How small changes can make a big impact on your candidate experience

What key elements often get missed in the recruitment process?

A good candidate experience is crucial to a successful overall recruitment process. Surprisingly, there are still a lot of things that tend to get missed when it comes to the hiring process, which are key elements in the candidate’s journey.

For example, basic information about the company, something one would think is the norm, is often overlooked. This doesn’t just mean the overall job description, but information about the company itself - what it’s like to work there, who the team members are and what the overall recruitment process looks like.

Knowing about the company you're applying to and the team members you’ll be working with allow the candidate to get an idea of the culture they would be a part of to see if it fits their own ideals and values. And of course, knowing more about the recruitment process overall makes the candidate feel more at ease and more valued as they know exactly what is expected of them and the journey they will be taking applying to your role.

How do you make sure the candidate experience is as good as you want it to be?

A mixture of competitor analysis and constant feedback seems to be the perfect ingredient to ensuring you’re always on top of your candidate experience. Léo stresses the importance of asking for feedback at every opportunity—why did your candidates apply? How did they feel when applying? What was the interview process like? You should also be asking friends and family about their recent experiences, as well as checking LinkedIn to extend your research. This should be something you’re doing consistently so you’re always assessing and identifying areas of improvement. 

Léo brings up an example from Virgin Media, who sent out a survey to their rejected applicants proving that poor candidate experience was costing them around $5 million in revenue, their entire recruitment budget for that year. This led to them retraining hundreds of hiring managers and completely changing their results, showing how crucial it is to be asking for feedback.

Another top tip from our experts is to use fake profiles to apply to both your competitors' open positions, but also to your own in a sort of “mystery shopper experience”. This way, you’re able to give your own hiring managers feedback based on the candidate journey and work on areas of improvement.

Some things to be on the lookout for when applying to your own or your competitor's jobs could be things like the tone of voice in your messaging, how much information you’re giving your candidates and how often they’re getting it. This is also usually where you’re likely to pick up discrepancies in response rate, which we’ll dive into more in the next section. 

Which stage is the hardest to provide a good candidate experience?

Having a great candidate experience overall is important, but there are many different steps in the recruitment process, so how do you make sure each step is consistently a positive experience for your candidates?

According to Léo and Carolina, there are some steps which need a little more attention than others. For one, the interview process was noted as a stage where multiple things can go wrong—it's a delicate juggle between evaluation and candidate experience, and if you’re unable to find the balance of both, one or the other may end up suffering. Most candidates are applying to many jobs so they won’t always remember each individual career page, but they’ll absolutely remember how they were treated in an interview, so it’s important to get this balance right to ensure a good candidate experience.

Another area that our guests agreed should always be prioritised is the time between the steps in the hiring process. Even a few days could feel like a lot for candidates, so making sure you’re giving them information in between every stage is crucial. It doesn’t have to be a huge amount, in fact, you might not have any news at all, but there’s nothing wrong with letting your candidates know that. You can use automation, so it won’t take you much extra time, but keeping your candidates informed and in the loop will put them at ease, make them feel respected and improve the overall experience.

How do you support hiring managers?

Hiring managers have to do both the job of a recruiter as well as having their own responsibilities, so training is crucial to ensure nothing falls through the cracks and the candidate experience remains consistent. Carolina stresses the importance of the hiring manager and recruiter knowing who’s responsible for which area and being fully transparent with each other as being the key to success. 

It’s also important to remind them that your candidates are your customers—if you had a bad experience in a store or with a product, you would warn your friends of it and the same can be said for candidate experience. You’d also never be late for a meeting with a customer, so why treat your candidates the same? Overall, once your hiring managers realise the impact a good candidate experience has, Léo explains that this will turn your team into recruitment champions.

Takeaways

To summarize, getting feedback from your candidates on a regular and consistent basis is key to assessing your candidate experience and constantly improving it at every stage. While it can seem daunting, some of the smallest, easiest changes can actually have the biggest impact. For example, using automation to help you give candidates information consistently throughout the process, even if you have no information to give them, an email stating that will go a long way. 

Another way to not overwhelm yourself is to break your process down into sections so you’re not looking at everything all at once. Assess each section individually until you are happy with the overall result and don’t forget to come back to it on a regular basis to make sure you’re always happy with the end result.

Listen to the Happy Recruiting episode to hear more from Léo and Carolina as they discuss how to measure candidate experience and examples of some outstanding ways to construct a successful recruitment process.