Don’t Lose Candidates Through These Bad Habits

If you’re looking for great people to join your team, then it’s important to make sure you are creating a positive and timely candidate experience. The best talent will always have plenty of options, so it will take some effort to make your company their first choice. If you’re having trouble capturing the attention of the talented people you want to join your team, then it’s time to examine your candidate experience from start to finish. These are a few missteps to avoid if you want to succeed at hiring the best talent on the market:

Unclear Job Descriptions

When you post your job openings, it’s important to make sure it answers common questions candidates will have about your company and presents the job thoroughly. If you’re not getting bites on your job posts, ask yourself the following questions: Is your job description too vague? Is it difficult to tell what level the position is? Does it leave out information about the job responsibilities? Does it give candidates a sense of what your company culture is like? Is it clear what the pay and benefits are? Look at each job description with a critical eye and update it to ensure that it answers these essential questions about the role. You could be losing great candidates because they are applying for other jobs that do answer these questions.

Slow Responses to Applications

It can be difficult to keep up with applications if you’re receiving a large volume of them for various job ads, but giving candidates timely responses is one of the keys to creating a positive candidate experience. There are tools to help you sift through applications, rule out unqualified candidates, and send them a form letter or automated message letting them know that it’s not a match. When it comes to your pool of potentially matching candidates, it’s essential that you engage with them as soon as possible. You don’t want to keep them waiting for long because chances are good that they’ve applied elsewhere too, and the competition could snap them up before you do if you wait too long.

Slow Interview Process

This is another critical point where you may be losing top talent to the competition. If you are putting candidates through multiple rounds of interviews, don’t drag out the process. You will hear stories of companies calling candidates back weeks and months later to ask for further interviews or assessments. At that point, the best people have likely moved on and settled into a different job. If you want to lock down your top choice for a role, then it’s important to be agile and follow up on applications with interview requests as soon as possible. You’re interested in them, right? So go ahead and make it clear that you are by enthusiastically moving the process along.

Being Unprepared for Counteroffers

If you’re finding that you typically lose out on your top candidates toward the end of the hiring process, then not being prepared to handle counteroffers may be part of the problem. If candidates are getting better offers from competitors that you can’t match, that may be difficult to change. But if they are receiving counteroffers from their current employers, then that is something against which you can inoculate. Make it a part of your offer process to discuss the possibility of a counteroffer with your candidates and explain why it’s a gamble to accept a counteroffer. Taking a counteroffer means that their employer now knows they were looking for a new job and it could drastically change the dynamic at work. They will also be giving up on an exciting opportunity with your company and all the potential that comes with it.

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