The Importance of Having the Best Possible Candidate Experience

As recently as five years ago, few employers cared about the experience that they created for candidates. Applying to work for an organization was often excruciating and so only, the most desperate of candidates would make it through the process. Employers had few tools in-place to measure not just how many candidates dropped out of the process but the quality of those candidates. Today, thanks in large part to The Candidate Experience Awards, almost all large and many medium- and small-sized organizations are working hard to make the experience of the candidate a positive one.

In today’s webinar, Andrea McEwen Henderson, National Account Manager for College Recruiter hosts College Recruiter President Steven Rothberg, who will discuss the importance of the candidate experience to College Recruiter.

Topics Discussed:

1. What is the candidate experience?

• Treating candidates with respect, like the human beings they are, makes them want to work for the employer more and recommend others to work for them as well. Employers that treat candidates well end up with long lasting, cost effective, hard workers, which make for happier workers. It’s also about making the application, hiring, and training/ on boarding process something that is positive. For them to enjoy it or at least not hate it. Long application processes online but don’t need to ask for social security number, shoot them an email right back after they apply and let them know when they will hear from you (overestimate) beat your own deadline look like a hero, nothing you aren’t able to do.

2. Why are The Candidate Experience Awards?

• Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler own Career Xroads, Gerry started the initiative to encourage employers to treat candidates with more respect. He used examples of employers to give a goal for them to shoot for. There is no limit on the number of awards per year, some companies are only recognized and some get higher awards. You can put in your company’s name in with no charge and can withdraw it if it looks like you aren’t doing well without being mentioned. Some of the largest and smallest companies have both won awards. It’s about how you treat people, not your size.

3. Why should employers care about the candidate experience?

• Using golden rule, expressing your morality, and doing the right thing, are all very admirable. Some employers care more about money than that, so another way of looking at it is that it is cost effective for the employers. If candidates know of you and want to work for you its cheaper to get candidates to apply and quality ones. You don’t need to extend as many offers; those that you hire will stay longer with you. Increases the profitability of the employers to treat the employees with respect.

4. What are some of the worst and best things that employers do which affects the candidate experience?

• Almost all have an applicant tracking system, a computerized database, when people apply their resume and contact information goes into this database. Employers and others at that company can view your information. The recruiter that first reviews the candidate’s file can put notes in, for example questions that you should ask her in the interview. Those applicant-tracking systems will kick a free email out when the candidate applies; the employer sends an informative email with whatever they want in it. If you reject a candidate, it automatically sends an email that states they don’t have the qualifications you’re looking for or compared to others you didn’t. Telling candidates whether they got the job is very friendly. Some employers tell a finalist that doesn’t get the job, will tell the prospect that they had many perfect qualities for the job, but someone else had something extra. That person will then be happy with that company, talk to people about the company, and try to apply later on.

5. What are some examples of things that we have done to improve the experience of candidates using College Recruiter?

• We spent a lot of time, effort, and money in improving the responsiveness of our site making it faster and the search better, now only takes milliseconds for a job to come up and the jobs are much more relevant, removed a lot of banner ads that made clutter. The job description is much more focused just on the description. Most of our jobs have short videos explaining the jobs. Very easy to apply to the job, don’t have to register but can and get benefits, but if they don’t want to they can still apply to the job they are viewing on our site.