Lately, the importance of candidate experience has shifted drastically. Like a consumer, candidates go through multiple steps and a lengthy thought process before accepting a job offer. In today’s candidate-driven job market, the need for improving the candidate journey has increased.
What is the Candidate Journey?
The candidate journey refers to the experience that job seekers go through during their job search process. Their journey starts even before they come across your employer’s brand for the first time and ends after you onboard them. In most cases, the candidate’s journey commences a long time before applying for the job. Each candidate has a unique experience based on their interactions with the employer.
Why does the Candidate Journey Matter?
When candidates have multiple job offers, they choose the employer that makes them feel more welcomed during their interactions, and many times it is not the offer with the best salary.
Each stage of the candidate’s journey impacts the candidate’s behavior and decision. Most candidates read at least six reviews before applying for a job. Nearly 55% of them will avoid applying for a job after reading bad comments about the company. Studies show that a candidate with negative experience not only abandons the company in the future but will also leave a negative review on Glassdoor. Poor candidate experience can impact your employer’s brand image badly.
Examples of Bad Candidate Journey
- An overly clunky or lengthy job application process that asks candidates to fill out several online forms.
- Poor interview process – an interviewer showing up late to the online or face-to-face interview and not appreciating the candidate’s patience.
- Multiple repetitive interview rounds and asking candidates to finish onerous tasks before the initial interview.
- Lack of engagement during the whole recruitment process.
- Not providing feedback after the interview and not attending to the candidate’s queries.
It has become easier for job seekers to learn about the workplace culture and employee experience by visiting review websites such as Glassdoor. Hence, employers are now more responsible for how they treat their candidates.
Let’s now look at the seven steps of the candidate’s journey.
The Seven Steps of the Candidate Journey
All the new hires go through 7 steps when joining a company. This journey is identical to buyers’ journey who want to purchase a product in this digital age. Their journey starts when they discover a need and look for solutions online and offline. When they find a solution, they seek more information through research and finally complete the purchase if they think it serves the purpose. In the same way, a job seeker goes through these seven stages – discovery, interest, resume submission, screening, interview, hiring, and onboarding.
Discovery
A candidate’s journey starts when they become aware of a job opportunity at a company. The candidates then try to discover more about the company through different ways, such as going through the website, social media, job boards, and employee referrals. Your company stands out from the other employers offering a job when a job seeker knows your brand even before they come across your job opportunity. This is why it’s vital to build employer branding.
Interest
The candidates who know about the existence of your job opening should become interested in working with you. This is the phase where talent acquisition managers should create interest among candidates. This can be done by writing compelling job descriptions with all the necessary information about the role and interactions with the candidates. You can use emails, social media channels, or the careers page to promote the company’s mission, culture, and values and grab their attention.
Resume Submission
People you have successfully attracted will consider your job opportunity and submit their resumes. This phase is also known as the application stage.
This is also the phase where most candidates leave the funnel before they even enter. Studies show that 1 in 5 candidates leave at the application phase if it takes them 20 minutes to apply for a job. Hence you need to make resume submission easy for the candidates by allowing them easy apply via social platforms reducing the number of clicks or forms to be filled. To make the most of this phase, allow your candidates to showcase their skills and experience.
Screening
In this phase, recruiters screen the resumes and shortlist candidates for the first interview round. The screening phase is crucial for both employers and candidates as they get a chance to communicate directly with each other. To ensure a positive candidate experience, recruiters should communicate transparently with the candidates about their application status. Providing feedback (even if it is negative) to the candidates creates a positive impression and inspires them to apply for future roles.
Interviewing
Interviewing phase is an opportunity for the company to show off how it treats employees. In the same way, it’s an opportunity for candidates to showcase their talent and talk about their expectations. You need to listen to them as much as you talk. That is how you will find the right match for the job.
Hiring
During the hiring phase, hiring managers decide to hire the most potential candidates. On the other hand, candidates with or without multiple job offers in hand choose you if you have provided them with a great positive experience. However, this is not the last stage of the recruitment cycle.
Onboarding
This is the final and crucial phase of the candidate’s journey. Studies show that 28% of new hires leave the company within the first three months if they experience a poor onboarding process. Recruiters should ensure a smooth and interactive onboarding rather than one-on-one onboarding. This will help you provide a great candidate experience and maximize hiring ROI.
Acing these 7 steps will help you create an extraordinary candidate journey that will enhance the candidate experience and your employer brand.
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