7 Tactics That Improve Recruitment Conversion Rates

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Current benchmarks for recruitment conversion rates along the hiring process have remained low across the entire industry over the last decade:

• Click-to-apply rates are as low as 8% (meaning 92% never complete job applications).
• Application-to-interview rates dropped from 12% to 8.4% in 2023.
• Interview-to-hire ratios were 36% in 2023, down 2% from 2022.

But why are recruitment conversion rates so low?

Well, this is due to a combination of factors, mostly to do with changes to the hiring landscape.

While applications and interview hours for open positions have increased over the years, the volume of hires has decreased.

Technology has made it easier than ever for candidates to apply for roles, but this has made employers even more selective about quality of hire. And with skills shortages plaguing almost every industry, this has made finding the right candidate like looking for a needle in a haystack.

But the good news is you can have an impact on your conversion rates as a recruiter, and that the difference between achieving good and average conversion rates comes down to a few core tactics.

Tactic 1: Implement a pre-screening system

One of the easiest ways to boost your recruitment conversion rate is to start with a robust pre-screening process.

Pre-screening helps ensure that only the most qualified candidates make it past the initial stages of your hiring funnel, saving time and resources for both job seekers and your recruitment team.

Here’s how you can implement a pre-screening system effectively:

• Use knockout questions: Add knockout questions to your job applications that automatically filter out candidates who don't meet essential criteria. For example, ask about specific skills, years of experience, or certifications that are must-haves for the role. This ensures that only those who are likely to be a good fit move forward, so although your total number of applications might go down, your conversion rates will improve.
• Automated assessments: Consider using automated assessments to evaluate skills and personality traits. These can include coding challenges, situational judgment tests, or personality questionnaires, and they give you valuable data about a candidate's suitability before you even speak to them.
• Leverage AI: AI-powered tools can help you scan resumes and applications more efficiently, ranking candidates based on how well they meet your criteria. For example, an AI screening tool can analyze resumes, past assessments, and even social profiles to help prioritize top talent and generate a shortlist quickly.
• Phone screens: A quick 10-15 minute phone screen can help weed out candidates who may not be a good fit. Use this as a chance to verify the details on their resume and get a sense of their communication style and enthusiasm for the role.

By automating the pre-screening process, you not only speed up your talent acquisition process, but also ensure that your recruiters are focusing their efforts on candidates with the best potential to succeed in the role.

Tactic 2: Engage passive candidates with AI chats or email sequences

Having a strategy for recruiting passive candidates can do great things for your application-to-interview rates because these are candidates you have already deemed are qualified for the role. The challenge is just to engage them in your job vacancy!

Creating an automated email sequence to engage candidates already in your existing talent pool is a personalised way to reach the best candidates in your niche.

Here’s what a potential email sequence might look like:

• Email 1: Introduction and role overview (keep it under 150 words)
• Email 2: Share a brief success story of a current employee in a similar role
• Email 3: Final outreach, highlight 2-3 unique benefits or opportunities of the position, with a clear call-to-action for a quick chat with you.

Using automation software, you can create a personalised candidate experience that results in high application rates and high success rates later down the recruitment funnel too.

Alternatively, you can use an AI agent to engage passive candidates in your talent pool.

Define your Ideal Candidate Profile, feed the data to the tool, and let the AI assistant come up with personalized messages for each candidate, based on the data available in your ATS and talent pool.

In both these cases, make sure you make candidates aware when they interact with AI, to comply with EU AI regulations.

Best practices for passive candidate engagement

• Think carefully about your email subject lines, using personalisation tokens so that the candidate knows you’ve done your research. Try hooks like "Brilliant opportunity in [Industry] for you, [first name]" or "Love what you’re doing at [current employer]."
• Use video messages: A quick, personalized video introducing yourself and the role can significantly increase response rates. This shows candidates that the content has been specifically created for them.
• Use SMS messages for urgent roles: For roles you need to fill fast, automate text messages to go out to both passive and warm candidates. SMS has higher open rates than email and gets faster responses.

You can also use an AI tool to personalize the email sequence for every candidate. Using a tool like Carv, you can feed the AI with the candidate’s resume, social media profile, previous assessments, and any pre-screening calls or interviews.

This gives the AI the context it needs to personalize the messages without you having to do it manually.

Tactic 3: Optimize your application-to-interview ratio

Your application-to-interview ratio is a recruitment metric that, as a recruiter, you can track closely and make small changes that will have a direct positive impact over time.

Here’s how to optimize this ratio:

• Set a goal to interview 25-30% of applicants for each role. If you find you’re interviewing less than 25% of applicants, either broaden the job requirements slightly or improve the job description appeal.
• If you’re progressing more than 30% to interview, you might need to tighten requirements or add knockout screening questions to the application process. If you’re expecting a high number of applicants, you can easily delegate the candidate screening stage to AI and it will produce a shortlist of the best applicants based on scoring.
• Track this KPI weekly and adjust your strategy accordingly.

