Candidate Experience

Candidate experience begins much before the interview. It often starts with the job post itself.

However, if the job description is not well explained, the job title is ambiguous or the whole process takes too much time, the candidate loses interest even before the recruiter evaluates his/her resume. Conversely, the use of a concise job description, simple application process, and acknowledgment creates an impressive first impression.

This is significant for corporate recruiting teams since recruitment goes beyond mere recruitment. Recruiters must ensure that the recruitment process helps to shape the employer brand image through candidate impressions made by the way of communication, scheduling interviews, decision-making, and closure of stages.

Candidate experience occurs through several smaller experiences throughout the recruitment process. Some occur with the help of the HR department, while other smaller experiences occur depending upon hiring managers, panel interviewers, recruiters, and even technology and onboarding teams.

Critical touchpoints are:

• How clearly the role is explained
• Whether the candidate receives confirmation after applying
• How interviews are scheduled and rescheduled
• Whether the interview panel is prepared
• How quickly feedback or next steps are shared
• Whether rejected candidates receive proper closure
• How smoothly selected candidates move into offer and joining formalities

SHRM notes that candidate experience auditing helps employers review the hiring journey from attraction and application to onboarding, so weak points can be identified and improved.

The poor candidate experience can slow down the process of recruiting, and it can make the process expensive. This happens when the candidates get frustrated due to the lack of communication from the company’s side.

This also poses a risk to the brand itself, as candidates with negative experiences of hiring might talk about them with other people or post them online on websites that give information about employers or even via social networking sites.

There is a connection between the candidate experience and recruiting effectiveness for HR teams. When there is an established procedure, there will be no need to follow up, increasing the productivity of the recruiters.

This makes it hard to manage candidate experience in large organizations, as there will be many individuals involved. The candidate could come into contact with recruiters, HR coordinators, hiring managers, interview panels, document collection personnel, and background verification firms.

Without such connections, delays in feedback on candidate statuses can arise. This is because it will be difficult for the internal team to check on interview statuses, offer statuses, completion statuses, and joining readiness statuses.

That is why candidate experience must not rely solely on the personal initiative of the recruiter. It requires an organized recruiting process, defined ownership, effective communication and the right handover from recruiting to onboarding.

For instance, after the candidate accepts the job offer, the process should be smooth flowing to joining formalities and document submission among others. At this point, a well-connected Onboarding Management workflow can come in handy to minimize the confusions that come with the process.

Poor candidate experience usually shows up in simple but important gaps. – Candidates may not know whether their application was received – Interviews may be scheduled at short notice. – Feedback may not be shared for weeks. – Offer discussions may be delayed because internal approvals are pending. – Selected candidates may also face confusion around joining documents or onboarding steps.

The gaps seem trivial on the inside, but to the candidate they cause confusion. The candidate who thinks that he has been ignored or left uninformed may feel like the organization is unstructured despite an otherwise appealing job position.

A good experience for the candidate will result when the hiring process is clear and well planned out. This can begin with crafting detailed job descriptions, avoiding complications with the application process, and setting reasonable timetables for each phase.

Communications are equally significant. Applicants need to be aware of where they are in the process, what documents they need, when they will receive the next progress report, and who to talk to for any queries.

Prepared interviewers and hiring managers contribute equally to the process, as does the structured evaluation form used by recruiters, who must give immediate feedback. If the feedback given during an interview is not captured correctly, the recruiter will have to chase it up continually.