With the increased demand for top talent, attracting a skilled candidate is one of the top challenges recruiters face. However, beyond simply attracting talent, retaining them poses an even more daunting issue in recruitment. One way to tackle this issue is by establishing a strong relationship with the candidate and treating them with respect, both of which help boost candidate engagement.
In this comprehensive guide, we will highlight the importance of candidate engagement in recruitment. We’ll also explore candidate engagement strategies as well as steps for building engagement from scratch.
Why candidate engagement matters in hiring
Hiring today requires more than a baseline strategy. Candidates have more expectations from recruiters, and when those expectations aren’t met, they can lose interest in the role.
However, with proper candidate engagement, you can avoid this loss of interest and still maintain your hiring standards. You just have to do it right. But before we get into these strategies, here are a few more reasons why candidate engagement matters in recruitment:
1. It boosts the employer’s reputation
Candidate experience is now a critical factor shaping your employer brand. According to a 2023 candidate experience report from CareerPlug, 49% of job seekers declined an offer for a role due to a poor experience. Effective candidate experience addresses this by enhancing the interactions you have with your candidates and improving their overall experience.
A strong candidate engagement strategy encourages your applicants to share their experience with others, positioning your company as respectful and transparent. This, in turn, attracts better candidates who are eager to work for a company known for valuing its applicants. Bottom line? A good reputation helps your recruiting efforts become more efficient, reducing time-to-hire and associated costs.
2. It fosters communication with candidates
Open, ongoing communication is the cornerstone of candidate engagement, especially in high-volume hiring. Yet in the U.S., 36% of candidates say they haven’t heard back from a recruiter even 22 days after applying. That kind of silence can easily push top candidates to explore other opportunities, costing you talent in the long run.
Conversely, when recruiters keep candidates informed at every stage, it builds trust and keeps them invested in the process. Strong communication also opens the door for questions and feedback, making the experience more collaborative. When candidates feel heard and respected, they’re less likely to drop off mid-process..
3. It encourages motivation for the open role
A 2023 report from CriteriaCorp found that 54% of job applicants abandoned a hiring process due to little or no communication from recruiters. This highlights the importance of providing timely feedback and clear communication in keeping candidates engaged and motivated.
When candidates feel valued and well-informed, they’re more likely to envision themselves in the role and remain enthusiastic and committed throughout the process. This sustained engagement reduces the chances of them dropping off or exploring other opportunities.
4. It increases offer acceptance rates
A positive candidate experience can dramatically improve offer acceptance rates. When candidates receive timely communication and clear information about the role and hiring process, they are better positioned to make informed decisions. This reduces uncertainty and helps avoid situations where candidates decline offers due to a lack of clarity or perceived disorganization.
In contrast, poor engagement during recruitment, such as delayed updates or on-and-off communication, can create doubts and prompt candidates to consider other opportunities. If not tackled, this can translate to lower-quality hires or an inability to meet your recruitment goals.
5. It leads to higher-quality hires
Improving the quality of your hires starts long before you send out offer letters. It begins during the recruitment journey and relies heavily on how well you engage with your candidates. When you respect, guide, and communicate consistently with your candidates, they are more likely to showcase their full potential as you assess them.
Whether you’re conducting interviews, skill tests, or portfolio assessments, effectively engaging with your candidates allows you to learn more about them. This equips you with a more accurate view of their skills, experience, and culture fit, empowering you to make more informed hiring decisions.
Plus, engaged candidates are less likely to ghost or accept competing offers, increasing your chances of successfully onboarding the most qualified individual for the role.
Candidate engagement strategies for recruitment
Engaging candidates effectively means using the right strategies tailored to your hiring context. No one-size-fits-all approach works, so it’s important to understand which methods best fit your company’s needs, hiring volume, and role types. Here’s a breakdown of four proven strategies, along with when and how to use them:
Multi-channel strategy
A multi-channel approach combines email, SMS, phone calls, social media, and automated messaging tools to maintain consistent communication and foster candidate engagement throughout the hiring process.
