pre-screened for all facilities and assigned the best positions for their needs.
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Results:

• Shortened time to hire by 30%
• 20% reduction in turnover
• 4.75/5 candidate satisfaction
  
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“We didn’t sacrifice the candidate experience despite efficiencies. The candidate’s application experience improved. They rate the experience 4.7/5.” ~ Javier Lozano, Talent Acquisition Manager at Sigma

Empathetic Candidate Experiences With Emi

Hiring with heart doesn’t just magically happen. Download our full guide to high-volume hiring for a deep-dive on how to attract, engage and onboard employees with empathy.

And if this guide piques your interest and you’d like to learn how to put the frontline at the forefront of your hiring strategy, please reach out to the team at Emi and request a demo.