Employee Experience is Fine. What About Candidate Experience in Your Or-ganization?

Candidate experience is the new buzzword these days that has captured the attention of human resources professionals. Lately, organizations have realized that candidate experience is as important as employee experience, and helps a great deal in employer branding. In this technology driven world, both current and prospective employees are well connected and social media plays a crucial role in forming the perspectives of people. When candidates have bad experiences during the hiring process, they tell others about it. And, even worse, some of them write about their experiences on websites like Glassdoor, changing the perspectives of a whole lot of prospective candidates. Once people form a bad opinion about your organization, it’s hard to reverse it. A study revealed that 70% of graduates lose interest in an organization if they read about a candidate’s bad experience. Also, majority of candidates do not reconsider an organization, even years later, just because they had a bad experience in the past.

On the contrary, a good candidate experience, communicated through social media, reviews or word of mouth can attract a great talent pool for your organization. This calls for the need of focusing on creating positive candidate experiences, which includes careful consideration of how to improve the practices in each phase of the hiring process.  

Let’s have a look at the ways an organization can improve the candidate experience:

1.       Maintain a Clear Communication

Throughout the hiring process, it’s important to communicate everything clearly to the candidate. Tell them what to expect next. Keep them informed and prepared about every step through emails or phone calls. Sending them reminder emails or thank you emails are always good for making a good impression.

2. Make the Candidates Comfortable

When the candidates appears at your workplace, put in efforts to make them comfortable. Assign someone to act as a “candidate concierge” to serve them water or coffee. Help them navigate comfortably through the hiring procedures. Make sure that every candidate is being taken care of.

3. Organize Your Hiring Process

Often candidates go through multiple rounds of interviews. The organization should structure and organize the process so that every round serves a specific purpose. This not only helps in avoiding overlapping questions but also in making decisions quickly. As an employer, it would help you save time in the hiring process and for the candidates the entire procedure wouldn’t be confusing or unnecessarily dragged.

4. Train Your Team

The way your organization conducts interviews either impacts the candidates positively or drives them away. Organize training sessions for your team on how to conduct interviews effectively. Help them improve their interviewing skills and ensure that they know how to answer the common questions that candidates usually ask and how to let the candidates know about the company culture and benefits.

5. Challenge Your Candidates

Talented candidates like challenging questions. Keep your interview questions relevant but also challenge the skillset of the candidates to set a high bar for your organization. This also conveys that your company wants to hire great talents.

6. Don’t Forget to Send Rejection Emails

Even if you reject a candidate, it’s a good practice to let the candidate know about it. Send an honest rejection letter instead of keeping the candidate waiting forever for the result. This gesture is actually appreciated by the candidates.

7. Personalize the Interactions

No matter how many candidates you are dealing with, it’s important to personalize the communication with each candidate. This makes the candidate feel valued. Keep short notes about the information the candidates share with you regarding their work experience, personal life etc. If someone reschedules the interview due to sickness, asking them about their health later can go a long way in building a positive reputation. 

8. Organize a Candidate Survey

You can also survey the candidates that appear for interview at your organization later. This helps organizations gain valuable insight into their hiring process. However, a candidate expecting to be hired wouldn’t always give an honest feedback, but a rejected candidate would. Keep the survey simple and try to gain knowledge about candidate experiences so that you can better your processes.

In order to deliver a positive experience to every candidate, organizations need to put some efforts and invest in the hiring process. Attention to detail is important and so is constant tweaking to keep up with the changing scenarios. And, undoubtedly, all this pays off very well. Focusing on truly positive candidate experiences helps organizations become the employer of choice and win great talents in the highly competitive market.