What does it mean to nurture candidates?

Candidate nurturing is a term that refers to communications companies send out to people who’ve applied for jobs in the past. It could be to touch base so that candidates are more likely to apply for a job in the future or as a means to recruit for new positions that open up. The reason you may want to nurture candidates is that they’ve already shown an interest in your company and may want to work with you, even if you passed on their application in the past.

How nurture hiring can benefit your business

There are times when you have multiple candidates that would make an excellent fit for a position, but you’re only able to offer the job to one person. If you stay in touch with your candidates, they’re less likely to harbor hurt feelings over your previous rejection of their application. Rather than needing to reach out to a brand new talent pool, you can offer positions to people that you’ve already interviewed and save some time and money on your recruiting efforts.

For example, if you post a job ad and process hundreds of applications, you’re required to sift through each person’s resume and start vetting candidates to narrow the field. When you nurture candidates, you already have their resumes and information about their skills, experience and education. It’s much easier to determine who you’d like to reach out to at this point and you know you’ve got quality candidates lined up for the first round of interviews.

How to create a nurture recruiting plan

To ensure that your campaigns are successful and don’t inadvertently turn talent away from your business, consider these tips:

Use candidate profiling

You don’t want to communicate the same way with each candidate, but sending manual emails and updates to everyone who’s ever applied for a job with you is a time expense you can’t afford. It’s a better idea to strike a balance between personalization and automation that helps the talent see you’re not sending the same message to every person on your contact list.

The way candidate profiling works is by creating different profiles for candidates based on their skills, experience, how close they were to being awarded the job and what positions they applied for. When you create these profiles, you’re able to target specific types of talent when it’s time to recruit.

For example, if someone applied for a role as a financial analyst, you don’t want to send that person emails about a new graphic design position you have open. Not only will it not generate a response, but the candidate may also remove themself from your contact list because they feel you’re out of touch.

When sorting candidate profiles, you can use the following indicators:

• Skill set
• Experience level
• Intangible traits
• Demographics
• Education
• How far they made it in the hiring process

Pay attention to how you reject candidates

Nobody likes to receive the bad news that they didn’t get the job, and rejection can invoke powerful emotions. How you reject candidates may determine whether you’ve burned the bridge or kept the possibility open for that person to apply later. You can use candidate profiles to send different emails based on how close the candidate met your requirements.

If candidates would have been right for the role but lost the offer because another candidate was a little more qualified, make sure you voice your rejection letters differently than if you’re letting someone know they weren’t chosen because they lacked the experience or technical knowledge for the position.

Use automation tools to your advantage

You can have your recruiting team set up an applicant tracking system that records key details about your interactions with each candidate and assigns them a candidate profile. When it comes time to send emails to previous applicants, you can compartmentalize by sending more direct and specific details to those who you want to apply the most.

Know the limits of automation

If you remember meeting someone in the past who really made an impression, an email may not be appropriate. You can let them know you’re really interested by calling them instead. Keep in mind that some of your emails may wind up in people’s spam folders, so a round of phone calls might make a huge difference in your recruiting efforts.

Keep in touch with previous employees

If an employee parted ways with your company amicably, you should keep in touch. They may find that they don’t enjoy their new role or could direct you to people who’d be a great fit for your organization. In either case, you could gain access to quality talent when you’re looking to expand your workforce again. If you rehire a past employee, they’re already aware of your expectations and the onboarding process becomes much easier.

Conduct exit interviews

There are many benefits to exit interviews, including helping you with your nurture recruiting efforts. Showing employees you value their opinions about how you could have improved allows you to make one last impression before they move on. They may remember this in the future if they find themselves looking for a job again.

Bring your marketing team into the loop

If you want to nurture candidates, your recruiters and marketing team should get together to create engaging emails and talk about effective alternative methods of communication. Marketers know how to make your messages stand out, appear original and improve the chance of a response. Use those skills to your advantage.

Don’t neglect your social media efforts

Emails are a great way to reach a lot of people with the click of a button, but they can be impersonal at times, and people don’t always open them. If your applicants have followed you on Facebook, LinkedIn or other social media sites, keep them informed with updates. When you’re looking to fill a new position, you can make a post on your social media accounts that may draw people in who have been in touch with you before.

Diversify your approach

Content has evolved beyond traditional emails and blog posts, so you should consider ways to stay ahead of the curve. Ways to nurture hires include sending links to videos, webinars, virtual presentations and photos. You can leverage your social media account outreach by posting this content to your followers, so they learn more about your company goals and always know when you’re hiring.

Use data analytics to track your efforts

Many businesses are using data to improve how they interact with customers, but you can use new data analysis and machine learning technology to improve your recruiting efforts as well. If you’re not tracking metrics such as how many people open your emails, the conversion rate and whether someone has applied for the position after looking at your job ad, you don’t know how effective your emails, job listings and social media posts really are.

For example, if a lot of people are clicking on your job ad, but you’re not receiving many applications, you might need to revise the listing or implement an outreach strategy to encourage people to apply. You can use automation to send emails to those who looked at your listings and didn’t act.

If people are opening your emails but not responding to them, you can brainstorm ways to improve the quality of your email campaigns. Your recruiting and marketing teams can review data to see what’s been working for you in the past and make adjustments accordingly.

Learn how to time your correspondence for the maximum benefit

If you’re sending emails or posting on social media at times when people aren’t likely to see them, your efforts may not be noticed. People’s Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter feeds fill up quickly, and while they may be interested in the information you release, they could simply not notice your post. You can leverage your data analytics efforts to see when people click through your posts and start sending emails and social media updates when the most people interact.

With more people working alternative schedules and non-traditional hours, the ideal timing for your campaigns may vary based on your target demographics. Pay attention to the data for each type of candidate that you’d like to reach and create campaign strategies that match.

Get involved with the community

Businesses use community outreach to help build brand recognition, devise new ways to attract customers and let people know they’re leaders in their field. You can use public events to make yourself more attractive to potential job applicants as well. Try to get involved in job fairs where you can speak with people directly and build rapport long before you may need to reach out to talent.

Your recruiters can also pay attention to which attendees have the skills, experience and intangible traits your business could use in the future. The information that they can glean from interacting with people in person trumps what you’re able to see on a cover letter or resume.

If you’re trying to target remote workers, you can host video conferences on relevant topics or conduct webinars. People who sign up for your virtual events will know that you offer remote work and may be more open to receiving updates from your company in the future through newsletters and social media campaigns.

Nurture candidates during hiring lulls

Even if you’re not looking for someone today to fill a role, your talent needs may change overnight. If someone filling a key role is promoted or moves on to a different company, it helps to have talent ready in your pipeline. One of the mistakes some businesses make is neglecting their candidate nurturing efforts when they don’t feel they need to expand their operations, but this could have dire consequences and require you to commit more time and money to fill roles.

The bottom line

Some companies choose to nurture candidates so that they don’t need to commit as many resources to their recruiting efforts when positions open up. Remaining in touch with candidates that made positive impressions during your last hiring round could simplify your recruitment process in the future. Nurture hiring processes involve a balance of automation, personalization and community outreach to ensure you’ve always got talent coming into the pipeline.