8 Ways To Improve Candidate Joining Ratios

1. Treat employees like your customers

Employees, new or old, prospective or alumni, must be treated like your customers. Gone are the days when employers would treat employees like cogs in a machine. Instead the pyramid has flipped. The employees irrespective of level, entry level or experienced, must be treated fairly and equally. Must be treated a couple notches above special.
Employees are your brand ambassadors.

All their needs, ranging from career growth options, Competitive compensation, wellbeing programs, healthcare needs, building a community of belongingness must be met.

2. Relationship with the Candidate

It is not enough to extend an offer, alone. Recruiters and company representatives must engage regularly with the candidate. Lest, there could arise a risk of distraction towards competitors.

Relationship with the candidate would mean engaging more about the company. It could be about the perks, update in policies, giving a pre-joining experience, sharing leaders vision and how the new joinees add to it and so on. The advantage of this brings in a sense of belongingness. Reflecting that the candidate is a valued member to the company.

3. Train Your Recruiters

The company could be great, but if the recruitment team is not good, the joining ratios could be undesirably low. Recruiters are the face of the company. And hence, it is crucial that recruiters are trained to demonstrate a balance of soft skills, company values, experience and recruiting skills.

Often, we see that recruiters have great recruiting skills but are not up to the mark in their soft skills, which often could tip off candidates.

4. Know your competition

Keeping a tab on where you stand against your competition, is a mandate. The worst case scenario would be, competitors poaching on your candidates. It is a competitive culture and competition could be prying on your candidates. And possibly, give them a better offer in terms of compensation or better work culture or any other aspect, that is lacking.

Matching up to industry standards and keeping up with the benchmarks is a must. Candidates these days, are known for researching on Google and getting details about what the company offers. It could be on aspects of compensation, work culture, etc. Platforms such as Glassdoor and others are known for providing such information with full transparency.

Candidates compare, analyse and assess on what is best for them. Hence, it is vital that your company is close to the market benchmarks and not give an opportunity to competition.

5. Candidate Engagement, proactively

Research has confirmed that humans have a limited span of attention like that of a goldfish. Goldfish attention span is either 5 seconds or 9 seconds, we see lots of discussions around that. The conclusive point here is that we are easily distracted and have less attention span. There is an excess of information and excess of choices or opportunities. Plus we have to deal with the shiny object syndrome, which is rampant. We are in the creator digital economy and are more empowered to make as many choices as we want.

It is in this situation, that competitors could be at an advantage to attract our potential candidates. And perhaps offer even more than what was in the original offer from your company.

In such a situation, staying engaged with candidates is a major prerequisite.
It is important to handhold candidates, talk to them often, take feedback and start involving them in company related activities, as much as possible.

An ideal solution is to leverage Candidate engagement programs that Acengage offers. Candidate engagement services are designed to handhold candidates, engage, look for disengagement signs and report back to the recruiters, until the date of joining is complete.

6. Be empathetic

We are aware on how empathy is topping the charts as a foremost employee need. Agreed that compensation, job role description, career progression options are needed to attract candidates. But in the long term, they alone, do not aid in retention efforts. We have seen that work culture and empathy in work space is in demand.

Employees want to be seen as more than just as an employee. They want to be cared for, appreciated, have a need to belong, add value, and to be recognised from time to time. This is something that can be met from the very start.
We are in a time and space where work and personal life lines are blurry. Hence, the priority on wellbeing of employees and their families is a topic of discussion in boardrooms.

Recruiters, Managers who interview can show empathy and establish a good rapport with candidates. It is important to have natural conversations to have a connect with the candidate.

7. Release the offer soon

One of the crucial phases where companies tend to lose candidates is when a verbal conversation occurred between the recruiter and the candidate, virtually. The terms have been discussed and agreed upon. But the next step is delayed. And that is of releasing the offer letter and encouraging acknowledgement and offer acceptance.

Recruiters and hiring leaders must have quick turnaround time, to release the offer to the desired candidate. If not, any gap that is extended could lead the candidate to attend other interviews and accept offers from other companies. And this is a situation that is within the control of the company and hence, must be steered in favour of the company by releasing the offer soon.

8. Pre-joining office visit and interaction with the team

Engage candidates and invite them to visit the office premises. If the work mode is hybrid, show them their desks. Introduce them to their teams and their team leads.

Have them interact with leaders and let them know their goals and how these goals add to the company objectives.

Capture their attention. Motivate them with the different career paths and options within the company. This will help candidates envision their growth and career opportunities, that they can map out, long term.
Keep them involved and invested in, from the start.

The top 8 ways to improve joining ratios cover a broad spectrum of candidate engagement. No one approach is more important than the other. Each approach has proactive engagement etched on it. And well planned frameworks make the basis for implementing them. However, the efforts to improve joining ratios must begin even before the process of hiring has started. Yet, must be continued, after the candidate joins and becomes an employee.

Because engagement is not only a continuous part of the work culture but also, a key element in the company branding. It’s like hiring the right talent to write a compelling story for your company’s success. Just as you’d want my essay writer to craft a top-notch essay for your academic needs, you need the right candidates to shape your company’s narrative and contribute to its growth.