Nowadays candidate experience is becoming a hot topic in recruitment world. Candidate experience is candidates’ perception about your company and overall hiring process that will influence their decision to continue the hiring process or accept your job offer. Candidate experience begin since the very first contact between company and candidate until the end of recruitment process, whether the candidate join the company or failed the recruitment process.
Similar to customer satisfaction, candidate experience is really important and can affect your brand experience. The accumulation of customer experience with the products or services offered by the company will affect the customer perception towards the brand. There is an open possibility that your candidates turn out to be your loyal customer. Bad candidate experience will change their perception of your company and brand, and lose respect for your company, both as an employer and as a brand.
Similar to customer satisfaction, candidate experience is really important and can affect your brand experience. The accumulation of customer experience with the products or services offered by the company will affect the customer perception towards the brand. There is an open possibility that your candidates turn out to be your loyal customer. Bad candidate experience will change their perception of your company and brand, and lose respect for your company, both as an employer and as a brand.
There are four aspects that have to be carefully note to make sure your candidate have a good experience with your company:
1. Transparency
Give your candidate complete information about the recruitment process, such as the name of the position, description of the position, the recruitment process needed and the company’s location. The important thing to consider, the description will give expectations to the candidates about their job responsibilities. Companies need to explain realistically by making sure that the description written is consistent with the real position and has been approved by the related department.
In addition, research also shows that the transparency in the recruitment process can help managing candidates’ expectation about their process, to decrease loosing them in the middle of it. Another thing you can remember in inviting candidates to the recruitment process is to provide clear information about the time and address of the interview. You can also provide information about the interviewer profile, so that the candidate can be better prepared.
2. Easiness
1. Transparency
Give your candidate complete information about the recruitment process, such as the name of the position, description of the position, the recruitment process needed and the company’s location. The important thing to consider, the description will give expectations to the candidates about their job responsibilities. Companies need to explain realistically by making sure that the description written is consistent with the real position and has been approved by the related department.
In addition, research also shows that the transparency in the recruitment process can help managing candidates’ expectation about their process, to decrease loosing them in the middle of it. Another thing you can remember in inviting candidates to the recruitment process is to provide clear information about the time and address of the interview. You can also provide information about the interviewer profile, so that the candidate can be better prepared.
2. Easiness
Review your recruitment process, from candidate application form, interview scheduling, until the end of recruitment process. Candidate will prefer an easy and non-repetitive process. Candidate application form often only repeat the contents of the curriculum vitae or resume that the candidate submitted. You can review your candidate application form and make sure only information needed is put on the form. The use of technology in recruitment process can be one instrument that is very helpful in creating a good candidate experience. There are many choices of recruitment software available now. You can also develop application features on your company’s website, so candidates can learn about your company when applying through the website. Research the features that you want to develop in your application, so that it really can facilitate well the candidates’ needs. For the scheduling you can use Calendly (https://calendly.com), SparkHire (https://www.sparkhire.com/interview-scheduling-software), goodtime (https://www.goodtime.io/interview-scheduling), yello (https://yello.co/interview-scheduling-software/), etc. They provide features that allows candidates pick the interview schedule based on recruiter’s schedule availability. Those softwares also allow candidates to do attendance confirmation. You can consider to use an applicant tracking system help you managing the recruitment process.
3. Equality
Treat you candidate without discrimination regardless of their position, age, gender, or race. Giving equality makes candidates feel valued and increases the value of the company from candidate’s perspective. Make sure you disqualified any personal reasons when choosing which candidate will be processed for the next steps ahead (ex: Only choose candidates from certain races). This also helps minimize the stigma in society about your company (such as: the company only accepts employees from certain races). The interviewer plays an important role in achieving this. The interviewer is one of the first people to represent the company’s brand. Being professional is one simple way that you can do. Make sure the questions you ask are relevant to find out about related matters. Avoid questions that are asked only to satisfy the interviewer’s curiosity of the candidate.
4. Speed
4. Speed
Avoid letting your candidates wait for too long in the recruitment process. Give immediate response the candidates whatever results they got. This also applied when giving feedback to candidates, wether if the candidate is accepted or rejected. Providing personalized feedback is one way to make candidates have a better experience in the recruitment process.
Careful consideration is needed when creating the recruitment process in order to build positive candidate experience. Therefore, the effort in building these experiences can not only be obtained by looking at the company’s perspective as a recruiter, rather the candidate’s perspective is the important key to continue to improve the recruitment process in your company. Be open to feedback from candidates after the recruitment process. It is important for company to maintain the satisfaction of candidates and treat them as they treat their customers.
Careful consideration is needed when creating the recruitment process in order to build positive candidate experience. Therefore, the effort in building these experiences can not only be obtained by looking at the company’s perspective as a recruiter, rather the candidate’s perspective is the important key to continue to improve the recruitment process in your company. Be open to feedback from candidates after the recruitment process. It is important for company to maintain the satisfaction of candidates and treat them as they treat their customers.