When it comes to recruitment, remember that candidates have a choice
Some people are really lucky, and they don’t ‘have’ to work for you!
But if you are really lucky they will decide that they want to (Yay go you!)
The candidate experience starts way before you put that advert out there, people will experience your brand, spend time using your product, in your outlets or with your people all as a consumer.
And don’t forget that even if you are not a B2C company with a high profile brand, potential candidates will experience your industry, they will see news about your gender pay gap or hear from friends and family what it''s like to work for companies just like you.
All this interaction happens without policy and procedure and forms their views, expectations and feelings about you as a company and a brand.
So, recognising choice, and impact of your candidate experience, is really important because before you get an opportunity to choose them…your candidates chose you (or not)!
The Candidate Experience is your time to shine!
This is it, you now get to tell your great company story to some fab candidates. Wax lyrical about your culture, the opportunities for them to develop and grow and how they will simply LOVE what you have done with the staff canteen.
If you start from a position that people choose you, then your whole conversation takes on a different message. How often does a candidate ask you “Why do you want me to work for you?” and what would you say?
But be authentic - part of the candidate experience is making sure that if you say you do something in your business then you do it. If you state your values, then you must live them.
30% of new joiners leave in the first 90 days and a massive 43% of these say that their role reality did not meet their expectation!
Attraction and selection is your process, so it should be designed to work, but remember thinking about Candidate Experience means that you need the process not just to work for you but for your candidates too.
Are they kept up to date, is the process timely, did you lose them simply because there was a delay in the process?
Show me the money!
So why is it important to ensure that each candidate has the best experience?
It is expensive to recruit and lose people
Research from Oxford Economics shows that the cost of employees leaving ranges from £20,000 to** £39,000** per person!
This includes the cost per hire so having a great Candidate Experience makes real business sense!
The hidden cost of a poor Candidate Experience
Think about this. If you stand out as the best employer for a particular candidate, how hard are they likely to negotiate their package? And what if you don''t?
In other words, a poor candidate experience is likely to add a premium to your salary costs.
What if your recruitment processes are a barrier for diversity?
Let''s say you want to close your gender pay gap by attracting and recruiting women into your tech teams – then getting the candidate experience right for women is pretty important, right? And to do this you need to think about how you design the experience using data to inform this design. Of course you can''t discriminate, but are you positively attractive to a diverse population?
Because treating people like people makes sense!
But more than this, isn’t the candidate experience important because we want everyone that we touch, deal with or hire to have the best experience that we can deliver?
Measuring the Candidate Experience
Capturing feedback from all candidates on their experience allows you to understand if there are any barriers to your business/industry for anyone, if something just doesn’t work as well as it could do, or if your company is perceived positively by people that have been through the process.
At The People Experience Hub our Candidate Experience module lets you ask everyone how the process was for them – find out more here
- Did expectation and reality meet or was something just not right?
- Was the process designed right? From the advert to the recruiter engagement, the application and interview right up being offered (or declined) the role.
- Analyse this by job grade, function, geography and you start to get a real indication of what’s working and what isn’t.
- Add this to your other Talent and Attraction data and you can start making some great decisions that will make life better for your people at the start of their journey.