Saving the Candidate Experience – A Complete Guide

Prateek was staring at the long list of candidates he had to screen, and the coffee at his desk seemed a lot more tempting than the heavy lifting he had to do. So, he returned to the espresso again and again to take slow, noisy sips. The thought of playing God always made him uneasy, but it was the day in and day out for every recruiter like him.

The search begins

Tina was a prospect he wanted to talk to. He had jotted her name down on his trusty yellow pad and was looking back at the screen, staring at her LinkedIn profile.

Though she was not the purple squirrel he’d been on lookout for, she came surprisingly close to being one. He was going to begin with Tina, then talk to Jeet and Rinku and twenty-five others for today. He would scout for more tomorrow, and then if he is lucky, then Prateek could make the final offer to a candidate in two weeks.

Yes, there’s a lot of resumes to rummage through, and in his long career as a recruiter it had taken at least as much time to hire for an executive role. Why should this be any different? He always paid attention to the candidate experience and so far, it’s been so good everyone in the management believed he and his peers couldn’t put a foot wrong.

Define candidate experience

Candidate experience is the perception a jobseeker has about your company and the overall impact it creates on them, positive or negative. It’s very similar to customer experience, in that both candidate and customer are outside the company, try to improve processes through feedback, and give their honest opinion about the product or service (or process, for a candidate) when asked to. Companies can learn just as much about their hiring process from candidates as they can from customers about a product or service they are offering.

What are some examples of great candidate experience?

Great candidate experience is recognized through not just great copy, but the overall experience at the interview, the ease of completing the application and screening assessments etc. But we will look here at examples where it is evident in great copy, one of the first frontiers where the candidate experience needs to be strengthened.

The first example is a letter of rejection from EY

Let’s see what this letter of rejection does right, and why in our opinion it is a piece of spectacular writing that does so many things write in so little space.

• Acknowledging interest

The letter begins with an acknowledgement of the candidate’s interest in EY.

• Respecting candidate’s time

Then it proceeds to acknowledge that EY values the candidate’s time.

• Citing reason for rejection

It then informs the candidate why he was not selected.

• Encourages candidate to keep applying

In this step, the letter encourages the candidate to continue applying for jobs at EY.

• Cites reasons for why EY is great for work

Next, the letter adds why people join EY and what EY has to offer.

• Adds a link to the Careers site

The letter also adds a link to the Carrers site where candidates can search for opportunities.

• Encourages candidates to stay in touch on social media

This greatly improves the engagement on social media.

The second is an offer letter from Deloitte.

The letter does so many things right, something we suggest you emulate! Here are the things we spotted:

• A warm welcome

After congratulating the candidate, Deloitte welcomes him to its family. This also makes it very personal.

• Acknowledges candidate performance

The letter goes on to say that the impression was favourable.

• Make an offer

The letter then describes what role the candidate is offered and where.

• Welcome to discuss offer letter

If the candidate wants to clarify anything, they can contact the team at Deloitte.

• Welcome the candidate again

The second welcome line suggests that the candidate can make a real impact by working at Deloitte.

What are the common candidate experience touchpoints?

The candidate journey moves across several touchpoints. Right from visiting a job portal to sending an application to receiving notifications about the job status, the journey is quite a long one for many candidates, especially those who are highly skilled or experienced.

Giving a consistent and pleasant experience at every touchpoint can make even a long journey seem a lot less chaotic. Let us look at some of the common candidate experience touchpoints now:

• Organization’s job portal
• Job postings on LinkedIn, Facebook etc.
• Any point in the job application process (includes notifications about job status)
• Any message from the ATS
• Steps in the screening process
• Steps in the interviewing process
• Correspondence with hiring managers
• Rejection letter or offer letter

What are the challenges to a great candidate experience?

There are so many things that can go wrong with candidate experience. In fact, just as customer experience is a discipline all by itself, candidate experience must be too. The list below is not complete, and there could be several other barriers to a great candidate experience.

