Do you require a full 10+ step job application before you engage with a candidate? If so, you may be missing many of the best candidates. Why?

No one wants to sign a prenuptial on the first date.

Here’s another way to look at it:

Would your sales department require a full credit application before you talk to a potential buyer?No, of course they wouldn’t. They would first present the product they’re selling and sell its benefits. 

Why is it that most companies require such long job applications first?

20 Years of Bad Habits

Companies are still using grossly long job applications because we’ve gotten used to a long-term employer’s market. We got used to posting a job and getting 100 or more applications. Inundated with such a large applicant pool, we biased our hiring processes to screen out everyone who wasn’t an exact match.  

Better Recruiting Habits

The recruiting landscape has changed drastically in the past years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in October 2021 there were only 0.7 job seekers per job opening. Now that there’s less than one available job seeker per open job, maybe it’s time to rethink how we engage with job seekers. Here are 3 things our most successful customers do:

1. Apply Faster

The fastest applications only need 3 fields: a name, a phone number, and an email address. It’s better to collect the bare minimum contact information to get the candidate talking as soon as possible with a recruiter rather than put them off with long form applications which should be reserved until after an actual job offer.

2. Engage Faster

Our most successful employers are responding to job seeker interest in less than 2-4 hours. A year ago, you could wait 2-4 days and still find quality candidates. If you want to get the best people, go even faster and respond in minutes.

3. Talk to Job Seekers

Have a human-to-human conversation with applicants as quickly as possible. If you are having people fill out long applications online and are only talking to the candidates you are interested in, your competition is eating your lunch. Most job seekers have basic questions they need answered to determine if they want to apply. Sometimes it is about benefits, sometimes it is about compensation, sometimes it is about requirements — most often it’s about something you don’t expect — and it takes a person to answer the question.

At PivotCX our candidate advocate team talks to every job seeker within minutes of every inquiry. Our team is answering job seeker questions, getting a complete profile and making sure there’s a good fit, and then referring candidates to our client companies who are then engaging with the applicants to complete the hiring process. 

Think Different

Times have changed. Jobs used to be scarce. Now applicants are. Regardless of how we got here, the new reality is there is less than one job seeker available for each open job in the US. 

It’s time to start treating job seekers like they are scarce — because they are.

Find out: PivotCX helps your company respond with a live person in seconds to candidate inquiries.