Candidate experience is a catch-all term to describe the way job seekers, applicants, candidates and new hires think and feel about your brand. The candidate experience begins the moment a job seeker discovers your open role and continues throughout the application, interview and onboarding process.
- Make your job openings easy to find
Your first step is a Career Page. Got one of those? Great!
But is your Career Page optimized? Is it easy to find in your site navigation—the header or the footer? Do you use a real call to action like Work With Us, or something less noteworthy like About Us? Some applicants need that bright sign on the side of the highway… it’s up to you to put it up for them.
- Simplify your application form
Not all applications can afford simplification. With one-time job seeker registration, all our registered job seekers have access to your jobs on a click of a button.
- Keep your process clean
If you’re going to be interviewing candidates over the course of two months, tell your applicants. Don’t forget they could be on pins and needles waiting for a next-day call—and your lack of clarity could mean they either contact you all the time, or march off onto the next thing a week after not hearing from you. If you’re running a tight, transparent recruiting ship, everyone leaves feeling good enough to come back when the time is right. So remember to:
1. Close out non-interviews
2. Stay in contact with your real prospects weekly
- Get mobile friendly
45% of job seekers say they use their mobile device specifically to search for jobs at least once a day. Make the most of these mobile searchers by giving them a mobile-optimized application.
Right. Now, you’ve got the basics down. Time to focus in on the details.
If you were a candidate, what would be those extra touches that make you genuinely eager to work for a company?
From personalized videos to honest feedback, it doesn’t take long to wow your candidates.
- Add interviewer bios (or video!) to your site
You know what quality candidates love most about your About pages and employee profiles? The chance to get to know their potential interviewers. Smart candidates like to know what they’re walking into. When they can see their future manager cuddling with his beagle and talking about his day in a brief bio, they become instantly armed with relevant questions that can make the face-to-face interview way more fun and productive.
- Add pertinent company information to your candidate emails
We’ll be honest, offering a better candidate experience tends to coincide with a longer hiring process. If you’re adding a step (such as a test project, in-person meet and greet, or personality screen), keep your candidates interested by sending regular check-ins. Score extra bonus points by sending company updates or blog posts they can reference during their second and third interviews.
- Ask questions that make candidates feel awesome
Like impeccable directions, this question can turn any new candidate into a pro interviewee:
“Is there anything you didn’t get a chance to talk about today that you think we should know?”
This gives the candidate the opportunity they may need to walk out the door with confidence, which will make them feel awesome about your company even if they don’t land the job.
- Offer constructive feedback
The vast majority of your applicants will be rejected. It’s just math. Problem is, that means hundreds of people per year will associate feelings of rejection with your brand. Give them a reason to appreciate your organization anyway. Offer honest, delicate feedback about why the candidate wasn’t suitable for the role, and how they could improve.
Do you really want to secure the perfect candidate?
Let’s be honest, sometimes the answer to that question is ‘no’—and for positions that don’t require specialized skills, that’s ok.
But for the roles where you can’t afford anything less than the best of the best, you’re gonna need to bring out the big guns.
- Personalize your communication with candidates
If you want to secure top-shelf talent, you need to know who you’re dealing with, so be sure to ask plenty of open-ended questions during your screening stages. Every interviewer should know the candidate’s aspirations, why they’ve chosen to interview, and what they’re looking to get out of their next position. Make sure your questions are personal, relevant and unique to each team or manager by going over the full list before the candidate walks in the door (or fires up the video app).
- Overhaul your onsites
If you’re planning to keep a candidate most of the day, take these tips from companies like LinkedIn and Airbnb to make candidates feel spa-day relaxed:
1. Provide them with a schedule of their day, complete with interviewer profiles and videos.
2. Text them their interview time and traffic conditions.
3. Give them a goodie bag to ease them through what will be a very long day.
4. Got a campus? Take a tour with them, so they can see what working with you is like.
- Ask candidates to rate their experience
The best way to improve your candidate experience is to continue to ask candidates how they feel about it.
- Say thank you
Perhaps a branded mug with a note (“I noticed that you were drinking coffee the whole day!”) recognizes that your candidate has spent their valuable time with you. When you’re ready to welcome them to the team, a gift basket with their new name tag (“See you Monday!”) shows them how psyched you are that they’re coming aboard.