If you’re finding that you have more than 30% of applicants to interview and they are all quality candidates that you can’t reject, you can use AI the support a faster and easier interview process.

Using a tool like Carv, you can ask the AI to prep interview questions, take notes during the calls, and summarize the interviews, as well as push the data to the ATS after the interview.

The AI assistant can then automatically generate candidate profiles and evaluate the candidates’ fit for the role. By delegating this admin, you can schedule a lot more interviews in a day.

However, make sure that no hiring decision is made by AI, and that you maintain human oversight in the selection process.

Tactic 4: Provide an interview preparation package

Sometimes, our interview-to-hire ratios can suffer simply because our candidates aren’t prepared enough, or worse - they get cold feet last minute and don’t show up on the day.

Or maybe it’s just that you have a hiring manager who is very particular about what they’re looking for in a new employee.

You might think these things are outside of your control, but in reality, you can use your inside knowledge of the role and employer brand to support your candidates in this situation by helping them prep.

Around 48 hours before the interview, send a standardized PDF or webpage to all your interview candidates. This document should include:

• Detailed agenda with interviewer names and roles
• 3-5 sample interview questions
• Dress code and location details (including parking information)
• Brief company overview and any recent news.

This will give the candidate some invaluable context about the role and company that could give them that confidence boost they need walking into their interview.

It’s also a good idea to follow up with a text reminder on the morning of the interview - anything you can do to support your candidate and reduce those no-shows.

Tactic 5: Create an employee referral program

Employee referral programs consistently rank as one of the most effective recruitment strategies and significantly improve your interview-to-hire conversions.

Studies have shown that candidates referred by existing employees are hired 55% faster, and stay in the job 20% longer, than those with another source of hire.

When running an employee referral program, it’s important to encourage employees to share job openings directly with people they know who could be great potential candidates and with their LinkedIn networks.

Use your ATS to track which employees consistently refer successful candidates so you can celebrate these "super referrers" internally to encourage more participation throughout the whole company.

When compensating your referrers, there are a few factors to think about as not all referrals are entirely equal. For example, you could offer smaller rewards for anyone who refers a candidate that gets to the interview stage, and bigger incentives for those who become new hires.

You could also develop a tiered reward system based on seniority: $500 for entry-level hires; $1,500 for mid-level hires; $3,000 for senior-level hires, for example.

And if retention is a concern, you could feed this into the program too: Pay referees 25% of the bonus when their referral is hired and the remaining 75% after 6 months of employment or so.

That way, people tend to consider the candidates they refer even more carefully as they’re incentivised to think about the long-term.

Tactic 6: Implement a fast-track interview process

At the moment, we’re dealing with a skills shortage across most industries. And the impact of this is that if your recruitment process doesn’t move quickly enough, you’ll lose your best talent to another employer.

This is where a fast-track interview process can do wonders for your conversion rates.

There are three primary tactics that will allow you to fast-track your interview stages in a way that has a positive impact on your offer acceptance rate too.

Pre-screen with AI tools

Use AI-powered candidate pre-screening tools to quickly assess a candidate’s suitability based on set criteria before you arrange an in-person interview.

This is done through asynchronous video interviews so it cuts down unnecessary time you spend with candidates who aren’t going to be suitable for the role, which is especially useful if you have a high number of job applicants.

Offer same-day interviews

When you spot a great candidate, invite them to a first-round interview on the same day they apply. This shows your responsiveness and commitment and leaves less time and space for another recruiter to swoop in and pull great candidates from under you.

Set up automated interview scheduling

Arranging interviews is a process that’s notoriously time-wasting - especially when there are multiple interviewers involved.

Using interview automation software, candidates can pick their preferred interview time directly from a calendar link.

The software also syncs with interviewer agendas and blocks out any time that they’re unavailable, which eliminates the back-and-forth email threads and speeds up the process to ensure you don’t miss out on any great candidates.

Tactic 7: Embed a recruitment chatbot on your careers page

Adding an AI chatbot to your careers page can also help improve conversions. Ensure it’s integrated with your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) so that it can automatically populate the ATS when a candidate is ready to apply.

The chatbot should be equipped with more than just job posting details; it should also have insights into the company culture, the team the applicant would join, the logistics of the talent acquisition process, and more.

With this knowledge, the AI chatbot can guide candidates through the application process, answer their frequently asked questions, and even automatically schedule initial phone screenings for qualified candidates.

Over to you

Whether you use one or all of the tactics on this list, just taking the time to think strategically about your recruiter conversion rates isn’t just great for business - it sets your recruitment process up nicely to provide a better candidate experience too.