In the current recruitment landscape, where demand for skilled candidates far outstrips supply, candidates are in the driving seat. Therefore, in order to attract them to your company, it’s essential to make the entire candidate experience a good one.
Insight to your company
Understandably, every interaction you have with a candidate, either directly or through a recruiter, is an insight into your company.
Candidates will continually be building a perception of your company and start to draw conclusions based on their experience. Not only this but 95% of candidates believe that the way a potential employer treats them as a candidate is a reflection of how they would treat them as an employee. Therefore, aside of the company as whole, they will be interpreting how their daily interactions, management styles and personal relationships will be. Both of these are huge considerations when deciding if this is the right move for them.
Reputation
With so many tools, such as Glassdoor, Feefo and Trustpilot, now available for current, past and potential employees to review their employers, bad employee or candidate experiences can seriously damage your reputation. It’s claimed that 72% of job seekers share their negative candidate experiences online and in response a huge 55% of job seekers report avoiding certain companies after reading negative online reviews.
If your recruiting for an already tricky position, reducing your talent pool by over half due a couple of bad experience can be catastrophic. This is also without taking into consideration word-of-mouth experiences that haven’t been taken online!
The long game
Not every candidate you interview is going to be right for company, similarly not every candidate you offer is going to accept. However, that doesn’t mean that will be the case forever. A few years, or in some cases, just a few months down the line that candidate might come back on to your radar. Many candidates will draw upon their last experience with the company and interview process to decide whether to reengage and a lot of this will come down to clarity over why the process wasn’t successful first time around.
Talent is four times more likely to consider your company in the future if you offer constructive feedback.
Candidates are always upskilling, and situations and timings will change. Always ensure you have kept the door open.
How can you ensure a good candidate experience?
Understanding why a good candidate experience is essential is the starting point, but what steps can you take to ensure it happens?
1. Take time to engage with your recruiter.The more knowledge you can impart on them, the more they can share with candidates. This will not only increase the success rate of your recruitment, but will also allow the candidates to invest in your company too.
2. Ensure a timely process. Time kills deals. With candidates being so in demand you can’t afford to be tardy when progressing the process. If you move too slowly, other company will get there before you. Similarly, don’t overcomplicate the process. Longwinded applications, multiple tests and too many stages can all turn a candidate off.
3. ALWAYS feedback.Whether it’s just on an initial application or final interview, good or bad. Always give feedback. Communication is one of the key factors in the candidate experienceand 80% of job seekers say they would not reapply to a company that didn’t notify them of their application status.
In such a candidate driven market, you should be doing everything in your power to ensure you are your candidates’ number one choice. Nearly all of talent say a positive or negative candidate experience can change their minds about a role or company. Make sure your candidate experience does your company justice!
