What is the Candidate Experience and How to do it right?
In today's competitive job market, the importance of a positive candidate experience cannot be overstated. As companies vie for top talent, how candidates perceive your organisation during the hiring process can make all the difference in attracting and retaining skilled professionals. The candidate experience encompasses every interaction a job seeker has with your brand, from the initial job description to the final follow-up communication.
This blog will explore what constitutes an exceptional candidate experience and provide actionable strategies to improve yours. By creating a seamless and engaging hiring journey, you can ensure that your company stands out as an employer of choice in a landscape where candidates have more options than ever. Let's delve into the key elements to help you get it right.
What is the Candidate's Experience?
Candidate experience refers to the overall journey that a job applicant undergoes during the hiring process, starting from their first encounter with a job opportunity to their eventual onboarding or rejection. This experience encompasses every interaction and touchpoint between the candidate and the employer, including the application process, communication with recruiters or hiring managers, interviews, assessments, and any follow-up interaction.
At its core, candidate experience is about how job seekers perceive your company's brand throughout this journey. It is shaped by their feelings and impressions during each stage. A positive candidate experience can significantly influence a candidate's decision to accept a job offer, while a negative one can lead them to withdraw from the process altogether.
Why is the Candidate's Experience So Important?
In today's competitive job market, candidate experience is crucial in attracting and retaining top talent. A positive candidate experience can significantly influence a candidate's decision to accept a job offer. In contrast, a negative experience can lead to lost opportunities for both the candidate and the employer.
Consequences of Neglecting Candidate Experience
Failing to provide a positive candidate experience can have severe repercussions:
Candidate Withdrawal: 58% of job seekers have declined an offer after experiencing poor recruitment processes. This affects immediate hiring needs and can deter future applications from these candidates.
Damage to Brand Reputation: Negative experiences lead candidates to share their dissatisfaction widely. With statistics indicating that 72% of job seekers report sharing negative experiences online, which can tarnish your company's image and deter potential applicants.
Disorganisation breeds bad candidate experience. Organisation and planning breed good candidate experience. Being well-organised starts with planning your hiring strategy by identifying gaps you need to fill and who would be best suited to fill them. As a result, candidates will have much better-defined job duties and a better candidate experience.
Performing a skill gap analysis first
Conducting a formal skills gap analysisis the best way to identify additional skills your team needs to grow. You can perform skill gap analyses at an individual or team level to help with succession planning, training goals, and hiring plans. A formal skills gap analysis can help companies see where to train their current employees instead of hiring new ones.
Write clear and enticing Job Descriptions.
Be clear who you are looking for
Clear Job Title: Job seekers typically use standard job titles when searching for new opportunities. Suppose your job advert features standard titles like "Marketing manager" instead of something ambiguous like "growth Guru". In that case, it is more likely to appear in search engines and job-search sites, increasing visibility and clarity for candidates.
List Must-haves (NOT Nice to have) as requirements: Job descriptions with endless lists of requirements turn off candidates who don't think they meet every single requirement. It's best to separate your "Wish list" traits from "must-haves" to discourage strong candidates from bouncing.
Get job insights from current employees.
Conduct short interviews with your existing team members to gain valuable insights into their daily experiences in their roles. This information can help you refine your job description to accurately represent the required skills, team dynamics, and experience. By incorporating these insights, you can create a more engaging job description that allows potential candidates to envision themselves better in the position.
Give candidates the information they care about
Some of the most common errors in job ads are emphasising what the candidates must possess or simply needing to supply more information, which increases the chances of an applicant moving on to the next ad. Remember, candidates are tuned into "What's in it for me?" Your ad should answer these questions.
Research shows that ads focusing on what the employer offers are three times more likely to attract high-quality applicants who are a better fit for the role.
So, reflect on the benefits of the workplace. Involve your team and get their perspective on what makes the workplace positive.
Work-life balance: Be specific. Instead of vague statements, say, "We offer the ability to work from home twice weekly."
Career development: Mention opportunities for growth, training programs, or educational assistance.
