Improving The Applicant Experience – My Thoughts As An Ex-Candidate

I have been a candidate many times in my life; as a 16-year-old looking for my first retail job, going on the graduate scheme search and when looking for a complete change of career in my late twenties. Apart from that first Saturday job, all my job searches have come up against two particular obstacles, both to do with availability. It doesn’t matter what job I’ve applied for, (even in the hospitality industry) the employer always wants to see you or speak to you during office or opening hours, which is when I’m working.

It’s the worst thing I found about job hunting; having to use up annual leave, feign illness or make up appointments, just to have a long phone call or attend an interview and then not get the job. Obviously, it’s great when you do get the job, it makes it worth it. But when it’s time to move on, having to go through the same process was always the most difficult part.

Another thing I found added to the problem was getting to and from an interview without transport. If I got the job I’d walk, bus or ride there but leaving work to attend an hour interview, that also included a 30 minute walk there and back meant I couldn’t do it during my lunch break and often had to turn down interview offers because I couldn’t get enough time away from my current job. Even driving a car to and from an interview takes up extra time; if you work 9-5 and you’re lucky, the interviewer will schedule the interview for after 5pm but you still need to get there during rush hour.

Once, I was so worried my employer would see me waiting for a bus to get home from an interview as I’d taken a sick day off for it, that I hid behind some bins and a burger van until the bus arrived.

However, I’m writing this because I’m hopeful for job seekers now. I’m lucky to have a job I enjoy and job hunting hasn’t crossed my mind since I started, but with the rise in redundancies and job losses since February, I know there are millions of candidates out there going through a really tough time right now and employers have a chance to revolutionise the way they interview by making use of the technology their current remote workers are using.

In pre-COVID it was standard practice to do face-to-face interviews meaning your candidates had to get to your offices, usually during office hours and, alarmingly, interviewers were still judging candidates on their handshakes and people who couldn’t leave their home were limited on what jobs they could apply for, regardless of their qualifications. Now, I know not every company was like that, but remote working and remote interviews were simply not as widely offered or thought of as a viable option.

Just think how much greater the talent pool is now though! Even if, as an employer, you are able to go back into the office in the future, if you commit to remote interviews and accept that a candidate might be on their lunch break, at home with their kids, in between a split shift, only available in the evening, in a different county, or even on holiday, it won’t deter those candidates from applying and one of them might be absolutely perfect for the job!

I’m also hoping that employers have started to see how the benefits of remote working means that they can employ people for whom travel would be too expensive, who are caring for someone at home or any of the hundreds of other reasons stopping them from achieving the next step in their career or working for their dream company. Doing this could also help people living in lower socio-economic situations work for non-local companies at better wages, young people who can’t afford to move away from home yet get their first career job sooner, and people who are house-bound get a full-time job that doesn’t put pressure on them to leave their homes.

Of course this won’t work for every industry – you can’t serve beer from home, but if you’re in an industry that works to typical office hours and you would usually insist your employees work in an office – I implore you to think twice about being flexible with these obstacles to success.

I think it’s worth noting too, that even if a candidate isn’t working full-time, it can still be difficult to travel for an interview or job; they may have had to sell their car, be looking after children or not have the money for transport. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t mean they can’t do the job if they get it, you just need to be flexible. It’s too easy to think that a candidate doesn’t want the job enough if they struggle with travel, but they might just be the perfect fit, and that is worth looking at remote options.

Looking back, if I’d had the chance to work remotely or at least interview remotely, who knows where I’d be or what I’d be doing right now. I had restrictions, but not as many as a lot of people do, and you have the opportunity to make it much easier for a more diverse pool of applicants to apply for your jobs, and improve how inclusive your company is.