CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE

Recruitment, in other words, searching for talents is never an easy task for any enterprise. Alongside difficulties and challenges, recruitment is a critical mission requiring recruiters to be innovative, open-minded and possess suitable approaches. Generally, every business shares the same target, which is to recruit the best talents for companies, hence, this topic “candidate experience” is for you. This page is aimed at helping you to fully understand all aspects of candidate experience, how it can transform your talent management strategies, and what it takes to enhance the experience to leave a positive, long-lasting impact on your employer brand.

Nowadays, there are countless ways for employers to post recruitment announcements, and the same goes for job seekers and how they search and apply for any vacancy. With just a few mouse clicks, they can easily find information about the position, the hiring company, the company culture, the working environment, etc. As such, to attract high-quality talents, your organisation needs to create a positive candidate experience.

But, what is the candidate experience?

Candidate experience is how the job seeker/ the job applicant/ the potential candidate perceives you, the employer/ the organisation, throughout the entire recruitment process. This means the candidate will form some kind of impression about your company during their job search, at the actual interview, or even after they are accepted for the probation period.

With a positive candidate experience, candidates tend to share nice feedback about the company on their personal social media platforms as well to their acquaintances and inner circles. Therefore, it is essential to avoid creating a negative experience. Firms should take into account how to get to know candidates better via “candidate personas”.  

Employers need to identify and analyse primary touchpoints that could make a significant impact on the experience of job applicants. The purpose of this analysis is to have a deeper understanding of how job seekers feel by putting yourself in their shoes, so you can form a better recruitment process, avoid "ghosting", and attract higher-quality talents.  

Job search 

To draw candidates' attention, organisations need to first select appropriate platforms to post job advertisements, which could be LinkedIn, Facebook, or employment search services. The next critical step is writing job descriptions, which have to be concise, transparent, inspiring and include all needed information from the company website to job requirements, salary, etc. This helps save candidates time and effort looking for information. Even when they decide not to take the job offer, they did have a first positive impression of your brand.

Job application process

Employers should utilise mobile-friendly platforms due to the increased usage of smartphones for job searches. Additionally, don’t overlook the impact of having clear instructions on the job application process as well as your requirements and expectations. And finally, an email saying thank you can go a long way.

Interview process

Interviewing is one of the most essential stages in the hiring process, which allows employers and potential employees to get to know more about each other.

However, the majority of traditional interviews are unreliable as they tend to be unstructured and open-ended. They are also easily influenced by the interviewers' biased and subjective judgements. Even when you believe you are good at "reading" others, how would you explain to candidates that "they are not a good fit for the currently vacant position at your company"? How do you define "good fit" anyway?

All in all, there are alternatives to traditional interviews and solutions to be used in conjunction with job interviews to support your hiring decisions, namely psychometric-based pre-hire assessments.

They are surveys, tests, or questionnaires that potential candidates need to do as one stage of the hiring or interviewing process. One of the benefits of implementing work-related assessments is that the response from candidates is very consistent. Whether they are hired or not, they often feel that they have been judged fairly to demonstrate skills and abilities. The challenge here is to make the assessments interesting to encourage the participants to join with enthusiasm.

No one likes to be rejected for the job they want. However, given a certain framework of reference (in this case, assessments), they will feel the respect coming from the recruiters. Therefore, even if they do not get the job, their impressions of the enterprise will be good and the brand image of that enterprise will be improved.

Onboarding

Onboarding is the opportunity for employers to showcase professionalism by preparing all related documents, organising a welcoming orientation, and providing necessary training to help employees quickly get used to their new roles. A warm welcome from the company and co-workers helps ease his/her nervousness and feel empowered to work harder.

The role of candidate experience has become more critical in recent years. Hiring managers and the recruiting team are starting to invest time and resources in creating an outstanding experience for all candidates. There is no doubt that a better candidate experience can result in a stronger employer brand. However, when there are opportunities, there are always obstacles.

There are 4 primary challenges to developing a positive candidate experience:

• The lack of awareness of the candidate's experience.
• The underutilisation of recruiting software (ATS, CRM).
• The lack of communication.
• The increase in hiring workload.

Creating a great candidate experience is a goal that businesses should aim for. In the process of recruiting new candidates, firms should focus on every step of the modern candidate journey. Imagine the entire candidate journey as a funnel with three distinct stages:

• Attract 
• Nurture 
• Convert 

Organisations should customise the messages they’re trying to convey according to each stage of the candidate's journey. The message should be informative and give value to the candidates, something that they are looking forward to receiving. The positive candidate experience is a cornerstone of forming the relationship between job applicants and recruiters, applicants can build trust and respect for the company brand, whereas employers can acquire quality talents for the given position. Hence, it is vital for employers to improve candidate experience by “humanising” candidate experience.

Other feasible solutions organisations should consider:

• Ask candidates for feedback about their experience during the hiring and onboarding process.
•  Utilise recruiting software (such as ATS, CRM) that is mobile-friendly and allows recruiters to connect with candidates via social media.

The hiring process is no longer a one-sided journey for the candidate only, organisations are making a considerable investment in hopes of finding suitable talents that fit perfectly into their culture.

And, a candidate, nowadays, is not the only person seeking a job offer from your firm, they are also your potential customers, your brand lovers and unofficial marketers for your company. Hence, it is vital for businesses to know how to build a positive impression and establish unforgettable experiences for their job applicants.

Best practices for better candidate experience:

• Put yourself in their shoes
• Communicate with the applicants
• Use the pre-hire assessment to give candidate feedback
• Ask for feedback from the candidate