8 Proven Ways to Improve Candidate Experience
About 67% of job seekers have had at least one bad experience during the hiring process in the past few years.
In that same study, 58% of those candidates said they had turned down a job offer due to a bad experience. This is why focusing on the candidate experience is so important.
If you want to attract top talent in this competitive job market, you’ll need to ensure that you have a great candidate experience. But how can you improve? Keep reading for the top strategies you can try on the employment market.
1. Write a Good Job Posting
When candidates are applying for jobs, they have to sift through hundreds of job openings to try and find one that catches their interest during their job search. These are the most critical pieces of content that candidates will read when thinking about whether or not they want to submit their resumes to your company.
So make sure that your job description is short and digestible. Write an accurate and clear expectation of what will be expected on the job and the responsibilities. Don’t give a long list of requirements because this will deter some people from applying.
List other essential information, like the benefits, perks, salary range, and company values. Put it into a format that’s easy to read, like bullet points.
2. Make It Easy to Apply
There’s no point in writing great job descriptions if candidates can’t find them. While you can focus on job advertisements, you should have a career page that’s easy to find on your website. Some companies will bury that page, but this discourages candidates from applying to your website.
But if you make it easy for them to find, candidates will be happy that they didn’t have to go over your entire sitemap to send in their resume. It will also show candidates that you are focused on providing a great experience.
When applicants make it to your career sites, make sure that you give them clear instructions for the online job application process. Make the recruitment process as straightforward as possible, so you don’t deter candidates from filling out pages and pages of questions.
If applicants upload their resumes, parse them out and auto-populate fields. Don’t ask a job seeker to fill out the same answers on their resumes.
Also, make sure that you don’t require applicants to create an account to sign in. People won’t want to make all kinds of accounts to apply for a job, and they’ll likely assume that there is a long process after they complete the account.
3. Reduce Bias
While going over the language in your job description is an excellent way to reduce the bias, you should make sure that you remove bias in other areas of your job application process.
Focus on being fair and transparent. Machine learning and artificial intelligence are becoming useful in the hiring process because these tools can help to remove bias and analyze candidates on an even playing field.
Some advanced-learning software tools will search for job candidates based on experience or qualifications. Then, recruiters will receive a list of ideal candidates from unbiased avenues.
It would help if you also focused on education for your HR professionals and recruiting team to help reduce bias when interviewing qualified candidates.
4. Communicate
According to some statistics , 81% of job seekers say that if companies communicated throughout the entire recruiting process, this would improve the candidate experience.
Lack of communication is one of the most important aspects of candidate experience, and it’s commonly cited as one of the main problems.
It would be best to avoid any communication breakdown by having a strict policy. In general, you should reach out to the candidate at least once a week to provide an update on their application status.
If they’ve been disqualified, make sure that you let them know as soon as possible. Once the position is filled, reach out to all the candidates and explain that they didn’t get the job but thank them for their time.
5. Focus on Feedback
When you send rejection emails to job applicants, you should also provide feedback on their interviews and resume. The feedback will help candidates improve for the following interview, and LinkedIn states that 94% of candidates would love feedback on their interviews.
When you deliver feedback, you’re making a positive experience for the candidate, and then you’ll be able to foster a relationship with them. They may consider your company in the future since they felt like you cared about them.
Recruiting is all about making relationships, and one way to do that is to ask for feedback on your recruiting process. This feedback can even give you insights into improving your own candidate experience.
6. Interview With a Purpose
Before you start interviewing your top applicants, take a step back and look at your interview process.
Your interviews need to be intentional, and each interview question won’t work for every applicant. Instead, ask yourself some questions to figure out how you should learn about each candidate.
What do you want the candidate to know about your company? What do you like to learn about the candidate? What questions do you need to ask to determine if they’re a good fit?
Your interview process should have some stable guiding principles. For example, you should have an early screening interview to screen for skills, personality, and experience. If a candidate meets all of those requirements, you should move them forward to meet with hiring managers or the executive team.
If applicable, you may also want to send a take-home assignment. The assignment will give you an idea of how a potential employee will behave and if they have the skills to do the job.
If they get past that stage, you may want to send a job offer or have one more final interview. You’ll have to be careful to make sure your hiring process isn’t too long that it’s turning away candidates.
If your competitors have a shorter hiring process, they’ll snatch up top talent faster than you will.
7. Be Clear About the Hiring Process
Speaking of the length of the application process, communicate what the hiring process will be like as soon as possible. You may even want to put that timeline in the job description so candidates know if they’re willing to go through it.
Starting a new job can be a significant life change, and a new hire will need to know if they need to relocate, restructure their life, or even give a two-week notice to their employer.
This is why candidates will need to know how long the process is. If there are any delays to this hiring process, send an email to the candidate to understand what’s going on.
8. Stay In Touch
The recruiting process can be difficult for some candidates, so if you’re there for them during the highs and lows, this will foster a relationship between you and the applicant.
If a candidate accepts the offer, it’s easy to forget about them and focus on the new job. However, they might get second thoughts if they don’t hear anything after signing the job offer. The candidate experience starts up until day one.
You should also ensure that you stay in touch with rejected candidates. This way, if you find that they’re a good fit for a future position, then you can reach out to them to try and recruit them.
Improve Your Candidate Experience Today
These are only a few recruiting solutions you can use to improve a poor candidate experience and recruit top talent.
However, there are even more strategies to provide a positive candidate experience. Recruiter.com can help you!
We have excellent talent sourcing software that will help you find candidates with no bias, as well as recruiters who can provide a great candidate experience whenever you need a little extra hiring help.
Contact us today to get started!
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