Recent NelsonHall interviews with the clients of the top ~20 global RPO vendors revealed that candidate communication was rated the most important vendor characteristic, with an importance score of 96%. However, the satisfaction score for candidate communication across all vendor clients was 82%, falling some way short of client expectations.

Recognizing the importance of candidate satisfaction as integral to attracting and retaining talent, PeopleScout recently launched a new technology, Affinix, to improve candidate communication and the overall candidate experience.

Embedded within PeopleScout’s offering, Affinix is built on Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure, integrates with all ATS and VMS systems, and has a single sign-on.

Affinix capabilities include:

• Digital and social recruiting, including the creation of job ads, job descriptions and career portals
• Artificial intelligence, including for immediate sourcing of passive and active candidates when a job requisition is opened
• ‘Mobile first’ platform for both the candidate and the hiring manager throughout the application, scheduling and screening process
• Video interviews and digital assessments to reduce time to hire using data analytics and machine learning to identify and rank the best candidates to communicate with hiring managers faster
• Predictive analytics and machine learning throughout the hiring process to better understand top talent behaviors and predict factors such as cultural fit, willingness to change companies, and future tenure potential.

Though only recently launched, PeopleScout is already working to implement Affinix with several dozen clients, and preliminary results include:

• Increased capture of candidates by ~40% via a fast and user-friendly application process, and automatic calendar interview scheduling with hiring managers, including the ability to do so via text
• Reduced time to hire, with candidate scheduling time reduced by 8-10 days.

In summary, Affinix has the ability to engage candidates and communicate quickly to identify, screen, and assess the right talent for the job with the best likelihood of long tenure – which should go some way to meeting clients’ high expectations for the candidate communication process.