Don’t forget the candidate: a closer look into candidate experience

Candidate experience is the corporate elephant in the room. It’s real and everyone knows it’s real, but they’re not sure what to do about it.

Click here to access our in-depth guide to candidate experience

A candidate’s experience can have a significant impact on the way your business is perceived in the market, and ultimately, how it performs. It’s proven to be directly tied to recruiting performance so it’s increasingly crucial you work to improve your candidate experience.

Improving candidate experience: why you should care

The cost of poor candidate experience is high due to the age of the internet. Everyone is now connected, with information widely accessible. On top of this, many problems with employee engagement and eventual turnover can be traced all the way back to poor candidate experience.

With the emergence of employer branding a company’s treatment of the candidate can impact your company’s reputation — 60% of candidates go through a bad experience when applying to a new job, and 72% of them choose to share their experience with others.

Whilst a poor candidate experience can be detrimental for your company, there are multiple benefits to providing a positive experience. A good experience can lead to more applicants, hires and referrals. Research shows 55% of candidates with a positive experience would tell their social networks about it, helping to build your reputation in the market.

Constituents of candidate experience

Candidate experience is about more than just the way a jobseeker is treated after they apply for a role.

It includes all aspects of the candidate journey including the application process, interview process, experience of the applicant tracking system (ATS) as well as how you treat rejected candidates. It’s the ongoing relationship of which the recruitment process is just a part.

The first step to improving your candidate experience is to fully understand it.

There are 5 key components of candidate experience:

Corporate baggage
Rules of engagement
Application stations
Acceptance in rejection
Aftersales service

Today’s candidates are less willing to blindly apply to a position. They readily have information available to them via career sites, social media and employer review sites such as Glassdoor (for information on how to get started on Glassdoor click here), and will take the time to research your company.

Building a positive candidate experience can be very rewarding. For more insights on how to develop candidate experience in your business, download our guide here.