Why Candidate Experience Is A Crucial Factor In Recruitment

Experienced recruiters know that one thing common among top candidates is that they will have a plethora of enticing work options before them, and these candidates are wooed by top organizations. It is vital that your company is perceived as a desirable place to work in order to attract top talent in today’s competitive, candidate-driven job scenario. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is to deliver a superior candidate experience during interview process.

What Is Meant By Candidate Experience?

Candidate experience can be defined as the overall perception that a jobseeker has of a company, based on their interactions with the organization throughout the recruiting process. This is inclusive of every point of contact, including:

Company career site & social media
Job postings
Online job application process
Tests & interviews
Communication with HR professionals, team members, & management
Notifications & follow-ups
Job offer/ rejection letter

From the above points, it’s clear that candidate experience begins even before a person applies for a job. Thanks to social media, online reviews etc., people get to know the ins and outs of an organization and its brand and values before they apply there. Similarly, candidate experience doesn’t end once a person is hired. Factors such as induction, onboarding, training etc. play an important role in enhancing the positive experience as the new hire undergoes the transition from candidate to employee. Ultimately, making the candidate experience holistic and comprehensive is the first step to acquiring great talent.

What Are The Benefits Of A Positive Candidate Experience?

1. Acquire the Best Talent

To stay at the top, you need the best people on your team. To get the best, it’s essential to offer the best candidate experience possible.

With the drastic shift in the employment dynamic, job hopping is the norm and talented candidates have no shortage of attractive job options. No matter how high the salary or how enticing the perks, if the candidate experience is poor, they will be averse to accepting a position with that organization, and also be unlikely to consider them in the future.

Enhancing the candidate experience also means a company has a chance to get top applicants on board before their competitors do. A Top Echelon Network study shows that 40 percent of candidates reject offers because another company gave them an offer faster or better experience during interview process. By providing candidates what they want and need throughout the hiring process, you can make a strongly positive first impression on good candidates and heighten their desire to work for you.

2. Better Acceptance Rates

Recruiting managers and HR heads know that rejected offers are an unwelcome yet unavoidable part of the talent acquisition process. However the good news is, providing a superior candidate experience can lead to a higher acceptance rate.

Businesses spend significant resources on a single candidate, including background checks, evaluations, document processing etc. When a candidate goes through the whole process and ends up not accepting the offer, all those resources are essentially wasted. A positive candidate experience could very well end up being the final deciding factor for a top candidate faced with multiple offers. While the company assesses the candidate, the candidate evaluates the company as well. Candidate experience forms the essence of this evaluation – a company that treats its applicants well would be more likely to treat its employees well too. This leads to improved post-offer conversion rates.

3. Strengthen Your Employer Brand

It is a well-known fact that today’s candidates undertake intensive research regarding a company before they apply. A positive candidate experience can do wonders in strengthening your brand as a top employer.

Thanks to the power of social media, dissatisfied applicants have the power to significantly devalue a company’s brand and alienate potentially valuable employees. On the other hand, when an organization provides a positive experience to a candidate, they will spread the word among friends and colleagues, be it through word of mouth or online. This will help expand your brand reach among other jobseekers in the same industry, as well as recruiting consultants and hiring agencies. This positive awareness for your employer brand can lead to more job applicants, more customers, and ultimately, more revenue.

4. Richer Pipeline for Future Hiring

The power of rejected candidates is something that is often overlooked by recruiters and organizations, but it can have a significant impact on future hiring down the line.

With all your efforts to boost candidate experience, there will inevitably be times when a candidate will turn you down. Adversely, there will be a sizeable number of candidates whom you will need to turn away as well. However, if the candidate’s experience has been positive throughout the recruitment process, there is a strong likelihood that they will apply to your company again sometime in the future. This helps you build up a valuable pool of potential applicants that you can tap as job requirements open up. Since these candidates have had encouraging experiences with you, they will be more likely to respond positively as well as recommend your company to other job seekers.

Finding and hiring the right people continues to be vital for the overall success of a business. For top companies, formulating and maintaining a robust candidate experience strategy is not an option, it’s a necessity. And this is where top technology recruitment firms like Employvision come in.

At Employvision, one of the leading IT recruitment agencies in USA with over 15 years of proven track record in recruiting top technology talent, we help you with finding top IT talent while providing better candidate experiences.

Contact Employvision and start hiring the right technology talent right away!

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