While it works for low-volume hiring, this approach is especially effective for high-volume recruitment, such as in retail, hospitality, or seasonal staffing. This is because the multi-channel approach lets you manage large candidate pools with different channels quickly and efficiently.
For example, initial job postings may perform well on social platforms, while SMS reminders can keep candidates on track for interviews or hiring updates. The key to applying this strategy is balancing automation with timely, relevant information via as many communication channels as you can access to reduce candidate drop-off.
Hyper-personalized strategy
With the hyper-personalized candidate engagement strategy, you customize your communication and engagement based on each person’s background, interests, or prior interactions. This shows the candidates that your company is genuinely invested in their fit for the role.
Because it requires more attention to detail and planning from the recruiter’s end, it’s best suited when filling mid-to-senior roles or positions requiring specialized skills. This might include referencing specific projects from their portfolio in emails or customizing interview questions to their experience.
In-person engagement
For roles where culture fit is paramount or when hiring locally, in-person engagement offers unmatched value. In–person engagement activities, like office tours, meet-and-greet events, or career fairs, provide candidates with a tangible sense of the work environment and team dynamics.
This strategy also works well for internships or entry-level roles where candidates may need more reassurance and insight into your company culture. A well-executed in-person event can leave a lasting impression that virtual communication often can’t replicate.
Content-based strategy
This involves providing candidates with informative content, from employee testimonials and day-in-the-life videos to detailed FAQs and webinars. It helps demystify your company and its roles, enabling the candidates to understand your operations better.
The content-based approach is particularly useful for positions with longer decision cycles or complex skill requirements, such as medical roles. It’s also great for employer branding and long-term candidate engagement. Overall, this strategy empowers candidates to self-assess for job fit, leading to more engaged and informed applicants.
How to build candidate engagement during hiring
As straightforward as it may seem, a lot of intentional planning and consistent execution go into candidate engagement. Whether you’re hiring at scale or for a few niche roles, following a structured approach helps ensure candidates stay informed, motivated, and excited throughout your process.
Here’s how to improve candidate engagement in five steps:
Step 1: Map out your candidates’ journey
Before you can improve engagement, you need to understand where candidates might be disengaging and potential stages where you can interact with them. To do this, outline each stage of your hiring process, from application to employee onboarding, and mark where communication would be most necessary, such as during screening and onboarding.
Then, track your current hiring process and compare your communication levels at these stages of hiring. This allows you to identify friction points that need attention, such as long gaps between interview stages or unclear timelines.
Step 2: Select a candidate engagement strategy
Once you’ve mapped the journey, outline your hiring goals and decide which engagement approach fits your needs best. High-volume hiring may benefit from a multi-channel strategy to keep touchpoints frequent and automated, while specialized roles may call for hyper-personalized outreach.
When picking your strategy, you’d need to consider your audience, the roles you’re filling, and how much time and human touch each stage of hiring needs.
Step 3: Choose the tools to aid your strategy
Selecting the right candidate engagement tools is crucial to executing your candidate engagement strategy efficiently. The right technology saves time and helps deliver a seamless, personalized experience to candidates, without adding more work for your team.
A great example of this is Vervoe’s AI-powered automation, which streamlines candidate communication at every stage, from personalized outreach to interview scheduling and skills assessments. Its intuitive platform lets you create engaging candidate experiences that feel human, even when handling large volumes of applicants. With built-in automation tools, such as AI Chatbots, Vervoe reduces manual follow-ups and ensures candidates never feel forgotten.
Step 4: Implement your strategy
With the right strategy selected and your tools set up, you can go ahead to implement your plan accordingly. At this stage, it’s best to apply flexible hiring practices in case of changes during your recruitment, such as new hiring goals.
For example, you can use templates and automation where appropriate, but always leave room to personalize messages for high-potential candidates or critical roles. Also, make sure your team is aligned on tone, frequency, and expectations so that candidates get a consistent experience regardless of who they interact with.
