The Candidate Experience When Searching for New Career Opportunities.

The “candidate experience” is the overall perception held by current, past and prospective candidates of your company’s recruiting process. It is based on candidates’ feelings, behaviours and attitudes they experience during the whole recruiting process, from sourcing and screening to interviewing, hiring and finally on boarding.

Candidates who have a positive experience during your recruiting process will more likely accept your job offer and refer others to your company in the future.

Once an application has been submitted, it’s quick and simple to make use of automated emails to immediately give feedback that their application has been received.  In today’s fast paced world the selection processes must become more efficient and therefore many companies are adopting ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems).  The days when lengthy results on time to hire metrics are considered long gone.  Often the length of the recruitment process is the primary reason for losing good candidates. 

So, there needs to be open communication with candidates throughout the process.  Silence can be very unsettling and at times simply by communicating with candidates this will keep them engaged enough in the process to stay with you.  

If your company loses the candidates who have a choice in selecting their next job and you’re often left with talent that doesn’t tick all the boxes then there is a strong chance that a lengthy recruitment process or lack of communication could be the reason you’re losing the best talent.  If you are losing candidates to your competitors it very likely, that with technology advances you are able to find innovative and powerful candidate engagement strategies.  

Candidate engagement software serves as your candidates’ personal PA throughout the hiring process.  Without spending any of HR’s valuable time this software provides an interaction with candidates ensures ongoing communication throughout the process.  This software can call, email, and text candidates to schedule them for various steps in the process.  

A very important and too often forgotten part of the hiring process is not advising a candidate that he or she has not been shortlisted, or worst post interview that they will not be receiving a job offer. Clever automation and standard templates can do work for you and ensure 

What Frustrates a Candidate The Most When seeking New Employment?

This is not a difficult question to answer! Not getting feedback! Simple!

Forgetting to give candidate feedback is a frequent and overlooked mistake made in the recruitment industry.  A silent rejection or lack of feedback is an awful experience for a candidate and I think some recruiters don’t even understand it’s a mistake. I know that many candidates find this lack of feedback unprofessional and personally very frustrating. 

I’ll admit that I’ve forgotten to give feedback to a candidate. There is no real excuse and that’s why, that even though it’s not the most personalised approach, I do believe the industry should make more use of an automated email approach to keep candidates informed of their job application process. I’m not suggesting that recruitment should ever lose the consultative approach of talking to candidates, but there simply isn’t enough hours in a day for a recruiter to talk to every single person who applies for a vacancy.

What’s The Most Important Thing about Candidate Feedback? 

Simple! Give Feedback.

I know that a lot of applicants seeking a new career could be offended when a recruiter can’t give personalised and detailed feedback, but the secret is simply for a recruiter to give the feedback. Although an automated email is not the first prize from an applicant’s point of view, giving feedback to your candidates is far more important than silence!

Not every candidate will be happy with an automated email with an application rejection or an update that there is a delay in the recruitment process, but you can at least demonstrate a professional approach. Who knows, the very candidate you respect enough to give feedback to, could well be your client tomorrow?