Here’s how technology can help you treat candidates as customers

When your customer service is great, customers talk about you to others. They tend to do so even more when they are the recipients of quality service over a period of time. Similarly, when a candidate has a great experience throughout the recruitment process, that ‘experience’ will become a reference point for other candidates.  

Candidates share their experience with their peers. Irrespective of a positive or negative outcome, there’s a need to keep candidates updated and provide feedback when needed. If a candidate has a great experience that will increase the referral rates.  Over time, it serves as a competitive advantage to attract the best talent from the market.

So, how does one ensure a seamless experience? 

Recruitment branding plays a major role in ensuring a targeted approach to attract candidates. In today’s digital world, candidates are not interested in reading one-page generic job descriptions. Video job descriptions are playing an important role in generating interest with candidates. 

Similarly, images created and put across on networking sites can create a strong impact on how people view the organization. E.g., ‘Best employer to work for’. Publishing images and content on social media gives a view of the organization to a much larger audience. 

The role of technology

Marketing cloud products like Oracle Marketing Cloud can be used to structure the content to the targeted talent pool (Similar to account based marketing). Content can be differentiated for mid-level and senior representatives, providing more impact instead of sharing the same data with all the candidates, which might not be effective.

AI & Chatbot – Today, most organizations are fighting for the same talent, so speed matters in picking up the talent. A talent advisor is likely to see some of the most repetitive tasks – for example CV screening - taken care of by the new technology. Using AI-enabled talent management portals like Oracle HCM Cloud help automate the process of searching for candidates. It also quickly lets you get the candidates that already match your criteria. Other AI-based technologies like chatbots help respond to different candidate questions. That way, you won’t have to respond to frequently asked questions. AI helps reduce the workload, especially where you have to handle repetitive tasks. This simplifies the job, improves the general ‘customer’ experience and also leads to huge savings in time.

The role of HR professionals is four-fold:

• Create a value proposition with the help of business.
  
  
• Share success stories (links/videos) with candidates.
  
  
• Leverage social platforms and technologies to provide the best candidate experience.
  
  
• Create career blogs.
  
  

Differentiating your brand from the others will be the key to success in your recruitment marketing efforts. In order to do this, leverage the help of successful employees in your branding initiatives and amplify your content using employee-ambassadors. Unique stories are what will help your brand stand out.


Alison Sibree will be speaking at Oracle OpenWorld 2019 Singapore. Register Now!