30 Nov Candidate Experience
When talking about hiring and recruiting companies often focus too much on themselves, on their needs and on the skills they are looking for forgetting one the most important parts of the recruitment process: the candidate experience.
How the process will take place, the timing, the mix of virtual and in-person interviews, the chosen outsourcing partner are all essential pieces that will influence a candidate’s decision to proceed or drop out of the recruitment process, or even to accept or refuse an offer. All these actions impact your degree of talent attraction and your possibilities of finding your best fit.
For optimizing our candidates’ experience we also have to think at when and how they will read about us and our job vacancy. Let’s start by considering that – as 4corners resources stated in their article published in June – 90% of job seekers use their smartphones to hunt for their dream job (and 79% using social media); mobile recruiting represents a significant and growing opportunity for staffing professionals to connect with candidates.
This data shows the importance of considering the mobile interface in order to improve the candidate experience and reduce application drop off. Besides making sure our job ads are mobile-friendly, here are some important suggestions to improve the candidates’ experience:
Avoid login requirements and make the process short.
The idea is to make the application process as easy and fast as possible because this unconsciously creates a perception of how the organization works. If we create an application process with many difficult steps and the applicants perceive them as annoying and everlasting barriers that interfere with their main objective of submitting their information and resume, this will have a negative impact. The feel the candidates get will not be very positive: they will think that everything is difficult within our company and may not conclude the process. The smoother the application, the better image the company will have.
Clear communication.
We need to guide our candidates, they do not need to feel lost nor to have the impression that something remains untold. Again, how we communicate in this phase will impact the perceptions of the company that the candidates are building step after step.
Clear expectations.
Either through your direct hiring process or through your recruitment partner, it is essential to be clear and create coherent expectations in line with the real company identity and daily atmosphere and tasks the candidates will have to carry out. The more transparent we will be, the longer our talents will remain in our company. We don’t want candidates saying – after the onboarding or a few months – “this is not how I thought it was going to be!”. Retention is a key indicator of how successful the recruitment was.
Does your company respect these three main points? Do you ask for feedback to your candidates to make sure your recruitment process leaves a positive impression? Do not forget that a positive candidate experience will tempt candidates to apply again, maybe for other positions aligned with their profile. Our aim is to create a successful candidate experience and therefore positive brand awareness throughout the entire recruitment process.
Gaia Urati