What is the candidate’s experience?
Candidates’ perspectives and reactions to the hiring, screening, and interviewing processes are often referred to as “candidate experience,” a phrase with a formal definition. It refers to a job seeker’s impression of an organisation and its application process. The candidate’s impression of the company and the hiring process as a whole is shaped from the time the application is submitted until the post is filled. Many organisations ignore the importance and reasons to improve candidate experience until it starts costing them a fortune.
Why is it important to have a good candidate experience?
Recruiters often use social media to find potential candidates, and LinkedIn is where most job seekers start their search. In the digital age we live in now, people can connect instantly even if they don’t know each other offline. The public’s opinion of a business can be altered by a single review, comment, or post. Before we get into how you can improve candidate experience, let’s have a look at some of the reasons you should take it into consideration in the first place:
Difficulty filling positions: Even the most competent applicants will be hesitant to accept a job offer if the interview and application process were unsatisfactory. After all, an interview is a chance for both the organization and the candidate to make a good impression. If you are terrible to potential hires when it counts, why should they trust you to treat them right once you have them on board? If companies want to fill jobs quickly, they need to improve candidate experience.
Low application rates:
Not accepting a job offer will not bring down the organization. That can’t have a negative impact on my company, right? One bad experience with a candidate, made worse by social media, can stop people from applying before they even think about it.
Loss of business: True; you lose more than just skill if your applicant’s experience is insufficient. According to 64% of job seekers, a bad hiring experience would make them less likely to use that employer’s goods and services in the future.
Tips to improve candidate experience
A candidate goes through a number of stages in their career. Small mistakes or miscalculations at any of these stages can hurt a candidate’s experience, which can lead to big problems with hiring in the long run.
Use the following tips to make each step of the application process as good as it can be so that candidates have a full and consistent experience:
- Be clear about job descriptions
Having precise job descriptions is one of the easiest ways to improve candidates experience. Even if you think your job descriptions are clear and precise, about 50% of candidates are likely to disagree. While just 36% of candidates agree with 72% of recruiting managers that they give clear job descriptions.
Setting expectations for candidates begins with the job description. Imagine that an applicant applies for a position and learns during the first interview that it is not what they first believed it to be. It’s easy to see how someone in this situation may feel let down or misled—all the ingredients for a negative candidate experience.
- Optimize your application process
Customers who use the Internet to make purchases or access subscription services value simplicity and convenience. They have similar expectations when filling out job applications, but many companies have yet to catch up. Research shows that 60% of people looking for work have given up on a job application because it was too time-consuming or complicated. It is highly recommended to have an optimized application process to improve candidate experiences.
Take a close look at the steps involved in the application process and make a note of anything that seems overly complicated or needless. Do you, for example, want applicants to replicate their resumes into the form fields? Do you ask questions that would be better answered later in the hiring process? Do you describe the next steps an applicant should take after submitting their application?
Applicants should be put first while finalizing the application process. By taking these steps, you can avoid a rough start with a potential employee or, even worse, miss out on highly qualified candidates who didn’t like your application process. These suggestions help recruiters improve candidate experience.
- Be flexible about timelines
Most qualified applicants are already employed full-time. That time is needed for them to get to and from job interviews. They often have to accomplish this while keeping their job search a secret from their current company. Because of these problems, committees in charge of hiring need to be very flexible and aware of the time of candidates. Lessen the candidate’s burden by working around their schedule. Being flexible with the applicant in the interview process helps to improve candidate experience.
- Stress-free interview process
Did you know that face-to-face interviews shape candidates’ impressions of a company more than any other factor? Many people seeking employment are nervous about going through with an in-person interview. You can make the interview process less stressful by telling each candidate in advance what you expect from them. Give each candidate an idea of how long their interview will last, who they will be meeting with, and any other ground rules they should be aware of. Once you’ve finished debriefing the interviews, it’s a good idea to give them a tour of the office. Highlight any cool perks at the office, put potential new hires in touch with the people they might be working with, and give them a taste of the company’s culture. Introducing company culture and taking a few steps help organizations improve candidate experience.
- Personalised communications
A very important step to improve candidate experience is to set up personalized communications depending on the status of the application. Everyone places equal weight on the last stage of the application procedure. What would you do if you got an email with a boring, generic job offer in it?
Call the chosen candidate to offer your congratulations and formalize the job offer after your team has made its selection. This is a far more personal approach, and it will make the applicant feel valued and enthusiastic about working with you. How you present a job offer to a candidate who isn’t sure if they want to work for your company can be very important.
However, even rejection letters need to be written with care. Instead of sending generic rejection emails, it’s better to take the time to personally thank each applicant for their consideration and explain why they were not chosen. Include personality assessments in your interview process. You can even list out the working areas of each candidate after seeing the results of their tests.
Your guidance could end up being the make-or-break factor in their future job search success.
Obviously, if thousands of people are applying for one job, it can be difficult to give each one its own unique consideration. However, as a general rule of thumb, it’s best to hold off on sending out manual rejection emails until after the resumes have been screened. Everyone who meets with your staff deserves a more comprehensive response.
Conclusion:
Throughout this article on how to improve candidate experience, we’ve told you to look at your hiring process from the point of view of people who might want to work for you. That wasn’t by chance; taking a candidate’s perspective during the hiring process is key to making a good impression.
The process of looking for a job can be time-consuming, difficult, and discouraging. The best companies know this, so they go out of their way to get to know their candidates by showing empathy, adaptability, and gratitude. Investing in a better experience for your applicants will bring benefits to your company as a whole.
