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“Almost 73% of organizations agree that candidate experience is essential to their business, but less than half believe their recruiting practices are effective.”
The current job market is largely candidate-driven and candidate experience has turned into more than just another passing HR trend. This means you don’t pick talent anymore, they pick you and they do it based on their experience of your organisation. In this, crafting a good candidate experience is a major recruitment challenge today.
The term “candidate experience” refers to a candidate’s overall experience and perception of a company’s recruiting process.
Most employers pay very little attention to the experience of their recruiting process, which often results in candidates not applying again or preventing others from applying. They may also express their experience to a massive audience of the Internet resulting in a damaged brand image.
On the other hand, a good candidate experience can lead to a higher applicant inflow, resulting in quality hires. Improved candidate experience can also lower your hiring costs and time to fill the open vacancies. This is because nearly four out of five job applicants agree that candidate experience serves as a solid indicator as to how a company values them.
This article explores 5 tried-and-tested candidate experience strategies with a proven track record of elevating your recruiting process.
An Easy Application Process Is The Right Beginning
Research indicates that the typical candidate spends over 3-4 hours preparing and submitting a job application. In this process, close to 60% of job seekers quit because of the length and complexity of the application process.
Your goal as a recruiter should be to develop the easiest application process possible for each position. There has to clear instructions at each age, followed by mobile-friendly design and confirmation and follow-up procedures in place.
Tighten up your job descriptions
In a world where nearly every company is posting attractive job listings every week, candidates don’t want to spend hours scrolling through jargon and a detailed recounting of one company’s history.
Its critical to provide details about what’s required to fulfil a certain role, how will the role help the candidate and what comprises day-to-day activities. Other key details that indicate a strong job description are nuts and bolts such as the job title, location, basic responsibility and a bit about your culture and work environment.
Here are a few tips to help you craft compelling job descriptions:
- Avoid buzzwords. Use short and simple sentences that are easy to skim.
- Bite-sized sections work well. Your writing should be crisp, relevant and easily digestible.
- Paint a picture with sections such as “A typical day at work” or “How we Work.”
Communicate Often
As modern-day recruiters shift to digital, more and more candidates expect fast and genuine communication. Over 65% of candidates say they either never or rarely receive any notice from the employer on their application. Of these, 51% say it takes more than a month while 85% believe their application was never even reviewed.
It’s true that as a recruiter, you probably have more than enough on your plate, but you can always leverage technology to help you help your candidates.
Use well-structured email templates that can easily be edited and sent to candidates. Another great way that comes after this is email sequences. You can create automated email sequence powered by auto-response and real-time updates of recruitment process.
Personalize the Candidate Experience
This is a fact that candidates don’t like cold calls and bulk mails, they value personalised responses. Since candidates are usually researching multiple job postings every day and are more informed than ever, when sourcing a candidate, it’s important to stand out.
You need to show your candidates they’re a good fit for your job posting by personalizing every step of candidate experience. You can start by creating personalized candidate journeys by deriving valuable insights about your candidates. You can also level up your email messaging by adding personalized fields such as names, skills, experience etc.
Candidate Relationship is a Futuristic Approach
A good candidate experience doesn’t end when they’re not hired. Candidates that don’t make it to a certain position may be a perfect fit for future job openings.
It’s crucial to stay in touch and engage with quality candidates to significantly reduce your time-to-hire and overall recruiting effort in your future positions. This is one of the key reasons candidate relationship management is extremely beneficial in 2022. Build your future talent pool and get access to perfect candidates every time a new position opens.
Crafting a robust, converting candidate experience takes talent insights extracted from rapidly changing trends and strategies, Draup can help.
By leveraging data from over 8000 data sources, Draup has extracted and analysed data of over 4500+ job roles, 2500+ locations, and 100,000+ courses spread over 33 industries. It has also analysed over 4Mn+ career paths and 30,000 skills and has it all in its extensive database. Talent Intelligence platforms such as Draup enable talent management teams to prepare high-impact candidate experiences that transform their approach to recruitment.
