Why you should care about candidate experience (and not just if you hire them!)

We know first-hand that one bad review can negate ten good ones.

'I saw this negative thing on Glassdoor' is a phrase that can send a shiver down the spine of any recruiter. 

Every interaction a candidate has with you can help or hinder your employer brand. Negative experiences with a company can very quickly do lasting damage to a company's reputation in the eyes of a candidate. It can also very quickly lead to a negative perception in the market of your employer brand, much like a positive experience is more likely to lead to positive word of mouth. A positive impression is lasting, but unfortunately so is a negative one. 

What part does candidate experience play here?

The candidates you're wanting to hire have more choice than ever before, so fostering a positive employer brand can set you apart from your competitors in the market and boost your chances of securing the best talent for your team. Candidate experience plays a major part in this, but not just for the people you go on to hire! No matter whether they're successful or not, candidate experience needs to be top notch across the board to boost perceptions of your employer brand. 

It's only going to get more important too. In the last few years we've seen how much more people are starting to care about the ethics and the values of their employers (see also: conscious quitting) and how well they align with their own.

Candidate experience goes hand in hand with this, and to borrow a very Gen-Z phrase here, if 'the vibe is off' with the recruitment process it can be enough to immediately put someone off going forwards. In fact, 52% of job seekers have declined a job offer because of a poor experience during the hiring process.

Now, it's all well and good saying 'make sure your candidate experience is good, or else' but how do you actually do that? From our experience there's two things that are key here - the process and the feedback. So let's break them down. 
 

The process

Good candidate experience starts from the second someone hits apply, or speaks to a recruiter about a role. Nothing puts a prospective hire off more than a disjointed, disorganised, or disengaging interview process. One of the biggest issues here is when the interview process isn't smooth sailing - whether that's interviewers being late, getting the invite sent through at the last minute, or just general unprofessionalism. 

Being transparent from the start here can really help. Setting expectations for candidates of what they can expect with the interview process - including things like who they'll be meeting and any tasks they might have to complete - from the off can set the whole thing off on a great foot. We really love the way Spotify do this even down to their career site, so take notes!

We're not saying you need a whole page on your site dedicated to it, but even popping this in an email to interviewees can do wonders to get everyone on the same page.

The feeback

This is nothing new, but a huge turn-off for candidates is feedback taking too long. We often find in processes with our clients that the ones who respond quickly to candidates with robust, useful feedback (successful or not!) have more engaged, happier candidates. Not only does this boost your chances of an offer accept when you get to that point, but it also creates the feeling of being valued by the company.

'Ghosting' might be a term that was first coined in the dating sphere, but it's a very real frustration for candidates too. In fact, 76% of people surveyed by Starred said not hearing back after a job interview was more frustrating than being ghosted after a first date. Feedback is crucial.

If you want to take this one step further get feedback from your candidates too. By asking interviewees for their view on the process you can build a cycle of continuous improvement and make sure you're constantly able to improve candidate experience. We take our own advice here, too. Whenever someone interviews with FMC one of our People team gives them a call to check how it went, regardless of if they ultimately get progressed.

One more thing...

If you're doing the recruitment yourself (rather than using a recruitment partner like us) it also pays to think about how you're putting your job out there. Are you being transparent about the role in your ad? Is your careers site easy enough to navigate?
 

Ultimately, if you're wanting to secure the best candidates now and in the future, it pays to think about your employer brand. Whilst candidate experience is only one part of this, it's one that pays to get right.