When it comes to crafting the ideal candidate journey, a company absolutely must keep in mind that the process also doubles as an information journey. Over its course, candidates will seek answers to lingering questions that they have about what employment with your company can provide them; and if they’re met with compatible answers, they’re bound to move forward and eventually join your company.
Being prepared with thorough answers to the most common questions in the candidate journey is essential to moving individuals along the way to employment. Better yet, mapping out the candidate journey and providing candidates with explanatory content throughout each and every step can make a huge difference in their perception of your company and the work it does.
However, in order to be able to craft an effective candidate journey, you must start by understanding your candidate persona. From there, you and your hiring team can work to create discrete steps for a straightforward and informative candidate journey for every individual.
What does effective candidate journey content do?
Within any standard candidate journey, individuals typically go through a specific, sequential funnel of steps: Attract, Engage, Convert, and Nurture. In order to optimize their impact, each and every one of these stages must be unique; serve a distinct purpose; and be backed by strong, persuasive content.
Attracts
Awareness always precedes attraction. When it comes to candidate journeys, companies can increase awareness and, therefore, attraction by including the following types of content: company achievements, diversity reports, as well as content that appeals to new grads who have just begun their job hunt.
This thorough Hubspot article is a perfect example. In it, graduates are ultimately encouraged to start a career in sales, all by dismantling various myths and misconceptions surrounding work in sales and amplifying the message that these kinds of roles can actually be rewarding and the perfect way to kickstart their careers. This article’s message is a strong one––particularly in how well it targets a very specific (and eager) applicant pool.
Engages
As you begin to plan what interviews will look like for candidates, it’s always helpful to lead with empathy. Understand that the interview process is usually a very stressful one, so providing candidates with a detailed breakdown of the interview process, as well as sharing tips on the best methods of preparation, can do wonders in terms of making individuals more confident when they enter the room.
Again, Hubspot checks this box by offering a detailed breakdown of everything expected from a candidate in a technical interview with the company. Take a look at this article to help shape your own interview guide to success for candidates!
Converts
In many ways, modern candidates are exactly like customers; but instead of making purchasing decisions, they’re making an even bigger decision to come onboard as a new employee. Just like customers, candidates are eager to know anything and everything about your company before committing to a specific role.
Think about your company and employer brand for just a moment: does your company provide candidates with the content that helps inform their decision to accept a role? We’ve found that the recruitment marketing funneled towards candidates actually plays an integral role in their decision to continue on the path to employment.
Another great way to increase conversion rates along the candidate journey is to provide support as needed. Maybe the candidate is a new parent and is considering whether your company would be a good fit with their necessary work-life balance. Here, Hubspot depicts the experience of an employee explaining why he left a former managerial position, accepted a new job at Hubspot, and received support from the company in his professional and personal life. No matter the specific context, offering a reminder that your company is there to support candidates wherever they are in their journey is a fantastic way to generate interest in working for you.
Nurtures
After following these concrete steps by the book, your candidate has accepted their offer. So… now what? Believe it or not, but conversion doesn’t stop when an offer is accepted. In fact, there’s usually a time period between accepting a job offer and starting one’s first day of work; so in order to set new employees up for success, continue to nurture and check up on them as they prepare for their new role within your company. Yet again, Hubspot nails this by sharing tips geared towards those beginning a new job.
In all, we’re huge advocates for a personalized omni-channel approach to all of the content above. We’ve seen successful content in a variety of spaces: email, social media, career sites, and even programmatic ads. After all, you’re bound to attract, engage, convert, and nurture more candidates once they come across a piece of content more than once.
As always, it’s absolutely vital for companies to remember that “selling” a job to a candidate has never been about pushing them to accept an offer, but rather guiding and helping them to this end-goal.
Want help strategizing your candidate journey content to attract new applicants, engage qualified picks, convert leads to acceptances, and nurture candidates through the on boarding process? Click here to learn more about how we can transform your current efforts and help you piece together a competitive workforce!