Candidate engagement is the measurement of how you are communicating with your candidates during a recruitment process. The communication may be over the phone, through email or text, or in-person. During a hiring process, engagement may be measured through the number of text replies, emails opened, roles viewed, or applications.
Highly engaged candidates will apply, read your communications, and respond quickly. Those more disengaged candidates may have applied but might not read your emails or respond in a timely fashion. If you continually experience low candidate engagement levels, this suggests that there may be an issue in the way you communicate with applicants.