Each corporate job opening, on average, attracts 250 resumes according to Glassdoor. Of those candidates, just 4-6 will get an interview and, of course, only one will get the job.
When you take into consideration the additional leads that pour in from job fairs, campus recruiting events and the myriad other ways to source candidates, it's no surprise that most enterprise ATSs and now candidate relationship management systems (CRMs) contain hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of applicants and/or leads. Without a talent rediscovery strategy, that's a lot of people you've paid to get in front of that never see the light of day.
Most of this talent just keeps growing colder by the day. Proof? Only 35% of the Fortune 500 have any type of talent network or database to capture interested candidates. Kudos to them, right? Well ... get this: of that 35%, one-third never send their interested leads anything. That means, across the board, there are a LOT of candidates out there who are opting in to learn more about potential employers, never to hear back.
Recruiters are sitting on a gold mine of talent, but few are working to extract the gold. And even with the right technology like a recruitment CRM, having the wrong strategy or limited functionality hinders teams from truly re-engaging or even finding the right people and prioritizing outreach. Recruiters and sourcers and technology need to meet in the middle: that means combining human insight and smarter skills with assistive intelligence that can aid in talent rediscovery to make sense of candidates faster. A recruitment CRM (or any technology for that matter) should never replace human insight, it should simply augment it.
Here is a simple, two-step approach to talent rediscovery and re-engagement with a smarter CRM:
Step 1: Identify and prioritize star candidates
This is where automation and algorithms shine.
Let's use silver medalists as an example. By using automated triggers to automatically add silver medalists in your ATS to a "warm" pipeline in your CRM, you can let technology help you match those people to new reqs based on specific attributes, behaviors, employment history, skills and more. This gives your team a natural jumping off point anytime a new req opens, instead of always defaulting to spray-and-pray, job distribution tactics which, coincidentally, often lead to serial applicants and your ATS being flooded with people your team has already reviewed and dispositioned in the past.
Automation and AI can also leverage historical data, behavioral data and feedback from recruiters to make more accurate suggestions for the candidates recruiters might want to start with. It's important to note that AI isn't technically eliminating anyone, per se, or telling recruiters "this person is the exact right fit." It's trying to make sense of the data available on each candidate to bubble up a starting point for more effective recruiter or marketing outreach, faster.
So if you need to hire for a specific role or on a tight deadline, you can quickly and automatically generate a list of leads that you should focus on. Imagine trying to figure that out manually!
Working smarter, not harder, when it comes to talent discovery and engagement for specific talent pipelines is about leveraging technology to narrow down and improve the quality of the candidates you're targeting. And by driving efficiencies in the sourcing, identification and candidate matching processes, you can focus your efforts on crafting targeted drip campaigns that will bring these star candidates back from no man's land.
Step 2: Execute re-engagement campaigns
Now, the fun part. Once you've identified which leads to prioritize, the next step is to create highly targeted, engaging reactivation campaigns that will resonate with this talent and win back their attention.
Borrowing from the marketer's toolkit, a re-engagement program consists of an email campaign or multiple campaigns aimed at reviving candidates who haven't engaged with your brand in a long time or might need a more focused message to finally prompt them to apply, attend an event, etc.
The key to a successful reactivation campaign is relevancy and consistency. It needs to be different than your typical nurture campaign, since general messages or job alerts didn't spark their interest enough the first time around. Don't be afraid to test different email formats, messaging and calls to action. A CRM with pipeline intelligence can also offer you deep insights into the behavior of targeted candidates so that you can craft a compelling message that will inspire even the coldest candidates to re-engage. The more you test, the more you (and your CRM) learn about your audience.
By leveraging automated email drip campaigns, you can send the right message to the right people at the right time increasing the likelihood of re-engagement. Taking the use of smart technology a step further, you can also use segmentation features to automatically route candidates into different workflows. This allows you to differentiate your employer brand and nurture candidate relationships while allowing your recruiting team to stay focused on high-value activities rather than wasting time on manual CRM tasks.
Pipeline intelligence makes good business sense
It's great to have a CRM full of great talent, but what good is it if you collect their information and then just let them sit there? What good is it if they ignore the content you send because it's not personalized? If you have to start from scratch every time you post a job req, you're not getting the most out of your CRM or your talent pipelines.
With a comprehensive talent rediscovery and engagement strategy powered by smart technology, recruiters can work smarter to finally "mine the gold" they've been sitting on for far too long. An AI-powered recruitment CRM enables recruiters to efficiently identify and prioritize cold lead outreach, as well as execute highly targeted reactivation campaigns, reduce time-to-fill, improve quality of hire and reduce cost per hire.
With the right technology and effective content, you'll be well on your way to warming up your pipelines and finally shining some light into the black hole of talent acquisition.
