Successful Candidate Relationship Management in 4 Steps

Recruiting qualified employees for one's own company is often not so easy today. Candidate Relationship Management is an excellent and essential method for recruiting long-term candidates. In this article we will show you the 4 steps to a successful Candidate Relationship Management!

Today's general conditions (demographic change, low unemployment rate and so on) make it difficult for companies to recruit new employees for their business. There are various methods and measures which employers can use. One of the most important is Candidate Relationship Management (CRM). In short, CRM serves the goal of binding candidates to your company or employer brand by managing relationships. By building up your own talent pool and creating lasting relationships, you can draw from your own candidate pipeline and win new employees for your company in the long term. In the following we will show you the 4 steps to a successful Candidate Relationship Management!

Successful Candidate Relationship Management in 4 Steps:

1) Contacts

Candidate Relationship Management aims to build relationships with candidates. So the first step is to have contacts in your talent pool with whom you can build up these relationships. One of the most important components in Candidate Relationship Management is therefore the acquisition of contacts. There are many different ways to do this.

On the one hand, you can get contacts to join your talent pool on your career page and in your job ads. Because even if they don't find what they're looking for, they can stay in touch with you! Furthermore, sourcing, the direct approach to candidates, has become an important method today. Due to demographic change and low unemployment rates, very few people today are actively looking for a job, are employed and have a passive attitude. However, you can approach them actively and get in touch with them via social media (Xing, Linkedin, Facebook, ...). They may not want to move directly to your company, but through Candidate Relationship Management you can build a long-term relationship that can convince such contacts of your abilities. Finally, job fairs, former employees, interns, employer branding campaigns or all kinds of events can be used to get in touch with different candidates and invite them to join your talent pool!

2) Talent Pool

When you meet candidates, you want to stay in touch with them as part of a successful Candidate Relationship Management to build a relationship. To do this, you collect your candidates or contacts in your Talent Pool (this works best with the help of software, e.g. Talention). At this point, it makes sense to organize your Talent Pool in small pools according to candidates with similar interests. Why? Trainees, for example, have different wishes and interests than professionally experienced candidates. Sort your talent pool, for example, according to subject areas or experience levels, so that you can take appropriate measures in the next step (nurturing).

Example: Talent Pool invitation on a job ad from Talention

3) Nurturing

You have made contact with candidates and built up your talent pool! These are the best conditions for starting with relationship management, the Nurturing. Through various Nurturing measures, your company stays in the candidates mind and you can bind them to your company or employer brand in the long term. In the best case scenario, they apply for a job at your company one day!

But what kind of nurturing measures are conceivable? The list is long and there are no limits to your creativity! The most popular options include job newsletters, for example, which inform candidates about your vacancies or company-related newsletters (e.g. prizes won or new products). You should adapt the nurturing measures to your candidates or pools (as described under "Talent Pool"). For example, invite Talent Pool candidates in the IT field to a hackathon or inform all student candidates about your graduate program. In doing so, always communicate suitable employer benefits that you offer. In the IT sector, for example, flexible working hours are highly appreciated by candidates - if you offer such advantages, communicate it to this target group! In this way you can convince interested candidates of your qualities in the long term and successfully recruit them for your company if required.

Example Nurturing: Invitation to a Marketing Workshop

4) Software

Many companies today rely on paper or on managing their talent pools themselves using tables (e.g. Excel). Unfortunately, this not only leads to error-proneness and tedious workflows, but in many cases is also not GDPR-compliant. For this reason, successful Candidate Relationship Management nowadays always includes software! They can support you in building up your talent pool (e.g. through sourcing and integration in career sites and job advertisements) and simplify your nurturing projects. Clearly arranged reports about your talent pool as well as automated workflows facilitate your work. In addition, you are on the safe side with the GDPR.

No matter whether you have already implemented the topic of Candidate Relationship Management or are just in the beginning: Talention supports you in your plans and efforts. The software has all the relevant functions you need for CRM. Request a demo now!