How to Create a More Engaging Candidate Experience
Introduction There’s little doubt that we are in the midst of what could be called the candidate-centric era of recruiting. Technology developers and the global companies that use their products have more tech jobs open than they have people to fill them. Unemployment is at its lowest rate in decades. And many of the technology talent that are at the top of everyone’s watch list are either happily employed or in such high demand that they have their pick of the lot, and can even feel overwhelmed by the volume of choice they have. This has created a perfect storm that is posing a stiff challenge for tech recruiters.
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Why Candidate Experience is Important It’s absolutely critical then to keep candidates engaged and interested by providing a superior candidate experience. When candidate’s experience with your company falls short of expectations, or is even downright bad, it can have a negative impact on your brand in the outside world — whether that’s by word of mouth in their professional network or on recruiting or industry sites. You also ruin any possibility of revisiting turned off candidates in the future who might otherwise end up being good references for other top candidates. A good experience, on the other hand, can work wonders. Candidates who are happy with the ongoing engagement with your company are more likely to stay in touch (if they end up elsewhere, provide future referrals and help propagate a positive buzz with your brand. And it goes without saying that a happy candidate is more apt to be a happy employee. That positive feeling drives excitement about the opportunity and gets them off on the right footing when they finally start work. Most compelling of all though, is that a good experience is what candidates have come to expect, and companies are setting some high standards. Recruiting organizations are compelled to create an inspiring and lasting candidate experience that keeps them differentiated from other companies and top-of-mind with the most in-demand tech candidates. Following are some guidelines recruiters can follow to improve the candidate experience and provide a long-lasting bond with these vital individuals.
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72%
of candidates have shared a bad experience online or with someone directly.
CareerArc
Step 1: Align your team Building a great candidate experience is easier when you are following a structured plan of attack, and you are able to hit the ground running by getting your entire team aligned early. Make it a collaborative effort by conducting one or more intake meetings with hiring managers and other key business partners to drill down on what’s most important to pursue and lock down your desired candidates. Use turnover data to forecast your hiring goals and establish realistic expectations with your pipeline. And diversify your intake panel to include different groups and levels of seniority; that gets everyone on the same page and ensures that you’re getting varied input on how to engage candidates in the most effective manner.
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Create an employee value proposition that establishes a baseline for role differentiation and shows candidates what they’ll get in return for the skills they bring to your company.
Many companies are now creating an “employee value proposition (EVP)” — similar to what your product marketers might do to differentiate your products and services to customers — to establish a baseline for role differentiation and show candidates what they’ll get in return for the skills they’ll bring to your company. EVP is the complete offering a company makes to its prospective employees in hopes they will join and to current employees in return for staying, for giving their best efforts, and in hopes they will speak well of the organization once they’ve moved on. If it’s important to the employee, everything from mentoring to foosball tables to how frequently managers email on weekends, falls within the proposition. Your employee value proposition should feature the competitive strengths of the position within the organization, and what separates it from similar roles with your competitors. EVP should align with your corporate culture, value and other inspiring attributes, and it should articulate why a candidate should be fighting for this job. It’s a storytelling device that reflects your culture and values, to be used in your employer branding and candidate outreach. Gather input from all of your stakeholders up front and build a value prop that everyone agrees has the best chance of engaging the right candidates. When you are clear what you are looking for and who will be a good fit, candidates will be able to tell.
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Employee value proposition (EVP) establishes a baseline for role differentiation and shows candidates what they’ll get in return for the skills they’ll bring to your company.
Step 2: Make it easy and personal Job searching is not traditionally known as a particularly a pleasant experience, even amongst in-demand tech talent who seem to have control of the process. Tech candidates have rated job searching more stressful than getting a root canal. In the outreach phase alone, tech talent are overwhelmed. The most in-demand talent get a message from a recruiter at least once a day. There are far too many messages to respond to and this puts a lot of work in the candidates’ hands. As a recruiter, it’s helpful to think about how candidates approach other areas of their life. When they want to get somewhere, they open an app and order a car on-demand. When they want to watch something, they choose from a list of recommendations personalized to them. Candidates have come to expect the same level of ease and personalization from all areas of their lives, and job searching is no exception. Consider accessing candidates on talent platforms that use data and AI to match candidates with the right job, which offers an experience to candidates to feel less overwhelmed and in control, and a more personalized approach.
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50%
of candidates want to see personalized messages from prospective employers
Make sure to also personalize your outreach. In the old days when you didn’t know much about a candidate other than a resume, it made sense to maximize your time and mass mail templated letters. Today, it’s much easier both to screen candidates via online profiles and reach out to candidates as well. With high-demand candidates, the onus is still on you to initiate and maintain contact, which is made easier when you have the proper templates with which to craft your communications. While online profiles are nothing new either, they continue to offer more and more insights into a candidate’s professional and personal character. Note the types of technologies and projects they’ve worked on, reference them in the context of your open position, and showcase a potential career path for them. If it’s a hot technology like Python or TensorFlow, for example, illustrate how data science or deep learning fit into your corporate vision. See what types of personal activities they’re engaged with; there might be others in your organization who have similar interests (bike riding to work, for example) that you can reference. Build a more personal bond and you’ll make a stronger connection between candidate and company. Half of all candidates surveyed in Hired’s 2018 Brand Health Report said they want to see personalized messages from prospective employers. Personalizing your messages has the additional benefit of distinguishing your employer brand. It shows your organization values getting to know candidates on a more personal level, and that aspect of your brand can last all the way through the candidate lifecycle and into employment.
