Experience Counts

Earlier this week I attended the Glassdoor Best Places to Work road show in Manchester and as a result of this was able to glean some great insights both from Glassdoor themselves and also from some of the winners of this accolade.

As Glassdoor has rapidly evolved into the “Tripadvisor for Talent” what has become ever clearer is how important every individual’s experience of your organisation is in contributing to attracting and retaining the best people into your business. With any review site, many people are only driven to submit their thoughts if their experience is either particularly good – or particularly bad, so with this in mind, it is vital to make sure that candidates, employees and ex-employees all become promoters rather than detractors of your company.

So how can we go about making this happen?

In the first instance, providing a great candidate experience is not just about focusing on providing high quality feedback and reducing time to hire ratios (this should go without saying), it’s also about understanding your candidates and engaging with them in the right way. Given that 86% of candidates currently utilise mobile devices when searching and applying for jobs, have you made sure that your careers site is mobile optimised? Once potential candidates do try and apply for a job or to be added to your talent pool, how simple is the application process? Often a lengthy application process that involves being redirected to another site can put many applicants off and result in them giving up halfway through.

Great content is another way of improving the candidate experience and helping them to gain greater insight into your organisation. Use of videos and testimonials from current employees can reinforce your employer brand and showcase why your organisation is a great place to work. However, when focusing on promoting your employer brand in the market place, you must make sure that what you relay is authentic as well as relevant to the target audience. Selling the dream is all very well but it needs to be backed up by reality. Are your employees fully engaged and does your business really walk the walk in terms of its culture and values? An inclusive and collaborative culture that empowers your employees will pay dividends and help to support positive social media reinforcement. This approach has been adopted by Expedia, helping to contribute to them becoming the Glassdoor #1 Best Place to Work in the UK.

Finally, the key message from Glassdoor is to embrace transparency, with 90% of job seekers stating that they want to work for a company that embodies this value. Make sure that you respond to every review, whether internal or external, and start turning negatives into positives. In addition to Glassdoor, companies can easily gain access to a wealth of analytics and survey data to help them continuously improve candidate and employee experience and become top talent destinations.

In conclusion, it’s important to remember in the current social age; ultimately it is your candidates and employees that create your employer brand.