Recruiters! 10 Reasons Why Candidate Engagement is

Blog Content

Recruiters and their leaders who want to spend less time and money sourcing, and more time placing, need to read this blog and think about why they need to create a virtuous circle of talent.

On our recent Bullhorn Tips webinar, where we focused on candidate management tips, we asked the attendees about their current candidate management strategy.

The results were unsurprising, but also disappointing.

They told us that their candidate database was...

And that their candidate management strategy was...

In other words, not future proof or focussed on creating a robust, easy to deliver pipeline. It's mainly focussed on live, active candidates who are imminently placeable... and Linkedin / Job Boards continue to win at the expense of the recruiter and their profits.

Recruitment Data Wealth💵💶💷

If we've learned anything (at least since 2008) we need a clean, warm databases to see us through easy and tough times.

We need engaged, loyal, happy candidates who are easy to find, happy to recommend, refer, and show up!

Some recruiters call this "Data Health" - I call it "Data Wealth".

I've seen a lot of tech and data hitting the recruitment market, but still do not see enough process improvements to capitalise on it. We just keep buying more, rather than exploring how we actually need less, but need to work it better.

It's Time to Move from Vicious to Virtuous!

Recruiters still waste crazy amounts of time sourcing and advertising, but not enough time engaging and managing.

And ironically, by not engaging, and letting hot data cool off, the industry creates silos of "cold" data. Hence sourcing is key and reliance on external systems is high, costs increase, placements take longer... Vicious cycle!

What if, though, we take a moment?

Let the stats below sink in, and engage with our systems and data in a proactive way. Could recruiters create a virtuous circle of engaged candidates staying loyal and placeable, meaning less need for job adverts, Linkedin, sourcing, and insanity?

Yes!

🔢Candidate Management Stats Every Recruiter Should Know

78% of placed candidates are already in your CRM.
– Yet many recruiters go straight to LinkedIn or job boards before checking their own database.
Only 30% of CRM records are typically up to date.
– That means 70% of your candidate data might be incomplete, inaccurate, or out of date.
60% of recruiters admit to rarely revisiting past candidates.
– This leads to missed opportunities and duplicated effort.
It costs 6x more to source a new candidate than to re-engage an existing one.
– Save budget and time by starting with your CRM.
43% of recruiters say poor data quality negatively impacts their ability to place quickly.
– Dirty data slows down sourcing, shortlisting, and matching.
48% of candidates who apply to a role never hear back.
– Proper candidate management helps ensure consistent communication and better candidate experience.
80% of candidates say they’d reapply to a company with a good hiring experience.
– Engagement doesn’t stop at “not selected”—it builds your future pipeline.
Recruiters spend up to 1/3 of their time on admin.
– Automation and smart candidate management free up time for relationship-building and placements.
Re-engaged candidates are 2x more likely to be placed than cold-sourced ones.
– Prior placements and silver medalists are often your hottest leads.
Companies that nurture candidates improve quality of hire by 20%.
– Keeping in touch with passive talent builds a stronger, more prepared pipeline.

The stats above are from a variety of sources, including IBM, TalentBoard, Bullhorn, and LinkedIn.

Even just one of the stats above should be enough to make you stop and think "how can I create a virtuous circle of happy, engaged, and placed candidates?"

And then sourcing is simple!

Recruitment and Bullhorn Training

We deliver the best live Bullhorn ROI webinar training, and you'll find other tips and tricks in Recruitment HIIT, our online recruitment training platform.

Plus, through our Bullhorn Vision service we help generate serious ROI from your Bullhorn, data, and people.