5 Ways Companies Can Actually Keep Talent Engaged in 2025

The New Rules of Candidate Engagement

The power dynamic in hiring has fundamentally shifted. Top candidates in supply chain and operations don't settle anymore. With unemployment for skilled professionals remaining low and companies competing fiercely for experienced talent, candidates hold more leverage than ever before.

According to Deloitte research, 80-90% of talent say a positive or negative candidate experience can change their minds about accepting a role or joining a company. Your hiring process is critical to whether you successfully attract and retain the people you need.

The talent market has changed. Candidates have changed. Your hiring process needs to change too.

Stop Hiring Without Alignment

Unclear or changing expectations = red flag.

If you don't know what you want, candidates will figure it out and they won't stick around to watch you decide.

The most common hiring mistake isn't screening the wrong candidates. It's not defining what "right" looks like in the first place. When job descriptions are vague, requirements shift mid-process, or hiring managers can't articulate success metrics, top candidates recognize organizational dysfunction.

This misalignment manifests in multiple ways:

• Job descriptions that are unrealistic drive away qualified candidates who assume you're not serious.
• Changing requirements mid-interview signals that leadership doesn't have clarity on business needs or organizational priorities.
• Conflicting feedback from different interviewers reveals internal disagreement about what the role actually requires.

According to McKinsey's 2025 HR Monitor Survey, overall hiring success stands at just 46% in Europe, with only 56% offer acceptance rates. This difficulty often stems from unclear role definition and inconsistent evaluation criteria.

Organizations seeking to build world-class operations teams must first get internal alignment on what success looks like before ever posting a job description. Create a detailed scorecard that defines must-have skills, nice-to-have qualifications, and objective evaluation criteria. Share this with everyone involved in the hiring process.

When candidates experience a hiring process where every interviewer asks relevant, coordinated questions that build on previous conversations, they recognize organizational competence. That confidence translates directly into offer acceptance rates.

Slow Hiring Equals Fast Exits to Competitors

Top talent won't stick around for a 3-month process with 8 interviews.

While you're scheduling the sixth round of interviews, your best candidates are accepting offers elsewhere. According to Gartner research, 65% of candidates have cut short the hiring process because they found certain aspects unattractive, and lengthy, inefficient processes are a primary driver of candidate drop-off.

Organizations often confuse "comprehensive" with "time-consuming," creating unnecessarily complex processes that accomplish little beyond frustrating candidates and slowing time-to-hire.

Consider the typical drawn-out process:

• Week 1: Initial phone screen (that could have been addressed in the application)
• Week 3: First interview (delayed by scheduling conflicts)
• Week 5: Second interview (because the first round didn't cover everything needed)
• Week 7: Third interview (with someone who should have been involved earlier)
• Week 9: Final decision (after internal deliberation that could have happened faster)

By Week 9, your top candidate has received two other offers and is three weeks into their new role with your competitor.

A defined scorecard and decisive process wins stronger hires faster. Organizations that streamline their hiring process see dramatic improvements. Companies focusing on candidate experience report up to 30% lower turnover rates, largely because they're capturing top candidates who would have otherwise gone elsewhere.

The best supply chain recruiters understand this timing dynamic. They know that speed and quality aren't opposing forces - structured processes actually enable both.

"Cheap" Hires Cost the Most

Budget hires don't save money. They cost more in turnover and missed growth.

The temptation to hire at the lowest acceptable salary is understandable, especially when budget pressures are real. But this short-term thinking creates long-term costs that far exceed the initial "savings."

Consider the actual costs of a budget hire who leaves within 18 months:

• Recruitment costs for the initial hire and the replacement
• Training investment that walks out the door and must be repeated
• Productivity loss during the learning curve - twice
• Team disruption from turnover and knowledge gaps
• Opportunity costs from projects delayed or initiatives not pursued

Companies that prioritize competitive or above-average compensation see better retention and faster hiring. More importantly, they attract candidates with options - the ones who could go anywhere but choose you because you demonstrate you value their expertise.

This doesn't mean overpaying for every role. It means understanding market rates for the specific skills and experience you need, then positioning your offer competitively. Organizations that try to get "a deal" on critical talent end up paying premium prices through turnover costs and lost productivity.

SCOPE Recruiting has been recognized by Advisory Excellence as one of the best supply chain recruiters specifically because we help clients understand this dynamic and make strategic compensation decisions that drive retention.

Fix the Red Flags Candidates Notice

That role you've reposted for 12 months? Candidates see it too and assume there's a leadership or culture problem.

In 2025, candidates research companies more thoroughly than ever. The vast majority investigate company culture, read employee reviews, and evaluate employer branding before deciding to apply. Organizations with strong employer brands see significantly lower cost-per-hire and better applicant quality.

