What Makes a Great Candidate Experience?
What exactly do we mean by ‘candidate experience’?
When we talk about candidate experience we’re referring to the end-to-end recruitment process from initial engagement through to the day a new member of staff starts work with you or a candidate is ‘declined’. More specifically, we’re talking about how the candidate feels about this process; their experience.
Why is the candidate experience important?
Let’s take a step back. Think about your own experience as a customer in your local restaurant. The food, the service, the atmosphere, the price… they all play a part in delivering that experience. Importantly that experience is what dictates whether you’ll go back again (or whether you’ll recommend it to a friend, or even whether you’ll pay the bill!) No single element on it’s own is enough to convert you – even if the food was great but the service poor you’ll probably go elsewhere next time.
Most organisations these days spend a lot of time and energy making sure their customer experience is as good as it can be. A better customer experience is a key differentiator, helping you attract and retain customers. Attracting and retaining customers – ideally the higher value ones – is a clear commercial goal, and the deeper your understanding of the customer experience the easier this becomes. And of course happy customers tell their friends, helping you attract yet more customers… for free.
So, back to the candidate experience. A good experience creates engaged, committed candidates who, if you hire them, are likely to become engaged and committed employees. Even if you eventually decline them (and you will always decline more than you hire) they will leave the recruitment process with a positive impression of your organisation; receptive to future contact if you place them in your ‘talent pool’ and materially influencing how they react to any customer-focused marketing you do. Essentially, a good experience here is free PR for your organisation. Great; a win-win situation. On the other hand, a poor experience invariably leads to greater drop-out rates, more no-shows at interview, a higher percentage of offers declined and – most importantly – it influences how engaged and committed they will be as employees if and when you do hire them. Not so great.
As the economic landscape improves and recruitment picks up it’s becoming clear that application numbers per role are generally falling and more candidates are now interviewing with multiple clients. In this more normal climate the candidate experience you deliver as part of your recruitment process will be a key factor in attracting the best.
What makes a great candidate experience?
Whilst a positive candidate experience is clearly essential, we fully appreciate that it has to be something that can be delivered within the framework of available resources and budget. The good news is that the key elements of a great experience are relatively simple and easily woven into your recruitment process. The caveat here is that it’s absolutely key to deliver these elements consistently.
Based on our extensive recruitment experience and, importantly, our objective quarterly Candidate Experience Survey, we’ve pulled together the most important elements of a truly great candidate experience. A great deal of this boils down to a single principle: communication.
1: Excite me!
In terms of engaging with your target audience, remember that, just like prospective customers, you need to excite them from the very beginning. Your recruitment advertising, your careers pages online, your recruitment agency partners et al… everything you place out into the market must stand out and must present a compelling reason to enter the recruitment process and to find out more. Although you’ll clearly need to state what you are looking for, remember too to let the market know what the role will deliver for them (beyond just salary). So long as the message is clear and compelling you will sufficiently whet the appetite and lay the foundations of a relationship with your applicants.
2: Acknowledgement
A simple case here of letting the applicant know you’ve received their CV or application form, thanking them for their interest in your organisation and letting them know what happens next. If you’re using an online Applicant Tracking System, it’s an automated response. If you’re taking in paper applications, a brief email back to the candidate would suffice. If you have a recruitment agency supporting you, remember to ask the same of them. It’s a common complaint from candidates that they often receive no acknowledgment, from either employer or agency, and this can put you on the back foot if you go back at a later date to invite them in for interview. This simple step can set the tone for all future correspondence.
2: Timescales
Whatever your timescales are, be up front. Knowing what will happen next and by when will help candidates plan accordingly. A strong candidate will likely have other applications in progress and will want to manage his/her time to be able to progress them all. The worst case scenario is that you invite a star candidate in for interview on the date you’d planned for only to find out that they have other commitments. A clear step-by-step map of the recruitment process and what’s expected of the candidate will help them prepare accordingly and ensure you see them at their best.
4: Information
As part of any recruitment process you will be asking a candidate for a CV, possibly an application form, perhaps even requiring them to sit some form of psychometric or skills evaluation test. So, lots of information from them. From their side most candidates will want to have decent information about the opportunity beyond the obligatory role description. Anything you can provide around your business operations, structure, culture, people and longer term opportunity will help cement their interest.
5: Feedback / Closure
It’s inevitable that you will decline far more people than you hire, but in either scenario it’s essential to round off the candidate experience with a sensible justification of your decision. If you’re hiring, it’s easy – “We think you’re a great addition to the business and we want you to come on board!” If it’s a decline, a simple notification would be well received; anything further can be a great help in terms of personal development and will certainly elevate your organisation in the candidate’s eyes. Yet again, if you are working with recruitment agency support, ensure they follow this process on your behalf as it will reflect on you.
Embedding this into your recruitment process.
The final consideration is ensuring that an appreciation of candidate experience and the day to day practicalities listed above are followed consistently across the recruitment process. This has both a ‘process’ element and a ‘people’ element. A good way of highlighting the benefits of great candidate experience to your Resourcers and the wider business is to run a regular Survey yourself. This keeps you in touch with your future ‘talent pool’, showcases real comments about your recruitment activity and feeds nicely into your employee engagement and talent management strategies.
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