Why are we talking so much about the candidate experience? Because it is so important.
Hiring used to be a one-way process. Your company had an open position that candidates wanted and would compete for. To win the job, they had to impress you more than the other candidates.
Not so anymore! Now, it’s employers who have to impress the candidates – especially if you hope to acquire top-level talent. And every little interaction, with people and processes, affects the experience each candidate has with your company. Are you making the best impression possible?
Make it easy for talent to like your company
Here are just some of the ways in which a candidate-focused process can deliver impressive benefits for your company, now and down the road:
- Working to improve candidate experience also improves your internal experience.
When you make candidates your top priority, you will reduce your time to fill positions and improve your close rate with first-choice candidates.
- A shorter process is sweeter for everybody involved.
A faster hiring process enables you to successfully land your top pick while other prospective employers dither. Of course, you have to impress them first, so give them:
- A concise job description that emphasis opportunity rather than a long list of picky “requirements”
- A short application process – applications that take more than 15 minutes to complete are almost 4x more likely to be abandoned
- Clear, complete, and ongoing communication about process expectations and progress
- A considerate interview schedule – less is more because everyone’s busy. If you have a panel and plan to conduct multiple interviews, make sure everyone is on the same page – keep each one short and specific to the interviewer’s position to avoid time-wasting (and annoying) redundancy.
A shorter process not only helps you hire the candidates you want most, but it also saves your company time and money. Here are some more tips to tighten up your hiring process.
- Your reputation precedes you, both as a company and as a workplace.
And word gets around fast these days, thanks to social media. For example, a higher rating on Glassdoor can increase your application conversion rates by nearly 50%. Your hiring cycle not only affects candidate experience right now, but it also affects your future hiring.
So does the all-too-common practice of ghosting. How you leave things with candidates you don’t hire can have a major impact on your reputation. So don’t leave people hanging. Always let those not chosen know as quickly as possible. And tell them why, in a constructive manner. They’ll appreciate your willingness to help them, and they’ll tell others.
And, who knows – they might take your advice to heart and come back around in the future to try for another position with your great company.
Don’t forget to provide candidate feedback to your outside recruiting partner, too. That will help them further refine their candidate assessments to present only the best-fitting individuals for you to interview.
The right recruiter can boost everyone’s experience
Because finding the right candidates and delivering consistently excellent experiences is so important, it is vital to align yourself with a trusted recruiting partner. Every interaction they have with prospective candidates reflects on your company and your brand as an employer. So even before you ever meet the candidate, they are determining if yours is a company where they want to work.
Working closely with you as a trusted partner, your recruiting team can present the best-qualified talent for every position, especially those that are famously difficult to fill. Often the most desirable candidates aren’t candidates at all. They’re gainfully, perhaps quite happily, employed. Still, they may be open to a new opportunity if it’s the right one.
Your recruiting partner works to proactively discover and attract this passive talent so your firm can create the best possible outcome. You’ve made a great match, and it would never have happened without everyone working together to create a consistently positive candidate experience.