Company culture: Describe your workplace atmosphere and team dynamics.
Unique perks: Highlight any standout benefits that set you apart from competitors.
To ensure your benefits align with shared candidate preferences, use resources like Seek Law of Attraction Data to understand what drives the candidates in your market.
It is also important to include salary information on the job ad, if possible. Transparency about compensation is crucial in attracting top talent and streamlining your recruitment process.
Structure your job description to be easy to read:
A well-formatted job ad that looks professional and formatted will enhance readability and user experience whilst increasing the likelihood of attracting high-quality candidates.
Use Inclusive language in your job descriptions.
A key aspect of crafting an effective job ad is using inclusive language. Certain words can exclude vast workforce sections, whether consciously or unconsciously. To help ensure you aren't putting candidates off from a gender, race, or accessibility viewpoint, it is vital to comb through your wording.
Critical Strategies for Inclusive Language
Remove gendered words and pronouns
Avoid gendered job titles (e.g., use "Salesperson" instead of "Salesman")
Eliminate derogatory or stereotypical terms
Use neutral language that doesn't exclude any group based on age, race, disability, or other protected characteristics.
Many companies include diversity statements in their job descriptions, encouraging people from diverse backgrounds to apply. Diversity statements with an empathetic voice and tone are received much more positively than statements that sound generic.
Tools to Help
Consider using language analysis tools like Textio to help identify potentially biased language and suggest more inclusive alternatives.
Simplify Access to Company Information for Candidates
Candidates often seek information about their organisation’s culture, history, and achievements before applying for positions. To facilitate this process, ensure that candidates can easily access relevant details about your company, helping them assess whether it aligns with their values and career goals.
Optimise Your Career Site
Your career site is a vital tool for employer branding and is typically one of the first resources candidates consult. Ensure that it is user-friendly and regularly updated with accurate information. A well-designed career page should clearly outline:
Compensation Packages: Provide transparency regarding financial rewards.
Professional Development: Highlight opportunities for growth and skill enhancement.
Work-Life Balance: Emphasise policies that support a healthy balance between work and personal life.
Purpose and Impact: Communicate the meaningful contributions employees can make within the organisation.
Additionally, share what sets your company apart, including employee testimonials and insights into why team members enjoy their work environment. Incorporating employee-generated content, such as testimonials or stories, can effectively showcase the real experiences of those within your organisation.
Consider adding a video highlighting various roles—from leadership to entry-level positions—demonstrating typical workdays and showcasing your company culture. This visual representation can attract high-quality applicants who resonate with your organisational values.
Leverage Social Media for Engagement
Utilising professional social networks is an effective way to keep candidates informed about your company’s culture and recent developments. Regularly post updates about company news, events, and initiatives to give candidates a clearer picture of working at your organisation.
Creating a unique career hashtag can enhance engagement by encouraging candidates to interact with your content. This approach raises awareness of your employer brand and fosters a sense of community among prospective applicants.
By making it easy for candidates to learn about your company through these channels, you can significantly enhance their overall experience and increase the likelihood of attracting top talent genuinely interested in joining your team.
Make the application process easy and accessible.
Many job seekers have encountered frustrating application processes that are overly lengthy, complicated, or repetitive. Such experiences can sour their perception of a company and may even lead them to abandon the application altogether. To avoid this, it is essential to evaluate your application process and make necessary improvements.
A cumbersome application process can reflect poorly on your organisation and result in lost opportunities. Research shows thatthree out of five job seekers experience difficulties at various stages of the application process, mainly when it is inefficient or user-unfriendly.
Below are some valuable tips for simplifying your company's application process.
Enhance Accessibility
With numerous options at job seekers' fingertips, your application page must be easy to locate.
Minimise Barriers: Once candidates find your job ad, ensure they can start the application process with minimal clicks. Reducing obstacles will encourage more applicants to engage with your opportunities.
Prioritise Efficiency
To prevent candidates from dropping out during the application process, aim for a quick and efficient experience. Limit questions to those necessary for pre-screening candidates. The focus at this stage should be on determining whether they meet basic qualifications for a phone interview.
