Your job advert makes a promise, but does your candidate experience deliver?

Rising employment costs, a busy candidate marketplace, ever-tightening budgets, not to mention accessibility and pay transparency… the humble job ad is under a lot of pressure to perform right now.

For industries facing critical skills shortages, like healthcare, a job advert needs to stand out from the competition, hitting the sweet spot where your unique employee value proposition is exactly what that candidate needs. In professional services, it’s less about standing out and more about precision. Narrowing the field enough that you’re not overwhelmed with applications, but without missing out on strong skills matches.

No matter which sector you operate in, your job advert needs to do enough to catch the eye of the right candidates but, as recruiters, we know the advert is only half the story. The promise made in a job ad needs to be backed up by what applicants see, feel and experience next: your employer brand, your careers pages, candidate portal and the candidate journey itself. Is your organisation somewhere a candidate would want to work, and does your candidate experience deliver what your job ad promises?

As recruiters, we spend huge amounts of time refining our hiring process to ensure we match the best candidates for our organisations. Indeed, Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and hiring software were built to optimise exactly this. But when was the last time you reviewed your hiring process through the eyes of an applicant? Does your process enhance or detract from the candidate experience?

Ultimately, candidates are weighing up two things: whether they want the job enough to apply, and whether the process makes it easy enough to do so.

The two questions every candidate is asking

There are two things at play here. The first is the ‘want’, the bigger, more emotional question that sits behind every application:

“Would I want to work for this organisation based on what I already know, or what I’ve read about them?”

The second is about ease of application, from ad to careers page and application:

“How easy is it for me to apply?”

These two questions are the basis for the candidate experience: their perception of your employer brand, and their perception of the applicant journey. Get both right and the results will speak for themselves. Fewer candidates will drop out of the application process, and retention will be stronger once they’re through the door, because what they saw in your ad – your values and your employee value proposition – is what they got. And when that happens, you’re building brand perception, not forcing it.

Walk the walk, don’t just talk the talk! If there’s a gap between the polished Employee Value Proposition (EVP) you’ve published on your career pages and what candidates can independently discover, doubt will creep in. Demonstrate what you’re doing to live up to the EVP.

What’s your USP as an employer? What makes you stand out from others in your industry? We’re not talking ‘birthdays off’ or gym memberships, but the nuts and bolts of working for you: clear progression pathways, values you actually live by, promises you keep. For non-profits, this is often the whole pitch – candidates are choosing you for your purpose, so living your values has to show up everywhere, not just the job ad.

Your employer brand isn’t what HR publishes online. It’s not the words in an advert, or the values section on a careers page. Employer brand is about perception: what others say and feel about you, and most importantly, the picture candidates build from multiple sources before they even reach your careers page. But, let’s go back to ‘first contact’.

The job advert – where it all begins

A job advert is a proposition, a promise. It’s there to attract the right people, but not all people. So, it needs to sell truth, not an aspirational dream.

Look at one of your recent job adverts. Does it clearly display the role and level of responsibility? Is the salary disclosed? With the pay transparency consultation due in the next month, it’s worth getting ahead of any new government rules around pay and clearly outlining salary bands in your ads.

A good job advert demonstrates the employer proposition rather than just listing responsibilities and requirements. Take a closer look at your job requirements. Are they realistic, or are you creating an unnecessarily narrow candidate pool for yourselves? This matters particularly in industries like education, where candidates are often comparing several similar roles at once.

Clear requirements can mean the difference between a strong match and a missed one. Think beyond qualifications too; more and more employers are using skills-based hiring now – have you reviewed your ad from a skills perspective?

When did you last reflect on the language in your job ads? Is it inclusive and accessible? We’re all guilty of cut and pasting content from job ads we know work, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is worth cycling back every 12 months and really auditing your job advert language for accessibility and bias.

Of course, a good quality ATS will look at a lot of this for you, checking for bias, for accessibility and helping you skills match. But it’s worth running through this all yourself too. Pick a regular role you hire for and see if the job ad is still relevant and working hard for you. Some small tweaks can make a real difference.

Finally, don’t forget to outline the recruitment process itself in the ad. Include whether or not there are multiple interview stages and when you expect to make a decision by. All these details help candidates know what to expect and rule themselves in (or out) of the application process.

