Marketing Desk

Is Your Company Paying Attention To Candidate Experience?

Last Update Oct 08, 2021

There is no wonder that in this hypercompetitive labor market, 60% of recruitment leaders are planning to invest more in Candidate Experience.

What is the candidate experience?

A candidate wants to be treated affectionally throughout the interview and joining process. Candidate experience is all about how a job seeker perceives and reacts to the hiring process (Sourcing, Interviewing, and Onboarding).

Why Is it so important now?

The current labor market power has shifted towards the candidates, giving them the power to decide to choose a job.

In today’s market, 92% of candidates have more than one job offer on the table to decide. 

Gartner

They don’t feel afraid to back out from the hiring process if they find it not matching their expectations.

36% of candidates stated that they had accepted a job offer in the past but after that decided not to join. This situation leaves the recruiters to start the hiring process from the beginning again, which is undoubtedly a disappointing situation.

Why Does It Happen?

There are plenty of reasons for backing out of the hiring process; however, there is one thing common: Negative Emotions. The hiring journey of a candidate includes several stages, which can be filled with excitement and hope, and sometimes filled with frustration, fraught, and confusion.

How To Improve Candidate Experience?

According to Garner’s research report, there are four critical moments in the candidate experience: Attraction, Application, post-application, and decision making. To succeed in the hiring process, organizations need to work to understand these four key factors and mitigate the negative emotions to give world-class candidate experience to the candidates.

Attraction: When Candidates check information related to the job

Application: When Candidates submit their job applications

Post-Application:  The time when candidates are waiting to hear back from the recruiters

Decision making: When candidates decide whether to accept a job offer

Candidates may withdraw their application or back out of the hiring process or post negative reviews about the company if the company fails in these four key points to provide a better candidate experience.

Attraction: Candidates are Swamped with Information

Undoubtedly, candidates have access to plenty of information now than ever.  Candidates’ mail inboxes are bombarded with Glassdoor follow-ups, LinkedIn recommendations, and mails from recruiters of different companies. With all this noise, it isn’t very easy to make your message stand out.

Instead of increasing the quantity of outreach, focus on improving the quality of candidate outreach. It will break the clutter and stand out your message. Create personas of your target segments and then craft the message around those personas to appeal. This strategy will help you to target the right talent with the correct information.

Application: Candidates Are Puzzled Regarding The Job (Poor Job Description)

The first thing that candidates ponder on while applying for a job is Job Description. Despite given this much importance to the job description, recruiters usually skip it. Job descriptions are the gateways for the recruiters to introduce their jobs to prospective candidates. However, most of the recruiters leave the candidates confused regarding what the job exactly demands. Thus, either the candidates apply for the wrong job or never apply for the first place.

Job descriptions with a laundry list of bullet points had a 7% apply rate vs a 46% apply rate for descriptions with few bullet points.

They need to have a clear picture of their role and responsibilities. Here are three vital ingredients of a well-written job description – Culture Description, Interesting work, and fewer bullet points.

Post-Application: Feeling Disappointed Due to “Little to No Communication”

After submitting the job applications, candidates reach the stage where they keep on waiting to receive little to no communication from the recruiters or organization.  Candidates spend several hours preparing application materials.

In fact, 69% of new hires report dissatisfaction with the status updates they receive from organizations throughout the process.

Gartner

17% of candidates withdraw due to the lack of contact/proper communication.

Gartner

Recruiters need to fix this negative experience. For this, they need to enable a transparent process where they first need to set realistic expectations. They should provide clear timelines and do proactive communication with the candidates.

Decision Making: Multiple Job Offers, which one to choose

The hypercompetitive job market is giving the power to the candidates to select the organization. Therefore, candidates often in more than one job offer in their hands to choose from. Having more than one job offer leaves them stuck in the decision-making stage.

In the past three years, the number of candidates considering at least one other offer rose by 31%

Gartner

Candidates are struggling in this phase to make the right decision. Recruiters make all attempts to persuade the candidates to accept their job offer, but this only does not help. Instead, recruiters should act like career coaches for the candidates and guide them to assess the best fit based on their interests and preferences.

They can show them organizations’ comparisons, highlight benefits, consider their employment value proposition EVP. Help them to cut all irrelevant information and make them focus on what matters. It helps the candidates to make the right decisions and reduces the chances of new-hire turnover.

Conclusion

The recruiting process is a rollercoaster of emotions wherein candidates go through various stages. It is a journey full of emotions. Recruiters can mitigate negative emotions and build the right team for their organizations. It is more like helping the candidates to find their dream job. Think from their perspective.

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