As you think about your candidate engagement strategy, consider these two questions.
A. Are your candidate engagement efforts working?
B. Are you measuring your efforts?
If the answer to the second question is no, how can you be confident that the answer to the first question is yes?
In other words, data and candidate engagement go hand in hand. The data you already have is instrumental in providing answers to important questions. How often should you be emailing candidates? How often should you be calling candidates? How can build better relationships with fewer resources?
Here are three ways you can use your data to evaluate and improve your candidate engagement and outreach practices.
1) Determine a baseline
Look at your historical communication with candidates to see how frequently you’ve been engaging with your candidate pool. See if you can uncover any trends or patterns—for example, is there an engagement method that most often leads to redeployments?
2) Set targets/goals
Decide how often you would like to call/email candidates. Consider setting different frequency goals based on the type of candidate you’re engaging with. Some segments you may want to consider are:
A. Strong Performers
B. Currently Contracted
C. New Candidates
3) Track your progress
Hold yourself and your team to hitting your candidate engagement goals. Monitor your performance weekly to ensure that you’re reaching out to the right candidates at the right frequency.
Following through on these steps requires that you have visibility into both your candidate pool and your activities. If you have a reporting tool, consider setting up ongoing reports to keep track of your efforts. In this case, using data will not only hold you to your plan and keep you consistent, but it can also help you adjust that plan based on effectiveness, to ensure you hit your goals.