In today’s candidate-centric market, your top picks are constantly getting offers from recruiters.
And with more candidates withdrawing from the recruiting process than ever before, you need to set yourself apart in a sea of recruiters to successfully convert top-notch candidates into hires. What’s the best tool for the job? Two words: candidate experience.
More companies are taking steps to create a standout candidate experience throughout the hiring process, and you can’t afford to fall behind. A positive candidate experience isn’t just an amazing tool to attract top trade talent—it can also help you prime skilled candidates to accept your job offer down the line.
So, what does a positive candidate experience look like, and how can you strengthen your experience throughout the recruitment process?
Here’s how to transform your hiring process with a conversion-worthy candidate experience.
What Is the Candidate Experience?
The candidate experience describes how applicants perceive the recruiting process. Similar to your run-of-the-mill sales funnel, the candidate experience cycle consists of:
- Awareness. This stage relies on powerful employer branding. Building visibility about your brand is the first touchpoint of the candidate experience. How recognizable is your employer brand? What perceptions do candidates have about your business?
- Interest. Once candidates know about your brand, it’s time to generate interest. During this stage, you’ll focus on attracting top trade talent by focusing on your company values, answering candidate FAQs, and sharing employee stories.
- Application. By this stage, you’ve hooked your ideal candidates beyond their resumes. How easily can applicants submit an application? Is it confusing? Can employees submit referrals?
- Screening and scheduling. The screening process looks different for every company. Do you pre-screen resumes before sending applicants to the hiring manager? Do you let applicants know if you’ve decided not to schedule an interview?
- Interview. While some companies have multi-stage interviews, others have simple one-and-done processes. Whatever your interview process looks like, communicate it clearly.
- Job offer (or rejection): After the interview process is complete, you’ll need to make the final decision. Should you offer the job or reject the candidate?
- Onboarding: The employee onboarding experience—where the candidate officially converts into an employee—is the final touchpoint of the candidate experience.
Now, let’s put the candidate experience into perspective. Think about your last job search. How many hours did you spend sifting through job listings and entering the same information over and over again? How many profiles did you make just to apply to different companies? And after that, how many weeks did you spend anxiously waiting for replies? If the answer is too many to count, you’re far from alone.
The candidate experience cycle can be frustrating. From the application to the onboarding process, job seekers have to deal with lots of moving parts. Sure, hiccups are sometimes unavoidable, but companies need to start investing in talent acquisition to make the candidate experience a positive one.
Why Does the Candidate Experience Matter?
Let’s face it—the hiring struggle is real. More organizations are attempting to return to “normal” hiring practices, but they’re facing higher recruitment workloads than ever before. Instead of defaulting back to your pre-COVID practices, it’s time to upgrade your candidate experience.
Why? It’s simple: A positive candidate experience will set you apart. In fact, 78 percent of candidates report that overall candidate experience highlights how companies value their people. To capture and retain the best talent, you need an amazing candidate experience to show candidates exactly why you’re worth working for.
Despite their importance, positive candidate experiences are on the decline—and the numbers back this up. According to the 2021 Candidate Experience Report, candidate resentment rose from 8 percent in 2020 to 14 percent in 2021, marking a 75 percent spike in poor candidate experiences.
What does that mean for your recruitment strategy? When done right, a positive candidate experience can give you a competitive edge during the hiring process—and it might just be the nudge your top pick needs to choose you over the competition. Fail to invest in the candidate experience, though, and you’ll damage your employer brand with less-than-glowing reviews and referrals.
Top 5 Strategies to Improve Candidate Experience
In a fast-moving job market, employers are fighting for top talent to meet their business’ needs. As one of the first touchpoints with your employer brand, the candidate experience is the perfect opportunity to build trust with candidates.
After all, job seekers want interactions with potential employers. They want to know what to expect on the job—and they want to know how you’re going to value them as an employee. If you’re going MIA, forgetting to schedule interviews, or leaving them guessing about their application status, you’re going to lose their trust.
Ready to take your candidate experience to the next level? Here’s how to drive qualified candidates down the talent pipeline.
1. Rethink Your Communication Strategy
The first step to reinventing candidate experience? Align your employer brand and candidate experience. To create a seamless customer journey, you’ll need a clear communication strategy so you can convey consistent messaging to potential candidates.
You’ll need to create a branding and communication strategy that showcases your company values and culture. That means collaborating with different departments to figure out what you stand for and what you want to tell the public. Then, you’ll need to collect authentic stories from your employees to give candidates a glimpse behind the curtain.
Finally, your strategy should outline where and how you’ll integrate this messaging into public touchpoints. Think about what content you’ll post on your careers website, social platforms, and other employer brand channels to build trust.
2. Streamline the Application Process
Next, it’s time to audit your application process to determine how easy (or difficult) it is for candidates to apply. Not sure where to start? Try navigating the application process from the shoes of a prospective candidate. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Where are candidates dropping out?
- How long does it take to complete an application?
- What steps seem unnecessary or irrelevant?
- Is the application process mobile-friendly?
At this stage, you should leverage candidate feedback to pinpoint where applicants drop off, lose interest, or withdraw from the process. Remember: Your candidates are busy, and they don’t want to waste time on cumbersome application processes.
3. Implement a Feedback Loop
After candidates submit an application, they want to stay in the loop. They want to understand their status during the application process, and you need to set expectations and offer timely communication (within 1–2 weeks of the application) to create a positive candidate experience.
Open, clear, and timely communication is vital to any candidate experience. Figure out where, when, and how your candidates want to be contacted during the application process. Then, build a scalable strategy to meet those touchpoints.
If you typically email candidates about their application status, keep in mind that spam filters can wreak havoc on deliverability. Wherever possible, leverage chatbots to create a consistent flow of information to candidates.
4. Train Your Interviewers
Nothing can make or break the candidate experience quite like an interview.
Throughout the hiring process, there are only a handful of times when candidates will have direct contact with someone at your company. As a result, you should think of interviewers as brand ambassadors for your employer brand.
All interviewers should know how to conduct a fair interview. At the same time, they should practice appropriate demeanor during all interactions with candidates.
Don’t forget to prepare candidates for the interview process, either. Before the interview, provide as much relevant information as possible, including a list of interviewers with their roles and titles. Even if you’re conducting video interviews, this can help streamline introductions and help candidates feel more comfortable.
5. Provide Timely Offers and Onboarding
Timing always matters in recruiting, especially if you’re planning to extend a job offer. When employers make job offers within one week of the final interview, the candidates’ willingness to refer others increases by 79 percent—and their willingness to further their relationship with the employer increases by 80 percent.
Of course, the hiring process doesn’t end when a candidate accepts your job offer. They’re still fielding other offers, and you haven’t locked them in just yet. If you revert to radio silence after the job offer, it’s only natural for candidates to have second thoughts.
So, what’s your next move? You need to engage your candidates throughout the onboarding process. Stay in touch until their first day and send contact information so they can reach out to their hiring manager with any questions.
And remember: Even small gestures can have a major impact on the candidate experience. Encourage the hiring manager to check in and let the new hire know what to expect on their first day. It might seem simple, but it’s an incredibly effective way to make the onboarding process go smoother—all while wrapping up the candidate experience on a positive note.
Upgrade Your Candidate Experience
What’s the most impactful thing you can do to improve the candidate experience? Communicate with your candidates throughout their journey. From application to onboarding, your top picks deserve honest communication—and they’re not going to settle for any less.
Tired of losing qualified candidates to the competition? We’re here to help.
Download our self-audit checklist and schedule a discovery call with our team to take your candidate experience to new heights.
