
Try these seven tips to improve your candidate experience
Improve your candidate experience with the positivity that he may reciprocate with the clients he manages.
“You can have the best strategy and the best building in the world, but if you don’t have the hearts and minds of the people who work with you, none of it comes to life.”
― Renee West, Luxor and Excalibur Hotel
A strong and highly skilled employee base can give your firm an advantage over your competitors, generating more business and higher profits.
When it comes to recruiting, you can’t pour every ounce of your energy into wooing that one perfect applicant. It’s essential to treat all of your candidates well. Great candidate experiences can reflect greatly on your company, which will increase the chances of people wanting to work for you. Improving the candidate experience is crucial to attracting a quality pool of applicants and Increases the percentage of successful, long-term hires.
How can you generate a positive and Improve your candidate experience, which can have a tremendous ripple effect on your business and your talent pool? Here are some ideas to consider.
“We can never fall short when it comes to recruiting, hiring, maintaining and growing our workforce. It is the employees who make our organization’s success a reality.”
― Vern Dosch, Wired Differently
How to generate a positive and Improve your candidate experience?
- Let them know how to apply
Be clear on how you want candidates to apply for the position and what they need to send you in response to your post. If you want a cover letter, say you want a cover letter and let them know exactly where to send it. Mention like ‘to apply for this position, please send a cover letter and your CV to apply@companyname.com’.
- Don’t make the application process too long
Application processes which are too long often block people from applying for the job position. Your company may not be the only one a candidate will consider so make it a positive experience. Only ask for important information in the application process as you don’t want candidates to abandon the application process halfway through.
- Acknowledge every application received
Not every CV you receive will be someone of interest. However, it isn’t an excuse to throw their CV to one side and forget about them. You can mail them and offer them some insight into why the role isn’t right for them. It reflects greatly on you and your company. If you don’t have time to send feedback to them, then a simple email saying they have been unsuccessful will be easy and much better than nothing.
“Hiring should be like dating. A great marriage does not happen in a 30 minutes interview.”
― kamil Toume
- Assess applications quickly
If you are serious about finding someone great for a position, you need to stay on top of things. If you wait more days to look through applications, you may find those candidates snapped up by your competitors by the time you make your decision to meet them. Set yourself sometime every day to go through the CV’s sent through that day.
- Let candidates know your recruitment process
You may know about your hiring process, but your applicants don’t. Every recruitment process is different. So, ensure they know the details of how long the interview will be, how many stages you are conducting, and where it will be conducted. Letting the applicants know what the recruitment process will be will reduce the number of people who pull out of the process.
- Provide feedback to rejected candidates
You cannot hire everyone, but it’s beneficial to let them know why they didn’t make it possible. Calling them and let them know why they haven’t been successful doesn’t take a long time. It gives the person with valuable insights on what they can do to improve the next time. Adding value to the hiring process through feedback creates a recruitment process which is appreciated by everyone involved.
- Make sure you have a smooth onboarding process
The recruitment process doesn’t stop once the right person has signed their contract. The nurturing process starts through their current notice period – keep in contact with them, so they don’t change their mind. Look after them when they start so that they feel welcome and make sure they seamlessly become one of the team.
Top applicants want to work with cutting-edge companies. So, job seekers will be expecting a higher level of engagement and convenience at every stage of the application process. What’s clear is that if you keep your candidates happy, your company will be even more pleased.
“If you hire only those people you understand, the company will never get people better than you are. Always remember that you often find outstanding people among those you don’t particularly like.”
― Soichiro Honda