As a recruiter, you’ve got tonnes of open reqs, hundreds of outreach emails to send and who knows how many phone screens to make. But when you take a step back from your day-to-day tasks, what are your goals?

Your role is all about finding great talent and getting them in the door. It sounds simple in theory, but of course, the reality is much more complicated!

Let’s take a look at six of the top reasons why you might be losing out on great candidates and what you can do to prevent this from happening.

1. Reputation

Great candidates care about where they spend their time. They are also very selective when it comes to the interviewing process, let alone where they actually accept an offer. The internet is the go-to source for most candidates to learn about your company, both before they apply and once they’re in the middle of the application process.

If your company has a negative reputation or bad reviews online, this can affect the response rate you get from outreach emails or the number of people who choose to apply.

One of the ways to monitor your online reputation is to simply google your company or check out your Glassdoor reviews. If your reviews are low, you can ask current and former employees who had a great experience with the company to write a positive review. To take it a step further, the CEO of the company can personally reply to each comment. (Editor’s note: Our CEO at Greenhouse, Daniel Chait, does this!)

2. Environment

The working environment is a huge factor for most employees, and this can vary a lot from one company to another. That’s why it’s essential to have a clear understanding of what you’re offering candidates. What is the work environment and team dynamic like in your company in general as well as on the specific team they’d be joining? Think about things like office location, team structure, flexible working hours, open plan vs. individual office and degree of autonomy in the role. Be sure to ask your candidates early on what they value in their working environment so you can ensure that what you’re offering is a good fit.

3. Professional growth

If you want to keep highly ambitious and motivated people, it’s only natural that you’ll need to provide professional development opportunities for them. The 2016 Deloitte Millennial Survey found a strong correlation between professional development and retention. What opportunities do you offer employees to help them achieve their professional goals? Whether it’s a conference budget, regular workshops or presentations, or access to online learning tools, don’t forget to share this information with candidates so that they can clearly visualise their trajectory at your organisation.

4. Salary

Does a higher salary make employees happier? Not necessarily. One study by Glassdoor found that there was only very minimal correlation between salary and employee satisfaction. But at the same time, salary is certainly a factor that will influence a candidate’s decision to accept your offer. There are different approaches to deciding on salary and compensation. Some companies make it a priority to offer higher base salaries, others offer attractive bonuses and performance-based commissions and others offer equity options. In order to make sure your offering is competitive, it’s essential to have a clear idea of market norms, both for the specific role and for your location.

5. Benefits/bonuses/perks

As with salary, benefits and perks are generally not the most critical factor for candidates, but they can certainly be a factor, especially when a candidate is considering competing offers. When it comes to winning over great candidates, different types of benefits, bonuses and perks can help you close the deal. Remember that perks don’t necessarily have to be flashy or require a tonne of investment on your part. Things like flexible hours, unlimited PTO, volunteer days off (or anything that aligns with your company values) may even appeal more to certain candidates than arcade games, kegerators or unlimited snacks.

6. Tools

If you lack the necessary tools to reach the best candidates quickly, then your competition will always get ahead of you. You want to streamline your work and cut down on manual tasks so that you can focus on high-impact activities. In order to be an outstanding recruiter, you need an applicant tracking system (ATS) that suits your business needs, access to an online database/resource where candidates are located and automation tools that help connect your applicant tracking system with those resources.

As of now, LinkedIn is the #1 source for top talent, so it makes a lot of sense to integrate your applicant tracking system with LinkedIn as much as possible. That’s why we created LinkMatch for Greenhouse. With LinkMatch, you can instantly see who’s in your Greenhouse recruiting system and who’s not, which will help you connect with new candidates straight away. This can save you anywhere from one to two hours per day on manual copying and pasting of information between LinkedIn and Greenhouse. In addition, you can view and edit your Greenhouse profiles while staying on the LinkedIn page. Learn more about the LinkMatch Chrome Extension here. (And if you’d like to learn more about how LinkMatch and Greenhouse work together, check out this video.)

Final thoughts

Now you have some ideas of some of the areas where you may be able to improve your candidate experience and offer acceptance rate. Give them a try and let us know what types of results you see!

Has your search for a better candidate experience led you to look into applicant tracking systems? Check out “A Buyer’s Guide to Applicant Tracking Systems” to help plan your budget, outline your requirements and compare different vendors.