How Candidate Research Drives Engagement Before Day One
- Jay Kipps
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Writer: Jay Kipps, Flint & Steel Inc.
Date: February 12, 2024 | 3 min read
How Candidate Research Drives Engagement Before Day One
Candidate engagement doesn’t start on day one—it starts at the very first click, scroll, or impression. Yet too many organizations rely on outdated assumptions when building their recruitment campaigns, career sites, and employer brand messaging.
To engage top talent in today’s market, especially early-career candidates, you need to build from real insight—not guesswork.
Here’s how leading employers are using data to build more effective, more inclusive, and more engaging talent strategies:
1. Start with Candidate Research for Market and Persona Insights
Generic messaging is invisible. If your employer brand or campus outreach is built without understanding what matters to your audience, it won’t land—no matter how polished your content is.
Action: Use candidate research to build detailed personas based on life stage, motivations, values, and decision drivers—not just job title or age.
1. Lead with Data, Not Guesswork
Most organizations still make talent decisions based on instincts, not evidence. That’s risky. Smart teams use candidate research, funnel diagnostics, and psychometric insights to drive hiring strategy.
Action: Audit your TA funnel. Where are you losing quality candidates—and why? Use candidate research and data-driven diagnostics to pinpoint breakdowns and prioritize change.
2. Make Your EVP Real for Different Segments
What drives engagement for an experienced hire is not the same as what matters to a first-year engineering student. Your EVP needs to be personalized—not just globally defined.
Action: Map your EVP across the candidate lifecycle. Use data to translate it into what different talent audiences need to hear, see, and feel to believe your promise.
3. Connect With Early-Career Talent Through Their Priorities
Canadian student data shows that flexibility, well-being, purpose, and leadership behavior matter more than job security or compensation alone. That’s a shift many employers haven’t caught up with yet.
Action: Tap into Flint & Steel’s proprietary early-career dataset (27,000+ responses across 80+ schools) to align your campus content and experience strategy with what students actually want.
4. Test and Refine Messaging Using Real Feedback
Too many recruitment campaigns are launched and left to run without measurement. But what if your top three messages are falling flat with your ideal audience?
Action: Use recruitment marketing diagnostics to evaluate message recall, conversion patterns, and engagement data. Then adjust—not next year, but next week.
Final Thought
Engagement starts long before onboarding. With the right insight, you can tailor your outreach, content, and brand experience to meet candidates where they are—and win their trust before they ever hit apply.
🎯Want to see what matters most to your candidate audiences right now?
We offer Canadian student research, global experienced and mid-career talent insights, and full-stack persona development to help you build a truly insight-led recruitment strategy.
👉 Book a complimentary consultation ahead of the competition.
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