Researchindicates that 70% of job seekers prefer fewer than five pages of applications, while 83% want no more than 15 questions.
Completion rates drop significantly if an application takes longer than 15 minutes.
Make your job application process mobile-friendly.
With90% of job seekers using a mobile device when looking for a job, mobile optimisation is expected amongst job seekers. These candidates will research and complete the application on their mobile devices. Ensure your website, application portal, and other job ads are mobile-optimised. To make it easy for applicants to submit their resumes, provide an option to link to their LinkedIn profile or portfolio.
Provide Clear Instructions
Clarity is vital throughout the application process. A significant number of job seekers—93%—report confusion due to unclear instructions.
Transparent Communication: Clearly outline what candidates should expect at each stage of the application process, including any specific requirements like portfolio uploads.
One-Page Format: Keeping applications concise helps candidates prepare all necessary information in advance without being overwhelmed by multi-page forms.
To further enhance clarity, consider adding:
Links to resources and company information right from the start.
A summary page detailing requirements before candidates begin the application.
Give options for how to apply.
In the past, applying for a job was a cookie-cutter process. It usually involves sending a resume and a cover letter to a recruiter's attention and targeted to a specific job. Thanks to platforms like LinkedIn, this process is evolving and improving.
Today, one-click applications through your LinkedIn profile, video resumes, and various non-traditional options are becoming the standard.
By allowing your job seekers options for how they apply to your jobs, you make it easier for them and allow them to showcase their creativity. It also conveys your adaptability and employee-focused company by opening up their opportunities.
Follow up with every applicant.
Finally, ensure you have a robust follow-up system for all applicants. This is crucial for maintaining a positive candidate experience and enhancing your brand's reputation.
Consistent Communication: Send prompt confirmation emails upon receipt of applications and provide regular updates on their status.
Timely Notifications: Inform candidates of acceptance or rejection as soon as decisions are made, allowing them to plan accordingly.
Constructive Feedback: If an applicant is not selected, offering feedback can keep communication lines open and positively reflect on your organisation. You never know when a rejected candidate might be a perfect fit for another role in the future.
By implementing these strategies, you can create a more accessible, efficient, and positive application experience that attracts top talent while reinforcing your employer brand.
Send Prompt Communication at Every Stage
Providing a positive candidate experience requires timely and effective communication throughout the hiring process. When candidates invest their time in completing an application, they anticipate receiving acknowledgment of their submission.
Sending a prompt thank-you message sets a standard for communication that should be upheld as the process continues. While it’s not necessary to send an email or text after every single stage, candidates should always be informed about the status of their application and when they can expect to hear back from you. This transparency helps keep the hiring process running smoothly.
Maintaining clear and consistent communication at these critical points can enhance the candidate experience and foster a positive impression of your organisation.
Give the Candidate a choice on How and When they interview:
To differentiate your organisation in a competitive job market, consider creating a personalised hiring process that gives candidates control over how and when they interview. This approach demonstrates that you value their preferences and are committed to providing a tailored experience.
Implementing a personalised candidate experience is more straightforward. You can easily share real-time availability using a scheduling platform that integrates with your team's calendars. This allows candidates to choose their interview times from the available slots.
20 Best Interview Scheduling Software For Hiring Support In 2024
Moreover, specific recruitment software enables candidates to select their preferred interview format—whether a live video call, a pre-recorded video submission, or an in-person meeting (when feasible). This flexibility enhances the candidate's experience and allows your team to engage with candidates most effectively.
Establish a Fair and Engaging Interview Process
It's important to remember that candidates assess your organisation just as you evaluate them. To foster a positive experience, design an interview process that engages candidates and helps you identify the best fit for each role.
Provide detailed interview instructions.
To ensure candidates feel prepared and confident, offer them comprehensive information about the interview process. Communicate critical details such as the date, time, location, and who they will be meeting with. Some companies now prefer to share interview questions in advance, allowing candidates to focus on their responses rather than their interviewing skills.
This transparency helps candidates know what to expect, which can ease their nerves on the day of the interview.
