The second blog in our Covid series (a series nearly as gripping as Tiger King) focuses on register your interest (RYI) forms. For anyone who doesn’t know what a RYI form is, we’re big advocates - number one fans you might say. RYI forms take the format of an online form that allows students to register their interest in either an employer as a whole, a specific role or programme or event before applications or sign-up is open. From there they will be kept in the loop of any opportunities, news or events relevant to them.
Super simple, but super effective.
We were cheerleaders of the RYI form before Coronavirus began it’s world domination, and now more than ever it is our number one recommendation for all Connect clients. Why, you ask? Well I’m so glad you did! We’ve got three great reasons…
1. Online Talent Pipeline Building
Last year across all RYI forms, over 60,000 students were captured. How mad is that? Factor in that there were no logistical costs of a physical event, no time out of the office for the team and no queues of students waiting to use a tablet involved in capturing this data - you’re on to a winner.
These forms can be shared anywhere online, and we’ll come on to best practices to maximise the promotion of these forms. One way that’s been really effective is using these forms on job boards, for example RateMyPlacement. One of our FMCG clients advertised their RYI job listings on RateMyPlacement for 4 weeks and just under 2,000 students registered their interest for specific business areas, creating ready made contact lists for when applicants opened.
It is unlikely that you’ll be able to capture data face-to-face in the same way (if at all) for the remainder of the year. By implementing a RYI form you won’t miss out on building the talent pipeline that you might have done at physical events. Building this pipeline will set you up for success and self-sufficiency for future early talent recruitment.
2. Capturing the most engaged students
Most students signing up to your RYI form will have had to actively seek out and research in order to register. Just like you might sign-up to be the first to hear when festival tickets go on sale (R.I.P. Glastonbury 2020, it wasn’t meant to be for us) because you’ve got an active interest, students are signing up to your talent pool for the same reason. (Slight exaggeration, can’t quite draw exact parallels between a 5 day festival and a 5 day insight scheme). But the point is these students are the most engaged with you as an employer.
Not convinced by my very wooly Glasto analogy? I don’t blame you, so let’s look at some stats. Following the story of the FMCG client, once applications opened they sent an email to all those that had registered their interest and it had a 73% open rate and 42% click through rate! To put that into context the average open rate for campaign emails is 47% open rate and 12% click through rate. So nearly 4 times the average click through rate, showing how engaged these students really are.
This is one thing Coronavirus has not changed. Recently, one of our consulting clients sent a newsletter-style email to students that had registered their interest since applications closed earlier this year. This received an 84% open rate. Boom.
The point here is these students registering their interest are the keenest of beans. They’ve actively sought out to register, most likely while they are researching you as an employer, rather than passively signing-up at something like a careers fair. And these students are likely to then go on to apply.
3. Proof is in the applicant & hire reporting
Which leads us nicely on to reporting. As a reminder, Connect has the functionality to report on where your applicants and hires have come from using email address as the unique identifier. And unsurprisingly when we’ve run these reports RYI consistently as one of the top sources of applicants and hires. Couple of headline stats from this years reporting:
- A public sector organisation found that over the past 3 years 30% of their hires came from RYI forms.
- A bank found that 28% of students that registered their interest over the summer went on to submit an application.
- A law firm found that 25% of students that registered their interest over the summer went on to submit an application.
Are we surprised that these students are more likely to go on to apply? No. As we’ve already established, these students are the most engaged with you as they’ve already expressed interest. But in addition to that, these students sit in your talent pool in time to receive all the juicy communications you’ll be sending out. Messages such as deadline reminders, invitations to events and application hints & tips. This keeps you front of mind as a preferred employer and sets them up to submit high quality applications.
Top Tips & Summary
RYI are as essential to your attraction strategy as your new loungewear purchases are to your new working from home situation. It ensures you continue to digitally build your talent pipeline and capture students who are most engaged with you as an employer. We’d recommend getting these forms live and circulated as soon as possible. To get the maximum out of RYI we’d recommend sharing these on/by:
- Careers websites
- Social media
- Brand ambassadors
- Emails
- Job boards
For all information on setting up RYI forms, bespoke auto-emails and any other queries please check out our support articles or speak to your Customer Success Manager.