The attract.ai Nurturing Playbook 🚀

Why is nurturing important?

You may be asking, why is this important? We live in a competitive hiring culture where consistent relationship-building and long-term vision will give you a advantage over knee-jerk recruiting.

1. Reduce time to hire from weeks to days: Having a pool of candidates you’ve nurtured means that when the time is right and a new role goes live, it’s as simple as letting them know. This means you will not be forced to use a reactive strategy (e.g. agency, job boards), broadening your choices, and saving you time & money in the process!
2. Better candidate experience: It’s a special experience when someone you build a genuine, authentic relationship with over time asks you to join the team. Often, nurturing leads to a better candidate experience as you get past the business talk and get to know each other on a human level. The longer time frame also provides more opportunities to interact with them in different contexts to identify strengths and issues.
3. Diversity: Creating a diverse team takes time. Nurturing presents a great opportunity to identify, engage with, and ultimately hire a diverse team. This kind of forward planning is crucial, particularly for tech companies.
4. Employer brand: Nurturing candidates is great for building employer brand. The more candidates you chat to in the market, the more people learn about the core offering & mission of your organization. Some ideas can be hosting events, inviting people to your office and introducing them to other team members. Let them see what working at your company is really like. This will create a positive brand image.
5. Get the most of your outreach efforts: don’t just drop candidates that were a close second in previous hiring rounds, or that aren’t quite ready to change jobs yet! Stay in touch with them and keep the flame alive for when things align.

The attract.ai HEART^💜 framework

Habits

Nurturing is a mindset. Set aside 10 minutes every day to think about how you can serve your talent community. It might be jumping on LinkedIn and sharing an interesting post, dropping a comment on a candidate post, revisiting your goals, checking in with business forecasts or dropping someone a message. Once you build nurturing into your daily habits, it will come naturally to you.

Expectations

Set expectations early and deliver on your promises. Integrity and follow through are important in a cautious, post-COVID market. Candidates are hesitant to leave their jobs (understandably) so stay rock solid in your interactions. 

Authentic

More than a #buzzword. Don’t portray yourself or your business as something it isn’t. Be real. Get creative with your engagement and find ways to be helpful to candidates & allow them to get to know the real you. As a final note, don’t confuse sending bulk EDMs as nurturing. One-One personalised messages will give you much higher cut-through to candidates that are bombarded with offers.

Relationships

The goal is to establish genuine relationships with your candidates. Make the relationship about more than just an opportunity — don’t sell an opportunity every time you interact. Nurturing requires great listening skills during candidate interactions. We suggest making notes about their interests on their attract.ai candidate card so you can tailor your future conversations.

Timing

As the old saying goes, timing is everything. If a candidate is keen to chat, get amongst it. If they keep their distance, don’t message them more than every 2-3 months. Read the room, sense their interest and go with their flow.

Set yourself up for success

Polish your profile

We have an entire article on this called improving your linkedin profile.

TL;DR: Use exciting language, provide a glimpse into your personality and make sure your company page is in tip top shape.

Click the leaf for candidates you wish to nurture in attract.ai

There is a nurture leaf when you click on a candidate card in attract.ai. This is important, because it signals to attractbot that you are wanting to nurture this candidate and in turn initiates our nurturing workflow.

Planning & Strategy

Work with your team to forecast the growth of your business. Determine which roles you will need filled in the next 6, 12, 24 months. What kinds of candidates do you want to have ready at your fingertips? Set goals for your talent community (size, goal hires and time frames) and segment per pipeline. 

An important topic to table with your team is how they can contribute to your nurturing efforts and build a culture of hiring. Encourage team members to send you candidates they come across – you can add them as BYOs. If you can motivate your team to get on board the nurture train, everyone wins. We actually see the best results (3-5x results in some cases!) when a department head gets involved with nurturing candidates as they can connect over shared interests.

** We regularly run planning workshops with customers — get in touch with your attract.ai CSM if you’d like us to run one for you!

Messaging Ideas & Scenarios

There’s no secret formula to crafting the perfect nurturing message. A common mistake made when thinking about nurturing your candidates is to “sell” an opportunity. Human connection and relationship building is what we’re trying to achieve. When we’re about to send a nurturing message. It’s important to re-frame. Think less about “I have this opportunity” and more on “How can I add value to the relationship?”

Below are a couple of messaging ideas to get you started:

General

Hi (name), sorry to see you weren’t successful with our (role) position, however we really would like to stay in touch. The team will be hiring again in 6-12 months, would you be happy for me to keep you in mind?

Hey (name), I really liked your perspectives on building equitable work cultures, I’ve got some roles coming up in the next 6-12 months that I think you’d be a great fit for. Are you happy to keep in touch?

Hi (name), glad to hear you’re enjoying your work! Drop me a message if you’re ever looking for a new challenge. My (virtual) door is always open. Let’s stay in touch, excited to see what you get up to this year!

Events

Hi (name), I’m not sure if you’ve seen this but there’s this virtual webinar / event coming up. I thought you’d be interested! Let me know if you’re keen, I’m thinking of going.

Hi (name), Our company is hosting an event on (date)! I wanted to extend an invite to you – meet more of the team. No obligations, just keen to catch up.

Hi (name), it’s been ages since we caught up. I saw some of your stuff on LinkedIn/Medium/GitHub and thought I’d see if you’re up for a coffee. I have a meeting in the Valley next week, shall we grab a coffee after?

Interesting articles

Hi (name), how are things going at (current_company)? Wanted to send you this article that (company) was featured in recently – just to keep you in the loop on what we’re doing. We should also catch up soon! When are you free for coffee?

Hi (name)! I remember you saying you were interested in learning more about (topic). I saw a link to this course and thought you might be keen on it. Let me know what you think!

Company updates

Hi (name), I wanted to get your thoughts on this brand & values doc we’ve been working on. You know a bit about our vision and what we do, so your name came to mind. (content_link). Let me know your thoughts!

Hi (name), have you seen the latest edition of our company newsletter? We’re working on (project), the newsletter features a bit about it. Just wanted to keep you across everything over here. How’s life at (current_employer)? We should catch up for coffee soon!

Videos

Hi (name), how’s things at (current_company)? A friend of mine just sent me this video and you came to mind (video commentary/relevance) (link). Enjoy!

Online groups

Online chat groups (e.g. Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord) are becoming more and more popular as a way for like minded people to connect. Either you or a hiring manager are the perfect person to engage candidates in these communities. Some innovative companies are even posting ads and JD’s in these groups. Below is an example of how people are using Slack as a channel to engage candidates for short term and long term requirements.