Organizations today are perceiving candidates from a holistic approach. They need brilliant minds that can proactively build their company. Getting to know candidates who fit this bill becomes a cinch when companies personalize the recruitment process.

On the other hand, candidates of the millennia are more prudent. A rising inquisitiveness among candidates to gather more information about the job and company culture is drawing them to research and explore the company beyond what is mentioned in the job posting.

Consequently, companies are inclined to create a fulfilling relationship with candidates by providing them with a solid personal experience throughout the hiring process. According to industry experts, a personalized hiring process bridges the gap between employers and candidates.

Here we present some time-tested hiring strategies to personalize your recruitment process and take it to the next level. All these strategies are effective and easy to implement. They help your human resources team to infuse the elements of personalization in the recruitment process.

Capitalize on Educational Institutions

Network with educational institutions that are potent enough to supply the candidates who fulfill your talent requirement.

Here are some techniques to build rapport with the students and push your brand closer to them to draw their attention toward your brand during recruitment drives:

• Volunteer at events at the community platforms and college campuses. Such events can range from short training programs on various skills, offering career development programs that showcase your expertise as the industry leader, and arranging job fairs, to name a few.
• Conduct talent hunts, hackathons, and other interactive competitions that catch the pulse of students. Invite winning candidates to join as interns and assure that your organization provides abundant scope to turn into full-fledged employees once they prove themselves.
• Invite the students or potential candidates to follow you on social media. Organize polls, contests, and discussions for them. Create groups where candidates can clarify their career-related doubts with your company experts. This builds trust in the candidates and elevates your brand reputation.

Thus, connecting with educational institutions and drawing students’ attention is one of the elementary steps to personalize your recruitment process.

Localize Your Hiring

The secret of a quick recruitment turnaround is to go where your clients are. Channelize recruitment drives in your client location and conduct events that attract talent specific to your recruitment needs.

Stage open interviews and align events to your recruitment needs to help drive candidates from those regions. This lets your clients from the area acknowledge your hiring prowess to provide them with high-quality candidates locally and appreciate your best practices to close their positions.

Thus, vitalizing localized recruitment at multiple locations is an added move to personalize your recruitment process and come closer to the candidates.

Establish Your Mentorship with the Candidates

To deliver the best candidates to your client and to personalize your recruitment process, it is imperative to guide the candidate through every step.

If you personalize your recruitment process effectively, you can easily make the candidate win over the client.

Hence, as a recruiter:

• Mentor the candidates about the various stages of the interview.
• Instill confidence in them to catch the employer’s attention.
• Guide them in resume preparation and hone their interview skills.
• Offer them help with interview tips and questions.
• Discuss probable questions they might face in the interview.
• Answer all their queries and inhibitions about recruitment to bolster their confidence.

In addition to these, pay personal attention to every candidate. This is the unbeatable approach to personalize your recruitment process and goes a long way to make the candidate feel comfortable and confident.

The primary aim to personalize your recruitment process is to make the candidates stand out from the competition. After all these measures, chances are high that it increases the probability of success at the interview, and even helps them in their future job search.

All the steps mentioned above earn you respect and attention from candidates during the selection process.

Interestingly, the real necessity to personalize your recruitment process emerges as the candidate clears the first round and moves to the further rounds. In this virtual work era where there is limited face-to-face interaction, emails and other written communication play a dominant role in offering a personalized touch to candidates. The following strategies can help achieve this goal seamlessly:

Personalize Job Description

A personalized job description helps to kick-start the interaction with candidates. A job description that is professional yet friendly, bold yet personal is the need of the hour to turn the candidates’ attention towards your brand.

The most common problem with the job description is that it is too lengthy or complicated. Bombarding the candidate with A-Z details about the job may not be a wise idea. It will bulldoze even a competent candidate and may create repulsive syndrome among the candidates, and worst, even discourage them from applying.

Never make your job description look like just another generic job description, or else the right talents are less likely to apply for the job. Hence, to prevent the first onslaught of a heavy job description, provide them with a sense of the company’s realistic expectations.

• Personalize your job description by highlighting and formatting it to catch the job seekers’ attention.
• Use engaging headers, and bullets, and keep it short, simple, and succinct.
• Graphics and visuals help candidates grasp the job description faster than text crowding.
• Add a compelling graphic that talks about your brand’s culture. This way, you can cut the related narration in the text.

Candidates love to know what the companies have to offer them for their professional growth. Give a transparent picture of how working in your organization looks like for the candidate. Add only relevant and mandatory skills you expect from the candidate in the job description. Details the rest in the communication – emails of phone calls.

Pay Attention to Candidate Emails

A “Hi Bob, thanks for applying” sounds more personal than “Hi candidate, thanks for applying“. Pay utmost attention to the words and the content of your email. For example, referring to their background makes them feel they are the likelier fitment and will encourage candidates to reciprocate favorably.

A mass reply in the generic form of an email will cause most candidates to ignore and repel them from applying or taking it forward.

That said, personalizing emails to each candidate can be daunting, especially keeping in mind the ratio of applicants each role draws. Here is where you should leverage HR automation tools to personalize your recruitment process.

CRM tools help to segregate and segment your candidates by their location, specialization, industry, and skill and send personalized emails. They ease the email blast aligned and customized to the position by targeting the best-fit candidates.

Additionally, email software programs help you do the segmentation of the candidates. Using such tools, insert the candidate’s name and profile to make your email look more customized than generic.

Welcome the Candidates to Further Interactions

Candidates wish to reach out at several stages of the selection process for various reasons. Let the candidates know that you are open to further interactions during any round of the interview process. Take feedback and suggestion, and help them with additional information about the next step to personalize your recruitment process.

If calling each candidate is not feasible because of the sheer volume, send a personalized email or a simple message to mention that you just wanted to say Hello and will share further updates as you receive them.

Ensure that you would let them know at once about their progress in the recruitment process. Inform if they are out of or in the drive. To successful candidates who move to the next rounds, inform them with the same excitement and enthusiasm as they would feel after receiving your message.

Never leave the candidates who could not pass the round and remained unselected lurch in the dark with no information. Be transparent and tell them why the interviewer did not find them a good fit for the position. Encourage them to apply for other roles in the future or after a certain cooling period to try again. Candidates will appreciate this gesture of informing them about the status quickly and will hold you in good stead when they apply in the future.

The Bottom Line

Companies need to personalize the recruitment process to change a candidate’s life, career, and future for the better. Besides building a brand’s solidity, a personalized hiring strategy would gain future referrals and build an upstanding pipeline and a vehement database of quality future hires.