Quality candidates – individuals who possess the skills, experience, and qualities necessary to add immediate and long-term value – have the potential to positively impact any organization’s success. Quality candidates make the hiring process more efficient by helping organizations avoid investing time and resources in candidates who are a poor fit. They also more easily translate into quality hires who are engaged and committed to supporting the organization’s goals.
Of course, every organization desires quality candidates and the benefits they bring. However, attracting quality requires effective strategies for discovering active and passive job seekers and encouraging them to apply. With the help of innovative solutions for talent engagement, screening, and conversion, organizations can boost candidate quality and achieve higher recruitment ROI.
In a recent survey, 62% of recruitment and HR professionals said their top recruiting priority was increasing new hire quality. However, in a highly competitive job market, finding quality candidates has become more and more challenging, with many organizations struggling to achieve their goals for applicant quantity and quality.
Factors that make it even more difficult to attract quality candidates include:
Tip: One of the best ways organizations can illustrate the EVP is through a well-designed career site. Recruitics' Fusion recruitment website design service helps organizations launch a fully integrated career site that boosts candidate engagement and conversion.
As any employer knows, hiring can be a costly undertaking. According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the average hire costs nearly $4,700, but can exceed three to four times a position’s salary, depending on factors such as sourcing method, time to fill, and opportunity cost (the related costs associated with the position being unfilled). However, quality candidates ultimately make recruitment less costly because their value to the organization exceeds the investment it took to attract and hire them.
Here are several ways quality candidates improve recruitment ROI for organizations of any size and industry:
Candidates that are a better fit for the role and organization can lead to a higher recruitment return on investment (ROI) in the long run because they perform better and are more productive. And since high performers are an estimated 400% more productive than other employees, quality candidates continue to add value long after their first day on the job.
High turnover, especially among newer hires, may be one of the first signs of a lower-quality hire. Of course, several factors can influence turnover, but hiring the wrong candidates can quickly result in the candidate, the organization, or both realizing it was a poor fit and making the decision to part ways. Conversely, hiring quality candidates who fit with the role, organization, and culture can result in a mutually rewarding relationship with much more longevity.
Quality hires support team morale by filling critical talent gaps and bringing new skills and experience to the team. New hires who are a strong fit help teams meet their goals and get things done, which also keeps morale and engagement high.
Improving candidate quality requires having strategies that build awareness and convert the right applicants into hires. Here are six actions organizations can take to reach, engage, and ultimately hire the highest-quality candidates:
Well-written job postings provide candidates with an overview of the job responsibilities, key challenges, and opportunities of a role. They also help candidates understand the employee value proposition, including how the role meets their salary, benefits, and career growth expectations. To attract the best quality candidates possible, organizations should craft job postings with the following characteristics:
LinkedIn research has found that organizations with a strong employer brand yield 50% more qualified applicants. A great employer brand helps establish an organization as an employer of choice and makes it easier to attract quality candidates who are more likely to engage and accept a job offer. An employer brand can be conveyed across multiple media options, including employer and employee-created video, storytelling, and creative imagery that excites and showcases the EVP.
Tip: Employer branding is the living embodiment of an organization’s culture, people, and values. With smart branding that tells an authentic story of the organization, it’s possible to engage active job seekers earlier and convert them into applicants.
Since not all quality candidates visit the same platforms in their job search, it’s critical to have a strategy for targeted recruitment marketing – presenting job ads to candidates where they live and interact online. A targeted media plan can consist of job advertising vehicles like cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-action (CPA) ad campaigns, as well as advertising via media channels such as email, text, niche job boards, radio, and digital billboards. This targeting strategy also helps to identify passive candidates with low brand awareness, resulting in higher application rates, better candidate engagement, and a higher ROI on recruitment marketing spend.
Research has already revealed several benefits of employee referrals, including higher retention, performance, and a faster time-to-hire. These measures indicate what many organizations have already learned: candidates referred by existing employees or through the company’s external network tend to be of higher quality and are more likely to add value post-hire.
Organizations wanting to tap into this rich source of quality candidates should encourage employees to refer candidates through an employee referral program. If the existing program doesn’t seem to be yielding enough referral candidates, organizations can switch things up a bit by offering other forms of referral incentives besides money. Examples include gift cards and extra time off.
In a survey of HR professionals, over 90% agreed that candidate experience had a direct impact on quality of hire. By offering a positive experience across each stage of the candidate journey, from awareness to the application and interview process, organizations can increase the chances of engaging quality candidates and avoid losing them to other companies. And since today’s candidates are likely to share their candidate experience with their professional network, delivering a positive employee experience can also support overall employer branding efforts.
Tip: The candidate experience begins even before candidates hit the “Apply” button. Recruitics’ Fusion solution combines the power of AI with human experts to help recruitment teams engage candidates and direct them into the company’s talent pipeline.
Data-driven recruitment marketing allows employers to measure the effectiveness of recruitment efforts and make smarter decisions about where to invest resources. Data analytics also provides real-time insights about the performance of job ads across different channels, so organizations can determine which candidate sourcing methods are most effective in generating candidate quality and quantity. It can also enable more accurate tracking of the key metrics organizations use to measure recruitment ROI, such as time-to-hire, click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, and more.
Organizations seeking to increase productivity and maximize their recruitment ROI by hiring quality candidates must apply fresh strategies for engaging and converting candidates into applicants. To get started, discover the Recruitics suite of Fusion solutions.
Fusion combines innovative technology and talent advisory services to help organizations capture and engage quality candidates, ensuring they have a positive candidate experience throughout the entire recruitment process.
For help building a recruitment marketing program that delivers quality candidates and paves the way to a higher recruitment ROI, contact the Recruitics team today!
