5 Best Practices to Close Top Talent

In a competitive hiring market, finding great candidates is only half the challenge. The other half — and the part where many companies lose — is closing them.

Top candidates have options. They are evaluating multiple opportunities at once, and companies that move slowly, communicate poorly, or lack a clear process will lose them to competitors who do it better. With that in mind, here are five strategies to help companies get the competitive edge they need to close on top talent.

1. A Clearly Defined Hiring Process

“Can you tell me more about the hiring process?” This small question that most recruiters hear at the end of an initial conversation can actually have a significant impact on a candidate’s desire to move forward with an organization.

In a competitive market, having a clearly defined process that can be communicated easily to candidates is essential. The candidate you are interviewing likely has two to three other active opportunities on the table, and being able to share your interview process helps them manage their timelines and their expectations.

However, even more critical than having an interview process mapped out prior to starting your search is having one that is efficient. Taking five to seven conversations to determine if you want to move forward, while your competitor may only need three, is not going to do your search any favors.

Look for places you can consolidate your hiring process. Is it possible to have a panel conversation? Or to combine two half-hour interviews into a single one-hour time block? Understanding where you can shorten your interview process is going to help you get an offer in front of top talent faster than your competitors.

2. Providing Feedback Within 24 Hours

Yes, even if it is a candidate you do not want to move forward with. The reality is that word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool, and how you treat candidates throughout your process can make or break your access to top talent. If someone is considering your company but hears from a colleague that they were left in limbo without timely feedback, it is not likely that they will want to throw their own hat in the ring.

Additionally, with the pace of hiring today, companies are finding ways to get candidates feedback sometimes within the same day. By the time you decide whether or not you would like to progress a candidate in your process, another company may have put them through the second, third, or even final rounds of theirs. Communicate with your recruiter whether or not you want to move a candidate forward within 24 hours of your initial conversation for the best chance of staying competitive.

3. Being Transparent About Salary

The data on the average salary for a given role is already available to candidates somewhere online. However, it goes a long way with most candidates to hear it directly from the company within the initial conversation or even the initial outreach message.

Having transparent conversations around salary goes a long way to establishing trust with a candidate, and can also help ensure equitable compensation practices. While salary is not everything, it is a huge part of the decision-making process for most candidates, so give them the knowledge they need to start that conversation early and ensure it will be a strong fit.

4. Knowing Your Candidate’s Timeline

While there is a lot you can do to be proactive in increasing your odds of closing top talent, understanding where they are in their search can make a world of difference. The ARPO method is a simple framework that helps:

• Activity: How many other companies is the candidate speaking with? Are they actively searching or just engaging with opportunities passively?
• Rank: Where does this opportunity stack up for the candidate against their other options? Why?
• Process: How far are they in the interview process with other organizations?
• Offers: Are they anticipating any offers within the next week or two?

Asking a candidate these questions during their initial interview helps establish open lines of communication around the candidate’s timeline. Top talent can afford to be choosy, so being aware of their timeline and being able to work around it will go a long way.

5. Educating Your Recruitment Partner on Your Competitive Edge

Before you conduct a single interview, there is a key piece to this puzzle: actually finding top talent.

While there are top candidates actively searching, many more will be passively open to opportunities should something interesting present itself. You can do a lot to help your recruiter by giving them the selling points that will really capture a candidate’s interest.

Make sure they understand the ways in which your company stands out from the competition, how you are disrupting the market, and any other information that makes your company compelling. Candidates may be receiving multiple messages every day from recruiters for a range of different roles. What will help your recruitment partner have the best chance of securing top talent is ensuring you have given them the big picture on why candidates would want to come work for you over anywhere else.

At the heart of things, candidates are looking for a best-fit role at a company they are truly invested in. Understanding what candidates want and need in the current market and being compassionate toward that can make a critical difference.

When Closing Becomes a Capacity Problem

These best practices work when your team has the bandwidth to execute them consistently. But when recruiters are stretched across too many requisitions, feedback slows down, follow-up drops off, and the candidate experience suffers — which means you lose the candidates you worked hardest to attract.

If your team is struggling to close not because of process but because of capacity, it may be time to evaluate whether an embedded recruiting partner can help your team move faster without sacrificing the candidate experience.

How SecureVision Can Help

SecureVision partners with growth-stage and enterprise tech companies to strengthen every stage of the hiring process — including the close. For more on how embedded recruiting can help your team close top talent faster, contact us.