Lack of time for recruiter

Sometimes, due to the sheer volume of applications received, the recruiter is unable to close the loop properly on the applications he/she is rejecting and is not even able to draft a great offer letter to welcome a candidate onboard. To get more time when conversing with candidates, your organization can use an applicant tracking system or candidate experience management platform.

Candidate Experience Platform is not up to speed

The Candidate experience platform is not advanced enough to give a more detailed overview of each stage of hiring, the candidates at each stage. What if the information of the candidates is also not obtained reliably? Or if the candidates have crossed a stage but they do not progress in the platform? Some other questions you can ask are:

• Does it offer customizable candidate pipelines, interview kits and scorecards?
• Is there e-mail and calendar sync?
• Does it offer profiles from several premium job boards, and can you shortlist from a huge talent pool very effectively?
• Is there a possibility of enabling and tracking employee referrals?
• How great is the reporting feature? Does it support viewing current pipeline, activity by members of your recruitment team, hiring velocity, time to hire etc.
• Does it bring down the cost of hire too over time?

These are some of the things you should check when picking a candidate experience platform.

Candidate expectations are too high

The candidate’s expectations are too high, and you are not able to meet them. This could also lead to a dissatisfaction experienced by the candidate that does not go away even after they say no to the job. To avoid this, you need to set the right expectations.

If there is a mismatch between your messaging and the actual work culture or compensation, for instance, then set the record straight. Let them know of the actual work culture or compensation.  Also, let the candidate know why there is a mismatch and that you will have it rectified soon, if this is possible.

‘Less is more’ when it comes to describing yourself in recruitment messaging or if you do want to be more detailed, be sure to put the clauses in the right places. Add only valid awards and certifications that you have received and double check if any error has been unintentionally introduced into a job posting.

Recruiter expectations are too high

Yes, as recruiters, you are always on the lookout for that spirited, fast, and highly elusive ‘purple squirrel’. While it is great to always have a vision of what the perfect candidate would be like, it doesn’t always work. Sometimes you do get the perfect candidate, and this then deserves a spirited celebration.

Sometimes you do have to compromise on a few non-essential skills. When you make a job posting, talk to the manager in charge of the team, what his/her talent priorities are and where he/she is prepared to make a compromise. Then highlight those non-essential skills and make it clear in your job post as well, that these are desirable, but not necessary.

This way you will not miss out on candidates who may bring some non-traditional skills on board or have higher interpersonal skills than others, the kind that matters if they continue in your company and rise to an executive level.

Lack of proper infrastructure

Sometimes, the lack of proper infrastructure could hurt the candidate experience. This could be by way of an offline interaction, such as coming down to your office for an interview at an agreed-on time, and finding it locked and bolted, lack of a good chair to sit on, or a lack of clean tables or toilets on the company premises.

It could also be because of ‘unhappy interactions in the digital realm’, which could arise from an unstable connection to the Internet, an applicant tracking system that is inaccurate and which disqualifies the client for no valid reason, or a lack of enough recruiters to manage the recruitment pipeline, leading to widespread dissatisfaction among the candidates, all of whom are still staring at a generic reply or no reply at all.

Lack of research by candidate

Sometimes, the candidate has not done enough research and is led astray by several websites presenting conflicting information about the company, especially when the company website is not authoritative enough.

This may cause the candidate to develop a negative image of the company and continue to believe in it. He/she may not have a complete picture of the role on offer either, which can lead to poor interviewing and testing experience for the candidate, hurting the overall experience.

Lack of research by recruiter

Sometimes it is the recruiter who should have done better research. If he/she approaches the candidate without proper research of the academic or work background and they shortlist based on that, then that too can lead to a situation where both recruiter and candidate are disappointed. This too can lead to poor candidate experience.

Bias from the recruiter

The recruiter may be biased and not realize it. Common unconscious biases are those based on appearance, social background, or gender. But some biases are conscious in nature, such as mentioning clearly in the job requirement that a particular sex is preferred.

Both these biases are undesirable from a recruitment perspective. They not only create an entry barrier that is unreasonable, but it also leads to poor candidate experience and hurts the organization’s image.

Bias from the candidate

Sometimes the candidate has a bias such as “Oh, this organization is not environment-friendly” or that “Oh, this organization hires only people from a certain class of the society or from certain academic backgrounds”.

