Does your candidate experience meet your candidate’s expectations?
A candidate’s experience through your recruitment process can make or break your reputation, new employee retention and whether someone reapplies in the future. Candidates have expectations for their recruitment journey so, why not make sure that you exceed those expectations and give them an experience they will remember instead of leaving them disappointed.
Let’s take a look at five ways that you can exceed candidate expectations.
Showcase your employer brand and company culture
Did you know that 75% of candidates research a company before they commit to starting an application form?
The best way to showcase your company values and culture is with a careers section on your website. One that you can load up with employee testimonials, day in the life videos, employee benefits, company awards, team photos, essentially, anything you would want to shout about from the rooftop include it in your career site.
You want to encourage a prospective candidate to hit the Apply Now button faster than Usain Bolt running the 100m sprint!
Make sure your application is user-friendly for all devices
In today’s hi-tech world, candidates expect to apply for a job quickly and easily from anywhere in the world.
Imagine you’re picking up a food order and have a 10-minute wait – you instantly get your phone out and start scrolling, right? Now imagine you come across a job you just have to apply for, but you find the application process is clunky and impractical – are you likely to remember to go back to the application once you’re home and using your laptop, or will you have forgotten by the time it comes to do the washing up!
75% of job applications are submitted via a handheld device, so why would you not make sure that your online application is as user-friendly as possible? Things to consider making the process as straightforward as possible include keeping the form as short as possible and giving candidates the option to save their progress, allowing them to come back and complete to form at a later time.
Communication, communication, communication…
Candidates want to know where they are in the recruitment process – they don’t know whether their application has been read, or if it’s floating around the Internet waiting for someone to catch it!
Glassdoor found that 58% of candidates wanted companies to communicate with them clearly and regularly.
Be upfront about your recruitment process! How long will it take before you start contacting individuals to invite them for an interview? How many interview stages are there? What is the expected timeline until someone is hired? Candidates appreciate the honesty – but what if you’ve received more applications than you anticipated and you don’t have time to keep phoning candidates? The answer is to send auto-response emails. You don’t want them to sound like a robot put it together, so make sure that they are personalised by including the candidate’s name, only send emails during office hours and make the content meaningful. Make it appear like a human hit the send button!
Silence is not always golden!
Have you completed your interviews and selected the candidate that you want to offer the position to? That’s fantastic! But what about the candidates who didn’t make the cut? Do you send out a generic email informing them that they’ve been unsuccessful on this occasion, or do you remain silent and turn into a ghost?
How about you go the extra mile and provide feedback for each candidate that took the time to interview with your company? By taking the time to give candidates feedback, you are not only helping them the next time they attend an interview, but you are enhancing your chances of someone who had just missed out on the role applying to your company again.
Welcome to the team
You’ve offered the position to your successful candidate, but now what? Do you tell them to show up on their first day and ask for their new line manager? Or, do you implement an onboarding process that reinforces candidate engagement, communicating with them instantly?
By staying in touch with your new employee you can get those new starter forms filled out straight away, send welcome emails and let them know their itinerary for their first week before they start so they are not overwhelmed on day one. Make your new team member feel welcomed and part of the team before they have even started!
Glassdoor found that organisations that implemented a strong onboarding process improved their new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%.
Reach can help you improve your candidate experience and go beyond their expectations. Our efficient and user-friendly ATS recruitment system can implement all this and more to ensure that everyone has the journey they deserve!
To speak to the team about implementing Reach into your business, give our team a call today on 01527 574408 or email [email protected] and we can arrange a demo to showcase how our candidate management system can help you.