Hiring The Best in 2020 - Part 3 - Candidate Experience

The Covid 19 pandemic has made 2020 the most volatile recruitment market ever in my 25 years in the profession. It has impacted every aspect of hiring from talent pools to selection processes to internal recruitment resources. 

For businesses that adapt there is great opportunity to gain competitive advantage. For those that don’t there are pitfalls aplenty.

To get you right up to date I have compiled an ‘easy to digest’ 5 article series which I will publish every week and we are already on to part three.

Candidate Experience

Candidate Experience and Employer Branding go hand in hand and are inextricably linked to last week's article about candidate attraction.

Do you remember the virtual continuum where a business is only attractive to the unemployed at one end and extremely appealing to all but the most entrenched at the other? Well, your employer branding is one of the pillars that positions you along that line. And candidate experience is a big driver of employer branding.

However, nearly 46% of hiring professionals said the Covid pandemic has negatively affected the candidate experience at their company, according to our recent survey. 

In a market with less hiring generally, this is not unusual. Firms that are recruiting see a greater number of active candidates and feel less incentive to provide a best practice experience for applicants. 

The business may also have reduced the size of their internal resources for managing recruitment if they anticipate lower volumes.

In combination this will lower the bar and have only minor implications for hiring now but will be eating away at your employer branding of the future.

So where and how does it go wrong?

It’s fairly commonplace to see firms provide a good candidate experience in the early stages of a recruitment process where the main focus is attracting prospective employees in to a meaningful discussion about a vacancy. 

Typically this positive candidate experience will involve high quality regular communication from the initial point of contact, sight of the job description, and further documentation promoting the firm's reputation as an employer.

Where things start to slip are after that point where the hiring company begins to deselect candidates. As these candidates are not of immediate value in filling the open position they are not prioritised in terms of communication. So no email to thank them for their application but make them aware that they won’t be invited to interview. Or no post interview feedback, just a ‘thanks but no thanks’ message.

So if you are not going to be offering these candidates a position why does this really matter?

The first reason is that they may be right for another position in your company either now or in the future. Their experience will have a significant impact on their decision to engage again - or not!

The second reason is people talk, particularly those operating in a specific skill or industry community. Do you want to risk one candidate bad mouthing your company to another prospective candidate? Of course not. I have seen numerous examples where a company’s sloppy approach to Candidate Experience catches up with them and good candidates they have never previously engaged with won’t entertain a discussion about their vacancies. 

In summary, Candidate Experience should be a top priority for any business that values talent. If you are currently in a hiring lull, this could be the perfect opportunity for you to appraise your processes and make adjustments if necessary.

I will leave you with two guiding principles to help.

Firstly, your processes should mirror the effort put in by the candidates. So, for example, an applicant who is being discounted before interview should receive a timely email explaining that they have been unsuccessful whereas some being deselected after interview should get a phone call and some constructive and specific feedback

Secondly, remember what it was like last time you were a candidate and what ticked you off. Make sure you aren’t doing that! Most poor candidate experience centres around lack of communication. Don’t employ radio silence with your candidates even if progress is slow and you don’t have much to report. A phone call simply explaining that goes a long way.

I hope this provides food for thought regarding your approach to candidate experience.

If you want to discuss any aspect of this feel free to contact me. Next week’s piece will be on Professional Talent Pools.