How Recruiters Can Optimize Applicant Engagement

In this article, we are highlighting actionable applicant engagement best practices for recruitment along with funnel optimization tips.

In recruitment, we know applicant engagement is important. But how to do it efficiently (and effectively)? Read the secret sauce to optimization here.

What does your current process look like for your company and recruiters? Do you have a process? How often are you engaging with clients and candidates?

Were sharing a blog series all about optimizing each step of the recruitment funnel and process, beginning with posting jobs all the way through onboarding and continued placement. Make sure to check out our first two posts in the series about optimizing your Job Posting and Candidate Sourcing processes.

Now that youve optimized your job post and have begun sourcing candidates, it’s time to focus on your applicant engagement.

How to Optimize (Make It Better) Applicant Engagement

Step 1: Automate Candidate Assessment for Engagement

You cant engage and decipher until you have all the details. After sourcing a candidate (or 20), your first step should be getting their information into your applicant tracking system with what we like to call a candidate profile to enable easy filtering and search functions.

Most people would agree that data entry is necessary but not the task they want to spend time on especially recruiters. You want to fill your job quickly with the most qualified candidate.

But, again, this data is necessary, so it needs to be entered. Even more cumbersome in this process is entering data when resumes are all formatted differently. What a headache!

At Tracker, we look at each step in the recruiting process to see what software features would be most supportive for recruiters to save time.

Resume Parsing is one of those features.

Forget hand typing. Resume parsing continually works behind the scenes to build out candidate profiles from applicant resumes.

Regardless of formatting (or even if its scanned!), our intelligent resume parsing, powered by Daxtra, will automatically extract all personal details and history to create a candidate profile. You can even extract photos for a more personalized profile!

Apart from reducing recruiter time dealing with data entry, Resume Parsing also assists another important and time-saving applicant feature.

That feature is AI Ranking.

It may seem straightforward for the system to take candidates and quickly rank them by skill sets, etc. based on their candidate profile. Tracker takes ranking to another level by also factoring in their history within the system.

You may have a candidate that checks all the boxes for the skillset needed, but if they have poor placement history, that needs to be accounted for.

So Tracker dissects not only every aspect of the candidates profile — including education, skills, employment history and skills — but also the applicants engagement history in Tracker such as previous placements, consistency, interviews, etc.

Consider Trackers AI Ranking as another way to assure you are moving forward with the most qualified candidates.

We also recommend using Custom Web Forms.

Your process should include sending out a qualification survey to applicants and potential candidates. Its a great way to answer some of those unknown questions surrounding a specific job that may not be listed on a resume and help you continue to filter and rank applicants.

Use integrated Custom Web Forms to send and collect live information directly back into Tracker. For candidate engagement, use this in an automated new applicant sequence to gather qualification information and other preferences. The best part is all data collected automatically flows back into the candidate record, so you can search on it later. #fullcircle

Tracker’s Custom Web Forms are great for candidate and client surveys, general candidate registration, resume application, generic leads, reference requests, and more.

Even better, you can send secure, legally binding compliant documents using this feature and our eSignature integration.

Key Features & Time-Savers:

  1. Resume Parsing
  2. AI Ranking
  3. Robust Candidate Search
  4. Skills Profiling
  5. Integrated Web Forms

Sourcing qualified candidates for different job opportunities. Tracker has helped with logging information and seeking candidates on specific technical terms.” – Tracker User

Step 2: Engage Candidates with Ease

Engagement is vital to your long-term business success and growth. From clients to candidates, clear, concise, and consistent communication is important for new, referral, and repeat business.

Make your messages clear, concise and consistent.

Is your message clear with what you are asking/sharing/telling? Does it make sense? Make sure your message is easily understood so there arent any misinterpretations.

It doesnt need to be a novel. Make sure your communication is direct and to-the-point with all the vital and necessary information, while also not sounding like a robot.

How often are you engaging with your candidates and clients? Not everything needs to be communicated right away, but make sure you have a calendar and establish when each client and candidate will receive communication. You can use our handy Task Boards to assure the team understands who is communicating and when.

Those are really the basics of good communication and engagement strategies. But, how to take to the next level and really optimize your candidate engagement?

Automate and personalize applicant communications.

Sequences in our marketing solutions can assist you in delivering the above quickly and efficiently. Create customized email, text and workflow sequences that are personalized to each recipient, yet can be sent out in bulk.

It’s not too good to be true.

Best of all, because Tracker is a truly integrated recruitment software, all of your records can be linked and used in your marketing; No worrying about one software not talking to the another software.

A Use Case for Applicant Engagement.

Start by creating a sequence for incoming applicant. You can customize using dynamic or merge fields for job details, source of application, applicant info, and more.

We recommend a series of touch points that begins with sending out a “thank you for applying” email that confirms the job details and what the applicant can expect next. You can follow that email up with a text message as well as a series of other emails and workflows, like a link to a qualification survey, or even links to interview tips and other content from your firm’s blog.

Include Digital Marketing Engagement.

Digital marketing and engaging active and prospective candidates online should be on every staffing firm’s to-do list.

With Tracker, our team has worked hard to create a product with real integrations that help solve your biggest applicant and candidate engagement challenges.  Ideally, with any software, you should be able to hook your website to your ATS to your social media to your job boards and any where else you live online.

Tracker accomplishes this with our Jobs+ Website Integration. With this service, we build and optimize the job posting microsite on your website. This built-in technology will automatically optimize job postings, distribute jobs to other jobs boards as well as your social media properties, and send candidates automated job alert emails.

Automated candidate engagement in one spot, made easy.

A Summary of Candidate Engagement with Tracker.

Tracker offers hundreds of innovative features to support your recruitment team and enhance applicant engagement. Our team is experienced in the recruiting and staffing industry and we understand the process. We’ve lived it. That’s why we’ve developed features that support and enhance every step of the the recruitment funnel to keep your recruiters focused on the most important tasks at hand finding and placing great candidates.

Key Features & Time-Savers:

  1. New Applicant Sequence (aka Drip Campaign)
  2. Dynamic and Personalized Communications
  3. Relevant and Timely Content
  4. Surveys and Custom Web Forms
  5. Digital Marketing Integration

“We are able to reach out to clients, prospective clients and candidates in much easier fashion, with higher touch points and better results. The data and KPI’s in Tracker are also fantastic.” – Eric E.

Quick tip

Dont leave your candidates in the dark! Candidate experience is vital to future business, regardless of whether the applicant was placed for the job or not. Make sure youre in communication with your candidates along every step of the process so they understand whats going on and what to expect. This can easily be set up as a sequence (workflow) to send reminders and notes out to potential candidates via email and text. This builds trust and will grow your business.

Building Better Applicant Engagement Practices for Recruitment

Tracker offers intuitive and time-saving features to support your recruitment team in sourcing the most qualified candidates efficiently. Our multitude of candidate sourcing features allow you and your team to work smarter, not harder for all around success. 

Want to see how much time our Applicant Engagement features can save your recruitment team? Contact us for a free demo of these features along with recruitment workflow optimization insight. 👇

Stay tuned in this blog series for our next Recruitment Funnel Optimization post featuring a deeper dive on the Candidate Submission and Interview process. Subscribe here to be alerted to future how to articles, best practices and other job recruiting tips.

About Tracker

Tracker helps recruiting and staffing firms build better processes, workflows, and revenue every day. Over the last 15+ years, we have developed Tracker into a leading cloud-based Recruitment, Applicant Tracking and CRM Software provider serving staffing and recruiting firms across the globe.

Contact us today to receive a free demo of our productivity-boosting features.

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