Did you know that poor candidate experience can be felt throughout the hiring process? [1] This is the main factor that would drive the right talent away, as 86% of employees and job seekers decide where to apply for a job based on their research of company reviews and ratings. [2] It goes without saying that a negative experience with your company can cause big damage and is something you should avoid.
So how do you fix that? How do you make sure of a positive recruiting process? In this article, we will explore the various aspects of poor candidate experience and look at strategies on how to tackle them effectively. Let’s scroll down and get right to it!
Why You Need to Avoid Poor Candidate Experience
- Loss of Top Talent: Talented individuals have multiple options, and a negative recruitment experience can lead them to accept offers elsewhere. This loss is not just about the individual; it’s about the innovative ideas and skills they would have brought to your organization.
- Damage to Employer Brand: Candidates share their experiences with their network. A negative experience can lead to a damaged employer brand, as word of mouth and social media amplify personal stories. This can reduce the number of quality applicants in the future, making it harder to attract the right talent.
- Higher Recruitment Costs: When candidates withdraw from the process or decline offers due to a poor experience, your company is forced to restart the recruitment process, leading to higher costs. Beyond financial, these costs include the time and resources spent on interviewing and assessing new candidates.
- Legal Implications: In some cases, a poor candidate experience could lead to legal implications, especially if a candidate feels discriminated against or if there’s a breach of recruitment regulations. This can result in costly legal proceedings and further damage to your reputation.
- Decreased Employee Morale: Current employees often hear about the candidate's experience, and if it’s poor, it can lead to decreased morale among the workforce. Employees want to be proud of where they work, and a negative hiring reputation can make them question their own employment decisions and the company’s values.
How to Tackle Poor Candidate Experience
1. Slow Feedback & Poor Communication
One of the best practices to avoid poor candidate experience is to utilize automated recruitment tools. These tools can streamline the hiring process, provide timely feedback to candidates, and ensure a more engaging and efficient recruitment experience. It’s a good idea to invest in an Applicant Tracking System that can automate tasks like resume screening, scheduling interviews, and sending follow-up emails.
With its customizable pipeline and a single database, you can easily manage the process and candidates, ensuring no one is left behind. Plus, with Manatal’s automation capability, candidates will be engaged and notified at each stage throughout the process.
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2. Hearing Candidates’ Complaints
To eliminate poor candidate experience, it’s important to identify pain points in your recruitment process. Take the time or use a tool to gather feedback from candidates about their experience, analyze data on application drop-off rates, and pinpoint areas where candidates may be facing challenges. Also, conduct regular candidate surveys or interviews to gather insights on their experience and identify areas for improvement.
3. Biased Hiring Practices
Ensuring a fair and unbiased recruitment process is essential for delivering a positive candidate experience. Take proactive measures to eliminate bias in job descriptions, resume screening, and interview evaluations. Implementing structured interviews, diverse interview panels, and unconscious bias training for hiring managers can help promote fairness in the hiring process. Regularly auditing your recruitment processes to identify and address any biases that may exist is also a good way to go.
Case Studies of Improved Candidate Experience in Companies
1. Yodel
The UK-based logistics company boosted its candidate experience by utilizing chatbots to streamline the application process and allow candidates to interact with the company at any hour. With over 1,200 applications per week (and up to 5,500 during the holiday season), recruiters were overwhelmed with inquiries and phone screenings, leading to confusion among candidates on the various job opportunities available.
To address this challenge, Yodel partnered with Meet & Engage to create three Candidate Experience Bots tailored to each key driver role. These bots provide candidates with relevant information about the job roles, answer common questions, and guide them through the screening process. Candidates can apply and progress through the hiring process at their convenience, even outside of standard office hours.
The implementation of Candidate Experience Bots resulted in a more positive candidate experience, with 97% of applicants rating it highly. Within the first month, over 300 people were hired through interactions with the bots, leading to a 38% decrease in the time to hire and a lower drop-out rate of only 9%. [4]
2. Airbnb
Airbnb’s journey to enhance the candidate experience began with a reflection on its own hiring experiences, leading to a collaborative effort to map out the ideal process. This included a more personal touch in communication, with tailored acknowledgment messages and a library of on-brand templates for recruiters. An American company known for connecting people who are looking to rent out their property with people who are searching for accommodations also sped up the hiring process by shifting offer letter responsibilities, cutting down the time from interview to job offer.
Further improvements were made by training hiring teams and fostering a candidate-centric culture. Initiatives like ‘primp your profile’ lunches and recognizing the ‘Interviewer of the Week’ encouraged employees to be more involved in the recruitment process. Plus, the on-site interview process was streamlined by pre-establishing interviewer roles and preparing them with detailed calendar invites.
The result of these efforts was a more efficient and engaging candidate experience. Candidates left the interview process impressed by the smart and coordinated approach of the Airbnb team, enhancing their excitement about the opportunity to work there. [5]
Signs of a Bad Candidate Experience
1. Poorly Defined Descriptions and Demands
Candidates want to know what kind of company they are applying to and what will be expected of them when they get the job. When elements like the role and the expected daily responsibilities or the first indications of what kind of company they are considering are vague or do not accurately describe the company’s culture, the candidate's experience can suffer. If they perceive that “bait and switch” tactics have been employed with them, it only angers candidates and could lead to high turnover within the first year of employment if they are ultimately hired.
2. A Complex Application Processes
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Another pain point for candidates is when the application for a job is overly complex. With the amount of competition for top talent, it is counterproductive to have an application that is too difficult or time-consuming for professionals to apply for an open role. Some ways that an application can be perceived as complex are if it can only be completed on a PC or if they have to repeatedly input information such as their work history. If the barrier to applying is too high, a potentially high-quality applicant may give up and look elsewhere.
3. Poorly conducted interviews
Once a candidate submits an application, another area where their experience could be negatively impacted is in the interview process. These are the first interactions that a candidate has with your organization, if the process is not smooth and has zero communication, the candidate will never be aware of their status in the process, leading them to bounce rather quickly. Inconsistency throughout the interview can also increase the chances of poor candidate experience. It’s even worse if you don’t implement DE&I practices in the interviewing stage. Candidates might not feel welcome in your company.
4. The Hiring Process Is Too Long
When candidates apply for a job - whether they are currently employed or not - they want to know fairly quickly if they are being considered seriously for the position. The time they spend waiting to hear from a potential employer can be frustrating and stressful. For example, the median time to hire for engineering roles is 49 days. If too much time passes from the time a candidate applies for a job and your company’s selection, they may lose interest in the job altogether or get hired elsewhere. This can cause companies to lose out on hiring high-quality candidates.
5. Inconsistent Communication
After a candidate has spent time applying and interviewing for a job, ghosting a candidate, or becoming completely unresponsive without explanation after an initial correspondence, reflects poorly on the organization and can directly impact the candidate’s experience. While increased workloads in HR departments could be to blame, it is no excuse. If recruiters are not conditioned to prioritize frequent communication and prompt responses to inquiries before and during the interview process, candidates will walk away with a negative experience.
Conclusion
The candidate experience is not just a reflection of your company’s hiring process; it is a mirror of the organization’s ethos and values. A positive experience can significantly boost your reputation, attracting top talent and potentially leading to higher acceptance rates. On the flip side, poor candidate experience can have far-reaching effects, from damaging employer branding to losing out on exceptional candidates. So, keep in mind that as the war for talent intensifies, those who master the art of candidate care will undoubtedly lead the charge in shaping the future of work.
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Citations:
1. SmartTask
3. LinkedIn
5. LinkedIn
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