While there are tools and features available to you on Spark Hire Meet to improve your assessment completion rates, there are also a variety of communication strategies and hiring process adjustments that can significantly influence whether candidates complete your assessments.

What's in your control?

🎙️ Communication with candidates

Outlining your hiring process for candidates will set them up for success as they can prepare for each step and know where they stand.

Without context, it's easy for candidates to get confused with where they're at in your process and a lack of clarity about the steps to come causes candidates to drop out thinking you might have a much longer process than you really do.

There are a few places in which you can outline the process for candidates:

• Careers page
• Job advertisement
• Communication with candidates
  • Example: auto-responder after they apply
  • Example: emails at each stage in your process

👀 Information transparency

The more information you can include about the job and your organization at each step of the process, the better. Candidates need the information so they can determine if they want to continue in the process which saves you from investing time on people who aren’t interested.

Some areas to consider being transparent about from the get-go:

• Role Responsibilities
• Pay Transparency
• Benefits
• Hours of operation
• Company Values

The transparency with these items at the front-end of your hiring process will allow candidates to ensure they are aligned with the expectations prior to even applying. This will save you time and a drop-off later.

One suggestion is to utilize knockout questions on a job application to pre-qualify candidates so they don't self-select out of your process later on.

For example, add pay transparency to your job application so candidates can inform you if that meets their expectations or not. This will ensure that the candidates you engage with are aligned with the expectations you've set.

⏰ Timeliness between stages

The speed you move between hiring steps is a major factor in candidate responsiveness.

For example, a hiring team that reviews resumes in 2 days is likely to experience higher candidate engagement vs. one that does so in 7.

So, if you take too long to review resumes before inviting a candidate to an assessment on Spark Hire Meet, they may already be disengaged.

Align with your team to ensure your expectations for the hiring process are clear.

Every hiring stakeholder should not only know what's expected of them, but also the timeframe they are accountable to.

🔀 Order of hiring steps

The earlier in your hiring process that you place an assessment step, the lower your conversion rate will be since candidates don’t know as much about the job or your organization, but that’s actually a helpful barometer to measure candidate interest.

The asynchronous nature of Spark Hire Meet assessments means you're able to hear from a wider pool of candidates, but it also means you'll experience some natural drop-off.

Think of this as a positive! This is preventing you from investing additional time in candidates who are not interested. With a wider candidate pool, some natural drop-off won't have as big of an impact on you.

That said, if you're not satisfied with the way your candidates are engaging with the assessment, consider moving it to another step in your process; perhaps after the candidate has a little more information about your organization.

What's mostly out of your control?

Speaking of natural candidate drop-off, there are things that are more outside of your control which contribute to candidates not completing their assessments...and that's okay!

Here are some examples:

👎 No longer interested

The “easy-apply” era has led to candidates applying to so many jobs at once that they don’t even remember all of them. Many candidates may simply opt-out of your process when they re-read the job description after being invited to a next step. 

🤝 Accepted another offer

While you may be moving fast in your hiring process, timing also plays a role. You’ll have candidates in your hiring process that are in “later stages” with other organizations just based on when they applied for those roles vs. yours.

⏸️ Delay in their job search

So many factors can lead to candidates pausing or stopping their job search altogether for reasons that have nothing to do with you or your organization. For example, a candidate may have received a promotion at their current job and decided to stay.

🤕 Personal circumstance

A benefit of on-demand assessment solutions is that candidates can do it on their own time, but keep in mind that candidates have things going on in their lives that may prevent them from meeting a deadline.

While you can’t control candidates' personal situations, you can allow for deadlines that incorporate weekends and have deadline extensions enabled.

Summary

While you can’t control every reason a candidate might drop out, you can take meaningful steps to improve completion rates by refining your process and communication strategy. Clarity, transparency, and timeliness all go a long way in keeping candidates engaged and they don’t require major overhauls to implement.

By setting clear expectations, offering role transparency, and aligning your hiring team around timing, you’ll not only improve completion rates, but also deliver a smoother, more respectful experience for every candidate.

And remember: a little drop-off is natural and even helpful. It means you’re spending more time with candidates who are truly interested and aligned. That’s a win.

When you’re ready to take it further, explore what you can do within Spark Hire Meet to boost completion even more.