Three easy candidate experience wins

Check out these three common candidate experience issues and make your candidates less likely to drop out.

We’ve all been there: the message pops into your LinkedIn inbox from the recruiter. You agree to attend an interview at ‘my well-renowned client’. The interview goes swimmingly, and everyone agrees to organise a meeting with the CEO, obviously, as you’re the front runner. Then, complete and utter silence.

The recruiter has no idea what has happened, the HR or internal resourcer has disappeared on holiday, and the hiring manager ignores any calls or emails. These are all examples of what is known as a poor candidate experience.

Candidate experience refers to, you guessed it, the candidate’s overall journey from the moment they see that advert or receive that LinkedIn message, all the way through to the point where they are thanked and rejected, or brought onboard and bedded into the organisation. It covers literally every touchpoint, and can last for an indefinite period.

And the sad thing? We’re always getting it wrong for one reason or another. Sometimes it’s sheer laziness (I don’t have time to respond to everyone we interviewed and make up an excuse!), a lack of resources (I don’t have time to respond to everyone we interviewed and make up an excuse!) or a lack of awareness of just how important candidate experience is.

See, that candidate you’ve just ghosted, or rejected without any valid reason, or didn’t get any sort of onboarding support and has left three months into the job, is not just a number. They’re a fully-fledged, fully-aware consumer who can tell the world what their experiences have been like, very quickly. It’s why sites like Glassdoor have become so popular – we’re used to speaking up if we feel like we’ve been treated badly.

So what can we do to improve candidate experience, and stop wasting so much time and money struggling to find candidates, when someone perfectly good may have been put off thanks to someone else’s negative experience? Let’s dive in.

Process, process, process

‘Fail to prepare, prepare to fail’ said every one of your high school teachers, and, sadly, they were right.

We’re so used to informal processes, especially around fast-moving tasks like recruitment, that we’re happy to do things on the fly. Hiring manager wants to organise an interview with someone sent directly by a recruiter? Sure. Can we just get this person in for an informal chat? You bet. Sorry, he wasn’t right – ok, I’ll make something up.

As you can see, by doing things informally, the person on the other end always gets the raw deal, like when the recruiter’s fee can’t be agreed, the informal chat gets forgotten about and the feedback is poor.

Set in place a strict set of tick boxes that must be completed for every candidate. Collect information on how they came across the role. Make sure everyone knows where they’ve come from, so no surprising fees put a stop to the process. Have a task for bullet-point feedback that hiring managers must complete – and chase them if they don’t.

Data shouldn’t just be a nice to have either. It’s a superb way to justify next year’s budget, to see if it’s actually your hiring process is the point of failure, or to prove that the candidates required simply don’t exist. Log this data, measure it, and talk about it – you may find that hiring becomes easier if you have a whole raft of numbers that provide justification.

By having a solid process, you’ll feel a lot better delivering the bad news to a candidate, knowing that you’ve given them a solid reason why it was a no, and perhaps some tips and pointers to help it be a yes when they’ve developed their experience / gained that qualification.

Interview like a boss

This one is our pet hate. You book time off your existing job, make the journey in for an interview, then sit for 25 minutes going around the houses as the interviewer makes it up as they go along.

It’s really easy to forget that not everyone is a master of conversation, so you may need to prepare a few open questions to get shy or tactful interviewees to open up and show off their skills.

Have a predetermined flow of conversation and set of questions that must be asked and practice the interview process with the hiring manager(s) involved. It’s quite incredible how many great managers forget that the interview is also a bit of a sales pitch in the other direction, and candidates certainly won’t have a great experience if the hiring manager focuses on the problems that need solving and the dream candidate they want, rather than what the candidate might be interested in.

Also, If you’re ushered into an interview room, spend a couple of hours blasting through questions, then are shown the door, it’s very hard to get an idea of what a business is really like, and critically, what the culture looks like.

Yes, spend time asking the all-important questions, but bring in a future colleague or another manager who could offer a fresh perspective. Organise a tour of the office or workspace and allow time for the candidate to ask questions and actually see where they’ll be spending the majority of their lives.

If you think it’ll help, build in a ‘working interview’, to really show off how great you are. Just remember that working interviews do not equal a free day of work out of someone – limit it to an hour or two and aim to make the conversation relevant and designed to gauge skillsets, leading to open conversation – not silly questions about where they see themselves in 5 years or if they have any commitments outside of work that could interfere with their job (they 100% will).

Don’t forget about them

Whether you send an offer letter or a rejection email, don’t leave the candidate / new hire to their own devices.

Remember that even if they aren’t good right now, or aren’t good at all, they could be great in the future. Or they could take to social media and other channels and let everyone know they didn’t have a good experience. Or worse, they could be a future client or customer…

And the key one we are all often guilty about is forgetting to check in with new hires. Even if it looks like they’re a fish in water, still ask how their experience has been so far and what further support they need – hey, you could build that into your process we mentioned right at the start of the article!

Have these quick fixes inspired you to improve your hiring and retaining processes? Or do you think the onus should be on the candidate to impress and engage? Share your thoughts with us on social media, or add your comments!