1. Making Candidates Apply by Email ONLY
How many emails do you get? How many do you read? I’m not one of those people who will tell you to forget about using email altogether – it’s still a useful and reliable tool for a great many things – but recruiters’ inboxes are usually pretty stuffed. I think it’s safe to say most recruiters have had a few candidates get lost or forgotten in the shuffle of email.
The beauty of having a system that somehow registers candidates with you is that data and information are then housed and organized in ways that are specific to candidates. When you have candidate pools grouped to your job requisitions, you’re more likely to disposition your candidates – which is where most recruiters and employers fall short in the candidate experience. Which brings me to…
2. Not Keeping Candidates Engaged
The most common negative experience had by candidates is that of applying and never hearing back. Don’t do this. Tell candidates if someone else got hired, tell them they should keep their eye out for other jobs, and give them feedback.
If you’re so swamped that spending that time to nurture those candidates who are good but not right for the job you’re looking to fill right now, think about setting up a referral agreement or partnership with other companies that do career coaching or resume writing. (Offering those services to candidates yourselves could also be another way to expand your business.)
Alternatively, setting up some automated marketing with interesting and helpful content or customizing job alerts for candidates can help with ongoing engagement.
3. Not Using Your Candidate Database for Sourcing
“We’ll keep your resume on file” might technically be true, but how often do you go looking through those files when you’re hiring?
Candidates who weren’t quite right for one particular job aren’t going to stay frozen in time after you stop talking to them. They will continue to move on in their careers, gain new experience, new skills, and more training, but you won’t have a clue because the resume they sent you two years ago doesn’t update itself.
By keeping your candidates engaged, following up with them, or coaching them to keep you up to date on their updated resume-profile, you can reliably search the people you’ve already connected with and qualified while you continue to attract new people.
4. Not Using Job Posts for Lead Generation
How do you get customers as a recruiting company? Maybe you already have established relationships and a solid customer base, but you always need to have an eye on growth and keep building a steady sales pipeline for the future.
One tactic that recruiters and many job boards use to generate business is to start with advertising jobs for the companies they want to gain as customers. Post and promote one of the roles they are trying to fill, and come up with a shortlist of awesome candidates you’d like them to consider. A sales pitch that comes along with proof of the value of your service can take you a lot further with customers.
5. Ignoring Google for Jobs
Google for Jobs has arrived and does matter. If your jobs aren’t posted somewhere that uses the right markup, Google won’t recognize it as a job post and will assume it’s just another webpage. This means it won’t show up in Google for Jobs searches, and you won’t benefit from that source of job seeker traffic.
If your team doesn’t have the bandwidth or resources to figure it out, try partnering with a technology partner who supports Google for Jobs formatting.