As the fight for talent continues to evolve, the latest battleground revolves around Candidate Experience. Here, our Talent Pros provide some expert strategies to employ as you enter the arena.
Hiring Friction Component
Candidate Experience
Candidate experience is centered on answering the question: How do candidates feel throughout our hiring process?
Creating a consistently positive experience for candidates improves your employer brand and talent market positioning, while also increasing the likelihood that candidates will move through your pipeline and ultimately accept your offers. According to research by The Talent Board, candidates who have a negative experience—and therefore a high level of resentment toward an employer—are less likely to apply again or refer others to that employer. And this is something that every employer should be paying attention to, because candidate resentment rose from 8% in 2020 to 14% in 2021—a 75% spike*.
Candidate experience might sound like an abstract concept, but there are several specific elements that connect to candidate experience. For example, the amount of time it takes to move through an application process is a critical factor. According to Greenhouse research**, 66% of candidates say the length of the initial application is a factor in considering whether they’ll complete and submit it. More than 70% of job seekers say that if the initial application takes more than 15 minutes to complete, they won’t apply to a role.
Similarly, the frequency of communication and level of transparency candidates receive once they’ve applied for a job can impact the candidate experience.
Today’s candidates expect frequent updates on the status of their application, information on how to best prepare for the next stage of the hiring process, and feedback on how they’re doing.
Meeting those expectations can help ensure a positive candidate experience.
When candidate experience is high friction, it’s not considered, measured, or believed to be important. Good candidates are frequently lost in the process, but the reasons why are unknown. And in these situations, if measured, the candidate experience would be scored as very poor.
When candidate experience is low friction, however, delivering an excellent candidate experience is considered critical to the success of the overall hiring process. Candidate experience is continuously measured and the results are acted upon.
*Source: TalentBoard 2021 North American Candidate Experience Research Report
**Source: https://www.greenhouse.io/blog/key-learnings-from-the-2022-greenhouse-candidate-experience-report
Talent Acquisition Diagnostic assessment
Take the Hiring Friction assessment to benchmark the performance of your recruitment function using the components of the Hiring Friction Maturity Matrix.
Related Posts
Previous Hiring Friction Component
Do we understand where to find good candidates and the issues that may affect supply?
Next Hiring Friction Component
How efficient and effective is our recruitment process at managing candidates through screening, assessment and selection?
Trusted by the world’s most exciting companies.
