Candidate Relationship Management
People and Culture

Boost Your Hiring: Improve Your Candidate Relationship Management

Gary Zurnamer

February 2, 2024

time

mins

As a hiring manager or recruiter, one of your biggest challenges is attracting the best talent for your company.

At Vouch, we are big on building your Employer Brand to achieve this in a highly competitive job market - and reach both active and passive candidates, as more is needed to rely on job postings and traditional recruitment methods. To succeed, you need to implement effective candidate relationship management strategies.

Candidate relationship management is about building and maintaining strong relationships with potential candidates throughout the hiring process. By leveraging powerful technology like Video and adopting best practices, you can streamline your talent acquisition efforts, enhance the candidate experience, and ultimately boost your hiring success.

Key Takeaways:

  • Effective candidate relationship management can significantly improve your hiring success.
  • Your company should also use candidate relationship management to retain the best talent.
  • By leveraging recruitment software and technology like Vouch, you can streamline your talent acquisition efforts and reduce your time and cost per hire.

Understanding Candidate Relationship Management

Suppose you want to improve your recruitment process and attract the very best talent. In that case, you need to understand what candidate relationship management (CRM) is all about, the strategy that focuses on building and nurturing relationships with potential candidates throughout the hiring process.

Combined with your Employer Brand, these efforts can significantly improve your hiring success, attract the best talent and reduce your cost per hire significantly.

Candidate relationship management includes building relationships with candidates before, during, and, importantly, after the hiring process - so that you have a large candidate pool for your next open position.

Effective candidate relationship management involves leveraging technology like Vouch, social media, and other communication channels like LinkedIn groups to reach potential candidates and maintain interaction throughout the hiring process. Candidate relationship management also requires tracking and analytics to continually improve your candidate experience.

The Key Benefits of Candidate Relationship Management

The key benefits of candidate relationship management include relationship building, communication, and engagement. While these can sound time-consuming for HR and Hiring team, these benefits are immense:

  • Expand your pool of talent and high-value candidates.
  • Attract and retain the best talent for your company.
  • Streamlining your hiring process and reducing time-to-hire
  • Improving your employer's brand and reputation among job seekers
  • Strengthening your talent pool and reducing hiring costs over time

5 Ways To Improve Your Candidate Relationship Management

Building a strong candidate relationship management (CRM) strategy is essential for attracting and retaining top talent. Here are some best practices to help you get started:

1. Communicate regularly

It's essential to keep in touch with your candidates throughout the hiring process, even if you don't have any updates for them. Send them personalized emails or messages to show that you value their time and interest in your company.

2. Provide a positive candidate experience

Candidates remember how they were treated and your recruitment process, so it's important to deliver a positive experience at every step. Ensure that the application process is simple and accessible with modern tools, provide clear instructions, and be respectful of their time.

3. Utilize social media

Social media is an excellent tool for building relationships with potential candidates and showcasing your employer brand. Use platforms like LinkedIn to engage with candidates, share job postings, and provide valuable industry insights.

4. Offer feedback

Be sure to provide feedback to candidates, whether they make it to the next round of interviews or not. This shows that you value their effort and interest in your organization and helps them to improve their skills for future opportunities.

5. Track candidate data

Use analytics to keep track of candidate data, such as their contact information, resume, and interview notes. This can help you build a more personalized relationship with each candidate and streamline your hiring process.

Remember, effective candidate relationship management is all about building genuine relationships with potential candidates. You need to be sincere and authentic at all times.

Candidate relationship management is an ongoing process that requires ongoing attention. By incorporating these best practices into your recruitment strategy, you can attract active and passive candidates and expand your talent pipeline.

The Role of Relationship Managers in Candidate Relationship Management

Relationship managers usually drive candidate relationship management throughout the hiring process. Relationship managers must possess amazing communication skills, strong interpersonal skills, and the ability to engage with candidates on a deeper level.

One of the key responsibilities is providing timely and relevant information to candidates, answering their questions, and addressing their concerns. Relationship managers are the go-to people for candidates.

Moreover, relationship managers must work closely with other recruitment stakeholders, such as recruiters, hiring managers, and HR teams, to ensure a seamless and efficient recruitment process - to gather feedback, address candidate issues, and streamline the recruitment process.

