Engaging With Your Existing Candidates

Check out our best practise advice on engaging with your current candidate database.

As recruiters, one of our most valuable assets is our candidate database. Within it, we have a store of potential placements waiting to be engaged and moved through your job workflows to find their next role.

The candidates within your database have all found themselves on there as at some point they have been seeking a new job. Its time to use this data to your advantage and make the most out of ther data within your current database of candidates who have previously engaged with your company, rather than trawling through job boards and new applications.

Ideally, everyone!

We know it's easier and a better use of resources to source candidates from your current database, so let's make the most of it!

We might not be able to place every candidate who applies for registers with our agency, however its worthwhile to keep candidates warm across your database in case a role drops that you have the perfect candidate for - they should be expecting your call!

However, it can be difficult to engage a whole database in one go, as some comms for candidates within one industry for location may not be suitable for all.

You can use Talent Pools and Saved Searches to segment your database into smaller chunks allowing you to split up candidates in different industries or parts of the country.

Creating Talent Pools and Searches in this way allows you to easily and consistently communicate to a block of your database with similar preferences.

How To Engage With The Candidates

In terms of engagement, there are several ways to do this.

Firstly, you may want to communicate to candidates without necessarily trying call an action for them to make an application. This allows you to communicate to the candidate and say "Hey, we're here if you need us", but also provide a value add proposition with them and give them the option to start a conversation with you.

For Example, you could use the Bulk Email in Firefish to send out:

• Industry News

• Your companies newsletter

• Your latest blog or article

• Invites to event's you're hosting or attending

• Seasonal Greetings, such as Merry Christmas or some more specific like Happy St Patricks Day to your Irish candidates Talent Pool.

The Bulk Email is a great tool, and in addition to the above can be used for a call to entice your candidates into a job workflow.

This can be used within your Talent Pools and Saved Searches, or also to a one-off Search you are building.

Firefish allows you to have 5 Bulk Email Templates, meaning you can fashion a template for each scenario and have something ready to go every time!

If targeting an audience based specifically in relation to an advert, Mailshots are a great tool to engage your candidates.

Mailshots are emails generated from the Reach tab of your Advert and can be sent to specific searches, or candidates from your Job Workflow, meaning it takes just seconds to communicate with a mass of candidates.

One step better, the Mailshots allow you to track the success of the comms on the Prospects tab, showing which candidates have engaged with the message and the level of engagement across the candidate base who received this.

Candidates Calls

Although it may take slightly longer than emailing out, there's no better way to understand our candidate's situation and engagement than getting them on the phone and chatting through.

This allows you to really understand where the candidate is and how you can help them - Why not run a search of a small number of candidates each day/week and reach out to each of them and see how you can help?

Once completed, you can leave a note and update their preferences to ensure you have the most up-to-date information on the candidate and you are in a great position with them going forward.

You could also do this using Firefish Click to Call functionality which will allow you to record the call and make notes as you speak with them!