Use Structured Interviews
The distinction between structured and unstructured interviews is straightforward, yet it can significantly impact the hiring process.
In an unstructured interview, the interviewer can ask questions at their discretion, determining the content and sequence of inquiries. This approach often leads to a more conversational atmosphere but can result in inconsistencies and challenges in evaluating candidates fairly.
Conversely, a structured interview involves predetermined questions in a specific order. This method allows you to focus on key competencies relevant to the role and facilitates easier comparison of candidate responses. By having a clear framework, you streamline your evaluation process and enhance the candidate experience.
Consider that dedicated candidates will prepare thoroughly to address the core competencies outlined in your job description. With an unstructured format, there’s a risk that interviewers may stray off-topic, preventing candidates from fully demonstrating their suitability for the position. In contrast, structured interviews provide candidates with a better opportunity to showcase their capabilities, making it more straightforward for you to assess their fit for the role.
Combat Your Bias
Interviewing bias refers to the preconceived ideas that can influence the evaluation of candidates during job interviews. An interviewer's perception of these candidates may be conscious, meaning they are aware of their thought process, or unconscious, meaning they are unaware of them. This bias can result in
Poor hiring decisions
Increased employee turnover
Reduced workforce diversity
Hindered inclusivity effort
Ways to avoid interviewer bias in your selection process
Use standardised questions: For each job, have a set of questions you ask each candidate in the same order. This way, you don't veer into similar-to-me bias or inconsistency in questioning.
Grade candidates on a rubric: Before you begin the interview process, determine which skills are essential and look at those skills individually. This will help you avoid stereotyping, first impression bias, contrast effect, etc.
Require anonymous test assignments: These should be short and non-actual work that benefits the business. Every candidate should receive the same assignment – whether writing a piece of code, analysing a data set, etc. and each candidate should be marked anonymously judging the work product without identifying candidates. This will help eliminate all biases if the work is directly related to the job's needs.
Have multiple people interview the candidate: Each interviewer should have questions about their expertise and job requirements. The candidate may feel they are answering the same questions with different interviewers, but the idea is to get a clear picture while reducing bias.
Don't use your gut: Sometimes, you may like a candidate or feel that this person is best. Using the above methods to evaluate candidates will give you a quantifiable answer for the best candidate. Your gut will often use your own biases disguised as intuition.
Train your Interviewers
In just a few minutes, it's often apparent whether a candidate has adequately prepared for their interview. The same goes for interviewers; candidates can easily sense when interviewers need to prepare.
Without proper training, hiring teams may be unable to handle their questions, inadvertently ask about information already included in the candidate's application, or appear disinterested.
For candidates eager to interview with your organisation, this experience can be frustrating and discouraging. Everyone involved in the hiring process must understand how to conduct interviews effectively and fairly.
How to do this:
Candidate Profile Access: Interviewers should have easy access to comprehensive information about the candidate directly within the interview link or platform.
Pre-Defined Questions: Collaborate with hiring managers to create relevant and appropriate questions tailored to the role.
Evaluation Scales: Implement rating scales (1-5 or 1-10) for each question to simplify the evaluation process.
Rating Guidelines: Establish clear criteria for each score to maintain evaluation objectivity.
Equipping your interviewers with the right tools and training can ensure a more professional and engaging experience for candidates, ultimately leading to better hiring outcomes.
Concluding The Interview
Wrapping up the interview professionally and transparently ensures a positive candidate experience and sets clear expectations. Here's how to effectively conclude the interview:
Remember, how you finish the interview can significantly influence a candidate's perception of your organisation. Research by CareerBuilder indicates that 68% of candidates believe their experience during the hiring process reflects how a company treats its employees. Therefore, ensuring a positive conclusion can enhance your employer brand and improve your chances of attracting top talent.
Providing constructive feedback not only aids rejected candidates in their job search but also increases the likelihood that they will consider future opportunities with your organisation.
Here are some key points to keep in mind when delivering feedback:
Use Established Rating Criteria: Base your feedback on the criteria you used to evaluate candidates during the interview process.
