At Data Idols, we champion the notion that nurturing relationships with potential candidates is a key way to attract the right people to add to your business. Creating a community, or tapping into an existing community, to hire for your team effectively is an efficient yet underrated way to do this.
In this article, we will explore how to do this by successfully taking advantage of the tools available at your fingertips to nourish those candidate relationships and improve success rates.
According to an HR News study, 1 in 5 people in the UK fail their probationary period. And with estimates that this could cost the business up to 150% of the employee’s annual salary, this can be an unwelcome pricey outcome for many companies to deal with.
No one likes to have their time or energy wasted. This is why it is integral for those hiring to think carefully about their approach when it comes to attracting the right candidates for their available positions, including jobs in Data Science, Engineering and Analytics. The alternative can result in long-drawn-out processes, unnecessarily wasted money and overall ineffective recruitment practices that negatively impact your business, existing teams and the candidate.
Aside from knowing and producing industry-standard job descriptions and being up to date with the best practices in interviewing techniques, hiring managers should consider the importance of building a community as part of their talent-attracting tactics. When done well, leveraging a community will also make you better at your job by increasing offer acceptance rates, saving your company money and helping to build your business reputation within the industry.
Having a relationship with your pool of potential candidates should go beyond a simple introduction and intermittent contact. Get to know your talent pool! It takes a little time and effort, but building on your talent community and opening the lines of communication can make such a difference to your success rates with your potential new hires.
Here are four ways to build upon those candidate relationships, or make new ones:
Whether you’re attending a career fair, industry or networking event, or even hosting one yourself, it can be a real goldmine for learning more about candidates and how best to approach them.
Various touch-points at these events provide an excellent way to complete data capture activity for later use. Hosting a networking event ensures sign-up data is gained from the attendees, but beyond this, why not add a couple of extra questions to find out further information? This can be done on the initial event sign-up page, or sent in an email after an event as a way to gain feedback and future communication preferences. You could also simply ask these questions yourself in conversation, and pass on a business card if the person seems like the right fit for a role you have open.
Ask questions that will help you to target your next steps for communications with them:
The more you know about your target ‘audience’, the better you can tailor your next step and grow that initial relationship! This assists in avoiding inadvertently targeting the wrong candidates and can in turn speed up filling your open positions by approaching those actively seeking jobs in your industry.
You can also put yourself in front of potential great hires by speaking at or hosting your own tech events. This will draw in potential perfect candidates from the data industry closer and help you to expand your reach when it comes to discussing open roles, industry highlights and tech trends.
Active job seekers and casual job board lurkers alike will always be interested in keeping up to date with current job openings to scope out salaries and various opportunities that could be available to them. To fulfil this demand, you could start a blog as a way to keep in touch with these potential future candidates and be sure to offer more than just job openings. Pique their interest by sharing current data industry news and trends, along with job interview tips, to offer further value to their blog catch-ups. Be sure to post your latest blog posts on your business’s LinkedIn and other socials with a sign-up link to encourage more subscribers.
This blog hub creates a community within itself, and your blog should support further learning and could even become a go-to for those looking for the latest insights – in turn, reaffirming your standing as a hiring manager, business owner or inhouse recruiter who knows their stuff. The regular communication also keeps you relevant and in front of potential job seekers who are more likely to reach out to you when the time is right.
Keep in touch with those whom you have previously worked with or communicated with on a recruitment basis. Celebrate professional milestones they share on LinkedIn, from job movements to new qualifications. Make a note of where they were at with their job-seeking journey and conduct a timely check-in by messaging to ask how it is going and see if you can suggest your company to them as a possible move. This personalisation and interest in their professional development helps to nurture a growing relationship and makes the individual feel valued. Plus, people are far more likely to engage positively when they are addressed personally.
Hiring managers can utilise open-source technology in their recruitment processes to help assess a candidate’s technical, creative and collaboration skills against their role requirements. Open source software can collect data to better engage with people and look at their compatibility with a new company whilst also identifying the most qualified candidates.
Making a good hire is paramount for business outcomes. Not only is placing the right candidates in the right roles beneficial to both companies and the candidates, but we also need to be clear about the importance of nurturing relationships with potential candidates. It takes dedication and time to do this. Still, it builds a reliable community for you to tap into and attract those perfect job candidates for your roles for a smoother recruitment experience for everyone involved.
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