How to Win the Right Talent by Understanding the New Candidate Journey

Scarce talent makes hiring hard.

Acquiring great talent is harder today than ever before. The pool of candidates for food and hospitality brands is minuscule due to record low unemployment across the US and high market competition.

Taco Bell is offering $100,000 for some in-restaurant positions. For many other QSR brands, even upping pay doesn't effectively bring in more hires. Turnover is also high in the industry, with brands like Panera losing 100% of their workers each year. These market trends contribute to a difficult hiring atmosphere. And there is also a shift in how today's candidates find and interact with job opportunities. Candidate trust and use of job boards is declining, and they are interacting more on the search engine. People are turning to search more often for answers to their questions throughout every stage of the purchase journey — so why would looking for a job be any different?

Brands understand the scarcity of labor in the US market. However, this shift in candidate behavior is less understood.

The new candidate journey

Today, technology has revolutionized the candidate journey. Over 70% of job seekers begin using a search engine to discover available opportunities. As they consider the openings that they find, candidates will seek out answers to any questions they have about the companies that are hiring. If they can uncover adequate information in search, they'll then convert by submitting an application on the career site.

Your talent pool is fully on search, but your information is not. Your hiring site, job boards, and applicant tracking software are not optimized for search and don't drive your information across the finish line.

Brands seeking new employees need a defined search strategy. Without search optimization for recruiting, your business will not show up on many job seekers' radars — leaving out a portion of your qualified candidate pool.

Win the new digital candidate

To win job candidates in today's competitive ecosystem, businesses must align with the new digital candidate journey. By doing this, brands will drive an increase in job requisition awareness, total application volume, and will improve applicant conversion and hiring efficiencies.

Food and hospitality brands, locations, and franchisees should implement recruiting technology that is built for today's candidate behavior. Yext for Recruitment helps brands optimize job requisitions for the search engine, provide complete information to job seekers, and deliver a direct experience from awareness to application.