Navigating the Candidate Journey

Could your Hiring Process Use a Tune-Up?

Your candidate experience is defined by how you treat the applicants that are in your company's hiring process. Every touchpoint impacts how your prospective hires perceive your organization, starting with your application until day 1 for those who make it to the finish line. The totality of these interactions impacts your employer brand, your ability to fill your pipeline with the talent you need, and your overall reputation in the market.

Here's a pop quiz on whether your candidate journey could use some maintenance:

1. Application Process: Have you achieved something close to a one-click apply? If your process takes longer than a minute you are behind the majority of advanced employers.

It may be time for a reset if: You are actually still collecting three mandatory references in your employment application.

2. Communication: Clear and timely communication with candidates can be really challenging. You are always walking that fine line between providing helpful feedback and having a lawsuit on your hands. Hiring managers are not created equal when it comes to interviewing and selection, and rarely consistent in their decision-making and candidate evaluation.

It may be time for a reset if: Your candidates are receiving generic rejection emails 9 months after they first applied.

3. Interview Process: Off-the-cuff and unscripted interviews are more common than you'd think. Many organizations do not have any calibration around their process and may use a single decision-maker who has no training on questions to avoid. Keep the questions job-related and avoid the personal ones which invite protected responses and perceived discrimination.

It may be time for a reset if: You are asking candidates too many cute questions like, "Why are manhole covers round?"

4. Respect and Professionalism: How you treat your candidates who do not get the job is one of the defining factors in your candidate journey. Look back on your entire career and think about how many times someone from a hiring team did a debrief with you after you didn't get a position. The human element has been lost from many talent acquisition processes in favor of CYA and avoiding hard conversations.

It may be time for a reset if: You are a staffing company convincing passive candidates to entertain opportunities and then ghosting completely when your client doesn't bite.

5. Honesty: Far too many recruiters are taught to oversell their opportunities and only speak to the positive. Failing to incorporate realistic job previews that include the ugly side of the job will keep you in a perpetual state of refilling the same role.

It may be time for a reset if: your 90-day turnover is higher than 50%.

6. Efficiency: Striking the right balance for the time you are asking of your candidates is an art. If your managers want to hire a candidate after a 10-minute interview what message does that send to your candidate? Conversely, many executives are asked to commit days to a hiring process, not hours. The top 10% of talent for any given role may not be willing to commit unreasonable amounts of their personal time and PTO to run your marathon hiring gamut.

It may be time for a reset if: Your 10-step hiring process strung someone along for 4 months and they met with 12 different people (Yes, this actually happens).

7. Negotiation: This is perhaps the most delicate point in the journey. If you lack experience as a job seeker and are disappointed with an offer, many won't attempt to have the pot sweetened so as not to offend their new employer because they want the position. For those who are willing to play the game, if the employer goes significantly above their initial offer the candidate may question your integrity and tactics.

It may be time for a reset if: your first offer is your last.

8. Pre-employment: Now that you have put your soon-to-be new hire through the ringer and they have accepted your offer, how many more hoops exist here? Is this a whole other journey in and of itself? Are these knockouts to protect your employees and customers or another time-suck and needless expense?

It may be time for a reset if: You are drug testing for marijuana in a state which allows it, checking 5 references you do nothing with, have an overly restrictive background check, require a credit check for a fry cook, or are administering a time-consuming personality assessment that is neither utilized correctly or for development or employee assimilation.

8. Post-Offer Experience: This can range from absolutely nothing and a paper-based onboarding day 1 (don't forget 2 forms of i.d. and a blank check!) to a seamless, automated process you can knock out before you start which includes a detailed multi-month onboarding plan, a swag bag, and an introduction from your peers and leadership team.

It may be time for a reset if: Not only was this a blank space in your process, but the candidate who accepted just chose to not show up without a word.

Each of these stops in the candidate journey are critical. When you get them wrong candidates may opt out of your process, or even worse, decide to join your organization with a really bad taste in their mouth before they even get started. Neglecting the droves of candidates who never make it through your journey can poison your reputation as an employer of choice even if you take phenomenal care of your people. The candidate journey is the gateway to the employee experience and sets the tone for creating a culture where great talent is going to want to stay. Handling your candidate journey with care also paves the way for positive word-of-mouth, more referrals, and a rich and deep talent pipeline. Just as a good organization surveys their employees to make improvements, if you are not gathering feedback from your candidates on how you can enhance your recruiting flywheel it's a wasted opportunity.

Let's connect if you personally have a good hiring horror story to share. If you are interested in retooling your candidate journey reach out through my website and for tips subscribe to my newsletter.