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Table of Contents
Why is candidate management important for HR professionals and organizations?
What are the key steps involved in candidate management?
Who are the main stakeholders involved in candidate management?
How does candidate management influence the candidate experience?
What metrics can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of candidate management?
How can HR professionals handle rejected candidates professionally?
What challenges do HR and TA teams face in candidate management?
What role does automation play in candidate management, and which tasks should be automated?
How can organizations ensure compliance with data protection and privacy laws when managing candidate information?
What tools and technologies can help with candidate management?
Candidate management and streamlined recruitment with Deel
What is candidate management?
Candidate management refers to the process of managing and engaging job applicants throughout the entire hiring process. It starts with a candidate’s first interaction with a company or sourcing profiles and then moves on to conducting interviews and hiring or rejection. Candidate management can extend even to the post-hire phase with pre-onboarding experience.
Candidate management is a critical part of the talent acquisition process. It seeks to align the organization’s needs with the expectations and experiences of job seekers. As candidates often keep their options open until the end, effective candidate management is essential to attract top talent and ensure smooth hiring.
Why is candidate management important for HR professionals and organizations?
Prioritizing candidate management is necessary for HR professionals and organizations, as negative candidate experiences can cause the following repercussions:
- Increase chances of candidate ghosting: 52% of job seekers say they had turned down job offers because of poor candidate experience. So, it directly impacts the quality of hires and increases dropout rates from candidates.
- Impact employer branding: Further, 72% of job seekers say they have shared their bad candidate experience with their network, creating a poor name for the brand.
- Affect long-term recruitment: Candidates facing poor candidate experience are 3.5 times less likely to reapply, which can filter out a significant number of potential candidates. Also, if they are sharing their bad experience with others, then it also deters others from applying.
What are the key steps involved in candidate management?
The key steps of candidate management include:
Sourcing candidates
Getting potential candidates through job portals, referrals, social media, or recruitment agencies for open job openings based on the recruitment methods you have finalized. An important thing to consider here is the clarity of job descriptions. They reassure candidates about what they are applying to and ensure organizations get the best-fitting candidates. Secondly, this data must be stored properly so that candidates’ profiles aren’t lost and candidates feel ghosted.
Job Description Templates
Shortlisting and interviewing
The next step is shortlisting the profiles and setting up necessary interviews. This step needs clear communication from companies, and currently, 42% want stronger recruiter communication.
Interview feedback
After the interview, candidates expect a response, either positive or negative. A no response at all leaves a bad aftertaste about the whole experience, and it isn’t uncommon. 61% of job seekers say they have been ghosted after a job interview.
Preboarding/Onboarding
Once a candidate is elected, it’s necessary to keep them engaged with preboarding or onboarding communication. In the current job market, where at least 38% of job seekers are mass applying to roles, it is necessary to keep them motivated till the entire onboarding is complete.

Who are the main stakeholders involved in candidate management?
Candidate management involves a coordinated effort across multiple functions, all focused on attracting, evaluating, and securing the right talent while ensuring a consistent and equitable experience. The key stakeholders typically include:
- Hiring manager: Owns the role, defines what success looks like, conducts interviews, and makes the final call on who to hire.
- Recruiter / Talent acquisition: Drives the process end-to-end—from sourcing to screening, scheduling interviews, managing candidate communication, and guiding offer delivery.
- People operations / HR: Ensures alignment with company policies, manages compensation benchmarks, supports equitable hiring practices, and facilitates handoff to onboarding.
- Finance: Approves headcount, validates compensation offers, and ensures alignment with budget forecasts and hiring plans.
- Legal / Compliance: Advises on classification (contractor vs. employee), oversees contract language, and ensures hiring practices comply with local laws—especially in global or remote settings.
- Executive leadership: Provides input or final approval for strategic, high-impact, or executive-level hires—often weighing in on offer structure or long-term team vision.
- Interview panel members: Support decision-making with peer-level insights across skills, culture, and collaboration dynamics.
In enterprise organizations, candidate management tends to be highly structured and segmented. Specialized roles (e.g., compensation analysts, HRBPs, legal liaisons) own discrete steps in the process. Systems like ATSs, CRM integrations, and interview training programs help coordinate large hiring volumes while ensuring compliance at scale. However, this often means a longer, more complex process with multiple approval layers.
In contrast, SMBs or startups typically run leaner hiring processes. Recruiters may double as HR generalists, and hiring managers often handle sourcing or initial outreach directly. Candidate communication is more personalized, decisions are faster, and cross-functional collaboration is informal. This agility can be a strength, but it also increases the risk of inconsistency or misalignment without clear role ownership or defined compensation strategy.
Global Hiring Toolkit
How does candidate management influence the candidate experience?
The candidate management process ensures that the hiring process is well-structured and engaging and candidates are well-informed about all the next steps. It ensures timely communication and brings transparency in the hiring process, which is necessary for great candidate experiences. Many candidates have spoken about this in the past.
For example, James C., a marketing professional, shares one of his worst interview experiences was when an interviewer didn’t show up on the call. He later found out the position was closed. This lack of transparency and communication makes him count this incident as the worst interview experience.
On the other hand, Jessica Gyles says that her interview experience with LinkedIn was excellent, despite being rejected, as the recruiter kept her regularly informed and even jumped on a call to share feedback.
What role does communication play in candidate management?
Communication is the most crucial cornerstone of effective candidate management. Poor communication is the biggest red flag for candidates, and that deters them from joining the company.
Excellent communication keeps candidates informed about their application status and engages them to join after successful selection and even reapply after rejection. On the other hand, poor communication leads to candidate dropouts and hampers the employer’s brand.
How does candidate management impact employer branding?
