These days, it’s harder than ever for staffing agencies to find enough qualified candidates and it isn’t going to change in the foreseeable future. But there are staffing firms who’ve been getting incredible results by transforming their automation and technology strategy to deliver an exceptional candidate experience.
In a previous blog – our 6 Tips to Elevate the Candidate Experience in Your Marketing Automation Strategy – we touched on the importance of content in automation. We’d like to get a little closer to this topic. Specifically, aligning your automated content with the profile and journey map of your candidates can be the crucial strategy that elevates your business, increases profitability, empowers your recruiters, and keeps your candidates engaged and feeling valued with every touchpoint.
Common Missteps: When Automation Is Spammy
To a novice, marketing automation is clunky and has limited capabilities. As such, automation platforms are primarily used to attempt to drive immediate conversions in these companies. (It is only natural that businesses would want to use the technology to deliver a strong ROI.) But the whole idea of an automated strategy is to raise the whole organization, not just get a quick win.
This is perhaps where automation gets a bad reputation as many beginner campaigns come off as spammy and “all about me” (the agency).
However, automation experts create strategies that leverage data and more detailed candidate profiles within your ATS to create messaging that is impactful. The more segmented your data becomes the more the content can become relevant and, rather than constantly asking for Net Promoter Score (NPS) or referrals, the candidates will have such a great experience with your staffing firm that they’ll provide more relevant information willingly.
The rate by which this need for sophistication has accelerated in just the past two years was evident at ASA’s recent Staffing World conference. At Staffing World, the candidate experience was the dominating topic of conversation and front and center to discussions on strategy for marketing automation.
It’s not hard to see why. Since the pandemic and the increased shift to a candidate-driven market, job seekers have the upper hand more than ever. This has led to a clear demand for a better experience at every touchpoint of the candidate’s journey.
Content, Automation, and “CATS”
Content that drives an exceptional candidate experience begins with your audience. Your audience is the most important element and they should dictate the content. It should follow the candidate’s skills, interests, and any other details that comprise their Candidate Profile. Additionally, the content should speak to their specific location on their journey map.
At Parqa, we use the “CATS” method to nurture candidates: delivering the right Content to the right Audience at the right Time to create Success. The good news is, you can do this working smarter, not harder.
By aligning the content to the candidate’s profile and their journey, we can automate content that would otherwise have to be sent manually by your recruiters, saving a ton of time and busywork. Overall, we can eliminate the risk of a recruiter not getting back to a candidate, not congratulating a consultant on their first day, or retaining a candidate that is about to “role off” contract.
Aligning Content With The Candidate’s Journey Map
It’s difficult to understate the importance of aligning your content to your candidate’s journey map. You wouldn’t send a “welcome” email or an urgent “redeployment” email to a candidate who is only three months in on a six month contract.
By connecting the content you’re creating with the different stages of the candidate’s journey you’ll have better success sending relevant, engaging and timely content with a highly successful AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action):
- Attention – wherein the candidate keeps your firm top of mind no matter where they are in their specific journey, including when they are on contract with you or a competitor.
- Interest – the candidate receives content that allows them to be in the know without a recruiter reaching out regularly for “scheduled check-ins” just because it’s part of the process.
- Desire – the candidate shouldn’t know if it is automated or written by a recruiter because either way it makes them feel important and adds value to them.
- Action – the candidate reaches out if they have needs but the recruiter isn’t burdened by excessive manual reach outs.
At Parqa, we take AIDA one step further. We suggest campaigns to engage existing candidates in a client’s ATS that fell through the cracks because they didn’t fit snugly in any of the common stages (job-seeking, on contract, etc.) of the candidate journey.
Developing key content for each of these stages in the candidate journey is simple to do, but difficult to do well. It’s even harder to do at a level that creates a great candidate experience. That’s where getting micro with our candidates makes all the difference.
Getting Granular With List Maintenance And User Feedback
Sending relevant content sounds great. But doesn’t it take a ton of time and busy-work to maintain a healthy list? Again, automation to the rescue.
You can maintain a healthy and updated candidate list a couple of ways:
- By analyzing and reacting to candidate trends and activity in your KPI’s
- Utilize the data cleansing features in your ATS and CRM platforms
- By using technology platforms to map relevant fields in resumes so that candidates enter your ATS with information vital to delivering relevant content
There are even some progressive profiling techniques that could be a simple approach to data-cleansing, such as providing options for the candidate to dictate what they receive with a message might go something like:
“We know you exist, we know your time and attention is finite and highly valuable. We’re cleaning our database in order to make our content more relevant, helpful, and engaging. Click three boxes that most accurately align with your interests.”
Time and Resources
Recruiters have an extremely limited amount of time to keep their list engaged and up to date. That’s why marketing automation is so useful. If it’s a repetitive task, automation can take that and make it simple and easy.
And with access to more data than ever, we can automate that around a scalable and repeatable process with relevant content that delivers the same positive experience at every stage of the candidate journey.
If you want to create a legendary candidate experience with your automation, contact Parqa. We can help align your content with the profile and journey map of your candidates to create an outstanding user experience. Contact us today.
