Candidate experience isn't what you think
Greg Wyatt • Aug 31, 2021
When you hear the phrase “candidate experience”, you probably think about all the complaints you read on recruitment. Ghosting, bad adverts, competitive salaries, shoddy behaviour and everything else.
But this misses the point of what should be a strategic and integral part of recruiting key people.
Candidate experience is everything people experience throughout your recruitment process across every touch point, including when you aren’t even aware of them.
That ideal person for your vacancy, who you hope to employ, and they aren’t a candidate yet. What experience do they need to make them engage in your recruitment process?
That’s why your website, your LinkedIn commentary, their perception of your messaging, which recruiters you use, and so on, are all important factors in whether they wish to engage with you.
They may never engage if they don’t like their experience, and you’ll never know.
Equally important is the lead up to employment and after: pre-boarding, on-boarding, keeping in touch, post placement reviews, your retention strategy.
These are tipping points where you may have lost what would have been ideal employees.
The ones you didn’t know about are bad enough, but what about those you were keen on?
Candidate experience is everything in-between as well:
- Job description – is it accurate? Is it relevant?
- Recruitment and interview process – are you working to the critical path?
- Compensations and benefits – will your package attract who you need?
- Working arrangements – objective oriented, flexible, work from home, jobshare, part-time: these are all possible
- Feedback – can you use the same post-interview analysis you do, to assess candidates, to help them?
- Communication – does under communicating cause issues?
Every way in which someone experiences your business is part of their decision to work for you.
Candidate experience isn’t just doing right by people (which requires no skills, just intent) it both underpins and is a consequence of a recruitment process designed to get the best people on board.
It’s the glue that binds everything together.
A good candidate journey accesses better candidates, makes them more committed and less likely to withdraw for reasons out of your control.
It really is that simple.
If you lose out on good candidates because your candidate experience is poor – that’s on you.
The good news though is that now is the second-best time to get your affairs in order.
Especially if you are struggling with a candidate shortage.
Since you’re still here, if you want to know more about the commercial benefits of good candidate experience or how to recruit right to give you the right outcome – we should talk.
Negotiate this, pt 6
Negotiate this, pt 5
