5 Common Sense Tips for Crafting a Beneficial Candidate Experience
When you really get down to it, recruitment and hiring is about building your business; creating opportunities for your company to achieve its full potential. It may seem counter-intuitive, but the hiring process contains another, hidden opportunity to grow and develop your company’s image and brand. Whether or not you actually hire them, prospective candidates leave the application process with an impression of your company based on the experience they had. According to a survey by Kelly Services UK, 70% of applicants would talk about a negative experience with family and friends and 31% would go public. But more than that, the way that you hire and onboard prospects really reflects how your organization is run, both inside and out. As such, it’s important that team members start off on the right foot when they are brought on, and that those who aren’t leave with the best possible feeling. Here are five common sense tips for crafting a better, more beneficial candidate experience.
1. Turn Candidate Experience Into a Company Policy
We touched on it before, but this point can’t be over-emphasized. Pooling company-wide support into creating a positive recruitment experience might seem like overkill, but it really goes a long way. Make sure team members politely greet candidates when they come in for an interview, and designate a few current team members to make themselves available for candidate questions. These may seem like insignificant things, but in reality, the benefits of a positive candidate experience reverberate far beyond the recruitment process. Virgin Media found that new business could be acquired through the recruitment process for one tenth the cost of traditional marketing channels, for example. Take every opportunity you can to be great, even in recruiting.
2. Create a Stellar Job Description
A job description is the earliest point of contact in the recruitment process. Before your recruitment team can even respond to the résumés flying in, candidates have formed an impression of your company’s brand and identity through the job description you posted. A good description will wow candidates and generate excitement about your company the open position.
3. Make the Application Process as Simple as Possible
Making the application process simple and straightforward is very simple way of improving candidate experience. Your recruitment process will be thorough in order to on-board the best talent available, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a labyrinth for applicants with various hoops to jump through. Format should never supercede substance; if applicants are having trouble adhering to the specification s within your application process, there’s something wrong. If the application process is simple and legible, applicants can focus on only including relevant information and bringing their A-game to the interview. Some businesses even pepper the process with tips, advice, or guidelines on how to successfully complete applications.
4. Think About how You’d Like to Be Interviewed
Another example of common sense thinking: a little respect can go a long way. Think of the golden rule and simply treat your applicants like you’d want to be treated. When it comes to recruiting, a good first step is to set up an automated email response to all applications. Every candidate should be in the loop at every turn of the application process. When it’s time to decline, do so respectfully with a professional note or a phone call. This step is particularly important if the candidate had multiple interviews. In general, it’s best to imagine that you’re interviewing a friend. Imbue the candidate’s experience with all the respect you know they deserve.
5. Remember, Onboarding is Part of the Candidate Experience
Onboarding is the final step in the recruitment process. Don’t leave new hires hanging. Just as you’ve done in the application process, give them all the resources, tools and information they need to be successful in their new position, and then share that success with your company.
Providing a more positive candidate experience is a practice taking the business world by storm. It doesn’t just feel good to treat people better; the ROI on making significant, systemic changes to your recruitment process is measurable and, frankly, too good to ignore.
We at Herd Freed Hartz understand the importance and the challenge of hiring top talent. There are so many executive recruiters in Seattle, but we have proven ourselves time and again to be the most successful at bringing to hire the right top executive talent from around the country.