This month, our very own Giles Heckstall-Smith partnered with Talent Labs and our client Matt Garner – Recruitment Manager at Voyage Care – to host a virtual roundtable with industry colleagues, covering candidate engagement in the care sector. It was a brilliant session but in case you missed it, we’ve summarised the learnings below!
To kick off, a mentimeter was sent out to learn the main challenges of the audience. Out of 66 responses, the top 3 issues were:
- Candidate drop-off
- Compliance checks
- Finding quality candidates
How has Voyage Care taken candidate engagement to the next level?
Matt: Before December 2023, Voyage Care was working with a different applicant tracking system provider. The application process wasn’t fit for purpose and we couldn’t learn much about them! We had a lot of applications coming in, but filtering through them to find good-quality candidates was time-consuming and labour-intensive.
We then started working with Jobtrain and we were able to sit down and think about what we wanted from an application form. CVs were now mandatory, we could ask custom questions that helped us find the people we needed. We were asking specific questions – does a candidate have a care certificate? If a candidate had already worked in care, what client group had they worked with? We made the most of talent pooling too, so we could have a consistent, replenishable bank of candidates to reach out to when a job goes live.
Off the back of that, our application-to-interview ratio improved and we saw a lot less no-shows! But we’re now having internal debates about whether or not we’re asking too much!
Giles: As recruiters, we should all be applying the 80/20 principle. Invest 80% of our time into the top 20% of candidates. Some care organisations are opening the floodgates to achieve lots of volumes and then working through that as quickly as possible. Others are applying screening questions to sift through and find the people they need. Others ask for everything upfront!
Confronting drop-off with application forms
Matt: We send out the second-stage application form to candidates who have progressed to the offer stage, and that’s helped hugely. Our team can invest time in chasing candidates who haven’t completed it yet. They can be confident in the knowledge that this is worth the time because it’s the people who we like for a role.
We also made the decision to switch off Quick and Direct Apply because we’ve found that making it too easy for candidates isn’t necessarily the route to quality candidates.
How do we identify a quality candidate upfront?
Matt: We’re exploring a values-based assessment. We ask value-based questions alongside competency-based questions, although it has been a challenge! Competency tends to favour people who have experience in the sector and we’re not always necessarily looking for that, so we encourage hiring managers to use value-based questions as much as possible.
We also need to introduce benchmarking. We have scorecards in our interview packs but currently no benchmark for what a 5/5 looks like for example. That’s something we’re working on!
All of the conventional wisdom from job boards is “make it look easy”, but they would say that. The measure of success for them is application volumes and that doesn’t always translate to a smooth hiring funnel.
Giles: Some organisations in the chat have said they found one-click apply had less than 0.1% conversion from application to offer!
Dealing with Artificial Intelligence
Giles: There are a few questions regarding Artificial Intelligence. Lots of candidates are using it to game the system and get AI to answer questions for them. From an ATS perspective, the best solution is to design your application forms with multiple answers and multiple choices. Don’t over-rely on free text boxes.
How do you drive candidate engagement?
Matt: To nobody’s surprise, the answer is to speak to people. Call them, email and don’t over-rely on automated workflows. Get to know your candidates as people. We implemented a business-wide plan to make sure there are enough touchpoints.
If for example, we speak to someone on Monday morning and are offering an interview for Wednesday. As soon as we put the phone down, we send follow-up emails explaining exactly what to expect from the interview, including a couple of example questions!
We also encourage candidates to use the STAR method in answering competency-based questions, so we explain what that method is and lay that out for them in follow-up communications so they can prepare.
.jpg?width=1920&height=1080&name=JS%20(1).jpg)
After that is sent over, I’ll call them again before Wednesday to confirm their attendance for the interview. If a candidate doesn’t confirm then we cancel the interview. We have Registered Managers who are incredibly busy and we can’t have them waiting for a candidate that never shows!
We went from a rate of 20% no shows down to 5% using this method. And candidates respond really well to that because they feel like we’re invested in their success. That gives them the confidence to do well in the interview too!