When I work with companies as an executive recruiter, I advise them on how they can improve their recruiting and hiring process by mapping different parts of the candidate journey, and how to make an impact through critical candidate touchpoints.
Candidate Journey Selection Touchpoint: The Job Description
Candidates in tech fields are savvy and mobile. They are not strangers to job search and job change. ISACA’s Tech Workforce 2020 survey found that 70 percent of their respondents (more than 3,500 members participated in the survey) had changed jobs within the last two years. Additionally, 39 percent of respondents expect to change jobs within two years.
In-demand technology professionals are watching the job market and paying close attention to the messaging and branding put forward by potential employers. Given this, job descriptions have become a critical touchpoint at the beginning of the candidate journey.
Surprisingly, most companies still write lousy job descriptions. Descriptions are written usually from the perspective of the hiring manager and HR department. As such, job descriptions are loaded with sketchy role outlines, requirements, and hiring manager wish-list skillsets. Very little verbiage is actually geared toward piquing candidate interest.
To win talent, companies have to write job descriptions that speak to what they offer and why their job, their culture, their mission is one worthy of the candidate’s engagement.
Candidate Journey Interview and Hiring Touchpoint: Messaging and Communication
A sparkling job description is just the beginning of the messaging and candidate engagement. During the interview and offer process, hiring managers, team members and HR partners must make good on the story started in the job description. They have to concretize it and bring it to life. In this way, they stand a stronger chance of winning in a candidate tight market.
Once the candidate has been interviewed, the critical touchpoint is the follow-up after the interview and during the offer process.
Time and time again, I see companies that I work with as an executive recruiter let candidates sit and stew after interviews. The hiring manager is busy, trying to get work done, maybe fitting in additional interviews. HR may or may not be on the ball with communicating feedback from the hiring manager and team about the interviews. An offer may be going through a lengthy approval process.
While complaining about candidate scarcity, hiring managers and HR often go radio silent with candidates during this time. This is a monumental mistake because, in the meantime, that hot candidate is responding to emails from other worthy organizations, while wondering if they are ever going to hear back on what they thought was a good interview and a potential offer.
The risk is not only of losing the candidate, but also of creating or perpetuating word on the street that the company is a less-than-gracious communicator, and probably not really interested in hiring, but just window-shopping.
While this article is mostly geared to hiring managers, I want to add a point that will help candidates with a question that comes up very often – that is, when should you be proactive and follow up on an interview? What to do and when to do it depends on who you met with, the tone of the conversation, and the timing of your follow-up. Let’s say that HR has been a key player in the process and a particular HR person you met with told you that you “would likely be hearing from us in about a week.” A week has now come and gone. Sending a well-written note, that is positive in tone, saying that you are still interested in the role, and look forward to hearing from them, is a good move. You may or may not get an email back; it would be wise not to expect a reply. You have communicated interest, and that is as much as you can do at this point. Trying to push their process forward is not in your best interest.
If you met with a hiring manager who gave you a business card and invited you to circle back with follow-up questions, writing a week or so after the interview to reiterate your interest and to ask an interesting follow-up question involving a strategic element of the job, or even offering news about a project you are working on that would be of interest to the hiring manager, can be an excellent next step. Hopefully you will get a gracious reply – within a week. Don’t expect an instant response; managers are busy. If you don’t hear back at all, that’s of interest – and potentially a red flag about the hiring manager’s communication style or interest, but not always. There can be a lot of extenuating circumstances, so best not to jump to conclusions.
With this advice to candidates, back to candidate communication touchpoints for hiring managers: Smart managers reach out with updates during the entire process (as needed) and reply to interview follow-ups from candidates. Savvy HR partners do the same. An email is often to keep candidates warm during the phone screen or first-round interview phase of a search. A call to a high-potential candidate, or the candidate waiting for the offer, is golden.
Here’s the take-home: We all know that hiring is a process with a number of steps. Candidate touchpoints during the process are often left out of the hiring calculus. Skilled hiring managers and their HR partners create a framework or methodology for the candidate touchpoints during the process and follow it with rigor. In this way, they assure themselves the highest probability of a positive hiring outcome in a competitive market.