How a Great Candidate Experience Turns Employees into Ambassadors

In a world where one recruiter is responsible for multiple job listings and each job listing attracting on average 250 applicants, there’s no doubt that recruiters sometimes feel like they’re carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. They simply don’t have the time to juggle all of the tasks on their plate, and this lack of time could be detrimental to the company’s candidate experience.

A study by Virgin Media found that a negative candidate experience cost their company $5MM a year in rejected candidates switching to competitors. This $5MM isn’t taking into account the number of friends and family members of the rejected candidates who also switched to competitors. A negative candidate experience can result in more than one negative Glassdoor review—there are business implications that come along with it. In this article, we’re going through how to flip your candidate experience around in order to turn candidates into ambassadors for your brand.

Top Pain Points for Candidates

Talentsquare looked into the top drivers for a bad candidate experience and found that:

· Almost 35% said lack of response was their number-one frustration

· Almost 25% said no clarity or transparency about the recruiting process

· 15% said the lack of mobile-friendly platform influenced their frustration

In all, a bad candidate experience boils down to communication and convenience—the latter being critical in today’s digital age.

Top Factors That Influenced Candidates into Becoming Brand Ambassadors

On the flip side, Talentsquare also looked into the driving factors that influenced candidates into becoming brand ambassadors:

· Over 40% stated constant feedback

· Over 25% attributed it to professional assessment

· Over 10% said they were provided career-related articles

Candidates are saying it loud and clear—communication is key during the candidate experience.

Flipping Candidate Experience on its Head

Now that we know the good, the bad, and the ugly about candidate experience, here are some solutions that will help you create a great one.

1. Review your candidate experience, from beginning to end. If it helps, draw out your candidate experience to visual each step in the process. Then set rules of candidate engagement so that everyone—from recruiters to hiring managers—are not only aligned with the end-to-end process, but also aware of each step. Also consider creating a repository that houses a set of interview questions that have been vetted by the team. This helps eliminate one variable from the recruiting process, and that’s called unconscious biases.

2. Communicate, and if you think you’re already communicating enough, consider over-communicating. As mentioned earlier, time is limited, so you may not be able to reach out to every single candidate at every single moment. However, think about where you can automate some communication such as leveraging a chatbot that is available 24/7 for candidates to reach out to. Or a chatbot that automatically checks in with candidates during set times (after a phone screen or one day before an on-site interview). Not only that, but also be upfront with candidates about the hiring process by giving them a timeline—do interviews at your company typically take 1 week or 1 month? By being candid and available for candidates, it’s showing that you value their time.

3. Two-way feedback. After the interview process, provide candidates feedback so they can develop professionally and take those learnings on to their next interviews. In return, ask for feedback on how the company can improve the candidate experience. This will show candidates that you’re not only invested in their future success, but that you value their opinion.

Hiring is no easy feat, and it consumes a lot of time and resources. However, that’s no excuse to skimp on your candidate experience. Creating an excellent candidate experience it not only a good look on your brand, but it will also help fill your pipeline with other qualified candidates and customers.