Find ways to provide candidates with an experience as positive as the one you offer to your customers.
In today’s HR world, we all recognize an emerging need in recent years: to treat our potential employees as potential… internal customers. Let’s start from the beginning: with your business’s customers, you provide a specific Customer Experience, a positive experience to keep them engaged, to have a positive interaction with your brand, to prefer you, and to recommend your brand to others.
You want the same for your Employer Brand, the brand you have as an Employer. You want to create incentives for candidates to prefer you just as your customers do, to speak positively about you to others, to want to join your business, and to stay close to it. One of the most powerful ways to achieve this is by offering a positive Candidate Experience.
A brief guide to the Candidate Experience journey
Similar to the Customer Experience, the Candidate Experience is a holistic journey with a beginning, middle, and end. The candidate experience starts from your first contact with the candidate (through a job advertisement you post, through the attractiveness of your career site, etc.) and concludes when you hire or “reject” the candidate. And yes, the hiring experience is just as important as the “rejection” experience.
Let’s briefly look at the stages of this journey:
- Talent Attraction: The beginning of the candidate journey, attracting candidates either through the information provided on a Career Site, through content on Social Media, Job Boards (such as LinkedIn, etc.), or any other means of promoting your outward-facing presence to the job market.
- Application Process: Equally important in shaping a candidate’s experience, as the number of steps in an application can either encourage or discourage them from completing it. A lengthy application process can make the process time-consuming and tedious.
- Screening: The first interaction with the candidate, such as a confirmation email of resume receipt or a phone interview, indirectly presents the employer’s culture and values, thus creating specific impressions in the candidate’s mind before proceeding to the next stages.
- Interview: The face-to-face or online interview marks the candidate’s first in-depth interaction with the company’s representatives, who serve as its mirror. The company’s values, corporate culture, daily work life, and policies are reflected not only through the representatives’ words but also through their attitude and behavior towards the candidate. Similarly, the responsibilities of the role, career prospects, and organizational procedures for its employees are clarified.
- Feedback: After completing the evaluation process, the feedback received by the candidates completes their image of the employer, regardless of the positive or negative outcome. Feedback should be two-way, from and to the candidate.
What Candidate Experience do you offer?
It’s really important to discuss within your company the candidate experience just as you discuss the customer experience. Some “indicators” of a non-positive candidate experience are:
- A nonexistent or non-functional Career Site (see here the importance of having a Career Site)
- Job postings that lack proper job descriptions or fail to communicate your company culture correctly or at all
- A complicated application process for open positions (too many fields, too many steps, or an unclear application process)
- A non-mobile-optimized site
- Absence of a talent pool where candidates can submit their resumes even if there are no active available positions
- Non-response to candidates who submit applications or go through interview processes
- Negative interview experience or general interaction with the company
“Positive experiences attract top talent.”
Benefits of a positive candidate experience
Once you realistically evaluate the candidate experience you provide, you’ll have the right tools to enhance it. This will bring you multiple benefits:
- You’ll encourage more candidates to get in touch with you and submit their applications.
- You’ll drastically streamline the selection and hiring processes you follow.
- You’ll create a positive and lasting word-of-mouth.
- You’ll more effectively showcase your Employee Value Proposition.
- You’ll be more competitive for top talent among other companies in your industry.
- You’ll reduce hiring times and costs (Time to Hire & Cost per Hire).
- You’ll prevent the phenomenon of the “disappointed qualified candidate.”
- You’ll start building a very useful talent pool for future use.
- Lastly, you’ll strengthen your overall Employer Brand, your employer reputation.
Insights on Company Reputation from Candidates
- 94% of candidates stated that even if they were not actively seeking a new job, they would seriously consider an offer from a company with a good reputation.
- 69.5% of candidates said it is somewhat to not likely at all to choose an employer with poor reviews from previous employees.
- 65% of candidates stated it is unlikely to apply for a company with a bad reputation for its people management.
- 91% of candidates stated that they review a company’s ratings before applying for open positions.
SUmmary
In the competitive landscape of talent acquisition, providing candidates with a positive experience is paramount. From the first interaction to the final decision, each stage shapes their perception of your organization. Let’s delve into the key elements of crafting a positive candidate experience.
Importance of Candidate Experience: Candidate experience parallels customer experience in shaping perceptions.
Key Stages of Candidate Journey: Talent attraction, application, screening, interview, and feedback.
Indicators of Negative Experience: Non-functional career site, complicated application process, lack of response, negative interview experience.
Benefits of Enhancing Candidate Experience: Streamlined processes, positive word-of-mouth, stronger Employer Brand.
