Last week I had the pleasure of hosting my first webinar for Navigo on how onboarding can wreck your recruitment process.
In this webinar we discussed the importance of a good candidate experience to ensure you hold onto your first choice candidate. I shared my own experience when joining Navigo – I had two job offers and Navigo won out easily based on delivering a great onboarding experience.
Something rather shocking happened in this webinar.
We ran a poll on what were some of the biggest issues people faced in the onboarding process:
The most common issue relates to internal processes. Alarmingly poor candidate experience ranked third.
This to me underlines a big issue. With onboarding, we are still focussed on what’s in it for HR, not the candidate. Reality check – in a skill short market, candidates have choice.
Recruitment is like fishing in a way.
Your recruitment ad is the bait. You hook a good candidate then reel them in. Most good fisherman will then tell you landing the fish in some cases be the toughest part.
Now I am a sales person by trade. If I walked into a meeting and my prime focus was on how much money this sale will make me, I am not going to get far. If I walk in thinking how can I solve this person’s problems, I will have a far better strike rate. In recruitment mode you are always selling your employment brand.
So when it comes to onboarding how are you portraying your brand?
Would a candidate be excited about joining your company based on the current onboarding experience you deliver?
With the evolution of online onboarding systems, more and more companies are now asking this question, and those who aren’t will lose out badly in the long run.