People forget what you said and did, but they never forget how you made them feel.
This is a well-known quote that resonates with many people, including your employees and applicants.
A survey in 2020 showed that 84% of employees said they are confident in their ability to find a job. People need jobs, but they’ll look elsewhere with you if they don’t like how you treat them during their journey.
Many companies have realized the importance of candidate experience a few years ago. Surprisingly, candidates’ experience has become more vital than ever during these remote work and social recruiting days. Before we jump into why candidate experience matters the most today, let’s see what it is, why it is important and how to improve it.
What is Candidate Experience?
Candidate experience is the impression you leave on candidates throughout their journey with you. From the application process, interview, hiring or rejection, onboarding to offboarding, candidates go through different stages, and each stage will leave an impression on them.
Candidate Experience is all about how you make candidates and employees feel about interacting or working with you. A great candidate experience is a key to growing your talent pool as it impacts the candidate’s decision on whether or not to join the company or how long they would stay in your company. As your competitors are a job post away from the talent you want to hire, it’s crucial to improve your candidate experience.
Let’s see some more reasons why improving candidate experience should matter to your organization.
Benefits of a Great Candidate Experience
Employer Branding
How employers treat their employees reflects their employer brand. Starting from interviews to performance reviews, people observe everything and make a decision accordingly. For example, Glassdoor users read at least six reviews about a company before deciding whether or not to accept the offer. Although you’re looking for one perfect hire, you leave an impression on everybody who applied for the role.
When you provide a great candidate experience, your employees and applicants are likely to spread positivity about your company, boosting your employer brand.
Attract Better Talent
People will talk extensively about you on social media or directly to their friends if you treat them well. And you know the power of word of mouth. Next time when you post a job ad or send an email to a passive candidate, people will love to apply for the role.
Keep your Customers
Employer brand is entirely different from your business brand. But, it is directly related to your business. Because customer experience is directly related to employee experience, when you have highly engaged employees in your workplace, customer experience will take care of itself.
Better ROI
A great candidate experience makes your recruiting process efficient and less expensive. When you know what creates a positive employee experience or candidate experience, you will invest a little in what’s unnecessary. Moreover, positive candidate experience not only cuts costs but time to hire.
Higher Acceptance Rates
As we said above, enhanced candidate experience will fetch you better talent and push them towards joining you. Who doesn’t want to join a company that treats them so well?
Lower Turnover Rates
Candidate experience transforms into employee experience if they’re hired. And when you treat your employees the same as you treated them before hiring, they’re likely to stick longer with your company. Thus, by constantly improving your employee experience, the turnover rates go down.
Robust Pipeline for Future Hiring
When you treat the candidates rightly during the hiring process and give the rejected ones timely, open, and honest feedback, they remember you. Therefore, they’re likely to apply for your future openings or spread the word and help you fill positions faster. Candidate experience is all about humans and their feelings. Show them you value their time and nourish your relationships for long-term benefits.
Higher Referrals
As we discussed above, people read reviews from employer rating sites before applying for a job. What your existing employees and rejected candidates say about you plays a deciding factor among new hires. When you provide an excellent experience for the candidates and your employees, they’re likely to refer your company to their friends.
How to Improve Candidate Experience?
Number of Interviews
According to Google’s oversight of its interview process, four interviews are enough to decide if you ask the right questions. Walmart reduced its hiring process to 24 hours. Study shows that the longer interview process turns the candidates down. So, ensure your interview process is as simple and shorter as possible.
Listen to What Candidates Are Saying
We’ve discussed this a couple of times for a reason. Pay attention to employer rating sites and reviews as the job seekers go through them even before applying for your open position. 55% of candidates would avoid companies with negative reviews.
Timely Follow up
Not only the right fits but the rejected ones also deserve a follow-up after the interview. The worst thing a candidate can face is not knowing where they stand in the recruitment process. You should explain to them why they’re hired or not hired or by when they can hear about their status. This creates a bond between you and makes your employer brand look great.
Wrapping Up
So, you’ve seen why candidate experience matters. The time is now to take action. Today, candidate experience is not an option; it has become a must. Again, improving candidate experience shouldn’t be challenging too. Create a great candidate experience strategy to build a large talent pool for your organization.
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