Candidate management has a direct impact (positive or negative) on employer branding. Candidates share their feedback, positive or negative, with others. In fact, they are quite likely to share a negative experience. 72% of job seekers report sharing their negative candidate experience with their network. Further, it creates a long-term bad impression in their mind, where they are 3.5 times less likely to reapply to the company.
What metrics can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of candidate management?
Some key metrics to track the effectiveness of candidate management are:
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Application completion rate: The number of candidates who completed the application process, ensuring that your job description was accurate.
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Interview-to-hire ratio: The number of candidates interviewed for every role compared to the number of successful hires. A high ratio shows you are potentially shortlisting candidates incorrectly.
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Offer acceptance rate: The percentage of job offers that were accepted successfully. A low acceptance rate can be a sign of poor candidate experience.
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Candidate drop-off rate: The percentage of candidates who drop out of the recruitment process at any stage.
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Candidate satisfaction score: The overall satisfaction score indicates how positive the hiring experience was for the candidate.
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Candidate net promoter score: The overall promoter score shows how likely a candidate is to recommend the company to others.
How can HR professionals handle rejected candidates professionally?
Rejection is a subject that must be handled with a lot of sensitivity, and it’s always better to say no rather than say nothing at all. Here are a few considerations for sending rejections to unsuccessful candidates:
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Provide timely feedback: Informing rejection three months after the interview shows gaps in your recruitment strategy and feels like ghosting. Send timely feedback to leave an impact.
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Be empathetic: Use respectful language when communicating the rejection and thank the candidates for taking the time to interview and apply.
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Keep the door open: Encourage candidates to apply again for future roles and let them know if you will reach out for any other future openings.
Communicating rejections professionally must be a part of the recruitment process as it still motivates candidates to reapply and create a positive word of mouth about the company.
What challenges do HR and TA teams face in candidate management?
Some common challenges HR professionals face in candidate management are:
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High application volumes: It’s easy to drop all the personalized notes and regular communication when applications are limited, but as the organization scales, it becomes tougher to keep all systems running. Having recruiting software like an applicant tracking system (ATS) to automate and streamline the process and make it easy. Sorting through numerous applications can be time-consuming. Using an ATS can help automate and streamline the talent acquisition process.
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Poor candidate engagement: Long hiring processes can create candidate disengagement. Candidate relationship management is another crucial task to keep candidates engaged when conducting interviews or joining the company. ATS helps to set up all required regular updates, and check-ins help keep candidates engaged.
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Unconscious bias in hiring decisions or communication: Bias is another problem that can silently come when you are hiring, and it can further increase with global hiring, where different cultures also have their own norms. To overcome the issues, HR can regularly review communication to avoid any bias in language. The language must be gender-neutral and inclusive. Further, they can conduct training for all interviewers/hiring managers on how to drive hiring bias-free.
What role does automation play in candidate management, and which tasks should be automated?
Candidate management processes can further be improved by automation to increase efficiency and improve candidate experience. Below are the key tasks that have strong potential for automation:
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Pre-screening: Applicant tracking systems now come with advanced AI features that can screen resumes and shortlist the right candidates for interviews. It can further send any pre-screening questions that might be required for the interview.
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Interview scheduling and communication: Modern applicant tracking systems (ATS) are also capable of scheduling interviews and sending any necessary communication to candidates.
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Feedback management: ATS can further create a mandatory step for an interviewer to type feedback, whether positive or negative, so the candidate never feels ghosted.
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Offer release and acceptance: Applicant tracking system or HR Management Systems (HRMS) can send offer letters to candidates who have cleared the interview.
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Preboarding and onboarding: HR management systems and learning management can also handle all necessary preboarding tasks, keeping employees engaged before joining. It also ensures they have completed all necessary paperwork and are aware of all relevant information. Further, a learning management system can also systemize the learning to ensure new hires have everything to get started.
Read more:
- AI in Recruiting: What It’s Actually Doing Today and What It Could Unlock Tomorrow
- Level-Up Hiring with AI: 7 Playbook Moves to Trial Today
How can organizations ensure compliance with data protection and privacy laws when managing candidate information?
To stay compliant with the data protection and privacy laws when managing candidate information, companies must:
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Analyze data: Check what data is collected and how many fields there are that would flag as sensitive data and need further secure handling.
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Check storage: Verify the platform you are using is compliant with global data protection standards and encrypts sensitive data
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Verify access: Ensure only authorized professionals can access this data for further security.
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Define retention periods: Define how long data can be stored based on the jurisdiction the candidate is in. For example, according to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, data must be stored for at least two years.
What tools and technologies can help with candidate management?
The most common tools that can simplify candidate management for HR/recruiters/hiring managers are:
- Applicant tracking systems: Applicant tracking systems are the best tools to improve candidate management as they take care of the entire recruitment workflow from start to finish: Job posting, pre-screening, interview scheduling, feedback management, and offer exertion.
- HR management systems: An HR management system unifies all new hire data and starts preboarding/onboarding tasks like offer generation, collecting documents or eSignature, and sending welcome kits.
- Learning management system: Learning Management Systems drive any necessary training for new hires before or immediately after joining.
Candidate management and streamlined recruitment with Deel
Recruitment teams today care about more than filling roles. They want to deliver a seamless, consistent candidate experience from first outreach to signed offer and beyond.
Deel helps them do that by combining global talent sourcing, employer of record (EOR), contractor management, and full-scale HRIS in one platform. Our product team has spent years understanding the challenges recruiters face daily and building a comprehensive solution that handles all hiring challenges (locally or globally).
Whether scaling with employees or contractors across borders, Deel ensures your recruitment strategy is supported by compliant hiring, fast onboarding, and a unified system to manage the entire talent lifecycle.
Elevate your candidate experience by joining all loose threads. Book a demo of Deel now.