Five Ways to Help Retain and Engage Candidates

As we are all aware, today’s unemployment rate is at an unprecedented low. Given this, it's important to be expedient in your hiring decisions. When Goodwill TalentBridge engages with customers to assist them in their staffing needs, we relay on our industry expertise. We offer advice to shorten the time to fill a position. Here are five ways to help retain and engage identified candidates and get them started as quickly as possible.

1. Minimal interview steps. Take it from the application, straight to a quick phone call, to an onsite with the appropriate individuals. If at all possible, you should complete this within a few business days. We lose most candidates when hiring managers take too long to coordinate interviews.
2. Assessments and other tests may need to take a back seat. Although they are useful tools, if a candidate has another opportunity that does not demand they spend an hour of their time testing, they will likely pursue that position.
3. Be flexible when finding candidates. In today’s fluid workforce environment candidates might not be committed to the role for all of eternity. Accepting this and choosing the right person for the role will help you meet your business needs. Allowing a position to remain open while you hope to find a person who won’t leave, offers you no real guarantee. After all, these are people, and at the end of the day, anyone can choose to leave a position, at any time.
4. Get them started as soon as possible. Making someone an offer and starting them as soon as possible will hopefully discourage them from or pursuing any other job opportunities. Understanding that there are payroll constraints, but trying to see if you can work with though some of these hurdles to get them quickly started once they accept.
5. Offer a higher wage up front. If that is not possible, find other ways to make the opportunity appealing to them. Perhaps it is a work from home day each week, a flex schedule, or something else that will encourage them to view this opportunity as something that cannot be missed.