This could be based on superficial reading from untrustworthy sources or even by word of mouth or driven by a single unpleasant experience. To remove such biases in the candidate, you must provide authoritative sources that discuss the truth and ask the candidate to discuss whatever issues he/she may have openly and sort them out.

 

Absence of empathy

A lack of empathy hampers candidate experience like nothing else can. Recruiters may not always be empathetic to the candidates or may seem like that. This is because they probably don’t ask enough questions or do not acknowledge when the candidate shares his/her problems, pertaining to the recruitment process, previous work, life etc.

 

Recruiters may also be caught up in a blind spot, where they do not make note of the candidate’s special needs, if any. Sometimes the candidate may be neurodivergent but is grouped under general candidates and asked to complete the screening process in a similar way.

 

This also shows a clear lack of empathy. Asking the right questions, acknowledging at the right intervals, giving the right concessions to specific candidates can all contribute to empathy during the hiring process and can improve candidate experience greatly.

 

Job not attractive enough

Sometimes the role may not be equally attractive to a person, who may either find it too mundane or think he/she is too overqualified for it and that it does not offer the remuneration they deserve.

As a recruiter, when you make a requisition, make sure you approach only the right candidates. A Candidate management/experience platform can do a brilliant job of this, not only searching for the right candidates among millions, but also giving a summary of their skills and interests and even monthly salary (if mentioned) pulled up from various job boards.

Why is candidate experience so important?

Candidate experience must not be viewed in an isolated manner. It cannot be addressed by asking for and then viewing just feedback from candidates. A lot of things that decide the actual candidate experience are left unsaid and there are several challenges to candidate experience, as we saw earlier. But, to begin with, why does candidate experience important?

Helps continue healthy relationships

If someone is rejected, don’t let that be the end of the road. Always inform the candidate via mail or a call that they would be contacted if found eligible for a role later, but that for now they aren’t. If possible, let them know why they weren’t selected. Let there be water under the bridge, let’s definitely not burn the bridge.

Reduces time to hire and cost of hire

Studies show that the best talent in the market goes away in the first ten days of a job application being posted. By making the candidate’s journey seamless and intuitive, a candidate can easily move from the homepage to the job portal, and then finally submit their resume. By providing the right information, the candidate experience can be further improved.

As the number of candidates submitting applications within a period goes up, the probability that one of them will be hired also goes up. Hence the time to hire would be reduced, and with it the total cost of hiring too.

Improves the quality of hires

As the time to hire a candidate goes down, and the process becomes more intuitive and the candidate experience improves, over time the brand can expect the quality of hires to also improve.

As the word gets around that the organization has a great hiring process and cultural fit, in addition to being a top workplace, then candidates will start to choose this company over others. This will give the company access to a lot of great hires.

Improves employer brand reputation

More and more people who apply to a company that offers a great candidate experience will tell others in their immediate circles about the company.

As more people get to hear about the great candidate experience at the company and the promptness of the HR, they will recommend it to others even if they haven’t gone through the recruitment process yet.

This improves the reputation of the brand as an employer. Then trust us that the ‘Great Place to Work’ award wouldn’t be too far away in the future for your organization.

Improves your bottom line

As your brand reputation improves and you start to acquire more quality hires in a small span of time, your bottom line will benefit in two ways:

1. More quality hires in a small period means increased productivity, which improves the bottom line for your company.
2. More purchases from people who know your organization because of its great reputation also means that the bottom line improves.

What are the prerequisites to ensure a great candidate experience?

You can’t go from B to C without deciding where B and C are and most importantly completing the walk from A to B.

Similarly, for a great candidate experience, you must first ensure that all the prerequisites for a great candidate experience are ready. Let us now look at some of the most important among them:

Brand

Because building a great candidate experience is like a marketing endeavour, it is important to build a brand first.

People

No company with a great candidate experience can thank their HR team and other stakeholders enough. They are the pillars of a great candidate experience strategy. The operations team ensures your company is managing its business well.

