The first time I was invited for a job interview by a cosmetics company, I searched for its fame. By coincidence, luckily, an old friend of mine was working there; so, she was able to prepare me to get more familiar with that enterprise and its values, through interviews they used to rise up them with their questioner.
As a matter of fact, it was my previous interview experiences that helped me make up my mind before the interview. But the point here is that the company candidate experience made me sure to take part in recruitment process.
What I want to say can be expanded through some statistics: according to CareerBuilder nearly 82% of employers maintain a bad candidates experience during the recruitment process do not have negative impacts on their employer brands, however, according to Top Echelon Network, apropos 40% of candidates reject offers because another employer gave them an offer sooner.
Providing a high-profile candidate with a pleasant interview or candidate experience would help you make the deal more attractive for the best talents, increases their willing to be hired by your organization. Hence, nonetheless, the matter of your candidate experience is undeniable.
About 50% of candidates do not have apparent imagination of their application status until two months after applying. So, you can use different ways to make a positive candidate experience for job seekers.
Another important fact here is that Covid-19 caused a working at home flux. However, the online candidate journeys confront ambiguous circumstances and new conflicts between new staff and managers. A friend of mine experienced interviews with new startups. Unfortunately, these companies could not talk about the job descriptions.
Using an appropriate automation system to facilitate the application process is just one simple way for increasing the rate of acceptance. The employer brand is another factor for this subject. All of the factors encourage your candidates to join your company after their successful journey.
Next issue is the way we interview the candidate. Since our face-to-face interviews help us to understand our tone of speech and gesture, while online audio interviews have negative impacts on the transparency of our communication. Furthermore, lack of synchronous communication causes candidates’ negative judgments.
Moreover, all interactions during the employment process have considerable impacts on the candidate experience. If you decided to implement your desirable employer branding strategies in the best condition, I suggest you treat your candidates as your consumers. Thus, make the best relationships and use your high-quality resources to attract your high-quality candidates.
Candidate experience is, in turn, one of the influential factors in your company’s reputation. On the other hand, the internet and social media provided faster platforms to share these experiences. So, we are confronting new ways, by which your brand is affected positively or negatively.
In short, candidate experience is the judgment of a job seeker about your brand as a prospective employer; this supposition is affected by job-search experiences from the application process, to the interview, and even the onboarding process sometimes.
In this regard, about 72% of employers claim that they provide clear conditions and transparent job descriptions and interviews. On the other hand, just less than half of (36%) of the candidates agree with this idea. As a result, you can make a positive experience for your candidates if you describe the job and work conditions obvious.
Regardless, if you succeed in creating a positive candidate experience, you can improve your employer brand and attract high-quality talents. Therefore, the positive candidate experience increase variety and involvement in your company more than you expect.
However, there are 4 main group of people who are affected by your employer brand directly.
Employer brand saves more time for managers in terms of hiring and onboarding. It accelerates communication between managers, recruiters and the candidates.
The more transparent the work process, the better staff you will have in the future.
Customers and clients can also be prepared to be hired if they feel they have a good experience with you.
Candidate facilitate the process to go forward faster to get the job once get a positive experience.
But one of the most criminal of bad candidate experience, which can be introduced as top culprit is complicated job application form, too long or too complicated hiring process, makes people confused and then hiring manager and recruiters as well. More than 60% of job seekers would quit in the middle of filling out online job applications by dint of the protracted form or its messy structure.
Employer branding is a set of measures and strategies, helps you shape social suppositions over your brand, while wooing top-notch job seekers as well.
Without doubt, social media, in turn, is one of the cool ways to share our inputs, feelings, and for sure, lived experiences workwise and personally. In other words, social media has become the best place to share experiences, and candidates who have bad experiences can share their journeys and damage the employer brands easily. On the other hand, positive candidate experiences encourage job seekers to go through the same way.
Nevertheless, sharing experiences that have negative impact on the others’ businesses is a bit critical, while somewhat it is inevitable. Thus, it is a good way if you think twice whenever you are about post something on the internet.
Studying a report of TalentNow, I understood about 87% of candidates believe that a company’s brand matters. So, self-evident that sharing negative candidate experiences weakens your employer brand.
About 50% of candidates do not want to work for companies with an inappropriate reputation, even when companies allocate a high salary for the job vacancies.
My friend worked for a thousand-dollar startup that only managed to make a good first impression on the candidates by hanging graphic images of the goals and teleological aim on the wall. I would like to say that memoir to assert that despite different strategies to strengthen the employer branding, we must use strategies that present the goals, policies and slogans of our company, and at the same time be honest with.
Furthermore, as a candidate, if you learn how to handle rejections, you can control yourself not to attack a company on social media. When I was not accepted into a supermarket recruitment project, it was difficult to cope with, because the process was not only fair, but also seemed to be a watery play for hiring some pre-selected people.
However, I did not say anything about it and that was a good strategy. It did not take long for one of the economic newspapers to cover this issue. So, it is better to leave the work to the professions in this field. As I mentioned, it is important to handle your rejections.
This ability encourages over 64% of candidates who had an unsuccessful journey to be hired by a company and apply again in the future. Also, it is helpful for your employer brand to take a candidate or consumer-first approach.
Mindfulness and going through an un-judgmental interpretation is one of my suggestions to make your rejection feel positive, valued, and beneficial.
All in all, the negative candidate experience increases the opportunities for low-level candidates. Candidates without enough skills and work experience lower the profit and make the companies more and more vulnerable.
As per stated previously, making good interaction and respectful behavior with candidates helps you provide them with a positive experience. On the flip side, the high-quality performance of candidates can make your communication more to the point. Your talent acquisition KPIs would be helpful to hire the best talents for your company, so to speak.
Moreover, if you somehow explain to your candidates why some skills are required for the applied job, then the process will be more straightforward. While this procedure helps your candidate make, a better decision that whether it’s a good idea or not to take on this job.
Currently, one of my colleagues wants to sign a convention and start his job in an airline agency as an accountant. In addition, due to the respectful behaviors and transparent job description, and having talked about the necessity of skills, my colleague would be able to trust this company. However, all of these factors provided him with a positive candidate experience.
From the beginning of the journey, invitation and interview you should behave kindly and respectfully with your candidates. This kind of communication causes the positive judgments of candidates about your brand, whether the journey becomes successful or not.
Your communication and candidate experience modify or direct people’s views. According to the survey, it is reported by some expert, about 33.5% of candidates expect to have better communication between candidates and employers. Plus, about 40% of candidates think if they do not receive confirmation of their application, they would have negative effects on the employer brand.
Perhaps you think that it is a common behavior that employers do not send their negative answers to the candidates, but more than 50% of companies let the candidates know the final decision of interviewers. However, apropos 41% of candidates are not able to connect with the recruiters to know were the journeys successful or not. Plus, about 41% of candidates with a bad experience will cut their communication with companies. This event impacts the company’s bottom line.
It would be a good idea, overall, if you put the candidate experience and end with an email; if the candidate knows the manager’s negative decision. Because candidates feel that they are valued, informed, and perceived as well as judged well and in justice. Thus, you can give a lasting positive impression, even if your candidate has to be turned down subsequently.
The experience of a job candidate is indeed crucial for talen-led businesses. Firstly, it increases or decreases the reputation of your brand; secondly, it speeds up usage, and thirdly, it speeds up the onboarding process.
If you work in a startup, the quality of candidates’ experience matters a lot; you can hire a lot for top talents if it would be qualified and pre-planned plot. Nowadays, many large businesses, for this reason, give up the hiring first class candidates, and would be forced to work with unskilled individuals.
