5 Candidate Experience Best Practices Employers Can’t Forget

How you treat job seekers that apply to your company is very important to your brand and the quality of your talent pipeline.  If a candidate has a bad experience applying to your brand or during an interview, you could be losing a potential future employee as well as a potential customer.   According to a candidate experience study from Workplacetrends.com, 80% of job seekers say that if a company doesn’t notify them of their application status, they wouldn’t consider applying to that company again in the future.  A similar study from HR software provider Careerarc found that of candidates who have had a poor experience, 72% have shared that negative experience online or with someone directly.  To protect your brand, here are some candidate experience best practices your company should follow:

1)  Make online applications quick, easy and attractive

There are plenty of online applications that don’t take more than ten or fifteen minutes.  So if yours is lengthy and redundant, a candidate is likely to give up or not bother at all.  Make sure your applications are as short as possible, glitch-free, user friendly and accessible on all devices including mobile.  Also, make sure all your online job applications as well as job advertisements contain appealing details about your company’s brand and culture that will draw in job seekers.

2)  Let candidates know what to expect

One of the most important candidate experience best practices that will reduce the job seeker’s aggravation even if they don’t get the job is to be as transparent as possible about the hiring process.  Communicate with job seekers that apply to your company as frequently as possible and keep them updated on where they stand with your company.  Find a way to clearly explain what the next steps will be, and when they can expect to be contacted again by you.  Give them an idea of how your interview process goes as well, such as if there will be multiple interviews or group interviews.

3)  Make the interview a special experience

Give each candidate a comfortable and memorable experience during the interview. If the candidate has to wait after they arrive for an interview, be hospitable by offering snacks and beverages.  Give the interview a personal touch by tailoring the questions to the candidate.  Since they have likely taken time to learn about your company, show that you have done the taken time to learn about them.  One of the most important candidate experience best practices that you can use in interviews is creating questions based on their specific strengths, career goals and what reasons they gave for their interest in the position.

4)  Give Feedback

It’s possible you may have candidates that aren’t qualified right now to work for you, but they will be with a few more years of experience.  Regardless of whether they apply to your company or not again, one of the candidate experience best practices that will help them with their future job search is giving both positive and negative feedback.  Be courteous when giving negative feedback, and as specific as possible on what the candidate can do to improve their weaknesses.

5)  Give the Job Offer Your All

Once you determine a candidate is an ideal fit for a position at your company, you don’t want to risk losing them by not putting enough thought into the job offer.  For job offer, candidate experience best practices that are important to remember include being transparent and explaining why you decided on the salary and benefits you are offering them.  Also, show that you have the candidate’s best interests at heart.  Show enthusiasm and gratitude for all of their time and effort during the hiring process.   Even if they don’t accept, they are likely to walk away with a positive attitude about your company.