4 Questions You Must Answer About Your Candidate Experience

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Standing in the checkout line at Target last night I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation between two people in front of me. A young woman, clearly a disappointed job candidate, was relating a story to her friend about the terrible experience she’d had with a recent interview. She’d taken time off work to attend the interview but was told when she arrived that it had been cancelled.

“I’d thought this company would be so great to work for, but now I don’t even want to shop them anymore,” the candidate said to her friend.

Textbook example of the importance of treating your candidates with respect, I thought to myself. We know candidate experience impacts the success of your recruiting efforts. It also impacts the bottom line. In today’s digital world, the connection between talent acquisition and revenue becomes stronger every day. A poor hiring experience can cause candidates to end their consumer relationships with a company and influence their friends to do the same.

On the flip side, a 2017 report  from Talent Board found that 74 percent of candidates will strengthen their relationship with a brand when they have a positive interview experience.

Your hiring process can either help or harm your bottom line. That’s why you can’t afford to ignore these four questions about your candidate experience:

1. Is It Fast?

The average amount of time required to fill a position is 36 days according to SHRM. That’s way too long for today’s candidates, who are used to immediate or near-immediate turnarounds in their consumer interactions.

In the best candidate experiences, organizations streamline hiring with technologies such as video interviewing software. They respond within hours or a day to application submissions and use automated scheduling to coordinate interviews efficiently. A faster candidate experience meets the expectations of modern job seekers, and it puts employers in a stronger position to capture top talent before they are lured away by the competition.

2. Is It Easy?

Complicated job applications, counterintuitive career sites, and requests for multiple on-site interviews are all a turnoff for candidates. Modern hiring should be candidate-centric, making ease of the experience for job seekers a high priority. One simple way to make the process painless: Give candidates the ability to apply, interview, and engage with your organization via smartphone.

3. Is It Transparent?

The days of making candidates wait for your final decision for weeks are over. Today, two out of three job seekers will wait less than two weeks before moving on to another opportunity, according to CareerBuilder.

Frequent communication and status updates keep the hiring process transparent, plus they make candidates feel more positive about the job opportunity. The more personalized the communication, the better.

4. Does Your Hiring Process Allow Candidates to Put Their Best Foot Forward?

One of the most critical elements of a positive candidate experience is the opportunity for candidates to present themselves well. According to the same Talent Board report mentioned earlier, the more opportunities candidates have to present their skills, the more satisfied they are with your candidate experience.

William Doyel is director of solution consulting at Montage.

By William Doyel