Candidate Experience Best Practices

Hiring employees is a very important thing that hiring managers and employers should be able to handle and hire the best people.

It should be noted that the first thing that every manager and recruiter does for recruitment is to publish an employment ad so that job seekers see the ad and reach out to it to interview for a job position.

Do you think job seekers only pay attention to the simple ad published? Does it mean that only one ad will make many candidates refer to your company?

When you want to hire people for your business, if you want many people to come to you, you should try to design and implement the steps of the recruitment process in such a way that many people are attracted to it and want to try their luck for employment in your organization. 

Such a process that makes candidates have a better experience for recruitment and encourages them to accept your job offer is called candidate experience.

Candidate experience will be more critical than ever in 2023 for companies looking to attract top talent and hiring skilled people that will help their business grow.

Besides, a positive experience throughout the recruitment process increases the candidate’s perception of the company and its services.

In this article, we will talk about candidate experience and provide tips that help you improve the candidate experience.

What Is The Candidate Experience?

The candidate’s experience is actually one of the most critical factors in attracting talented candidates to your company so that you can hire the best people.

Generally speaking, the definition of candidate experience is how candidates and job seekers think about your company when they go through the hiring process.

In fact, it means how the candidates see your company’s hiring process, which includes the job advertisement and the face-to-face interview. That ultimately gives job seekers a better view of your business and organization and can make a better decision to accept your job offer or request an interview.

Broadly speaking, the candidate’s experience can strengthen or weaken an applicant’s opinion of a hiring company for reasons that have little to do with the job offer. 

Why Is Candidate Experience Important?

According to the explanations in the previous sections, you have understood what candidate experience is and why employers and hiring managers should care about it. This section examines the importance of candidate experience, so you can better understand it.

A positive candidate experience is vital cause it ensures satisfied candidates will admire your company in their social circles and talk about your company. Moreover, when you provide a good candidate experience, the rejected individuals will remain potential customers and can benefit your company and business.

Besides, studies show that 65% of job seekers with a positive candidate experience will likely reach out to your company again. It is also interesting to know that candidates are more likely to accept a job offer after having a positive candidate experience.

In the following, we will tell some of the reasons for the importance of candidate experience.

• It makes your talent pool bigger
• Increase the candidates’ satisfaction
• Brings brand awareness
• Provide better hiring quality
• Increases your brand value
• It causes happier employee retention
• Help employers to cut extra costs
• Help hiring managers hire top talents faster and sooner
• Improve your company culture
• It strengthens your employer’s brand

The things mentioned in this section are the most important reasons for the importance of candidate experience. Still, there are undoubtedly more cases that will make you realize its importance and benefits if you have a good candidate experience for your company.

10 Candidate Experience Best Practices

If you want to be the winner of the talent hiring war, improving the candidate experience is essential. And now that you are familiar with candidate experience and its benefits and importance, it is time to discuss the methods that will help you implement a better candidate experience in your company to take advantage of its benefits.

1- Prepare The Suitable Job Description

The first thing you should consider is the description you write about your job position and company.

Note that the text of your description is attractive so that candidates are attracted to it at first glance and want to know more about it.

Also, try to be honest! Write the job description according to the conditions that really exist in your company because if you exaggerate, you may hire good people. Still, they will quit quickly when they work in your company for a while and realize that the conditions are not the same as what you wrote in the job description.

2- Use The Proper Technology In The Hiring Process

These days, technology plays a vital role in making things easier, so try to use the right technology for this.

You can use artificial intelligence to review numerous resumes, which will quickly help you find the candidates you want.

In addition, you can use some bots to find your desired candidates, reach out to them, and provide you with more information about them.

Remember that you can use the video interview, which has recently become very popular; this method saves you and the candidates time and money and shortens the interview and recruitment process.

3- Try To Be Consistent With The Candidate’s Schedule

One of the ways that increase the candidate’s experience is that you coordinate with the candidate’s plan and available hours. 

When you want to set an interview time with them, ensure they are available when you request and can prepare themselves for the interview.

Some people may not be able to interview during business hours, so try to be flexible and, if possible, interview at a convenient time.

4- Make Sure The Application Process Is Straightforward

The application process is one of the most important aspects of having a positive candidate experience. So, if you want your company to grow, ensure every step of the hiring process is easy. Otherwise, candidates may give up moving to the next steps of the hiring process.

For example, design the recruitment process, so people can easily upload their resumes and save their steps to ensure you will receive their information.

Moreover, remember that many jobseekers use their phone to apply for a job, so ensure the hiring process is mobile-friendly.

5- Personalize Your Communication Strategy

Try to have a strategy that is specific to you and matches your company’s style so that you can communicate with candidates more efficiently.

Don’t forget old communication methods, such as emails that start with “Dear Candidate,” are not popular anymore, and successful companies use their communication strategy.

Instead of the old methods, have your own communication style to have a better relationship with the candidates and attract them more easily.

6- Treat All Candidates The Same

Treat all candidates equally during the interview. Try to check all their background and skills and listen to them when they talk to you.

If you find out during the interview that someone is not the candidate you are looking for, try not to confuse them and listen to them carefully until the end of the interview because if you reject them in the middle of the interview, that candidate may write negative reviews about your company and candidate experience as soon as they leave your office which will damage your reputation. 

7- Ask For Candidates’ Feedback

One of the critical things that help your company provide a better candidate experience is to ask for candidates’ feedback after the interview. This will help you understand and identify your strengths and areas to improve.

In addition, when you ask people to give you their opinion about the interview and how it was conducted, it makes the candidates feel valued and know that their opinion is important to you and your organization. So, if you don’t hire a particular candidate but ask for their idea, they will not talk badly about your business.

8- Be Transparent About Your Company And Business

One of the most important things you need to do to improve candidate experience is to be transparent and honest in all stages of recruitment.

Try to be honest about the business, employment conditions, work methods, and so on, and provide a clear job description and explain the details honestly during the interview. This creates a sense of trust, and candidates will feel better about working with you.

Also, being transparent will help you avoid problems with your employees in the future because, as mentioned, if you exaggerate the working conditions and your company, you may lose your employees after a while. After all, they will not notice the difference between what you explained and the reality.

9- Ensure Candidates Feel Comfortable During The Interview

Don’t forget that one of the important things you should pay attention to is creating a calm and stress-free environment for the interview employees; basically, people are usually stressed during the interview, so try not to make them more stressed.

Make sure they are comfortable during the interview, you can offer them a drink like water and tell them they can ask any questions, so they know you care about them.

Moreover, don’t carry your phone if possible because receiving and answering phone calls during an interview can make candidates feel like they aren’t getting enough of your attention. 

10- Do Not Leave Candidates Onboarding

Try to shorten the time between the final interview and the candidates entering the company, don’t make them wait too long. It is better to provide conditions for employees to join their new team more comfortably.

After all, the hiring process doesn’t end after the last interview, be intentional about the onboarding process for each candidate. For example, you can email new hires and explain the details about their first day in the work environment.

If your new hires work remotely, ensure you provide all the needed equipment and send them to their house before they start working.

In general, be creative about this and provide conditions for candidates to be ready to perform well before starting the job.

Conclusion

As mentioned earlier, hiring employees is very important, but it is more important that your hiring conditions are in a way that brings many talented candidates to your company.

In this article, we talked about candidate experience comprehensively, examined its importance and benefits, and finally provided you with 10 things that will help you deliver a better candidate experience.

Using the content mentioned in this article, you can ensure that candidates with skills are attracted to your company and want to work with you.