The digital marketing team will help formulate ideas that will project you as a strong employer brand and invite more reviews from existing users. The HR teams will refine the process of recruitment, write clearer job descriptions, and build familiarity with changes in job platforms and the browsing and application habits of candidates etc.

Strategy

Your HR team should already have one in the form of a great leader. If you think you need assistance with HR strategy, best to consult an HR consulting organization like Alp Consulting, who have been in the business for more than 25 years, finding organizations much needed talent and improving candidate experience, without sacrificing organizational goals.

You could otherwise recruit an HR strategist as well who would work with your HR team to improve processes to ensure great candidate experience.

Enthusiasm

Believe it or not, this is very important. The success of your candidate experience planning also depends largely on the enthusiasm and the willingness that your stakeholders have perhaps even to change age old processes for the sake of candidates and your company.

These stakeholders could be decision makers on the board, your organization’s leaders, or current employees.

Tools

To ensure a great candidate experience, you must first understand the candidate journey. To do so, you must have a tool that monitors the candidate’s actions on your website and your job platform. To do some you must have a human capital management software.

There are many such software on the market. Do proper research and see if it fulfils your need before going ahead with it.

Stakeholders and how they influence the candidate experience

A great candidate experience is driven by organizational unity, a sense of direction and stakeholders who believe in the company’s vision for its workforce. And who exactly are these stakeholders? These stakeholders are decision makers, employees and members on the board. Even your vendors could play a role. Let us now look at each one of them.

HR Team

The HR team is the most important stakeholder on this list. They are responsible for the entire hiring process, the sustenance of corporate culture, and the quality of hires among several other things that impact the candidate experience directly and indirectly.

If your HR team is efficient, technology-savvy, resourceful and empathetic, then a lot of the problems with candidate experience can be avoided. For the HR team to perform consistently they will need encouragement from employees and decision makers and training from senior HR leaders.

They will also need to allocate responsibilities among themselves and ensure that each person on the team is aware of his/her responsibilities.

Employees

Employees are the advocates for your company. They speak on your behalf and elevate your brand in the circles they are engaged in. Employees can refer to people in their circles who they feel would be a great fit for the company, and it works great true from the perspective of recruitment.

According to Forbes, referrals have a 16.7% applicant hire rate, and referred applicants are 13 times more likely to receive an offer than applicants from job boards. How does this translate to great candidate experience?

When the applicant hire rate goes up, it means that a higher percentage of candidates are likely to get hired. This means far fewer rejections and a much better candidate experience overall.

Decision makers

Decision makers are responsible for how well the candidate engagement process works. They are responsible for the way recruitment or staffing happens, whether the organization spends on analytics tools etc.

Decision makers are also responsible for providing suggestions and placing directives to improve the HR processes in a company, thereby also affecting the overall candidate experience. They also decide how much a candidate is worth to the company, what remuneration a candidate will be offered and how the pay will be made.

Vendors

Vendors can become your brand advocates if they believe that your company is doing a great job. They can recommend you to other vendors or partners they work with and put them in touch with you for any requirement you have.

This way you not only grow your business with trusted vendors but also improve the reputation of the company because of this and the word-of-mouth campaigns that your vendors will run for you!

As the reputation of your company grows, more candidates would be happy to work with you. The vendors are also responsible for the infrastructure and the software that you use in your recruitment processes. In this way too, they can impact the candidate experience.

If the infrastructure and the software they provide enables a seamless experience for your candidates, then that too will improve the candidate experience.

IT

If you have an IT support team, they too can become a key stakeholder in candidate experience. They can assist the HR team by ensuring that the computers they use and their accessibility to the Internet and overall stability of the operating system is top notch.

And if your recruitment management software is in-house, then IT becomes an even more important stakeholder in the candidate experience. IT also manages the access levels that each person from the HR team has to assess and for how long and the data security and privacy of candidate information, all of which again can critically affect candidate experience.

Measuring the candidate experience

The candidate experience can be measured by using specific metrics applicable only during one of the pre-application, application, and interview. There are also global metrics such as hiring velocity and candidate survey responses that are applicable for the entire process and are calculated in post-interview stage. Let us now look at some of those metrics and what they mean.

