What is Candidate Management?

A company is more likely to succeed if it has a positive brand reputation. Many factors contribute towards establishing a positive reputation for a company, one of which is the candidate experience. Irrespective of whether or not a candidate ends up employed by a company, it is imperative that the candidate has a positive experience throughout the recruitment process. This is because a candidate who has had a positive experience is more likely to recommend the company to their associates and improve the brand reputation.

By Candidate Management, we refer to the recruitment strategy used by companies to build, retain and improve the relationship with potential candidates and job seekers to improve the candidate experience and ensure a positive brand reputation. In simpler terms, it refers to building and maintaining relationships with candidates. Every recruiter has the responsibility of Candidate management, be it an active candidate or a passive candidate.

Establishing good relations with the candidates allows the company to network successfully. Even if the candidate does not end up working with the company, it will still have access to a larger pool of talented people who it can contact when the need arises.

Effect on Talent Acquisition:

The Talent acquisition process is primarily impacted by the Candidate management strategies of a company. Here are a few reasons how:

Keeping in Contact:

Recruitment processes are generally very drawn-out and takes a lot of time. Ignoring or ghosting candidates between the various recruitment steps can quickly make the candidates lose interest in the company. It is better to keep the candidates informed every step of the way and contact them after a few days to tell them about the progress of their application. If a candidate is kept in the dark for too long, they are more likely to join another company with better candidate management. The worse the candidate management, the less likely talent acquisition becomes.

Build Relationships:

Good Candidate management is about more than just keeping a hold of the candidates' attention;instead, it can be used as space and opportunity to build an understanding between the employer and the candidate. By establishing a meaningful relationship with the candidate, the company builds rapport with the public in general.

Artificial Intelligence:

Companies receive thousands of applications for their job openings. Screening these applications can take up a lot of time, during which the company does not get in contact with the candidates. This can create a negative candidate experience. To reduce the workload and increase candidate engagement, companies can use Artificial Intelligence Chatbots. These chatbots are capable of streamlining the recruitment process. They can filter through all the applications to take out only those that match the company's requirements. Further, interacting and chatting with all the candidates ensures positive candidate engagement and management.

Candidate Relationship Management:

An amalgamation and combination of tools, strategies, and processes used by a company to control and design the candidate experience are generally referred to as Candidate Relationship Management. Through Candidate Relationship Management, a company can build a talent pipeline. Then by interacting and engaging the candidate constantly, the company can guide them through the recruiting funnel. Following are the basic steps of a Recruitment Funnel.

• Talent Attraction

• Segmenting/ Screening

• Building Relationship

• Application selection

• Interviewing

• Feedback Management

• Offering the Job

• Hiring the employee

The Candidate Recruitment Management Software automates much of the recruitment process, streamlining various steps to ensure that the candidates have a good and positive experience. The main principle of this software is to ensure that regardless of whether or not the candidate ends up being recruited by the company, they should leave with a positive image of the company in mind, further, the building a long-lasting relationship between the company and the candidate and that the next time the company has a job opening, the candidate applies again.

Here are a few ways in which Candidate Recruitment Management Software improves Candidate Management and experience.

Data Management:

The Candidate Relationship Management software collects data from the application provided by the applicant, along with the various social media platforms of the candidate, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, along with any interaction the candidate has had with the employer through these platforms, emails or text messages. This data is then gathered into a database that the company can use for future recruitments and the software to improve candidate engagement and candidate Management.

Attracting Candidates:

Candidate Relationship Management software can be used to build job opening advertisements and their descriptions, along with examples and insights to make the post as factually accurate as possible. The software can then post these job openings on various platforms such as social media, job-seeking websites, and other relevant places. The software also gathers data about which of these platforms had the most incredible turn and was the most successful in attracting potential candidates.

This is done by insights, data gathering, polls, and surveys. These analytics can help keep the Human Resources department up to date about which source is the most in trend, along with which platform provided the most talented candidates and which the least talented ones.

Managing Communications:

Some Candidate Relationship Management Software comes with a messaging feature that allows easy and direct communication between the employer and the candidates. These messages are then added to the database and play a definitive role in deciding whether or not the employee is fit for the company. Also, having such easy access to the company improves the relationship between the employer and the candidate.

Conclusion:

To put it simply, Employee Management plays a vital role in talent acquisitions and has a great impact on the company's brand reputation. With the help of Candidate Relationship Management software, a company may streamline the recruitment process and improve the candidate experience.