Tips to improve the candidate experience
Candidate experience can be defined as the many contact and/or touch points throughout a recruitment process that can influence the candidate’s decision to join a company and also mould their perception of that company. Some of these influences are technology-driven such as job postings or social media interactions as well as personal-driven such as interviews and assessment days. Providing consistent communication is vital to ensuring a positive candidate experience.
Why is the candidate experience important?
In a world where sharing a review on websites like Google and Glassdoor can be done in a few minutes, ensuring your candidates have a positive experience with your company is important. In a candidate scarce market, the focus and responsibility on companies to deliver a concise and informative recruitment process is elevated.
How can you improve the candidate experience?
- Clear job description – Making sure that the job description accurately reflects the requirements of the role is the best way to ensure that the candidate applications you receive match the specification of the person you are looking for. As a result, those candidates in process will feel more confident that they are a good fit and won’t be caught off-guard by an element of the role that had not been outlined in the job specification.
- Easy application process – Make your application process simple. Adding multiple tests and pages of questions may help to reduce the CV-spam, but it will also scare of potential candidates that may not have the time to dedicate to the application process.
- Be clear about recruitment process – Make sure that the candidate knows how many stages are involved in the recruitment process, to ensure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to the hire and what is involved.
- Provide a designated point of contact – Having one central point of contact for candidates to report to allows for hires to be co-ordinated successfully, mitigates confusion over interview scheduling and also helps to keep consistency throughout the recruitment process.
- Be flexible with scheduling – The best candidates may already be successfully working in full-time roles and this may cause scheduling to be more complicated than if all candidates were unemployed. With this in mind, a certain amount of empathy and flexibility is needed to make sure that candidates can attend interviews that don’t conflict with their ability to perform in their current roles.
- Engaging communication between client and candidate – Even if there isn’t a specific update to report to a candidate after interview; making sure there are clear and frequent lines of communication is integral to a positive candidate experience through the interview stage.
- Provide feedback and communicate even if not proceeding – Anyone who has interviewed at your company will become an advocate for your employer brand, even if you don’t proceed with their application. Providing adequate feedback and communicating in a timely manner will give the best impression of your company, and just because a candidate may not be right for the current role, they may be aligned to a role in the future.
In 2019, as employer branding becomes more crucial to differentiate you from your competition, positive candidate experience increases in value. Those candidates that enter your recruitment process now may not be your employees tomorrow, but they could become cheerleaders for your business or even part of your team in a year or two years down the line. Making sure they have a positive experience is closely linked to the success of your business and its ability to grow in the future. Got an example of a company with a great candidate experience? Let us know at [email protected]!