What is the candidate experience, and why does it matter?
When it comes to the hiring process, the most important thing is ensuring that you hire the best person for the job, right? While this is vital, how your candidates feel as they go through the hiring process really matters too. In fact, this has a name – the candidate experience, which refers to how candidates feel about your organisation once they experience your hiring process.
Unsurprisingly, the candidate experience has been found to have a significant impact on whether candidates choose to accept your offer and also whether they will apply for jobs with your organisation in the future. Depending on your organisation, there is also the possibility that they could be customers of yours in the future as well.
In addition, providing a good candidate experience can help reduce dropout from your hiring process. A disorganised, excessively rigorous, or otherwise unpleasant application process may result in your ideal candidates dropping out of the process. Also, if your process is much slower than your competitors, top candidates may be snapped up before you make your final decision.
So, how can you ensure that your hiring process provides an excellent candidate experience?
Effective Communication: Keep your candidates informed about where they are in the process, what the next steps are, and provide a rough timeline until the next step. Transparency and open communication can go a long way in creating a positive experience for candidates.
Efficiency and Speed: Try to move through the process in a timely manner and communicate any issues that have caused the process to slow down. Consider whether all the steps in your process are necessary, ensuring that your process includes the most valid tools to differentiate between your candidates.
Fairness and Equity: Candidates want to have the opportunity to excel in your process, and utilising tools such as valid psychometric tests can help ensure a fair and equitable assessment. Psychometric tests can provide valuable insights into a candidate’s abilities and characteristics, promoting objective decision-making.
Respectful Treatment: Always treat candidates with respect. While some candidates may not be suited to a particular role, they may be the right fit for another position in your organisation, either now or in the future. How you treat candidates today can leave a lasting impression and impact your talent pipeline. This can include ensuring that you are on time when running interviews, which shows that you value candidates’ time. Also, don’t overlook the little things, like providing candidates with a glass of water when meeting in person, and walking candidates to and from each interview.
How does psychometric testing fit in with a positive candidate experience? Done well, psychometric testing can be a key asset in ensuring a positive candidate experience. A well-designed psychometric testing battery using valid assessments can measure a number of key competencies required for a role quickly and efficiently, allowing you to keep the pace up in your hiring process, which, as discussed above, is very important. Well-designed psychometric tests are also fair and equitable, allowing candidates to perform on an equal playing field. They provide objective data to the hiring process which many candidates appreciate.
Creating a positive candidate experience isn’t just about finding the best candidate for the job; it’s about building a positive reputation for your organisation and fostering strong, long-term relationships with potential talent. By implementing these strategies, you can enhance your recruitment process and create a more favourable candidate experience that benefits both your organisation and prospective candidates.