Treat Them Like Royalty (part 1)
Your candidates, that is!
If you want to land your ideal food & beverage candidate in today’s hot market, you need to create an amazing recruiting experience for them.
According to a 2017 CareerBuilder study, nearly 4 in 5 candidates (78%) say the overall candidate experience is an indicator of how a company values its people – but just 32% of candidates rate their most recent recruiting experience as “very good.”
That last stat may sting a bit, but it actually provides your food & beverage organization with a huge recruiting opportunity. If you treat candidates like royalty throughout the hiring process, you can significantly reduce dropout, protect hot candidates from poaching, and increase offer acceptance rates.
Sounds pretty good, right? And it’s not as difficult as you might think. So today, our food industry executive search team is kicking off a series of posts to help you improve recruiting results by enhancing the candidate experience.
In this installment, we’re focusing on the importance of professional and timely communication.
Improve Candidate Experience by Improving Communication
When it comes to their job hunt, the most desirable food & beverage professionals and executives are savvy. Selective. Impatient. Even demanding. And frankly, they can afford to be. Top candidates frequently entertain multiple job offers, so if you fail to “roll out the red carpet,” they’ll take their talents elsewhere.
By communicating more effectively, you can demonstrate how much you value candidates as professionals, minimize drop-off and accelerate your search. Here’s how:
Provide regular status updates.
In the study mentioned above, 81% of job seekers say it would greatly improve their overall experience if employers would continuously communicate status updates to them. Examine your candidate intake and recruiting process to eliminate “communication vacuums”:
- Send timely, automated responses to anyone who applies, acknowledging application receipt and outlining your intake process.
- At each step of your hiring process, inform screened prospects how and when decisions will be made.
- Close the feedback loop! Follow up with every candidate you interview to let them know where they stand. Even if you do not hire them, respectfully communicating with candidates is essential to building your employment brand, protecting your reputation and increasing candidate referrals.
- This earlier Kinsa post provides additional tips for communicating with candidates.
Choose the right method(s).
Today’s multi-generational workforce requires you to tailor the way you communicate. Baby boomers appreciate phone calls and value face-to-face communication; millennials prefer email communication; younger professionals are accustomed to texting and messaging within social platforms, as well as using more traditional methods. Bottom line? Use a variety of communication methods to make corresponding convenient for you and your candidates. Thankfully, modern technology solutions allow you to customize both messages and response methods to maximize effectiveness.
Always take great care of second- and third-choices.
Regularly update them on the position’s status, and ensure they always know exactly when they will receive communications. This way, if your top choice falls through, you’ll have other candidates who are primed to accept your offer.
Related post: Interview Smarter: Close Strong and Keep in Touch
Hiring food & beverage executives or professionals?
Trust your search to Kinsa, a leading food and beverage recruitment partner. Our extensive talent database, combined with proven search and assessment methods, will help you find your ideal candidate, faster. From launch to accepted offer, our average days to fill is 65 days – but we have also facilitated hires in as little as two weeks. What can Kinsa do for you? Contact our food & beverage executive recruiters today.