You Don’t Have a Candidate Information Pack? Big Mistake!
Reason Why a Candidate Pack Is Non-Negotiable
If you want to recruit the most talented people in FMCG, a candidate information pack (‘candidate pack’) is an essential tool. It will help set you apart from your competition, sell the role and your company, and help potential candidates picture themselves working with your team.
A well-composed candidate pack will help engage candidates in your company, products and services, and your corporate values and culture before they are hired. This is crucial – Gallup found that engaged employees are 59% less likely to search for a new job in the next 12 months.
If you aren’t distributing a candidate pack, you’re more likely to miss out on the exceptional candidates you should be targeting. Here’s why, and how to develop an engaging candidate information pack.
5 Reasons You Should Use a Candidate Pack
A candidate pack helps streamline your hiring process. It helps candidates to ‘reject themselves’ because of poor fit. This saves you time and wasted effort during the interviewing process. You’ll end up with a list of candidates who are higher quality, and more bought into making a career move to your company. Here are five major reasons you should use a candidate pack:
- It’s smart, efficient, economical, and professional
- It saves time by communicating all relevant information to all potential candidates effortlessly
- It is a perfect way to share and demonstrate your company values and culture
- It gives candidates a better idea of what they are getting into before they proceed with the application process
- As part of your hiring process, it increases the efficiency of screening, helps prevent bias, and delivers a consistent quality of candidate to the interview stage
5 Things to Include in Your Candidate Pack
Knowing what to include in your candidate pack is difficult. You don’t want to overload the pack with information. This will make it bulky, and the most important information is more likely to become buried.
When considering what to include, you should ensure that you provide the key information that will help candidates decide whether they want to continue with their application. You should deliver your messages enthusiastically, in positive language that is designed to engage.
Here are five key pieces of information you should include in a candidate pack:
- A clear introduction to your company (‘About us’)
- A description of your company’s values, mission, and culture
- Your company’s main products and services, the market it serves, and the type of client it sells to
- Positive testimonials, recommendations, and experiences of employees and clients
- The job description, including skills required and tasks and duties involved
Don’t forget to add your company’s website and social media links.
5 Steps to Take Before Writing a Candidate Pack
Before creating a candidate pack, you must clarify its purpose and what you want to get out of it. Once you have decided on these things, refine what you want in the pack. Remember, your candidate pack will set the expectations of candidates.
Here are five steps to help you:
- Determine the purpose of the candidate pack
- Define and gather the information you need to include
- Decide how long you want the pack to be
- Write a title for the pack that is catchy and describes what is included
- Decide how you will distribute it (e.g. by email, in print form, etc.)
Ensure Your Candidate Pack Delivers AIDA
Your candidate pack should be clear and concise. It should provide the reader with all the important information they need to decide about applying to your company.
A well-written candidate pack is a key part of your strategy for finding the best talent for your company. It will help you attract a wider range of talented employees, who are more likely to be engaged and productive in your company. Those who are less interested in your values, mission, and operational qualities will deselect themselves.
How you design your candidate pack will depend on many factors – such as branding and the content you wish to include. You may also have specific requirements for your candidate pack, which may only become obvious to you as you work through the steps above.
An effective candidate pack delivers AIDA. It:
- Attracts the calibre of candidate you are targeting
- Interests the reader with the information it provides
- Creates desire within the candidate to join your company
- Compels the candidate to take action and apply
Are you not sure where to start with your candidate pack? Have you gathered all the information, but unsure on how to distribute it to get the best response?
We have extensive experience in helping clients to create and optimise candidate packs that attract the interest of exceptional candidates and create a desire for them to apply to roles to which they are incredibly suited. Our candidate pack template will help you compose the perfect candidate pack that makes sure you hit all the points you must and does the job you want it to do. Best of all, our candidate pack template is free, complete the contact form below to receive the template.