Did you know, according to the Department of Labor Bureau, there are 10.5 million jobs open right now? What does that mean for the labor market? It means there are two job openings for every person looking for a job, otherwise known as a “candidate’s market”. Business leaders, you need to stand out from the competition. Attracting top talent for your team is great, but it’s the Candidate Experience that can make or break the deal.
What is the candidate’s experience and why is it important?
The candidate experience is how job seekers feel about your company before, during, and after their recruitment and application experience. The candidate experience begins with awareness of your company, this can be through a job posting, your website or careers site, or can be word of mouth. And it continues to form through the application and interview process and into the onboarding.
As a business, you want to ensure your candidates have a positive experience. A positive experience has proven to perpetuate top-tier hires (as we say at Leath HR Group, “top talent knows top talent”) and many studies have shown that positive candidate experiences lead to higher retention rates, increased productivity, and boost brand awareness. Most importantly, keep in mind that candidates are interviewing you too!
Here is some tactical advice to improve your candidate experience:
Have a social presence.
We’ve talked about this before in our blog, “Win the War on Talent with Your Employer Brand”. Candidates are doing their research on your website, careers page, and social media pages to see if your company culture sparks an interest in them. They are checking you out way before they complete that job application.
Implement an application review and interview timeline. Communicate it. And stick to it.
We’ve seen many hiring managers wait five, six, or seven days before reviewing resumes. Then, once the interviews are completed, many take over a week to give the candidate feedback or a decision. This is a huge opportunity to improve the experience. Set a realistic but aggressive timeline, and communicate that timeline to the candidate. The longer you wait to hire the candidate, the higher the probability that they will lose interest and go with another offer. Remember how we mentioned there are two jobs for every job seeker at the moment? Taking the guesswork out of the timeline for the candidate is the very best way to ensure they stay engaged, even if it is taking some time to make the decision, keep them informed. Remember, they may soon be your colleague, so act like it!
Small details go a long way.
Make sure your hiring team is organized. The last thing you want to do is call a candidate by the wrong name or provide them with interview steps that were meant for someone else. No job seeker wants to join a company that is unorganized. And be flexible with candidates, they are humans, and so are you.
Communicate often.
Make sure you are checking in with your candidate and providing them updates when you can. You don’t want to leave them guessing. Remember, in the absence of communication, people will make up stories to self-protect.
If you need to, outsource your selective placement teams.
Attracting, recruiting, and interviewing talent can take time, especially when you have a candidate-first mindset. If you are time-strapped, outsource the recruiting to a firm that will tailor their approach to fit your values and culture. You cannot afford to “half-arse” the candidate experience, there’s too much riding on those first impressions.
How the Leah HR Experience Enhances the Candidate Experience
At Leath HR Group, we take a modern approach to outsourced talent acquisition: we’re not just recruiters, we are true HR professionals who know people. Meaning, we know that every person is unique in their career goals, aspirations, ambitions, and work/life balance needs – and that’s what we focus on. Leath HR Group deploys a highly customizable approach to recruiting, we work with our clients to fix the system first, then focus on finding that top talent that results in a “professional match made in heaven”. We also believe that continuous improvement of the process is key, so we’ll help you analyze and optimize your people processes to maximize your efforts.
At Leath HR group, we are Employee Experience gurus and we will continue to preach that the employee experience begins when the employee is a candidate.
Reach out to our team of HR experts to level up your people processes. Our recruiting division can add the horsepower you need to turn a positive candidate experience into the start of a spectacular career. Contact us today.