Pre-application

• Candidate sources – Where do your candidates come from: The LinkedIn page, the website or some other job portal? How can you improve your employer branding across these sources?

 

• Bounce rates – Do candidates who visit your website or view your job posting on an online job board leave quickly? Can you make the descriptions more concise, informative and trustworthy?

 

• Career site conversion rate – How many candidates are converting across the career sites you are posting your job applications to? If you find a few career sites that are not delivering any value, then you could abandon them.

 

Application

• Application completion rate – How many candidates completed the application to be eligible for the interview?
• Application abandonment rate – How many candidates abandoned their applications? Can something be done to bring down the abandonment rate at this stage? Is it that the value of working with the company is not clearly communicated to the candidates?
• Application-to-interview rate – How many candidates who completed the application reached the interview stage?

Interview

• Number of touch points – How many touchpoints did the candidate go through before they reached the interview stage? How did they feel about it?
• Reputation metrics – Net promoter Score (NPS)
• Interview-to-offer rate – How many candidates who attended the interview made it to the offer stage?

Post-interview

• Time per stage – What was the time per stage of the recruitment process?
• Offer acceptance rate – How many candidates accepted the offer? What were the main reasons cited during rejection, if they did cite any?
• Candidate satisfaction – Was the candidate satisfied with the process? Was the entire process transparent and was there enough communication?
• Hiring velocity – Total number of hires in each period divided by the total time it takes to fill those positions.
• Time-to-hire – What is the total time taken from application to hiring? This is important because longer cycles mean either a lot of rejections or lengthy interview and screening processes, both of which are detractors from candidate experience.

12 ways to improve the candidate experience

1. Coach the HR team periodically

Coach the HR team periodically to keep up with more recent recruiting challenges and also develop skills to conquer with confidence the common challenges they face.

This could include everyday challenges such as how to reply back to a person who has responded dissonantly to a rejection mail or a relatively newer one, such as people requesting remote work, when there is no such option. How do you then justify your position?

2. Write great job descriptions

Writing great job descriptions innovatively is an art. Job description need not be dull and boring. They can be interesting to read, and they should be.

Remember to be authentic and informative when you write your job post, answer questions like who will do the work, how the work must be done, what its frequency will be and the purpose of the work as it aligns with the goals of the organization.  Do not make job descriptions overwhelming; try to be as concise as possible.

3. Use an applicant tracking system.

An applicant tracking system generally keeps track of the applications received, the jobs that are being applied to, the HR person in charge of it and so forth. It can be more comprehensive. That’s the problem that a candidate experience management system is trying to solve.

4. Write great shortlisting, call for interview and offer letters

Make sure the letters you write to shortlist candidates are memorable, the call for interview letters invite action and that the offer letters are very welcoming.

Take time when you craft them by writing brilliant copy and use design that is aesthetically appealing and easy on the eyes. Do not use language that is patronizing or make the letter difficult to understand.

5. Use a CEM (candidate experience management system)

Use a candidate experience management system that will go beyond what an ATS normally does. In addition to keeping track of the candidate pipeline, it also produces detailed reports and will also keep track of the people who handle each task with respect to the candidate, enhancing accountability and increasing transparency in the HR team.

6. Be transparent about what’s to happen next

No surprises, now that’s a great song by Radiohead, and actually implementing this in your candidate relationships is sweet indeed. The best reward a candidate can have been appreciation of their hard work or a job, if they are up for the task and skilled enough to handle it. There’s no need to surprise them. Let them know what to expect at each stage of the candidate recruitment process, be it a round of screening or an interview.

7. Personalize the candidate experience

The candidate experience must be tailored to the needs of each candidate. For instance, for candidates who are especially abled, you may need to personalize certain aspects of the recruitment process to make it possible for them to go through the various stages.

An example is suggesting a change in accessibility settings or automatically updating them for visually impaired people, such as reading text out loud.

8. Make it easy for candidates to move in the candidate pipeline

Make it easy for candidates to move from one stage of the recruitment process to the next. Let the instructions be clear and the connection seamless between them.