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Step 3: Make your employer brand shine A strong employer brand will ultimately help you improve candidate engagement. It’s a key differentiator to be sure, and it helps define your organization and set it apart on a personal and professional level. You’re not just a place to work; you’re a group of like-minded individuals who enjoy working with each other toward common goals. Tell a great story and make it inspirational. Everyone wants to be part of a great story, whether it’s a young company about to hit hypergrowth or an organization that just hired a visionary new CIO. According to Hired’s 2018 Brand Health Report, 57 percent of candidates want to know what it’s like to work at your company, before engaging with you so show them. Feature profiles of top employees to put a face on your company, and encourage candidates to further investigate your story by reviewing updates on your social sites. From a competitive standpoint, tech firms are also getting more and more flexible with how they manage their working environments. Many now offer flex time and the ability to work remotely, all in the hopes of giving employees a compelling work-life balance. These make excellent features of a standout employer brand. Benefits are becoming an increasingly important part of a company’s employer brand. Rather than wait until you’re giving an offer to share your benefits, try standing out by talking about them upfront. Use your online company profiles to show your benefits to candidates to eliminate surprises and help them see how your company aligns with their wants and needs.
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45%
of candidates are looking for the right culture fit, making it the #2 most important thing candidates look for
Step 4: Be transparent upfront and throughout the interview process Not only are candidates interested in hearing about your benefits up front, but they also want to hear about salary. In Hired’s 2018 Brand Health Report, salary transparency was the top reason tech talent said they would engage with a company that reaches out with an offer to begin the interview process. Don’t be afraid to start the conversation about salary early. It can save valuable time for the candidate and your team, and sets expectations and a sense of trust early on. Once they get to the interview stage, candidates prefer to have visibility into the interview process. Research says that 83% of candidates believe that if employers set expectations about the recruiting process it would greatly improve their overall experience. With the job search being as stressful as it is, helping a candidate come in confident, enthusiastic, and prepared can go a long way. Let candidates know exactly what to expect in the interview process. Let them know who they will be meeting with and what they will be evaluated on so they can do their homework focusing on the right thing. Providing tips will make them feel like they have an insider scoop. You can also provide extra details on things they might be curious about like office attire, culture, things they might do or see while onsite. Lastly, try to also to keep a steady and honest line of communication open with the candidate before, during and after interviews. A vast majority of candidates want to receive feedback from their interviews. It’s easy to fall into the trap of saying everything went well when there are actually things that can be improved upon. Surprises can hurt you when expectations are set poorly. And conversely, feedback is important for the employer as well. When you ask candidates for feedback about their experience, you’ll get valuable insights that could help you improve the candidate experience and see some real effects on your hiring KPIs.
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Salary transparency is the top reason tech talent will engage with a company that reaches out with an offer to begin the interview process. 2018 Brand Health Report
94%
of candidates want to receive interview feedback
Step 5: Have a consistent process for interviewing and screening Particularly in the technology industry, assessing skill sets can be a challenge unless you have a structured and scalable method for testing and evaluating each candidate. Skills assessment tools provide an objective, unbiased way to test skills and expertise, such as programming mastery or data management tactics. There are plenty of pre-packaged tools on the market that allow you to customize your testing environment and make it available to a group of candidates to see how they handle a real-world work environment. Why is that important for improving the candidate experience?
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It shows you are focused on evaluating core skills in a fair and unbiased way, and not basing evaluation on personal intuition or knowing the right person. Candidates get to see first hand the types of projects they’ll be working on, and whether or not they fit with their professional preferences and goals. You have a grounded method for illustrating your commitment to transparency and uncovering the empirical value of an employee.
The interview stage may be one of the most critical opportunities to improve the candidate experience, since it may be the first time you’re coming face to face with your prospect. Interviews are prime time for evaluating a candidate’s “personal quest,” which helps articulate what they are truly looking for in their ideal position and environment. Gear your questions to uncover their challenges and objectives, views on work-life balance, and even compensation, which is always important to bring up as early in the conversation as possible. Aligning their quest with what you can offer will help speed up your acceptance speed and acceptance rates.
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Conclusion In the candidate-centric era of recruiting we’re currently in, recruiters must take assertive steps to differentiate their roles and keep good candidates constantly engaged, right up to and including onboarding and employment. Your strategy should include building a structured plan of attack, leveraging assets like your employer brand and corporate culture, personalizing candidate communications, creating fair and friendly interviewing environments, and retaining your new employees by following the same best practices you used to lock them down.
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