Interview Feedback to Drive Recruiting Success

Collecting interview feedback from the internal hiring team is a crucial element of the recruitment process. Interview panellists’ evaluations help identify each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses to select the best candidate for a given role. But mostly TA teams stop there. That is, don’t leverage candidates’ comments (and even criticism) to elevate the recruiting games. In turn, they miss the opportunity to use the interview feedback to drive the talent acquisition program’s success.?

Ways to best leverage interview feedback

Taking a more strategic approach to using and collecting interview feedback can help to recruit staff to improve candidate conversions, keep the talent pipeline full, and continually improve the recruitment process.

Here’s how.?

1) Improve candidate ‘close rate’ with timely internal feedback.-Top-tier talent is in high demand. (And not often on the market for long.) If move too slowly, top-choice candidates may be scooped up by competitors and will have to begin the recruitment process over with a new slate of candidates. If wants to win these coveted candidates for the team, we must quickly collect internal feedback (i.e., interview panellists’ general thoughts and specific scores for prospects based on structured interviews) so can make timely hiring decisions and job offers.?

The best way to secure this comprehensive feedback in a timely manner?

?Encourage interviewers to submit candidate assessments as soon as possible after each interview, while their chats with prospective hires are still fresh in their minds. Then, build off the excitement and momentum of the recruitment process by submitting a candidate offer as quickly after the final job interview asap. Include positive feedback from the team to explain to the candidate why excited to have them on board. Not only do we become more likely to extend offers to target prospects before competitors do, but will also impress them with the bespoke candidate experience provided and, in turn, increase your chances of job offer acceptance.

Talent acquisition recruiting benchmarks.

2) Share collective interview feedback with passed-on candidates-Most candidates won’t be hired. That’s the nature of the job. But many prospects we put the time and effort to speak with but pass on could be a good fit for a future job. When we decide not to move forward with a given candidate, it’s important to notify them why that’s the case- ideally, via an email shortly after hiring a candidate that features specific reasons why went with that other candidate for the position. Informing candidates of decisions as quickly as possible post-interview and providing them with detailed, constructive feedback helps provide a great candidate experience. Candidates can use this given feedback to improve their performance in future interviews and may even improve upon skills they lacked so they can re-apply to your company in the future.

The 2021 North American Candidate Experience Research Report from The Talent Board found that when job prospects received feedback, their willingness to refer other candidates increased by 24%. Moreover, their willingness to increase their relationship with their employer increased by 36%.

If we want, candidates to consider our company for future apps and speak highly of our company within their networks. Providing this feedback will help enhance the employer brand (i.e., public perception) and keep our talent pipeline full of qualified individuals who had a good recruitment experience for future positions.

?3) Allow job prospects to share their thoughts on your recruiting approach- Recruiting is a two-way street. Internal feedback isn’t the only interview feedback that matters. A top way to improve the recruitment process and refine interviewing skills is to ask prospects (rejected candidates you ‘archive’ and those you hire) for their feedback too. Following each interview process, send a feedback form (i.e., a candidate experience survey) to each job seeker you interview to discover opportunities to improve your work. Some of the most important candidate feedback questions to ask in said surveys include:

1. How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with your interviewing experience?
2. How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with our communication during the recruiting process?
3. What suggestion would you make to improve our interview process?

Take note of trends noticed in candidate interview feedback, and create action plans to continually improve the hiring process. Testing new (but proven) recruitment strategies and tactics, will lead towards improving the candidate experience and the process by which we screen talent. Again, we want every candidate that comes through our doors to think highly of the company, so as to maintain a strong employer brand and keep our talent pipeline full. Collecting and acting upon candidate feedback can help accomplish that.