At each stage, the HR team member who is in charge must be prudent enough to make the right decisions and be empathetic to the needs of the candidate.

9. Always respect the candidate’s time

The candidate may have applied to several companies with similarly demanding roles. Do not let him/her lose interest in your company. Everyone has a specific time that they will focus for on the present activity, after which they would want to do something else.

You must not send unnecessary follow or subscribe requests. Be prudent about how much time you take to respond to candidates after a round of interview or written tests.

10. Give and receive feedback without hesitation

Give feedback in a timely manner to the candidates who have applied for jobs in your organization. This will help them continuously improve themselves even while undergoing the recruitment process and know what to expect from training once they join the company.

Keep them involved by requesting their feedback at regular intervals during the acquisition and after (in case they are rejected). Such feedback, when taken seriously, can drastically improve your recruitment processes.

11. Follow-up with the candidate at each stage

Make sure you follow-up with the candidate if you do not receive a reply from them to any mail that is sent or call that is made. Do not take inaction as a sign of dismissal.

The candidate may be genuinely busy at the time or must tend to some business a lot more important than your job offer. Follow-up at least once for every mail you send out to the candidate, so they feel wanted.

12. Write empathetic and uplifting rejection letters

Don’t overlook the importance of writing a great rejection letter. The candidate wants closure, and it is always better if the HR team sends a letter of rejection in the most acceptable way possible.

Try to be as empathetic as you can, appreciate the effort, and cite the reason for rejection. Finally, give the assurance that you will be called as soon as a suitable vacancy is available.

Wish them the best of luck for the future. Do not do any of this with an air of pride or loftiness, instead strive to be practical, professional, supportive, and thoughtful. The tone of the message matters as much as the message itself, especially for a letter of rejection.

 

What can you do if your candidate experience is generally poor?

A poor candidate experience can be corrected before it is too late. And that’s great that you can, because even a less than good candidate experience can affect your brand reputation, the NPS score remains low, and the HR processes, which should remain open to mitigating risks and take on challenges, now become stagnant.

Let us look at some of the ways by which even a poor candidate experience can be transformed into something stellar.

Make sure every prerequisite to a great candidate experience is in place

We discussed the prerequisites earlier. Just try and ensure that they are all satisfied before you even begin the journey of revolutionizing your candidate experience.

Do you have all your people in place? Do you have a great strategist on board to guide you with your hiring strategy? Do you have the necessary tools to ensure a great candidate experience? Most importantly, are you enthusiastic and proactive enough to succeed? What are the barriers to making any of this happen and what can you do to overcome the challenges you are facing?

Have a discussion with the stakeholders

Try to figure out the reasons for a poor candidate experience by having discussions with stakeholders. Take advice from stakeholders on how the candidate experience can be improved.

Try to determine if the cause of a poor candidate experience is a poor reputation, an HR team that needs training, or a process that is too lengthy and complicated to go through. But most importantly, determine if every stakeholder we mentioned is doing his/her job with due diligence.

Use candidate experience management software

If your company is large enough, then you should move to a candidate experience management software, as it will highly impact your candidate experience and help to increase NPS (net promoter score) and reduce cost of hire as time to hire is also reduced.

A candidate experience management software can greatly improve your recruitment process itself, giving the HR more time to devote to strategy and creativity.

The search ends

Prateek finally succeeds in finding the right candidate in Jeetu. His gut instinct told him that Tina would be the ideal candidate but she failed to qualify for the interview.

He does consider Rinku too, but Jeetu proved to be the ideal candidate in the end. The skill requirement was nearly well matched (training would make it perfect, thought Prateek) and he had great interpersonal skills and was referred by an employee, a good marker of possible cultural fit.

Prateek was relieved he’d made the right decision. Now all he had to do was send out personalized rejection letters to all of those who applied along with the assurance that their application would remain in the company’s database and if found suitable for a future vacancy, they would definitely be contacted. Prateek was happy that he had adhered to the ‘12 great tips to improve candidate experience’ he picked up in an e-book titled Saving the Candidate Experience from Alp Consulting.