What is Candidate First Hiring?

Candidate first hiring refers to implementing a candidate-centred approach in the hiring process. It stretches across the entire end-to-end process, from the initial application process through to onboarding new employees.

58% of candidates have turned down a job due to poor experience with the employers recruitment process, and organisations that invested in improving candidate experience saw the average quality of hire improve by 70%. Thus, candidate first hiring shouldn’t be seen as unnecessary pampering or a waste of resource, but rather a proven strategy that can generate impressive ROI when executed effectively.

This strategy will look a little different for every organisation, as it will need to be customised to the sector, organisation size and mission, as well as external factors, such as emerging workplace trends.

Attract The Right Talent

Two candidates may be equally well qualified, but one will still likely be a strategically better addition to your organisation than the other. What this looks like may fluctuate depending on where the organisation is at the time of hiring. For example, if innovation and growth is a top priority, then focusing on talent who will be a culture add instead of a culture fit is likely to be the better choice.

Regardless, communicating your organisation’s employer brand from the beginning is crucial for not wasting your hiring team’s time or the candidate’s time. Throughout your job adverts, social media, and careers site, it’s critical that you clearly communicate what it’s like to work at your organisation and what your recruitment team will be looking for.

One of the best ways to sort your applicants from the start will be to customise application forms based on your organisation’s specific needs, values, and goals. This will also improve candidate experience by ensuring only the necessary questions are included, to prevent cumbersome or overly long application forms putting top talent off. Hireserve ATS also provides section stats, so your team can see where candidates have dropped out of your application process, so you can identify potential problem areas and remedy them.

Flexibility at Every Stage

Flexibility during the recruitment process can be a great way to showcase flexibility as one of your organisations values that you genuinely live by. Not to mention, the more flexible you are, the more talent you can involve in your hiring process, allowing you to have a wider talent pool.

A great way to ensure flexibility is when it comes to your interview scheduling process. The Hireserve ATS offers a ‘Self-select Interview’ tool which offers candidates the agency to choose their interview timing via your organisation’s online candidate portal. This provides candidates a sense of empowerment and proves your organisation to be considerate of the fact candidates are often already juggling a job, childcare, education, and personal lives.

This drastically reduces the administrative strain on your HR and recruitment team, providing them with greater capacity for more high value work rather than leaving endless voice mails, sifting through different dates, or risking human errors such as double booking.

Efficiency For All

Efficiency is often a top priority for HR and recruitment teams looking to improve their processes and boost ROI, but a streamlined recruitment process also produces great benefits to the candidate experience, positively influences the hiring organisation’s employer brand and reputation.

Utilising a recruitment platform which allows your team to automate key communications, from rejections to reference requests, not only reduces the administrative workload of your in-house recruiters, but also prevents human error causing candidates to be ‘ghosted’, with 45% of candidates in recent research sharing they had never heard back from an employer. Researchers also concerningly found that candidates from historically underrepresented backgrounds are 62% more likely to be ghosted after a job interview than white candidates. Therefore, automation reduces not only mundane admin, but also the risk of prejudiced behaviours.

Perks and Benefits

Part of creating a positive and memorable candidate experience is recruiting for a role that gets people excited. Recruitment should work with HR to take a look at your current culture and benefits package to identify areas for actionable improvement. How can you offer better learning and development which will empower career growth and keep talent at your company for longer? How can you level up your parental leave package (both maternity and paternity) to support parents in the workplace?

It may be useful to speak to existing employees about what attracted them to and keeps them at your organisation. You may see patterns emerge, which will help you identify the most appealing benefits, as well as what kind of benefits appeal to different people, allowing you to tailor them for particular roles or seniorities.

Applicant Tracking Software for Candidate First Hiring

Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) can be an invaluable tool when looking to support your candidate first hiring strategy. At its core, it will relive administrative burden that results in a quicker, simpler process for both your recruitment team and the applicants. At a deeper, more long-term level, it can contribute massively to enhancing your employer brand, reporting on recruitment data, and empowering hiring managers.

Learn how Lincolnshire County Council transformed their processes with Hireserve.