If you are a recruiter focused on hiring the best talent for your organization, you would have faced the challenge of candidate dropouts. It is pretty frustrating for a recruiter when a candidate avoids calls and is unresponsive to emails and texts to finally inform you that they will not be able to accept your offer. As Abraham Maslow described in his need hierarchy theory, candidates desire to feel belonging, be creative, and even find life’s purpose through work.
To be better prepared to deal with this challenge, you can read on to understand:
- The reasons for dropouts
- How to reduce or avoid dropouts
- how to improve offer conversions
Understanding the demand-supply ratio of jobs is a tricky business.
Job seekers used to aspire to fulfill their basic needs through their jobs. Over time, a candidate’s perspective has shifted from seeking a job to building a career.
As Abraham Maslow described in his need hierarchy theory, candidates desire to feel belonging, be creative, and even find life’s purpose through work.
Top 8 Reasons for Offer Dropout
#1 Inauthentic or misrepresented facts
Candidates are promised the moon and the stars when their hiring experience is contradictory. Overselling the job role or the organization to close a position may lead to dropouts as well as a negative employer brand.
#2 Unclear Job Description
Candidates may not be satisfied with the job title, job description, or KRAs as compared to others they may have seen in the industry.
#3 Criteria or expectation mismatch
The most common reason for candidate dropout is an expectation mismatch in terms of salary, benefits, work hours, location and job title, etc. When recruiters are too rigid in their expectations without any scope for negotiation or upskilling, it can lead to a dropout. It is often wiser for a recruiter to look for the ‘nearest fit’ instead of a perfect fit.
#4 Interview process
Candidates may often feel put off due to the duration of the interview process as well as the number of interview stages, making a difference in the engagement experience.
#5 Lack of communication
Lesser follow-ups or delays in communicating with the candidate may also be a major factor for dropouts.
#6 Slow decision-making
Another factor that may slow down the decision-making process is the number of stakeholders involved in the hiring process. Keeping a profile ‘on hold’ for too long may lead to the candidate dropping off.
#7 Candidate experience
A negative experience at any interview stage can lead to candidate drop-offs. Lack of engagement with the employer can also be perceived as disinterest from the recruiter.
#8 Better offers
This is a factor that is fairly unpredictable for recruiters. Since you cannot know how many interviews the candidate has appeared for, you will also be unable to anticipate the candidate’s counter-offers.
How to Avoid Dropouts and Improve Offer Conversions
Fortunately, there are many steps you can take to prevent offer dropouts and improve conversions:
#1 Emphasize your Employee Value Proposition (EVP)
Your EVP is probably the main reason that attracted candidates to your organization. Giving the candidate a clear view of what they stand to gain when they join will keep them involved and focused on your offer.
Reviews and testimonials from previous candidates and current employees on your website or social media will remind candidates of your EVP.
Read – Detailed guide about Employee Value Proposition
#2 Build a candidate persona
Many Applicant Tracking Systems are highly efficient in collecting and recording candidate data. Being mindful of what matters the most to the candidate will help you position your offer and EVP to keep the candidate engaged.
Of course, this will require you to take notes during all the interview interactions with the candidate. This is especially helpful if you are hiring candidates for unique roles or senior positions in the organization.
Read – How to create Candidate Persona
#3 Create a wonderful Candidate Experience
Nothing replaces a memorable, positive experience.
Like Maya Angelou rightly says, ‘People may forget what you did, but they will, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’
A positive candidate experience can be a subtle yet strong influence on conversions. This can be achieved by adequate training and skill development of the recruitment team.
The organization can also get creative with creating positive experiences like personalized communication and communicating employee roadmaps.
Read – Best Practices to Transform Candidate Experience
#4 Consistently engage with the candidate
No one likes to be left in limbo after attempting an interview or receiving an offer.
Even more important is engaging with potential candidates when they are in their notice period, transitioning from their previous job to the new one. Most automated systems allow consistent and scalable communication with candidates.
The Hyreo Post-Offer solution allows 24/7 communication with offered candidates through inbuilt conversational AI components to answer candidate queries, guide their onboarding process, and set up meetings.
Such tools result in higher candidate engagement, higher offer conversion, and more feedback received. It is found that automation improves the overall offer conversion rate from 65% to over 75%.
Many organizations also arrange candidates’ interaction with their future team, influencing their engagement.
#5 Speed up Employee Onboarding
It is essential to reduce the time between the offer and actual onboarding.
Keeping the candidate engaged through onboarding tools like Hyreo can also provide a seamless experience for candidates.
Hyreo is a candidate experience platform that offers real-time interfacing and support with conversational AI capabilities, engaging candidates meaningfully throughout the notice period.
Automating recurring transactional activities such as document collection, meeting scheduling and notifications, and frequent candidate feedback and sentiments curates a supreme candidate experience.
It is seen that these tools improve the time taken to complete the document collection and onboarding process by 20%.
#6 Analyze reasons for dropout
If your candidate dropout rates are higher than you expected, it is prudent for you to find out the reasons for dropping out.
You could gather feedback from candidates, understand the industry standards, and analyze your competitor’s offerings and EVP.
Consider making changes in your EVP, considering the long-term and any domino effect this change may cause.
Be mindful of proposing these changes exclusively to retain highly skilled talent.
Wrap up
On the one hand, recruiters seek a skilled and committed candidate pool; conversely, candidates want the best from their employers.
As with any relationship, understanding what the candidate wants, needs, and motivators will help you present the appropriate EVP to a candidate.
Likewise, a streamlined recruitment process will keep candidates engaged with the organization, keeping them focused and optimistic toward your offer.
To summarize, conversions are better with clarity, consistency, and credibility!
Recommended Reads: Effective post-offer engagement to reduce candidate drop-offs Hyreo post-offer solution for a leading IT outsourcing company (Case study) 7 Strategies to engage and retain employees
FAQs on Reasons for Offer Dropouts
How important is technology in ensuring candidate conversions?
Technology has been useful in solving age-old complexities and challenges and has made the entire hiring process and experience efficient and seamless.
There are various tools like Applicant Tracking Systems and other peripheral software programs that help reduce time and effort for recruiters. Technology also helps better communication and engagement with candidates.
How can you deal with counter offers that candidates get?
While you cannot always match what is available in the industry, you must understand what matters to the candidate in their workspace.
Not all the reasons are related to monetary benefits; therefore, you can focus on your EVP for specific candidates.
You could speed up presenting an offer letter as soon as possible. You could also invite candidates to openly communicate any counteroffers and leave your offer open to discussion or negotiation.
