Why executives need to put candidate experience on their agenda—and now

This is exactly how people are recruited today and what so many job seekers experience every year. There may be hundreds or thousands of applicants for a job, but only one individual gets the position. The vast majority of candidates are stuck in a fuzzy, never-ending recruitment process. Your customers expect transparency. Why shouldn’t your candidates as well? After all, they are at the same time/also your potential customers.

The way we recruit is fundamentally broken.True human touch has been missing from recruitment for far too long. At the same time, the war for the best talent has never been more fierce. Companies are investing a considerable amount of time and money into attracting and hiring the best talents. However, they are failing to have a transparent dialogue with their candidates and actively nurture their talent pipelines. This is mind-boggling. It is like taking one step forwards and two steps back. This leads to talent disengagement, negative employer image and loss of business/lost business.

A major paradigm shift is taking place in recruitment—a shift towards bringing the needs of job candidates and recruiters closer together. Candidate experience is becoming a top/high priority for all successful companies.

Or start by reading this blog about how Candidate Experience can be defined.

Candidate experience—so what?

Executives need to put recruiting and candidate experience onto their agendas. Poor candidate experience poses a serious threat to a company’s employer image and branding, which limits their potential to attract the top talent and achieve future growth. It is also worth remembering that every candidate is a potential customer for the recruiting company at the same time.

Meanwhile, 41% of candidates had a poor overall candidate experience and indicated that they will henceforth take their product purchases and professional relationships elsewhere.

In 2015, TalentBoard conducted a Candidate Experience survey that collected the responses of more than 130,000 job candidates. According to the survey, more than 91% of employers made zero contact beyond the automated acknowledgement of their application receipt. Meanwhile, 41% of candidates had a poor overall candidate experience and indicated that they will henceforth take their product purchases and professional relationships elsewhere. Worse yet, 33% of candidates intended to share their negative candidate experience publicly via their social networks. This should be a wakeup call to the many companies failing to provide positive and equal candidate experiences for their potential talents.

The miserable current state of job candidate experiences indicates that many current recruitment processes are outdated and fundamentally flawed. Another factor that indicates the recruitment process is long overdue for a true shakeup is the rapid evolution and increasing fragmentation of job markets. Recruiting is becoming more and more personal, with talents being sought for progressively more specialized roles. In many cases, this also increases recruitment costs by expanding HR workloads. This fragmentation has also produced a trend called “on-and-off recruitment”, which describes the constant stopping and starting of the recruitment process. This poses a serious threat of causing talent disengagement because it leaves candidates vulnerable to endless waiting without any awareness of the recruitment proceedings or their application status.

Obviously, many current recruitment processes are outdated and fundamentally flawed. As job markets continue to rapidly evolve and fragment, it is becoming clearer that recruitment processes are long overdue for a shakeup. Recruiting is becoming more personal, with talents being sought for progressively more specialized roles, consequently expanding HR workloads. This fragmentation also interrupts recruiting with constant stops and starts in the recruitment process. This can cause talent disengagement by leaving candidates endlessly waiting, totally unaware of the recruitment proceedings or their application status.

At the same time, data has an evolving role in recruitment. Data is being utilized in completely new ways.Yet many companies are also stuck with old HR legacy systems that are better designed for storing information than for using it. These aging and inflexible HR systems make it difficult to offer a proactive and transparent recruitment process to all candidates. They do not allow companies to build engaged and effective talent pipelines.

So what is good candidate experience?

This is quite simple really. Good candidate experience consists of equal, pro-active and transparent candidate processes for all applicants — not just to the applicant chosen for the job. As we all know, waiting for a recruitment decision is a very lonely job. When candidates get real-time and transparent information on the recruitment process and their position in it, they are more committed to the process. Remarkably, this transparency and open communication can make candidates more receptive even when rejected.

“According to CareerBuilder, 69% of candidates are more likely to buy from a company to which they have applied if they are treated with respect throughout the application process.”

This is quite simple really. Good candidate experience consists of equal, pro-active and transparent candidate processes for all applicants—not just for the applicant chosen for the job. As we all know, waiting for a recruitment decision is a very lonely job. When candidates get real-time and transparent information on the recruitment process and their status (position) in it, they are more committed to the process. Remarkably, this transparency and open communication can make candidates more receptive even when rejected. According to CareerBuilder, 69% of candidates are more likely to buy from a company to which they have applied if they were treated with respect throughout the application process.

“84% of job candidates expect a some kind of personal email response.”

Another key element of a positive candidate experience is individualized feedback. According to CareerBuilder, 84% of job candidates expect some kind of personal email response. And at the same time, 73% of candidates who interviewed with companies said they were never given an explanation for why they didn’t get the job. In too many cases, feedback is limited to generic and blunt statements: “Thank you for your interest in this position. Unfortunately, we have decided to move forward in the process without you.”These responses offer little information regarding why they were rejected or what elements were lacking from their résumés. In many cases, it can feel like a slap in the face.

But, when candidates get personalized feedback on their applications, what was good and where they need to develop, they can appreciate and discover areas for professional development and hence improve their personal brand to create more value in the job market. While this does not change the situation of a specific candidate not chosen for a job, it can turn an initially disappointing event into a positive eventual outcome. Furthermore, this constructive interaction can create goodwill towards your employer image. A good recruitment experience also keeps candidates more interested in future job possibilities. Suddenly, there could be hundreds of very competent professionals in your talent pipeline, people who are actually interested in your upcoming job postings.

“In as little as 10 seconds per candidate, you can provide fully personalized feedback with our help.”

All this has been previously considered impossible. How can you effectively give personalized feedback to hundreds of applicants? But today, this is not impossible. In as little as 10 seconds per candidate, you can provide fully personalized feedback with our help.

Current recruitment processes fail to address the needs of candidates. Traditional solutions seldom provide recruiters with efficient tools for recruiting loyal talents and building engaged talent pipelines. We formed TalentAdore based on the resolute belief that every job candidate deserves to be treated with respect. Simply put, we wanted to bring the human touch back into recruitment. Join our journey and follow us to learn more about how we aim to build better companies and careers through a distinctively superior candidate experience. Watch this blog develop to see how we build stronger companies and careers.

Let’s reimagine the recruitment process and work towards superior candidate experience together.

Saku Valkama and the rest of Talentadors

Did we catch your interest? Request a demo to see how we can help you to provide superior Candidate Experience.