The interview process can be pretty stressful for companies and candidates.
Candidates are hoping for a great job, and they want to make a good impression on your recruiter and the employer.
Businesses are hoping for a short job interview process. They want their next big superstar to walk through the door and be an excellent fit, come on board and make an immediate impact.
Then of course, your recruiter wants to match the perfect candidate to the client and make everyone happy.
No pressure!
Depending on the client, the specific job and other factors that can be difficult to control, the interview process can be short or long, super stressful or breezy. Sometimes, variances in this process can frustrate clients and candidates.
Other times, it can make them fall in love with you. Of course, we ALL want clients to fall in love with us, and you certainly want candidates to fall in love with you too.
The first step to ensure a best-in-class interview process is to create a defined structure. This involves mapping out the steps and expectations for the interviewer and interviewee.
Using technology like Sense, you can map the interview process and then automate a sequence of emails and texts to deliver a white glove experience for both your candidates and clients. We call this the “Interview Journey.”
Here are our tips on what makes a great interview journey:
Be mindful of time during the interview process.
Time is on a lot of people’s minds day-to-day. How to save it, how to get more of it, how not to waste it. Hand me more time, you’re my hero. Waste my time and you’re, well, not my hero.
Clients engage you to save them time and money. Candidates work with you because they want to save time scouring job boards endlessly or pestering LinkedIn connections.
Clients LOVE staffing partners who only send them highly qualified and engaged talent. Candidates adore staffing firms who send them only to interview for jobs where they’re the most qualified.
Identify the interview process stages that take much too long. Do whatever you can to avoid wasting people’s time and minimize back and forth (hint: add in automation). Sending out interview communications based on triggers from your ATS will not only shorten the process end-to-end but also free up your recruiters’ time.
Communicate regularly during the interview process.
Consistently communicate with clients and candidates to keep them informed and make them feel like they are a priority. After a phone screen or an in-person interview, how do candidates feel about the position? Has anyone accepted another role and has removed him/herself from consideration?
Clients are giving up some power to your staffing firm in order to make a better, more efficient hire. Keeping them in the loop helps them feel in control throughout the process.
Candidates can often feel especially powerless throughout their interview process. Sharing a timely job interview confirmation email, client feedback and timelines, or even just touching base to let them know there isn’t any update, can help them feel valued and important. And happy talent always leads to happier clients!
Setting up an interview journey ensures that every candidate and client gets the same number of communication touches throughout the interview process. You can optimize the client and candidate experience while ensuring consistency from recruiter to recruiter.
Get personal with interview communications.
Following through on the last suggestion, communicate regularly, can be enough to make some staffing firms sweat. But there’s another piece to the communication puzzle that bears mentioning. And that’s getting personal. Shooting off generic templated interview emails every few days isn’t enough to make your clients and candidates fall in love with you. In fact, too many sterile messages can have the exact opposite effect and result in negative feelings.
Personalized recruiting messages that are relevant and specific to your clients and candidates are essential to make them feel valued throughout the interview process. Remember, both your clients and candidates have a lot on the line! They’re trusting you to help them get the best possible outcome, and they’re counting on you to not only deliver that outcome but treat them well throughout the process. There are many other staffing firms to choose from!
Don’t waste time personalizing one-by-one, rather use custom variables from your ATS in your interview journey. Sense makes it easy to pull personal information into every message so your outreach builds trust and rapport with candidates and clients.
We’ll even go out on a limb and say that you may even fall in love with Sense. It happens 😍.
But in all seriousness, Sense empowers staffing firms with “Interview Journeys,” customized sequences of communications that support the interview process for both candidate and client. Using the right sort of artificial intelligence (AI) to customize message content and delivery time then using smart automation to send personalized, consistent messaging, Sense empowers your team to build and nurture stronger relationships while freeing them to focus on their most mission-critical tasks.
It’s a game changer.
To learn more, schedule a demo with a member of our team. They’re staffing industry experts who understand your business and its challenges. Our team will help you build a customized plan to implement Sense and start delighting clients and candidates with interview journeys.
