CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE
As Acquire Group’s resident “Talent Connoisseur” my mantra is to remain absolutely focused on improving the recruitment experience for our candidates to remain relevant in this industry.
The Candidate Experience is a real opportunity to hold onto a genuinely tangible process while others disappear into the digital age. If you’re a hiring manager, it’s in your best interest to start off on the right foot with candidates. Consider what it is like to apply for a job at your company. Put yourself in their shoes. What’s the application process like? What impression are you making from the very first phone screening down to the rejection letter or offer letter? All of this is known collectively as “the candidate experience,” and too often, it’s not good at all!
The key to success is creating a personalised, immersive experience for all candidates, the more you know your candidates, the better the experience for everyone. To make the experience better you need to remember 2 simple things:
Information – provide the candidate with as much information as possible, yes it’s always nice to see that candidates have done their research, but genuine candidates really want to immerse themselves in the business before the first interview.
Communication – candidates want to know what’s happening. Candidates want to feel that they are being invested in by their potential employer, it can no longer be a one way street. If a candidate is unsuccessful at interview you still want them to have a positive experience, as any candidate could still be a potential customer.
A modern approach to recruitment requires a candidate experience that is both personalised (addressed to a particular candidate) and segmented (relevant to the position and level that the candidate has applied for). In our data rich world we need to be able to understand candidate behaviour for example what attracts certain candidates to the company is it the brand, the specific role or the perceived company culture. What our clients are learning is just how interlinked the customer experience and the candidate experience are. If your candidates have a good experience going through the life cycle of recruitment and onboarding then ultimately it has an impact on your customers.
More often than not, as the hiring manager you are the “Chief of First Impressions” the “window into the business” and in today’s highly competitive job market you must focus on your company’s core values to create and execute a new and innovative candidate experience from day one. In a recent survey a third of all respondents chose not to apply to a company because it was too difficult to find information on it. Nearly half of all job candidates didn’t apply to a company because they found the hiring process frustrating. Also, nearly half of candidates were driven away by vague job descriptions.
Great hiring isn’t just about putting bums on seats. Treat candidates as you would like to be treated yourself, online or offline. Every interaction you have with your candidates (job applications, phone screenings, on-site interviews, even rejection letters) is an opportunity to make a lasting impression and build your company’s reputation as great place to work. It’s a fact that companies that closely connect their candidate experience and talent planning to their strategic planning perform better.
The Candidate eXperience needs to be consistent across the entire company at all levels.
All too often the recruitment of more junior roles aren’t given the same priority or importance as those that are more senior or at least perceived to be. Alignment of your strategic planning with your human capital planning involves all levels of the organisation, from the “shop floor”, to the C-suite to the board. When companies take a deep dive into the roles with highest value creation, they find that many of them are at levels significantly below the C-suite. These key positions don’t always get the VIP service that others do but that simply must change.
Position your company to make your recruitment strategy a reality, give us a call and see how we can help. Acquire Talent focuses solely on permanent recruitment for organisations that believe that people are their competitive edge. Our clients rely on us to search out and then deliver their future top talent. Recruitment has evolved, with the advent of technology, on-site recruitment teams, RPO’s and a multitude of recruitment providers we consciously developed our offering to deliver both value and innovation. Our expertise lies beyond posting vacancies on job boards and filtering resumes!