Step 5: Measure candidate engagement and gather feedback
Tracking the success of your candidate engagement efforts is essential to improving on weak points. Start by defining key metrics that indicate how engaged candidates are throughout your hiring process. These might include:
- Email open and response rates
- Time-to-respond
- Interview attendance and no-show rates
- Offer acceptance rates
- Candidate drop-off points
Collecting this quantitative data helps you pinpoint exactly where communication or process gaps may exist. You can also gather qualitative feedback directly from candidates by sending short surveys after key milestones, such as post-application, after interviews, or once the hiring process concludes. Ask candidates about their experience with communication, clarity of information, and overall impression of your company.
With these insights, you can continuously refine your engagement strategy. For example, if you notice many candidates drop out after the first interview, you might revisit how you communicate next steps or reduce delays in scheduling. If candidates consistently report confusion about the role or process, enhancing your content or personalization can help.
Candidate engagement success stories
Not sure where to begin with improving your candidate engagement? Platforms like Vervoe can help with that. Here are some case studies on companies that improved both candidate experience and engagement with Vervoe’s support:
N5Now
N5Now is a top fintech company with operations in over 15 countries. For them, streamlining candidate experience wasn’t just a goal but a step to achieving recruitment success. And with Vervoe’s help, they were able to do just that.
On integrating our AI-powered assessment platform into the recruitment process, N5Now was able to personalize their recruitment and hire 15 new employees, with all of them reporting high candidate satisfaction. Ailen Gomez, a Recruitment Analyst at N5Now, mentions that, “The candidate experience has improved as we can now offer evaluations that align better with their skills and expectations.” Ultimately, candidate motivation for the job is at an all-time high due to proper engagement.
Bank Of Queensland
Bank of Queensland (BOQ) needed to streamline its recruitment process while maintaining a high level of candidate engagement. They faced challenges typical of financial institutions:
- A competitive talent market
- Lengthy hiring cycles
- The need to assess candidates thoroughly without losing interest.
By applying Vervoe’s AI-powered skills assessments and automation tools, BOQ was able to deliver a seamless candidate experience that combined efficiency with personalization. Vervoe ensured that each applicant was evaluated fairly and carried along in the hiring process by combining skill-based evaluation with effective virtual communication. This approach enabled recruiters to focus on engaging with top candidates rather than being derailed by administrative tasks.
The results were a significant reduction in candidate drop-off rates and faster applicant screening, with 2,340 hours saved. Additionally, BOQ raised its candidate satisfaction scores to 4.59/5.0, all achieved within 60 days.
1-800 Contacts
1-800 Contacts faced the challenge of hiring quickly and efficiently in a competitive retail and customer service environment. They needed to engage a high volume of candidates while ensuring the hiring process remained personal and candidate-friendly. Traditional screening methods were time-consuming and often left candidates in the dark about their application status, leading to disengagement.
Fortunately, by adopting Vervoe’s AI-driven skill assessments, 1-800 Contacts transformed their recruitment process while boosting overall engagement. Our platform used a variety of text, audio, and video-based questions to keep candidates engaged throughout the evaluation. To take it a step further, we added role-specific inclusions, such as typing tests and job simulations. This resulted in improved quality of hires and faster hiring, as a large part of the evaluation process was automated.
Jill Bailey, a Talent Acquisition Partner at 1-800 Contacts, was particularly thrilled with the results. In his words, “Our ability to hire and talk to higher quality candidates faster has been a game changer for us. Instead of taking four to five days in a stage, once the candidate completes our Vervoe assessment, they can be automatically moved to an interview. Seeing an improvement in the quality of our hires has been worth the investment. As an added plus, we have been able to use our time better.”
Engage candidates from start to finish with Vervoe
Beyond a job, today’s candidates expect a hiring experience that’s clear, fair, and engaging. While candidate engagement strategies help, you need the right tool to bring them to life at scale.
Vervoe makes this easy. From automated skills assessments to AI-powered chatbots and real-time updates, Vervoe keeps candidates informed and involved every step of the way, without creating extra work for your team.
Whether you’re hiring at scale or for niche roles, Vervoe helps you move fast while delivering an experience that top talent won’t forget. Book a demo today and let’s show you how Vervoe transforms hiring for both you and your candidates.
