Improving the candidate experience has become a top HR issue. 62% of candidates reported a poor experience when applying for a job. In a tight job market, your recruiting process needs to differentiate yourself to attract the best talent. What exactly is the candidate experience? Why is it so important to improve it? Here are 15 best practices to implement.
What is the candidate experience?
The candidate experience refers to what the candidate experiences and feels during the entire recruitment process, from application to final feedback.
It begins as soon as they are exposed to your employer brand, regardless of the medium: job ad, advertisement, LinkedIn post, pre-qualification phone call, Inmail, etc.
Every step of the recruiting process is an opportunity to make a good impression on talent:
- Search for information on your website
- Interviews
- Psychometric tests
- Competency tests
- Feedback
- Promise of employment
- Onboarding
The best way to get a feel for the candidate experience is to do a quality survey, or apply to your own job postings.
The candidate experience is the blind spot of your employer brand, don't forget it.
Why improve the candidate experience?
The recruitment landscape has changed a lot since the Internet became more democratic in the early 2000s. But it is the mobile usage that has completely changed the market and the way we apply.
And the year that marks this shift was 2015, when Google updated its rating criteria to favor sites that display best on mobile.
Since then, the relationship of the French with the Internet has completely changed. And this has impacted the recruitment landscape on four levels:
- The virality of information: it circulates much more quickly
- The War for Talent: More Companies Competing for a Shrinking Pool of Candidates
- Candidate volatility: they apply with a single click
- The digitalization of professions: many did not exist 15 years ago and have no pool of talent
On the other hand, the consequences of good or bad recruitment have not changed for companies:
- Failed recruitment is expensive
- It can have legal and economic consequences
- The 5 or 10 tips to improve your candidate experience 4
- Not recruiting penalizes the competitiveness of companies
Indeed, various factors evolve much more slowly than digital technologies:
- The recruitment process is still as long as ever
- Evaluation of candidates remains difficult
- The Labor Code has not changed much
- The cost of recruitment remains high
In this context, the candidate experience is one of the levers on which companies can play by taking advantage of new technologies, the recruitment process being almost exclusively digital today.
They can leverage the virality of information, reach more candidates and iterate to adapt their process quickly.
Finally, the benefits of a good candidate experience contribute to maintaining a good employer brand, which in turn strengthens the company's brand.
Improving the candidate experience is therefore essential to maintaining your employer brand.
But what are the best practices? While the recruitment process is very similar from one company to another, the candidate experience can be very different.
15 best practices to improve the candidate experience
1/ Structure your recruitment process
Structuring your recruitment process has several benefits. Human beings hate living in uncertainty and candidates are no exception.
Clearly define each step. Ideally, try to have a single recruitment process for all your needs.
This will allow you to have identical and comparable indicators when you want to do an audit. Each employee will be able to inform each person about the progress of their application and what is next.
The structure of a classic recruitment process consists of 5 steps.
It is up to you to adapt it to your needs and your business context.
2/ Choose the right tools
Choosing the right tools allows you to simplify and optimize your process.
If you manage a lot of applications, opt for an adapted ATS (Applicant Tracking System).
Each talent acquisition software has its strengths and weaknesses and it is up to you to choose the one that suits you best.
Here are the steps to follow to choose the best TTY for your recruitment process:
- Set up a working group with TAMs and Hiring Managers
- Define your process steps
- Identify the tasks that take the most time
- Turn these tasks into software features
- Set a budget
- Contact TTY editors
- Request a demo and take a test drive
- Choose the tool
Steps 3 and 4 are the most important because they allow you to choose the right tool for you.
3/ Reduce the number of steps
If you have mapped your process, you know how many steps the candidate will have to take. Identify the friction points and the moments that waste the most time for candidates.
We advise you to apply to your own advertisements and to time each step. Because you are probably underestimating the difficulty and time it takes for candidates to send you their application.
For example, asking applicants to copy their resumes to your career site can save you time, even though it's a tedious task. Your competitors may offer one-click applications.
Here are some tips for shortening your recruitment process:
- Take quick tests before the pre-qualification phase
- Make sure your career site is mobile-friendly
- Conduct asynchronous video interviews
- Schedule all interviews on the same day
- Propose the application in one click from a CV or a LinkedIn profile
There are plenty of options to save your candidates time.
4/ Update your career page
Most of the companies' websites have been entrusted to external agencies. They are updated more or less regularly to stay up to date in terms of UX/UI.
