The recruitment game has a unique quality, in that both candidates and hiring managers are on a buyer’s journey, as well as selling their own proposition.

They are both customers of the recruitment process, and as such can suffer from poor customer experience (CX) throughout, from the awareness and desire stage, through to purchase and delivery.

At its worst it’s the kind of experience that can prevent those buyers getting what they need – whether a job or that candidate they were hoping for.

What would CX specialists make of the bloated demands many recruitment processes make?

Given we are all CX specialists for our own buyer’s journey, there are some easy lessons to take that can be applied to recruitment.

Let’s say you bought some furniture during the pandemic. All was tickety-boo, with delivery in 4-6 weeks, you paid your monies and got your receipt.

When, 3 weeks in you get notified that actually it was more like 12 weeks all along. Quite the disappointment, with misleading expectation management throughout.

That’s what happened to me when I bought an Adirondack chair for my wife’s birthday.

Given our tight deadlines – the birthday – I cancelled the order and bought it elsewhere. Ironically it was from a retailer that had been out of stock, during my initial purchase, but then had new stock for delivery for the following week. It was cheaper for the same SKU, and it included a free footrest. (And it arrived with time to spare)

What an easy decision to make leading to the first supplier losing out on what had been a confirmed, and paid for, sale, with inflated profit margins.

What a common issue we’ve all experienced, no doubt.

Now think about that same situation in recruitment.

Your verbal offer has been accepted.

They are keen and about to turn down many other opportunities.

But you take two weeks to generate your final written offer and documentation, the point at which they might resign.

At what point, during those two weeks do you think doubt will settle in and they’ll become more receptive to those other offers?

Are you really so surprised if you are losing candidates for reasons you could have prevented?

Don’t get me started on all the other analogies that hold equally true in recruitment.

CX is candidate experience and it is employer experience too.

In recruitment, even if you only care about your own requirements, if you give others what they need you're more likely to get what you want.