This advent calendar presents 24 practical suggestions on how to learn from candidate behavior to improve your HR marketing, based on early results from Potentialpark's upcoming 2024 Talent Comm study.
This week's special is "Easy Apply". Every day this week will be about how to make application processes more competitive and lose fewer candidates.
In yesterday's Door I talked about speed and faster processes as a way to beat other employers and gain an upper hand on the talent market.
Now to reduce candidate friction even more, we can learn from advertising executive Rory Sutherland who in his book Alchemy famously compared Taxi and Uber like this:
Uber's biggest innovation is the map that shows you how far away your driver is. It doesn't actually reduce the waiting time but makes it 90% less frustrating.
From my experience, waiting for an old-fashioned taxi even for 7 minutes has become enormously uncomfortable in comparison. I simply don't know if the driver is around the corner, stuck in traffic or has forgotten me altogether.
The worst is not knowing. And this is true for applicants as well. You'd like to know the timeline and next step or it's very easy to feel lost and forgotten.
Sutherland contrasts this with how airports inform passengers of delays: would you prefer the announcement "your flight is 70 minutes late" or "your flight is late"? Most are more comfortable with the former. At least you know and you can go to the restaurant for a coffee or baguette.
The same goes for applicants: knowing ahead of time how much time the whole process and each step take reduces drop-outs.
Three frustrating scenarios
Let's look at three typical situations in which lack of transparency falls back on you. Imagine a candidate receives an exploding offer from your competitor and she has two more days to consider it. You are about to send her an offer as well, tomorrow. But she is not aware of that.
Thinking she hasn't heard from you in a while, she accepts the other offer. You lost her. Had you kept her informed a bit more closely, she could have easily waited one more day.
Or take the insecurity about how up-to-date a list of vacancies is: all jobs appear to be open, but oftentimes some have been filled and the system has not taken them down yet. So you end up getting applications for outdated jobs, which is a waste of time and talent.
Similar situation - a candidate looks at an open job and sees no application deadline. So they think: should I apply today? This leaves me litlte time to do research and adopt my cover letter. Or wait for the weekend? But then it might be gone. Clarifying this might improve number and quality of applications.
Make applicants happy they applied for your job
Candidates should be happy they applied for a job at your company, not regret it.
Potentialpark analyzed the online applications of top employers in the US, Europe and Asia. On average, only 15% of them explain the timeline of the application process on their career website.
So today's tip is really simple: dare to be more transparent and communicative.
It doesn't take much to stand out here: give an overview of the recruitment process, step by step, including a few time estimates and you are ahead of most employers in the world. Or in case the timeline varies by job, give ranges and estimates. Show deadlines in your jobs if you can.
And during the process stay in touch with applicants about what happens next, and when. Again, sometimes an estimate is better than nothing.
This will make you an Uber among taxis and, by the way, probably improve your Glassdoor score on the way. And you don't even need a new ATS for it.
This special Applying Online week will continue tomorrow with the next Advent Calendar Door.
BONUS: Would you like to receive the results of Potentialpark's new Talent Comm study when it comes out with data from the global candidate surveys? Sign up on the Potentialpark website to secure a free research expert talk (no strings attached) and tickets to Potentialpark's events to meet peer HR marketers.
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