Career sites are often outsourced to specialized recruitment platforms or are an option of SaaS ATS(TeamTailor and Taleez, for example).
Managed by the recruiting team, which remains focused on operations, the career site can be a bit forgotten when it comes to updating the company's communication materials.
Do not underestimate the importance of having a beautiful and rich career site.
The option that Skeelz has chosen is to propose its ads on Notion pages. It is a free option and very simple to set up. The advantage of Notion is that you can add rich content (videos, images, etc.) easily.
5/ Adapt your communication
It is important to keep in mind who you are talking to. Tailor your communication so that the talent feels understood and involved.
L'Oréal does not have the same target or the same tone of voice as Médecins Sans Frontières, for example.
6/ Create landing pages
If you are recruiting a wide variety of profiles, a single career site may not be enough to adapt your communication to all of them.
In this case, create landing pages to offer 100% customized content to each target.
If you already have a generalist career site, you can simply create landing pages on Notion and direct candidates by linking to your job boards.
Your ads or content on social networks can also send candidates to landing pages.
And nothing prevents you from completing this landing page by putting the link to your career site.
7/ Do candidate nurturing
Recruitment is the result of a complex alchemy. Candidate nurturing is the process by which we develop a relationship with a candidate to make him/her more familiar with our employer brand.
Invite them to events, send them interesting information by e-mail, animate a community on social networks, etc.
8/ Copywrite your job offers
Copywriting is the art of convincing with words. The basic principle is that each person will react differently according to his profile, his needs, his vision of the world, his fears and frustrations.
If you have created a persona of your candidate by creating your scorecard, you are half way to copywriting your job offers.
Tailor your pitch to the candidates you want to attract.
9/ Be transparent
The prerequisite to being transparent is having an aligned employer brand and company culture . Be transparent in presenting your business so you don't waste time. Don't make false promises to avoid disappointing candidates when they become your new employees.
10/ Offer rich content
Stand out from your competitors with a recruitment process that is rich in content and in line with the profile sought.
Here are some options:
- Gamification
- Recruitment process related to the position
- Immersion in the job
- Professional situation
Remember, you are competing with other companies and your recruitment process should also be a way to stand out and appeal.
Digital recruitment processes must be attractive.
The research firm PotentialPark publishes a ranking of the companies that produce the best HR communications each year. The companies that stand out are large groups whose jobs are not the most "fun" or exciting: Banking, Insurance, Audit, ESN.
This ranking demonstrates two things:
- Large groups with large budgets have a clear advantage.
- But they are also very innovative in attracting the younger generation to professions that are not particularly appealing.
Who has ever said to their parents, "I would like to be a banker/insurer/Manager in an ESN?"
11/ Communicate regularly
It is crucial to maintain regular contact with candidates. The big difference between external recruiters (firms, ESN, RPO) and internal recruiters is the follow-up of the candidates.
Unfortunately, a candidate who has not heard from you for more than a week will start to wonder and apply elsewhere. They may even accept a competing offer, thinking they have been overlooked.
Set aside time in your calendars to check in with your candidates each week.
12/ Give personalized feedback
Applying takes time and emotional commitment. Giving personalized feedback is a mark of attention that candidates will appreciate.
Unfortunately, many companies and service providers still do not take the time to do so. Just look at the success of the content on social networks denouncing the lack of feedback from recruiters.
13/ Adopt a continuous improvement approach
Your recruitment process should always be challenged. Use indicators to implement a continuous improvement process.
Updating your process once a year will allow you to challenge yourself and stay competitive.
14/ Get feedback from candidates
The best way to improve your recruitment process is to ask for input from key stakeholders.
You can have an automated survey completed, but you will get many more responses if you ask candidates to fill out a questionnaire just before receiving your feedback.
15/ Ask new employees for an astonishment report
The recruitment process only really ends when the candidate confirms his or her trial period.
During those first few months when he is an employee but not yet confirmed, ask him for a surprise report. Our advice is to ask open-ended questions to guide him at the very beginning of the trial period.
Then use a structured report that they will have to fill out when they are confirmed in their position.
You also have the option of having him fill out a logbook with MCQs and free writing sections that he can complete for a maximum of 5 to 10 minutes each week. The log allows you to measure the evolution of his answers and ensures a greater reliability of his feedback.
Improving the candidate experience in your recruitment process is a major step in building a strong and competitive employer brand. The advice we give you should enable you to start thinking about and implementing corrective actions quickly.
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