Do you treat your employees and potential candidates in the same way as your customers?

The major ingredient in hiring top talent is creating a recruitment experience similar to customer experience. From your work environment to company values and team culture, a lot of things contribute to building this reputation.

When we are in the process of onboarding a customer, we tend to do everything in our power to help the customer ease into this process. Similarly, if you want to stand out as an employer, you need to improve candidate experience throughout the recruitment cycle. This includes the way you keep candidates informed and how you offer a positive experience in each stage.

5 Ways to Improve Candidate Experience

The first impression is often the last one. So, before thinking about improving the entire candidate experience, think of enhancing the first impression for every candidate. For instance, you could start by improving your job postings, making them more informative and easily scannable. Another way can be to modify the website’s career page in a way that it is user-friendly.

Once you have achieved that, check the following ways to improve candidate experience.

1. Conduct an Audit

To change your recruitment process, conduct an audit first. You need to understand what experience you are providing to your candidates.

Use the following questions –

• Can you find the job-related data easily?
• Is your career page user-friendly?
• Is it possible to apply for a job post from different devices?
• How much time do you need to submit a job application?
• Is every step of the process clear?

For example, if your application process is designed in 3 pages when you can easily reduce it to one, you should create one concise form for the entire process.

2. Take Feedback

A small feedback form at the end of the recruitment process can tell you a lot.

• Where are you lacking?
• Is your process slow?
• Do you offer complete information to candidates?

Think about it, who could tell you better about your recruitment process than the candidates applying for the job?

How can you accept feedback?

You can use a simple form containing 4-5 fields maximum. This should be offered to candidates once the recruitment process has been concluded.

3. Set Right Expectations

For a candidate, deciding to apply for a job role is unknown territory. They don’t know what to expect and how the process will go on.

Therefore, you should take charge and clear the air. Address issues and queries of candidates before they apply as well.

• How long will the process go on?
• What are the different stages?
• Do I need to submit a project or assignment?
• Do I need to give a presentation?

4. Make Valuable Connections

You never know which candidate may be able to help you in the future. So, make good connections!

• Show empathy by informing the candidate quickly if they are not in the recruitment pipeline anymore.
• Stay honest all along the process. If you are already processing the employment of another candidate, there’s no point in keeping others on hold. Tell them that you are deciding to not move forward but you will stay connected for future opportunities.
• Throughout the process, communicate regularly with candidates to keep them updated and engaged.

5. Assign a Designated Contact

If most of the people in the hiring process are too busy to communicate with candidates, assign a dedicated contact. Send an email letting your applicants know who to contact when in doubt. Allow them to clear their queries as soon as possible. This will eliminate confusion.

Conclusion

Today, candidate experience is a necessity. It is not negotiable or avoidable at any cost. If you are consistently offering a good experience to potential employees and applicants, you would be able to attract the best talent.

Hence, without further ado, start utilizing the above tips, improve your hiring processes, enhance ROI, and eliminate information-dispatch glitches.