Candidate experience is the key to unlocking ‘hard to fill’ vacancies.

Not because of common decency and responsiveness, although that would help if it weren't lacking in many quarters.

Because it's the consequence of a good strategic recruitment process whose goal is to fill vacancies.

Look at each part of your recruitment process and ask “what does our next employee need to experience to get them on board”

To answer this question, you'll need to:

1 Understand the skills, behaviours, attitudes, experiences and capability that make up the candidate that can deliver the needs of your vacancy. You’ll need to understand their pains and aspirations, to give them reason to join you.

2 Establish the touch points which your ideal candidate will have in engaging with you as an employer. Which may well be without you ever being aware of them, such as when a reader ignores the apply button on a poorly written advert.

3 Define the contextual requirement of each step, both from your side and what the candidate needs.

4 Act - whether that's through training, consultation or doing.

This question should be asked, and acted on, for each touch point:

- website / careers section
- social media
- industry news
- financial reports
- EVP
- LinkedIn presence
- job description
- messaging
- customers & suppliers
- recruitment agency
- employee word of mouth
- expectation management
- interview & assessment stages
- offer and rejection process
- offer letter management
- pre-boarding and onboarding
- induction
- candidate peers. Perhaps even ones you've rejected for your vacancy. What do they think and what will they say?

There are many more experiential touch points which may whisper some insight to someone you want to employ.

These steps are channel agnostic - it doesn't matter if a candidate comes to you from a headhunt, advert or referral.

It does matter what you do with them when you find them and the decision they may make from their experience of you.

After all, it's never been simpler to find people, while many recruiters will tell you it's never been harder to engage them.