It often happens that interesting candidates do not complete the application process and therefore appear in Application Manager as unfinished. In this article we will give you helpful tips on how to optimise your application process in order to reduce the number of application drop-outs. In addition, you will find useful tips on how you can still encourage interesting talents to complete their application.

What are unfinished applications?

Candidates who do not complete their application process are listed in Application Manager as unfinished applications.

There are many reasons for abandoning an application:

• The application process is too complicated.
• Documents and information are requested that are not relevant to the advertised position.
• Too much time elapses before candidates receive feedback.
• Candidates think it is enough to complete only a few of the steps.
• The candidate has changed his·her mind and no longer wishes to apply.

In chapter "What can I do to prevent candidate abandonment?" we will show you what options you have to avoid unfinished applications.

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Candidates with only unfinished applications may delete their profile at any time. The normal data retention periods only start once the application has been completed.

If the candidates then find themselves in an ongoing application process, they can only have their profile deleted by submitting a data erasure request. You can find more on this in our article "Data processing" under point 1.5.

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Where can I find the unfinished applications?

Unfinished applications are displayed in the general candidate list and highlighted in light grey.

You can also use the filter function to display only the unfinished applications by clicking on "More" (1) and selecting at "Finished/unfinished" the option "Only unfinished applications" (2).

At this point, these candidates are neither assigned to a job nor to a step in the hiring process. For data protection reasons, the application must be completed before the actual hiring process can begin.

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In the information on data processing, candidates are informed about the following facts:

The creation of the online application can be paused at any time and continued at a later point. The data provided to create the user account, as well as any uploaded documents, are recorded in onlyfy. The data remains recorded even if an application is paused and/or not completed. In this case, the application is flagged as incomplete and the data remains visible to the company only.

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You do not see the unfinished applications? Visibility can be controlled by your administrator. Please contact the person responsible in your company.

Do you have admin access? You can set the visibility of unfinished applications individually for each access group. To do this, go to "Settings" (1) > „Access management“ (2) > „Access groups“ (3). Click on "Edit" (4) for the desired group, go to "Access" (5) > "Candidates" (6)  and de-/activate the access "can see unfinished applications" (7).

Attention! People who are mentioned in the comment of an unfinished application automatically get access to the corresponding profile, even if the authorization has been deactivated for them.

What can I do to prevent candidate abandonment?

With onlyfy, you have different options to prevent application drop-outs. This chapter provides a summary of our recommendations.

Message templates

You can use message templates to remind applicants to complete and finalize their application.

These messages can, for example, be sent as mass emails to all persons with an unfinished application and motivate the applicants to complete the application process. To do this, select all the people you want to contact (1) and click on "Contact" (2). Now you can select the appropriate message template in the "Template" field (3).

Message templates can be created by persons with administrator rights under "Settings" (1) > "Messaging" (2) > "Message templates" (3). Click here on "Add template" (4) and fill in the corresponding fields.

Automated workflows for unfinished applications

To encourage candidates to complete their application, we recommend that you set up an automated workflow. This will send a pre-defined message after a certain period of time, inviting the candidate to complete the application and thus be included in the hiring process.

Please note that workflows can only be created by persons with administrator rights. To do this, as an admin go to "Settings" (1) > "Automated workflows" (2) > "New workflow" (3) and select "Application creation date" (4) as the trigger.

The automated workflows are similar to the IF/THEN equation, e. g. in Excel. A trigger starts a query. If the conditions are met or not met depending on the query, a corresponding action is started.

Now set the conditions for your workflow:

• IF this event occurs (1): Application was started longer than X days ago. Here you can specify when the automated workflow should start.
• AND all of the following conditions matches (2):
  Condition: Finished/Unfinished? IS
  Value: Unfinished.
• THEN this will happen (3): Message to candidate. Here you have the option to enter the text manually or to select a message template. The message is sent in the name of the contact person responsible for the respective job and the candidates have the possibility to reply to it.

Evaluate and optimise the application process

Analyse your application process to see where candidates drop out. The "Unfinished applications progress" report will help you to do this. Go to the reports (1), click on "Add analysis" (2) and select "Unfinished applications progress" (3) from the predefined analysis.

Now you will see the unfinished applications. You can use filters to further refine the report:

• Job application process: Do you have multiple processes? Select the desired process here.
• Job: You can call up the evaluation for your jobs individually.
• Time frame: Enter the time period you want to analyse here.
• Filters: Under "Filters" you will find further filter options. We recommend that you use the filter "Acquisition channel".

After you have set the filters, the report shows you how many candidates dropped out at different stages of the application process.

Do candidates abandon the application at a particular stage? Look at this step and try to simplify it.

• Profile: Keep the registration for candidates as short as possible during the application process. For example, only ask for the salutation and phone number and do not ask for the date of birth or nationality. If a person meets the requirements, you can also send further questions to the person in the second step or clarify them in a phone call.
• Questionnaires: Create different processes for different positions or application groups. For example, a position as a salesperson will probably require different documents than a position as a developer.
  Do not ask for too much information and documents in the application. Tasks, practical examples or online questionnaires are still useful in the second round.
• Acquisition channel: Are you receiving unfinished applications through a specific channel? Check the job posting and test the application process for that particular channel. Maybe there are technical obstacles or misinformation that leads to abandonment.

In addition to the application process, the structure of your hiring process is also important. After submitting their documents, candidates often wait a long time before receiving feedback from the potential employer. Candidates would like to receive feedback within two weeks.

Do you need more time to make a decision? Write an automatically generated patience e-mail. You can find detailed information on automated workflows in our article "Automated workflows".

You also have the option of setting reminders for the individual steps in the hiring process. This means that you will be reminded of the application after a specified time has elapsed.

Persons with administrator rights can set this function according to your company's specifications. To do this, select the desired process under "Settings" (1) > "Applications" (2) > "Hiring process" (3) and click on "Edit steps" (4). Next to each step you will find the function "Reminder" (5). Click on the pencil icon and adjust the function to your needs.