Talent is the lifeblood of your company, but there’s not enough of it. Chances are you’re already feeling the impact of a declining workforce, not to mention mounting pressure to communicate in new ways that will appeal to Millennial and Gen Z candidates. And it’s not getting any easier. According to the 2017 Recruiter Nation Survey, 89% of recruiters think the hunt for skilled talent will get more competitive.
The heat is on, and only those companies ready to shift focus from managing requisitions to creating remarkable candidate journeys will come out ahead.
But how do you get there?
We think the answer is Continuous Candidate Engagement™ (CCE)—a candidate-centric recruiting model encompassing both technology solutions and strategies to continuously engage candidates at the right time, in the right way, from first look to first day.
New Market Dynamics, New Approach
Over the last several years, eight trends have emerged that are changing the rules of recruiting— forever.
- The talent crunch is getting worse
- Candidates are more informed and have more choices—they pick you, not vice versa
- The up-and-coming workforce has different expectations for how they want to communicate and engage with you and your brand
- Job shopping is the new normal and candidates will reject you before you even know they’re looking—your brand and your career website matter more than ever
- Ever-rising social media numbers make it easy to find candidates—not just for you, but for your competitors too
- In this gig economy, fluid work arrangements call for flexible hiring strategies
- Speed is the new currency—you better move fast if you want to keep those top candidates
- A signed offer is no longer the finish line
These new market dynamics call for a modern approach to recruiting—one that is flexible, fast and flawless at every engagement point throughout the candidate journey.
That’s where Continuous Candidate Engagement (CCE) comes in.
A CCE strategy can help you improve the quality, speed and effectiveness of engagement across a broader candidate journey, and in turn, an expanded recruiting cycle—from recruitment marketing to hiring to new hire engagement.
Compared to models of the past, which were built on administrative efficiency, recruiter-centered processes and transactional relationships, CCE puts candidates at the center of the experience, enabling you to engage candidates at the right time, in the right way. Only with a candidate-centric strategy can you access, attract and retain the best talent—whoever they are, wherever they are.
And as the name suggestions, CCE supports continuous and consistent engagement opportunities —starting from the moment a candidate is aware of your employer brand (“first look”) and extending seamlessly into employee engagement once they are on board (“first day”). This allows you to orchestrate high-quality interactions across the entire recruiting process to influence an exceptional candidate experience.
For more on these trends and how CCE helps you address them, download our ebook.
The Role of AI in Continuous Candidate Engagement
New levels of automation—including automated Intelligence and machine learning— are playing a critical role in this new model.
By automating routine recruiting tasks like screening resumes, narrowing down your candidate pool, and scheduling interviews, AI frees up recruiters and hiring managers to spend more time on the human work: high-quality, high-touch interactions that create meaningful moments throughout the candidate journey. From spending time with top candidates and collaborating with hiring managers, to evaluating candidates with less bias, AI is central to the success of a CCE model that drives better, faster outcomes.
The shift is on. We’re facing a strategic imperative to embrace Continuous Candidate Engagement, and companies that don’t adapt will be left behind.
Stay tuned for more in our CCE blog series, where we’ll lay out the requirements for a CCE strategy, provide questions to ask to get you started, and much more.
