The online hiring landscape has changed incredibly over the last several years, and the recent pandemic had an additional impact that nobody could have predicted.

This has led to a massive shift in hiring tactics, moving away from traditional methods of pushing ads and listings into the feeds of those who we feel might be the best fit, and moving to a framework that involves recruiting leads and incentivizing candidates to apply.

Changing to a “pull” mode from a distinct “push” mode is the core of the philosophy behind candidate nurturing, and it can change the way you onboard and retain your top talent.

What is Candidate Nurturing?

Candidate nurturing is the term for blending both “push” and “pull” methods of recruiting leads for hire. It stems from the marketing practice of lead nurturing, where potential or future potential leads are not just attracted to the brand or business but are actively engaged over time, leading to higher conversion rates for candidates across all channels.

Common problems that candidate nurturing can sort out

Inherent Problem Of The Hiring Process	How Candidate Nurturing Can Help
Lengthy Time To Hire	Candidate nurturing can drastically reduce the time to hire once the candidate enters the application pipeline from the talent pool.
Mismatching Hires & Brand Culture	The talent pool your business builds will be actively interested in your business and its success, allowing selection from hires that are enthusiastic about the brand.
Better Overall Candidate Experience	Being able to communicate with and engage potential talent allows easier personalization, as well as speed and transparency when applying.

How to nurture candidates?

A crucial component to making sure you can nurture talent easily is to make sure you have adequate nurturing tools available to you. Nurturing can be versatile and take many different forms, but there are three tactics that are both incredibly common and incredibly effective, automated emails, industry or hiring events and using social media to your advantage. Let’s take a look.

Nurturing candidates by Automated Emails

One of the easiest and least effort-intensive ways to create nurturing is to leverage automated nurture campaigns that send out emails based on various actions. One example could be for a candidate to be sent an automated email when they submit an application, as a confirmation that the application was received, or that their information has been passed to interview scheduling, who they should expect a call from.

Another great use of email automation is for promoting additional content to someone who just paid for or otherwise ungated other content. The main difference between nurturing and “drip” campaigns is that nurture campaigns depend on personalization rather than timed communications.

Nurturing candidates by Industry Events

Attending industry events as a business is important, but to become a true authority you need to host industry or even hiring events. This is where you will be able to build your talent pool from face-to-face interactions and handshakes. While the process can yield amazing nurturing results, event marketing as it’s known is often an expensive and challenging way to build name recognition and draw in candidates.

The upsides of these events are significant, though. Your organization can engage in heavy brand promotion and can engage candidates who are in very different stages of the recruitment or hiring process simultaneously. Additionally, you can play the numbers game and meet with far more candidates in a day than otherwise, and you can give on-the-spot interviews to those you feel should be on the team as soon as possible.

Nurturing candidates by Social Media Engagement

Social media engagement has become one of the overall most important ways to keep your candidates and customers engaged and up to date on your brand. It allows companies an effortless way to keep everyone updated, and in the loop while inside your pipeline. It’s vital that your brand build a strong digital presence across the primary social media networks as well as other potential channels.

You should be prepared to become very familiar with the biggest social channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to make sure your brand is established. Then you can move on to other platforms like TikTok, LinkedIn, and even Glassdoor.

Candidate Nurturing process

There are several steps to creating an effective candidate nurturing process. It begins with knowing what you’re looking for, which can be more challenging than it seems. Then, you need to understand the journey each candidate will take in the recruiting funnel. After that, the biggest challenge is planning content that will engage the candidates you want, even if they are not actively seeking employment.

Create Your Ideal Candidate Personas

Just like any qualified marketing department will create customer personas to help them determine who their target audience is, your company should be doing the same with the talent pool you hope to draw from. These are fictional “applicants” that you want to attract so that you can become familiar with what drives their application behavior and can cater to that behavior.

Know Your Recruiting Funnel

During the nurturing process, your candidates should be segmented based on what stage they occupy in the recruiting funnel. The common stages include awareness, consideration, interest, and hiring.

Engage Active & Passive Job Seekers

While you want to fill open positions with the talent you need now, you also want to make sure you keep your passive job seekers engaged. They won’t want listings forced on them, but if they are interested enough in your brand and you draw them in enough, they’ll find openings and apply for them automatically.

Boulo Solutions Can Streamline Your Entire Hiring Process

From the first like or share on social media to submitting an application and beginning the interview process, Boulo Solutions is one of the national experts in recruiting and staffing. Our talent is suited to full-time, part-time, and even contract jobs.

We are driven to help growing companies find and retain the top talent they need to remain competitive, while also ensuring that the talent you find is compatible with your overall culture. Our specialty is working with talented candidates who simply need more flexibility in their employment, such as those in caregiver situations. 

References

• ZenHr. (2022). Metrics to Master Your Recruitment Funnel. ZenHr. Retrieved from https://assets.ctfassets.net/r18zc2po1g62/1QNW1V0mWQFS5e2wASRu0X/305083a7b41d1f875bd5f024ace397e2/Metrics_to_Master_Your_Recruitment_Funnel.pdf