Refer to the Job Description: Connect your feedback to specific requirements outlined in the job description to provide context and relevance.
Be Clear and Concise: Ensure your feedback is straightforward, avoiding unnecessary jargon or complexity.
Highlight Areas for Improvement: Focus on specific qualities or skills that candidates can work on, providing them with actionable insights for future interviews.
By offering thoughtful and constructive feedback, you support candidates in their professional development and enhance your organisation’s reputation as an employer that values transparency and growth.
Maintain Communication Between Offer Acceptance and Onboarding
Once candidates accept the job offer, their experience continues. The period between acceptance and the official start date can be filled with excitement and anxiety, and how you communicate during this time can significantly impact the overall experience.
Silence during this phase can lead to uncertainty and may increase the chances of candidates losing interest or withdrawing. Conversely, overwhelming candidates with excessive communication can create anxiety about your expectations.
When a candidate accepts an offer, send a welcoming email outlining the next steps. Include any preboarding activities they should complete and what they can expect during their first week. This is also a great time to ask if they have questions or need accommodations.
Keeping in touch and providing thoughtful resources during this crucial period can help new employees feel like part of the team from day one, setting a positive tone for their journey within your organisation.
Welcome new hires with a smooth onboarding experience
Onboarding is a critical first impression for new employees joining your organisation. This phase is about familiarizing them with your processes, welcoming them, and ensuring they feel comfortable, confident, and excited to be part of the team.
Bridge the transition between the candidate experience and employee experience.
Integration into the team is vital for new hires to feel a sense of belonging. According to Gallup, employees who develop strong friendships are more engaged, productive, and satisfied.
Facilitate introductions with team members, assign a buddy or mentor to assist them during their initial days, and incorporate team-building activities into the onboarding process. Regular check-ins from managers can help new hires understand their roles within the broader team context and how they contribute to organisational goals.
Revisit virtual onboarding
The shift to remote work caught many organisations off guard, requiring rapid adjustments in how new employees were onboarded remotely. Now may be the time to review your virtual onboarding process to ensure it provides a smooth experience for remote hires. This includes confirming that they have all necessary equipment, dial-in details for first-day meetings, and access to tools for connecting with colleagues.
Utilise video conferencing for personal introductions and virtual interactions. Online training modules and digital handbooks allow new hires to learn independently. Ensure there are opportunities for them to ask questions and provide feedback on their virtual onboarding experience so you can continuously refine the process.
Measuring the success or failure of your hiring process:
To assess the success or shortcomings of your hiring process after implementing improvements, take a comprehensive approach that evaluates various aspects of the candidate experience. Here are some key metrics and methods for measuring effectiveness:
By focusing on these strategies and metrics, you can create a positive onboarding experience that welcomes new hires and enhances your overall hiring process.
Transform Your Hiring Process: Partner with AustCorp Executive
Are you finding it difficult to create a positive candidate experience, struggling with high turnover rates, or facing challenges in attracting top talent? Don’t let these obstacles hinder your organization’s growth. At AustCorp Executive, we recognise the critical role that an effective hiring process plays in your company’s success.
Take the first step towards enhancing your recruitment strategy. Reach out to us today for a confidential consultation with one of our senior consultants. We can help you refine your candidate experience, streamline your hiring process, and ultimately attract the right talent to drive your business forward.
Why partner with AustCorp Executive?
Expertise in Executive Search: With over 27 years of experience, we specialise in connecting top talent with leading organisations across the APAC region.
Tailored Recruitment Solutions: Our approach is customised to your specific industry, company culture, and role requirements, ensuring a perfect fit every time.
Comprehensive Candidate Assessment: We go beyond resumes, utilising advanced screening techniques to evaluate candidates' skills, cultural fit, and long-term potential.
Ongoing Support and Guidance: Our partnership extends beyond placement, offering continued assistance to ensure successful onboarding and retention.
Don’t let a poor hiring process hold you back from building the team you need to succeed. Reach out to us today to discover how our tailored services can transform your recruitment approach and elevate your employer brand.