This means your hiring patterns are visible. When the same role appears repeatedly, candidates draw obvious conclusions:

• The role has unrealistic expectations that nobody can meet
• The company has retention problems and people keep leaving
• Leadership can't make decisions and keeps restarting the search
• The work environment is problematic and people leave quickly

Each of these assumptions damages your ability to attract quality candidates. The best talent simply moves on to opportunities that don't raise these concerns.

Beyond chronic reposting, candidates notice other red flags:

• Glassdoor reviews mentioning specific problems that your job posting ignores
• LinkedIn showing high turnover in specific departments
• Indeed reviews highlighting poor management or lack of career growth

You can't completely control your employer brand, but you can address legitimate concerns proactively. If a role has been open repeatedly, diagnose why before posting again. If reviews mention specific issues, address them rather than hoping candidates won't notice.

Show a Real Career Path

The best candidates want to grow. If they don't see it with you, they'll see it somewhere else.

Retention begins at the offer stage. When candidates evaluate opportunities, they're not just considering the immediate role - they're assessing whether your organization offers a future worth investing in.

Career pathing doesn't require detailed five-year plans for every position. It does require:

• Clear skills development opportunities that build toward advancement
• Visible examples of people who've grown within the organization
• Honest conversations about realistic timelines and requirements for promotion
• Investment in learning through training, mentorship, or challenging projects

When supply chain and operations professionals evaluate opportunities, they're looking at whether your organization develops talent or just consumes it. Logistics recruiters consistently report that career development opportunities rank among the top three factors in offer decisions for experienced professionals.

The best candidates have options. They're choosing not just a job, but a trajectory. Organizations that can articulate compelling career paths win the talent they want and retain them longer.

What Actually Works in 2025: Business Leaders and HR Teams Share Their Engagement Strategies

We asked business leaders, HR professionals, and recruiters what engagement strategies they've built into their hiring process that worked surprisingly well in 2025. The most effective strategies let candidates see exactly what they're signing up for while showing them you're serious about their growth.

Leading With Career Development From Day One

Engagement really started to evolve for us when we involved the professional development process at the onboarding stage, in that we made employees aware from the outset just how much we're willing to invest long-term into their training. This meant that employees were more engaged from the outset as they could see a clear development path at the beginning of their role.

Tracey Beveridge, HR Director, Personnel Checks

Personalizing Training Instead of Generic Onboarding

We've found that the most effective engagement-booster is actually onboarding new hires with a bespoke element to their training, rather than just going through what employees might see as the onboarding motions (if they're not specific or somewhat bespoke to how they want to develop/the level of development they expect to achieve within their role).

Wendy Makinson, HR Manager, Joloda Hydraroll

Replacing Interviews With Real Work

We changed how we hire. We now ask candidates to work through a small, real project and then share their thinking with the team. It's a much better way to see if we actually work well together than the usual interview questions. New hires feel included from day one, since their ideas are heard right away.

Brian Tetreault, Co-Founder, Kitching & Co. Dirtworx

Here's our secret. During interviews, we have candidates solve a real problem our team is actually dealing with and walk us through their logic. It shows so much more than a resume. We both see the same thing, which creates a shared understanding from the start. You can tell if it's a good fit before anyone even talks about an offer.

Alvin Poh, Chairman, CLDY.com Pte Ltd

This year at Lusha we started giving candidates a small hands-on project. We used our own CRM sales data, just with customer info removed. They worked on the same kinds of problems we see every day. It changed the whole conversation. Instead of talking about hypotheticals, we discussed their actual solutions. You could quickly see who was genuinely engaged and had the right skills, which made figuring out fit much easier for everyone.

Yarden Morgan, Director of Growth, Lusha

At ShipTheDeal, we started giving candidates a short assignment from our actual SaaS challenges. They immediately got a feel for our daily problems and could show us their thinking process. For remote hiring, this was the best way to see who is genuinely a self-starter. That one change made the whole process more direct and honest for everyone involved.

Cyrus Partow, CEO, ShipTheDeal

The Path Forward

The shift from employer-driven to candidate-driven hiring isn't temporary. It's the new reality of talent acquisition in supply chain, operations, and logistics.

Organizations that thrive in this environment share common characteristics:

• They respect candidates' time with efficient, well-organized processes
• They communicate clearly and frequently throughout the hiring journey
• They make competitive offers that reflect market reality rather than wishful thinking
• They address visible concerns rather than hoping candidates won't notice
• They invest in career development that makes talented people want to stay

This is about making hiring effective. The companies that adapt to candidate expectations don't just fill positions faster. They build stronger teams, reduce turnover costs, and create competitive advantages through superior talent.

Work with SCOPE Recruiting to find supply chain and operations professionals who fit your needs while implementing hiring best practices that keep top talent engaged throughout the process.

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