Leveraging Customer Relationship Management Technology

Technology has transformed the way businesses approach candidate relationship management. Customer relationship management (CRM) software can help you streamline your hiring process, manage candidate data, and improve your overall recruitment strategy. Here are some examples of CRM tools you can use:

1. Try Vouch

Vouch is a simple Video tool to improve your candidates' hiring journey. Vouch adds context and builds trust with candidates the right way, helping to onboard in less time. One of the biggest benefits of Vouch is that you can seamlessly transition your customer relationship management into your Employer Brand videos, which is a powerful set of tools.

2. Consider HubSpot

This all-in-one marketing, sales, and service platform allows you to manage candidate relationships from one central location. You can use it to track candidate activity, send personalized emails and messages, and automate tasks. Vouch integrates perfectly with Hubspot, too, so you can include all of the powerful Video tools within Hubspot.

3. Look into Lever

This cloud-based recruitment software offers a range of features to help you manage your hiring process more efficiently. With Lever, you can create customized candidate pipelines, track candidate activity on social media, and send bulk emails to targeted groups. It also integrates with Vouch.

4. Test out TalentLyft

This recruitment software offers a range of tools to help you attract and engage candidates. You can create targeted job postings, track candidate applications, and communicate with candidates via email and SMS. Combined with Vouch, this is a powerful set of tools for your candidate relationship management strategy.

By leveraging recruitment technology, you can provide a better candidate experience and improve your chances of attracting and retaining top talent. Whether you're a small business or a large corporation, these tools can help you achieve hiring success. 

FAQs

Q. What is candidate relationship management?

Candidate relationship management refers to the strategies and processes used to build and maintain strong relationships with potential candidates throughout the hiring process. It involves effectively engaging and communicating with candidates to attract and retain the best talent for an organization.

Q. Why is candidate relationship management important?

Like your Employer Brand and Employee Value Propositions (EVPs), candidate relationship management is important because it allows your company to attract and retain top talent effectively. By nurturing relationships with candidates, you can create a positive candidate experience, improve your employer brand, and streamline your hiring process.

Q. What are the benefits of candidate relationship management?

Some of the benefits of candidate relationship management include improved candidate experience, enhanced employer brand, increased candidate engagement, better quality of hires, reduced time-to-fill positions, and increased overall hiring success.

Q. What are some best practices for candidate relationship management?

Some best practices for effective candidate relationship management include personalized communication, regular follow-ups, providing valuable and relevant information to candidates, utilizing an applicant tracking system, leveraging social media, and ensuring a positive candidate experience throughout the recruitment process.

Q. What is the role of relationship managers in candidate relationship management?

Relationship managers play a vital role in candidate relationship management. They are responsible for building and maintaining relationships with candidates, ensuring effective communication and engagement, providing support and information, and acting as a liaison between candidates and the organization's hiring team.

Q. What are some popular customer relationship management (CRM) tools used in candidate relationship management?

Some popular customer relationship management (CRM) tools used in candidate relationship management include Vouch Video, Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho CRM, Bullhorn, and Greenhouse. These tools offer candidate tracking, communication management, automation, and reporting functionalities to improve the recruitment and hiring process.
 

Conclusion

Candidate relationship management is all about building relationships with potential candidates. It involves developing and implementing strategies to attract, engage, and retain the best talent for your organization.

Whether you run a small or large business, effective candidate relationship management can significantly enhance your recruitment and hiring efforts. For small and large companies alike, investing in your candidate relationship management can help you build your talent pool, improve your candidate experience, and ultimately drive business growth.

For larger businesses, your candidate relationship management can help you manage a large volume of candidates, automate your hiring process, and reduce recruitment costs when you hire at scale. Remember, the goal is to attract and retain top talent. By implementing effective strategies and technologies, you can boost your hiring process to drive your organization's growth and success.

Like to try Vouch?

Loved by companies like Canva, Nike, Cisco, Stryker, HubSpot, Amazon and more, tools like Vouch make leveraging video in your business remarkably easy.

Be sure to book a Vouch demo today and chat with a video content expert.

Gary Zurnamer

Gary Zurnamer

Co-Founder and CEO of Vouch.

Lights. Camera. Traction

Cut through the noise with video.