Today’s talent is savvier than ever. We talk about this quite a bit on the Sense blog. It’s just that to stand out and land talent, employers are expected to go above and beyond what worked in the past. A concerted, strategic effort is necessary, especially with today’s 4% unemployment rate.
When it comes to a strong, strategic recruiting effort, two key areas stand out:
Your brand is much more than who you are and what you sell. It’s your reputation, how you make your clients and candidates feel, it’s how your employees feel about working for you, and so much more. The concept of “brand” can be pretty nebulous, actually. When we talk about employer brand, it’s all of those things, but from the specific perspective of your current, former and future employees and contractors.
When we take that approach to employer brand, it is clear to see how candidate experience easily fits into the puzzle. Creating a positive candidate experience is critical for building and nurturing a positive employer brand. Not only a positive experience, but a cohesive one.
Talent today expects you to have your act together. A disconcerted effort across one or more platforms will leave candidates with an uneasy feeling about your company, and a negative view of your employer brand.
Professionals today know about the tools and data out there to help employers put their best foot forward in the “war for talent.” When employers fail to take advantage of those tools, it’s often a warning sign for talent, a push to look elsewhere, or even bolting entirely.
Many firms are still using a multichannel approach to candidate communications, but candidates today expect and want an omni channel experience that leads them to choose your firm over the competition.
Here’s a quick look at the major differences between the two:
With an omni channel approach, your candidates become the focal point of your efforts, while a multichannel approach centers more around you and your firm. To look at it another way, when using a multichannel approach, each channel enables a singular touchpoint. When your candidates are at the center in an omni channel approach, every candidate touchpoint is unified and connected.
To dig even deeper, here are two (2) core reasons why an omni channel approach delivers better results for your staffing firm than a multichannel one:
The purpose of a multichannel effort is to essential cast out a wide net and hope you facilitate positive engagements with your candidates. This is especially true when using social media (particularly if you’re not spending money to target your content or ads). You blast out messages across as many platforms as possible, in the hopes that your candidates will be exposed to those messages and continue to feel engaged or valued by your firm. It’s very much a “quantity” approach.
An omni channel approach to candidate experience goes in the opposite direction. Every channel is interconnected to provide an intimate, holistic experience. There is no jarring nature to encountering a message in one place and a similar, yet disconnected message in another. Rather, a text message may touch upon one key point, while a later email may continue the conversation right where it left off. Or perhaps data gathered during the first touchpoint is used to further customize a message that is sent later using another channel. No touchpoint or communication is “wasted,” each contributes toward a positive experience for candidates (individually, and as a whole).
Sometimes it can be hard to remember what it feels like to be a candidate. It can be stressful. Sometimes annoying. Time-consuming. It’s pretty safe to say that very few people would say they enjoy looking for and applying to jobs.
Staffing firms that deploy an omni channel approach to candidate engagement rather than a multichannel one are more apt to succeed in part because they successfully integrate channels to make life easier for their candidates. When your talent is at the center, as is the case with an omni channel approach, the stress, worry, and wonder that often accompanies a job search can be effectively eliminated. In other words, many of the things that cause candidates to become frustrated with recruiters and staffing firms can be avoided altogether.
By doing so, you make it easier for your candidates to accept when the job offer comes through, less likely to “ghost” your interviews, more likely to refer their friends or colleagues and after their first assignment, more likely to redeploy. Imagine how more quality referrals, higher redeployment and more “yeses” can impact your bottom line!
Taking an omni channel approach may seem intimidating. After all, you’re probably already deploying a multichannel approach, and you're using a range of resources and tools to do it! Here is some good news: With Sense, designing and implementing an omni channel candidate engagement strategy is simple and stress-free. With infrastructure that was designed from the ground up specifically for the staffing industry, we understand how technology can you build and nurture a strong employer brand that attracts the right talent.
And our team is comprised of staffing industry experts. We’ll help you integrate Sense into your operations, and put it to work to get results for your firm. To learn more and see Sense firsthand, schedule a demo with a member of our team.
