Why a Great Candidate Experience Results in Better Hires

Candidate experience ⁠— or a job seeker’s overall experience with the recruiting and hiring process ⁠— matters to the success of your organization more than you think.

Here are a few ways the candidate experience impacts your business.

Candidate experience influences brand perception

Companies that spend a lot of time promoting their brand in the marketplace. But they fail to pay the same attention to their candidate experience.

Effectively, they’re taking one step backward for every two steps forward.

Imagine a candidate who has enjoyed your organization’s product or services and sees an open position. A poor candidate experience will erode his or her good opinion of your company.

Common issues that might deter potential hires include:

• A complicated application process
• Redundant questions
• Zero follow-up emails after an application is submitted

Worst of all, when job seekers have a bad experience, they are likely to tell others. According to research from Talent Board, 33% of job seekers who have a bad candidate experience will post about it online, where it may come up in search results. All the hard work that goes into creating your solid brand becomes tainted when it appears next to a poor review online.

Any time your brand interacts with the public ⁠— whether with consumers, clients, or job seekers ⁠— it must be on its best behavior. Anything less is just bad business.

In fact, the Content Marketing Institute reported that 89% of B2B marketers believe that brand awareness is more important than sales and lead generation. In short, a poor candidate experience harms the organization by damaging its brand and resulting in lower-quality hires.

Engaged candidates make good hires

Providing a great candidate experience isn’t difficult, which is why job seekers get so frustrated when they encounter an application that takes over an hour to fill out. With today’s breadth of automation services, employers have no way to excuse a poor candidate experience.

Even companies that receive hundreds of applications per opening can use simple technology solutions to ensure every applicant feels heard.

Here’s an example: Talent Board reported that 73% of job applicants never receive any kind of communication from an employer after submitting an application. Imagine spending hours adjusting your resume, filling out forms, writing a cover letter, and brushing off work examples and then – nothing.

Not even a thank you for applying!

No one likes being ignored – it can feel humiliating and disheartening.

It doesn’t take much for a candidate to consider his or her experience a bad one. A total of 86% of candidates say that when they don’t receive a basic application confirmation, they consider the experience subpar.

So much of the candidate experience comes down this: candidates want to feel heard. It’s likely that the individuals applying to your organization already feel lost, anxious, or stressed out. By acknowledging them, hiring stakeholders benefit from an engaged pool of applicants, thus increasing the number of opportunities for making a great hire.

Key takeaways

To sum up, candidate experience results in better hires when:

• Managers apply branding guidelines to the hiring process.
• Candidates feel acknowledged during and after application.
• The application process is uncomplicated and easy to complete.

JazzHR can improve candidate experience at your organization. For more information, check out the JazzHR website or schedule a free demonstration with a specialist.