One of the biggest challenges you may face as a recruiter is how to nurture candidates when time is in short supply. However, without personalized attention, top talent is likely to self-select out of the recruitment process. So, how can you build rapport with candidates, encourage them to stay on track, and ensure they have an overall better candidate experience?

4 Candidate Pain Points in the Recruitment Process

Candidates working their way through the recruitment funnel are likely to abandon their journey at several key points due to frustration with the hiring process:

Candidate Recruitment Pain Point #1: Application taking too long

A whopping 92% of applicants never complete their online application. Reasons for this abandonment include the application being too many pages, involving too many steps, or requiring repetitive entry of basic information, which is seen as wasting the candidate’s time. When the information required is already supplied in the resume or CV, is it really necessary to have candidates type it into multiple fields as well?

Candidate Recruitment Pain Point #2:Too many assessments

Companies are using more and more assessments to filter out candidates before the interview stage; in fact, more than 75% of big companies utilize at least one and often more than one. However, demands for test after test can be seen as disrespectful of a candidate’s time. Assessments should be carefully chosen and structured for maximum benefit and with an eye to avoiding turning off candidates.

Related: The 5 W’s of Reference Checks & Industry Best Practices

Candidate Recruitment Pain Point #3: Lack of communication 

This is a major sticking point. When a worker needs a job, they aren’t just sitting around waiting for someone to get back to them, especially when 75% of workers say they have been “ghosted” by an employer even after making it to the interview round. More than 80% of candidates say that if employers would simply communicate ongoing status updates, this would greatly improve their overall candidate experience.

Candidate Recruitment Pain Point #4: Waiting for an interview

After investing the time and effort to identify candidates worthy of an interview, it’s a kick in the teeth as a recruiter to see a candidate walk away before it can be scheduled - but 60% of recruiters say this happens all the time. Simply keeping candidates in the loop and getting interviews scheduled quickly once potential has been identified can help stop the loss of a highly qualified worker to the competition.

Recruiters Are Struggling Too

Candidates aren’t the only ones getting frustrated with hiring funnels. You may be struggling with too little time to really get to know candidates, and too much data to sort through, as well as trying to balance the needs and wants of candidates against the demands and expectations of hiring managers.

You need tools and technology designed to help you create a rapport with candidates, identifying front-runners quickly and fast-tracking them to the interview stage to prevent drop-off. From tools to speed candidate reference checks to analytics that help recruiters more swiftly surface top talent, technology for recruiters is expanding rapidly.

Related: Free Pocket Guide - See the 10 Most Common Hiring Mistakes Made by Recruiters

Crosschq 360

Crosschq 360 streamlines reference checking by transforming the process from a traditional reference checking model to a digital candidate check. This makes it easy to compare candidates based on scores derived from skills and attribute focused questionnaires. The candidate as well as their peers and mentors complete the checks, providing a full picture of a candidate’s strengths as well as areas where they can improve. This can reduce the time needed to complete a reference check by up to 90%.

TalentWall™ by Crosschq

TalentWall™ by Crosschq overlays your ATS, breaking down all of the data on your candidates and making it easy to digest. You can view how hiring is going by candidate, recruiter, role, or department, and identify bottlenecks before high-value candidates get discouraged and self-select out of the recruitment process. TalentWall™ by Crosschq also lets you drill down into individual data points as needed without getting overwhelmed.

Benefits of Hiring Technology

When you use hiring technology to cut down on time spent doing repetitive administrative tasks like reference checks and interview scheduling, you have more time left to spend on creating rapport with your top candidates, communicating with them more frequently, and nurturing them as they work their way through the hiring funnel. Here are benefits you'll see:

• Better understanding of the data available on both candidates and hiring funnels
• More high-quality candidates kept engaged throughout the hiring process
• Fewer candidates self-selecting out of the recruitment funnel
• Unselected candidates left with a good experience who may be recruited later
• Better coordination between you (recruiter) and hiring managers
• Improved communication between you (recruiter) and candidates
• Enhanced candidate experiences for all applicants
• Improved quality of hire and employee retention

Related: A Guide to Fixing the Differences Between Recruiters and Hiring Managers

Technology can be a recruiter’s best friend, but only if it is easy for you to use and integrates smoothly with tools already being leveraged to make hiring run smoothly.

For more information on how Crosschq can help you create a better recruiter-candidate rapport that leads to an overall better candidate experience, ask one of our experienced team members for a demonstration today.