The End to End Candidate Experience

In this day and age, even if your company is well known or has a great success story to tell if your recruitment process is not held in a positive way by the candidates it affects the prospects of the employer to attract the right talent to the company.

Nearly 80% of candidates see this as how well a company treats its people and if they get a cold response then they will choose another firm over you. The candidate’s experience is made up of many touch points, starting from the application process to the final selection. Let us go through these touchpoints and give you some tips on how to improve them.

1.  The Application Process

This is the first touchpoint, the application process must be smooth and easy. This shouldn’t be clumsy and the questions you ask should be relevant to the job role. Nearly half of the candidates quit the application process midway if it’s too lengthy and if the site is full of errors.

To make it easy for candidates, Make it Mobile-friendly as 90% of candidates apply through their mobile phones. Making it mobile-friendly can help with the accessibility of a larger pool of candidates. So optimise it for both mobile and website.

Also, make candidates aware of the average time it takes to finish the application process and any other things like image formats, file sizes etc before the start of the process. So candidates are prepared beforehand and can easily finish the process without any hiccups. Including a ” Save for later ” option it will help candidates complete the application process in their own time and this will help you to get more candidates.

2.  Sorting of Application

An average job post receives well over 100’s applications and sorting those needs to be done carefully. There shouldn’t be any bias or discrimination in any way when they sort and select candidates from the applied pool.

A fair process makes great hiring and candidates will be eager to join that firm. Plus when you select candidates from the lot, they will receive an email regarding their selection, but it is often not the case for those who were not selected. An email with a simple line saying they are not shortlisted will go on a long way over no response and people will feel appreciated, and feel good about the firm. They are more likely to apply for other positions if and when they are available with the same firm.

So be bias-free and respond back to everyone that applied with the appropriate message.

3.  Interview Scheduling

After selecting candidates through simple sorting or through an assessment if there are many candidates for that particular position. But if you are doing an online/offline assessment make sure that everything is communicated to the candidates with ample time to prep and travel. Also, the assessment platform should be easy to use and perform well.

So after selecting candidates comes the interview process, and for that one needs to schedule first. Many employers face the uphill task of properly scheduling or intimating the candidates early on. Imagine you are hiring to fill a lot of vacancies, hundreds of positions. Then if you do the assessment in stages and plan to conduct the interviews after all assessment is finished might be stupid and a waste of time. Conducting or scheduling interviews soon after the selection will help you to lessen the hiring time, keep those candidates locked in your company and avoid any other delays or issues of keeping the candidates waiting for long.

So always communicate to the candidates well in advance about the interview schedule so that they can change the date or time of the interview if they have any inconvenience. This will also help employers reduce the chance of a no-show.

If you are directly reaching out to candidates after a quick shortlisting, it will be better to reach out to the candidates within a few days of applying to keep this application fresh in their minds. Communicate with them through email or calls or through SMS and keep them updated on the interview schedule.

These all make a candidate feel good and cared for, so he/she is more likely to attend the interview on the scheduled date.

4.  The Interview

In the past interviews were just two people, the candidate and the employer/HR talking about their common interests and passions which led to a lot of bias in hiring. This often led to hiring sub-optimal candidates instead of talented ones.

Modern candidates perceive and prefer interviews to be fair and would not hesitate to walk away from those who aren’t. A Fair interview gives all the candidates equal opportunities to showcase their talent and skills. Plus it will help with the office diversity and culture.

Plus having on-demand or interview scheduling options anywhere anytime will help to attract a wider pool of talented candidates. By giving candidates all the instructions in advance with dates, the interview app ( in case of a virtual interview ) will help in conducting it in a smooth, friction-free way.

5.  Interview Followup 

This is the final touchpoint for employer-candidate interaction before he/she becomes your employee. This is also the most frustrating part for the candidates, The waiting to hear back from an interview. Just like more than 75% never get a response to their application, here also more than 60% of those interviewed usually don’t hear back from the employer. That’s why candidates are eager to know if they are selected or not at the interview time itself, so employers need to be trained and make sure everyone at the interview stage gets a response back whether they are selected or not.

If a candidate is selected they quickly communicate it to the candidate to avoid the waiting frustration and to lock that candidate into your company, else he/she may pursue other interviews and may get an immediate response from there.

Also if a candidate is not selected just communicate that with them and provide constructive feedback as to why they were not selected for that role. This shows that you value candidates as well as your employees. Those candidates who receive feedback are far more likely to consider that company in future also.

So always leave candidates in a positive/good manner and this will help in having a talent pipeline for your hirings. A positive candidate experience will ensure that your organisation will have the talent pipeline it needs.

Here at Hireclap.com, we have a robust candidate management system from the time of the application process till selection. so do check it out.