Missed talent? How to reroute talent to maintain the candidate journey and improve the candidate experience.
The candidate journey is a process in which a job seeker will experience during their job search and hiring lifecycle. It is generally considered that the candidate journey occurs within seven different stages:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Interest
- Application
- Selection
- Hire
- Onboarding
Awareness – The candidate becomes known to a job vacancy, potentially through a job board or your careers page
Consideration – What does the candidate know about your company and what are their brand perceptions?
Interest – If their perception is positive the candidate will feel greater impel to apply. They may email your team to ask any role questions prior to application.
Application – The candidate takes the plunge and will apply for the role.
Selection – Your selection process determines whether the candidate was a fit or not.
Hire – Successful job matching applicants undertake an interview and chosen candidate(s) are offered the job role.
Onboarding – Post application stage includes the onboarding of new employees and integrating them into their role and company.
Seems straightforward, right? Mapping out the candidate journey is crucial in building a strong candidate experience. To ensure their needs are met during the recruitment process and they are satisfied with their experience (whether they got the job or not).
When the candidate journey ends
The candidate journey will come to a halt when their application is unsuccessful. In most cases, this is due to the applicant not having the right skills or experience. They could be underqualified or even overqualified, not possess the desired length of experience or just generally not a good fit for the role.
Rerouting the candidate journey
In most cases, once a candidate’s application is rejected, or their interview was unsuccessful – they’re journey ends and it’s back to the job market. To begin their search again and look for new opportunities with potentially different employers.
It becomes difficult as an employer to keep track of past applicants and deliver the promise of ‘keeping a candidate’s details on file’.
There are lots of resumes to store, keep track of and review when new job vacancies arise.
Sometimes it just feels easier to begin a brand-new sourcing attempt to look for new talent rather than reconsider previous applicants.
However, doing so greatly increases the risk of missed talent.
How to reroute
To reroute the candidate journey, consider these different factors first.
- Organisation size
- The number of live job vacancies
- Average applicant intake
For organisations who experience high volume job application intake, they will most benefit from recruitment rerouting automation, such as:
Automated candidate database search and sourcing
Automated technology completes the process of searching through a historic candidate database. When a new job vacancy arises recruiting technology will automatically search and match applicants who have the right skills and experience to the job criteria.
To improve the candidate experience, a rejected applicant will continue their journey if presented with a new opportunity. Through reconsideration, it is possible to maintain their interest and employer brand investment.
Automated talent pipelining
An increase in irrelevant job applications does not have to mean the end of the candidate journey. Reroute applicants to new opportunities. Their skills may not match their original intended role but this doesn’t mean they should be disregarded for other and more suited positions.
Talent pipeline automation provides a second chance for applicants. It works by automatically matching them against all open job vacancies within the hiring organisation to determine possible job fits.
As companies often see that 75% of applicants for a given role aren’t actually qualified to do it, it highlights the opportunity to maximise the talent and funnel these applicants to more suited opportunities.
Why you should reroute
Automation allows job seekers to continue their candidate journey. It brings truth to ‘keeping details on file’ and presents better fit opportunities to those ‘silver medal’ candidates. There is great value in reconsidering these applicants because it presents an opportunity to improve the candidate experience and take advantage of the fact that they have already expressed an interest in working for the company.
Arguably this can be more effective than beginning a brand new search for talent because it requires less time and recruiting resources to start over the hiring process and in turn candidate journey.