Now of course, as we’ve said before, job ads are promises that have been made. And if your careers pages, job application process, and candidate experience don’t live up to those promises, then you’ll find your applicants drop out, and your employer brand starts to suffer.

Ask yourself, if you removed the company logo from your careers page, could you still tell which organisation it belongs to? Are your pages distinctive enough? Are you really demonstrating your employer brand, or have these pages actually become a generic information dump?

We firmly believe in making things personal, that’s how you stand out from the competition. Use real employee stories to show progression routes that really happened. Did someone make it from the shop floor to management? Show how they got there. Tell your people’s stories in your own unique voice. If you can do that, you’re giving your candidates the proof that supports the job advert promise.

The application experience – would you finish your own form?

You know your job application process back to front and inside out. But you know it from a Talent Acquisition perspective. Your expertise has honed your workflows and processes to optimise outcomes to help YOU select the best candidates for the role. But how does it feel on the other side of that process?

Why not go undercover and apply for one of your own roles, or even better, get a colleague in the wider company to apply as well. Go through the entire application process and note down what feels good, what’s awkward, what might be missing. It’s a very worthwhile exercise.

Some things to consider:

While you’re busy applying for your role, keep in mind your candidate drop-off points –  your hiring software should be able to pinpoint those for you. Another thing to look out for is incomplete applications. Those will tell you that something within the application process isn’t right. Find out what it is and fix it. If necessary, reach out to those who haven’t completed an application and ask for their honest feedback.

Controlling your employer brand isn’t about perfection. It’s about looking at where things go wrong and actively doing things to fix them. No ex-applicant will begrudge you a call to ask for feedback on their candidate experience. After all, every candidate who doesn’t get the job is still a potential future employee, customer, or someone talking about you on LinkedIn.

What happens after ‘submit’?

So, you’ve been through your application process from the candidate’s side, spotted the gnarly bits and smoothed them out. But the candidate experience doesn’t stop at ‘submit’. In fact, it’s barely started.

Communication is key. From application receipt to progress updates, keeping the applicant updated and informed goes a long way to providing a great candidate experience. Consistent, timely and honest messaging goes a long way to keep people in the process.

Our clients frequently comment on how Reach’s ‘self-serve’ interview scheduling tool is a game changer! Panellists block out their availability and candidates can choose a slot from the ones on offer that suits them. It’s breathtakingly simple but it saves a genuinely amazing amount of admin time – especially for firms with high volume hiring needs. Combine this with a system that automatically sends out joining instructions or location and travel guidance, as well as any preparatory work for the interview and suddenly one of the most time-draining parts of recruitment is a breeze.

So far, so good for recruiters – but how does it feel for your candidate? Do they have all the information they need? Do they know where/when they’ll be interviewed and what to expect in the interview? Go back to your job advert. You made a promise, is the candidate experience living up to it at interview stage? If not, why not?

Recruitment is only part of the employer brand

We talk about the employer brand in relation to hiring but in reality, it’s not something that’s limited just to HR. The employer brand brings together Talent Acquisition/HR, the marketing department and hiring managers as well as senior leadership. Every interaction with your organisation contributes to it: the recruitment process by the Talent Acquisition team, the interviews by hiring managers, EVP and rewards sit with HR, and culture ultimately comes from the leadership team.

We’ve had many conversations about who owns the candidate experience here at Reach. Ultimately, we don’t believe it sits squarely on any one team’s desk. It’s a collaborative effort that only works when your employee value proposition is a language everyone speaks.

As with any organisation, it begins at the top. Leadership behaviour influences culture, retention and employee advocacy. It shapes what future candidates hear about you and whether they believe the promise your job advert makes. A strong salary and benefits package will always help, but if your employer brand doesn’t reflect your job ad, the applications won’t come. And if the reality doesn’t match once someone is through the door, they won’t stay either.

Every interaction, LinkedIn post, Glassdoor review, idle conversation with an employee – all of it contributes to a candidate’s perception of you as employers. And if you want your job advert’s promise to deliver, then you need your candidate experience to feel effortless, and rooted in a deep trust that your organisation does what it says it does.

Can we help you deliver on your promises?

The best process is one that you’d be happy to go through yourself. If any of this has struck a chord, or you’d like to explore ways to improve candidate experience, reach out – we’re always happy to chat.