How to create a 5-star candidate experience, and win in the war for talent
Written by @Zacharoula Liarou
In the last few years, the talent landscape has become more competitive than ever before. In our discussions with our clients and HR Professionals, it is clear that they are facing huge challenges to attract and hire the right candidates for their roles. From my personal experience having worked several years in Talent Acquisition, it is also clear that the companies who are succeeding in this war of talent are the ones who understand the importance of the candidate experience.
The emerging data about “Great Resignation” (a phenomenon that describes record numbers of people leaving their jobs during the COVID-era) show that we are undergoing a massive workforce disruption; millions of people, globally, aren’t just quitting their jobs, they are re-configuring their careers and are more willing than ever before to find a role that resonates with their goals and lifestyle. What’s unique about the current situation is that candidates, like customers, are now savvy, have access to information about an organization, and have alternatives. When they engage in a recruitment process, they evaluate the company’s culture constantly and are able to opt in or opt out based on their understanding of the role and working environment. They also openly share their feedback (positive or negative) with their friends, family, professional network, on social media or on recruitment boards like Glassdoor (the same way they would evaluate a product on a site).
With that said, a company’s employer branding is largely affected by how the candidate experiences its recruitment process. If the recruitment process is sloppy, unprofessional, or slow, the candidate forms the same impression for your entire culture. And once this reputation is out on the talent market, it is difficult to convince your prospect candidates for the opposite.
And now the million dollar question… How can companies design their recruitment process to create value for the candidates and effectively manage how they feel and think during it?
Here are our top recommendations on how to create a game changing candidate experience.
🔍 Zoom out to see the whole picture
We don’t believe that there are organizations who deliberately want to create bad experiences for the candidates. On the contrary, they spend a lot of time, energy and money to attract the top candidates.
The fundamental problem is that organizations don’t always see the big picture when they are designing their recruitment process, missing the fact that the candidate experience begins way before the first interview. It begins when the candidates first get in touch with the organization and is shaped by every touchpoint they have with the organization, the recruiters, the hiring managers and other members of the team.
Το start with, the organizations should zoom out to understand the culture and values they want to demonstrate during their recruitment process. And then zoom in to figure out the process milestones, the channels (digital or physical), tools and the content needed to deliver that culture and communicate their Employee Value Proposition (EVP) throughout the whole process.
🎯 Our roadmap to success is the people we design our processes for
There are several cases of organizations with the best of intentions that lack, though, a deep understanding of what the candidate experiences throughout the process. So, they design fancy processes — sometimes incorporating technology solutions too — that are detached from the candidates’ reality.
Our golden rule is that when planning out processes, you should always consider it from the users’ point of view. And this golden rule applies to the recruitment process too. You can’t design and implement a great candidate experience until you deeply understand how the candidate feels, thinks and acts when they interact with the organization.
In this process of empathizing with candidates, you can:
get consistent feedback by sending a cNPS survey to all candidates that went through the recruitment process. CNPS (candidate net promoter score) is a metric that will tell you how candidates experience your recruitment process and if they would recommend others apply to the company;
have quick calls with candidates once the interview process is completed to gather a more personalized feedback;
conduct focus groups with recently hired employees to gather their input and potential recommendations for improvements;
conduct workshops with the hiring teams to decide on specific solutions and improvements taking into consideration the feedback gathered. Our experience has shown that co-creation workshops and design sprint methodologies can help teams quickly and effectively capitalize the collective brainpower and move forward with impactful solutions.
🧩 Connect the dots by creating a Candidate Experience Journey Map
My colleague Vasileia in her article “How to create & implement a Customer Journey Map from scratch” explains in detail what a Customer Journey Map is and why organizations that are in the middle of designing, restructuring or optimizing processes should run one.
The approach should not be different when it comes to our internal customers so below, we’ll take a look at what Talent Acquisition Professionals and Hiring teams can learn from Customer Experience best practices and how a Candidate Experience Journey Map can help them connect the dots.
A Candidate Experience Journey Map is actually a very simple idea: it is a visual representation of the recruitment stages the candidates go through when engaging with the hiring process. The first step should be to map out the current process and determine what is happening at each stage. The next step should be to focus on how the candidate feels through this process.
Why should we focus on the candidates’ emotions? The answer is simple. First, because the emotions are always with us; we cannot remove emotions from the way we think and act. And second, emotions drive our behavior and create preferences which lead to our decisions.
In recruiting, candidates go through a range of emotions from being curious about a role to feeling excited, frustrated or confused. Being aware of the candidates’ emotional drivers and barriers throughout the process, the Talent Acquisition and Hiring teams can determine how to address them in order to optimize the candidate experience.
Below, it is an indicative Candidate Experience Map that highlights the key stages of a recruitment process, the touchpoints and candidates’ emotions. We are also sharing a few tips on how you can turn your interactions with the candidates into WOW moments (zoom in for a better view).
Wrapping up…. and a bonus tip
There is a lot of room to be creative and innovative when it comes to candidate experience, since it is such a broad subject. In addition, although we highlighted the most common recruitment stages, there is no one-size-fits-all candidate journey. That means that your company’s Employee Value Proposition (EVP), culture and industry specifics should be also taken into account when you design yours.
For sure, now that the competition for talent is high and the candidates are more selective than ever before, it is the perfect timing for the organizations to rethink their recruitment approach and challenge the way they used to hire. We hope our point of view to inspire those who wish to do so 🙂
Our bonus tip:
If 100 people apply for a position and only one gets the job, that means 99 people get rejected. So, the great candidate experience doesn’t start with the people you hire. It starts with the 99% of candidates who get rejected and how they feel treated during their interactions with the company.
Having that principle in mind, at Reborrn we take seriously our promise to create a valuable experience for all the candidates who are interested in working with us and we help our clients do the same. This is why, whether a strong fit or not, we suggest spending a few minutes at the end of the interview to share with the candidate a brief feedback, what they did well and what we feel they need to further improve. This practice, which actually doesn’t cost time, money or energy, has a tremendous impact on the candidate’s experience because, irrespective of the interview’s outcome, they feel valued and well treated exiting the interview process.
Imagine a world where even rejected candidates became your ambassadors, speaking highly of your company. “Even though I was rejected, I felt the company treated me well.”…”My interview experience was so pleasant, I would recommend applying to the company.”.
Can you think of a better way to measure the success of a game-changing candidate experience?
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