When candidate experience goes wrong (and how to get it right)

If you’re looking to improve your hiring process, most talent experts would agree that the number one thing you can do is to improve your candidate experience.

Whether it’s lengthy application processes, too many hoops to jump through, waiting weeks for sub-standard (if any) feedback or a final decision, there are lots of ways the job application process is pretty broken for candidates.

According to data from CareerPlug, 26% of candidates surveyed had rejected offers based on compensation, which isn’t surprising. However, 34% of candidates rejected offers because of culture-related reasons — either a poor fit with the working environment or a bad interview experience.

If you don’t want to miss out on top-quality candidates, you need to focus on candidate experience.?

Zinc Case Study

The one where everything went right — and the candidate still said no

At Zinc, the interview process is pretty straightforward: application, recruiter-video screen, video interview, final in-person interview, and offer.

One day, an amazing candidate applied. Bel Germon, Zinc’s Talent Lead, conducted the initial screen, asking all the usual questions (salary, experience. etc). When asked about their job search, the candidate admitted they weren’t actively looking for new opportunities and to leave their current job.

“I made the rookie mistake of glossing over this one because so many people say it and it rarely amounts to anything,” said Bel.

The candidate excelled in every stage, earning top scores, and the final interview was booked four days later.

“I was super excited and probably pretty smug,” said Bel. “The candidate was going to smash it and we were going to get a great new starter with an incredible time to hire.”

The interview went well, Zinc made an offer…and it was rejected.

What went wrong?

The candidate revealed they felt rushed. The quick process gave them no time to reflect on their current role, explore other opportunities, or compare Zinc to other companies. They couldn’t confidently commit.

“Candidate experience isn’t just about speed,” Bel reflected. “It’s about understanding the bigger picture—their hesitations, priorities, and personal timeline.”

The lesson?

Great recruiters dig deeper. Candidate experience means creating a space where individuals feel confident in their decisions, not just moving them quickly through the process.

Now we know where this went wrong, let’s make it right.

How did Zinc improve candidate experience?

We don’t need to convince you that a good candidate experience is key for candidates and makes business sense, so let's look at how you can improve it in your organisations.?

1. Focus on better communication and the rest will follow

There are three central aspects of a good candidate experience: efficiency, transparency and good communication.

One way to make sure you’re communicating with candidates effectively is to visualise your entire hiring process, from application to offer accepted, and ask yourself:

1. Where do candidates enter and leave the pipeline?
2. What are the key touchpoints?
3. Who’s responsible for the process?

A common issue with candidates is a lack of clarity, so being mindful of the candidate’s journey and managing their expectations is an easy win for candidate experience.?

“Every single person who is interviewing right now, anywhere, is in a vulnerable position,” says Bel. “When you’re looking for a job, you’re vulnerable. It’s easy to forget as a talent person that job applications are a big deal for the candidate.”

Timelines that make sense for individual candidate situations can help them feel more at ease.??

2. Look for the bottlenecks

When the hiring process gets stuck, it’s annoying for us, but it’s downright nerve-wracking for a candidate. Identifying bottlenecks in your process helps you figure out where limited resources or time are slowing down the process.?

Not sure how to identify your blockers? Try this trick to work through the problem:?

1. Start with visualising your process, maybe even drawing on a recent hire you’ve made.
2. Write out all the steps, no matter how much detail it takes.?
3. If a one-hour founder interview is a key event in your interview process and your founder only has six spare hours in their diary per week, this is a bottleneck.?
4. Fix it by shortening the interview — but be aware that when one bottleneck is cleared, another often appears.?

The goal of optimising isn’t to fit in as many candidates as you can into the system as quickly as possible. If you push too many people through at once, you risk delays in giving feedback, or can miss key details that lead to a rejected offer. It’s a process of continual improvement.

3. Humanise the process

If you asked candidates what you could do differently, what do you think they would say?

Collecting feedback demonstrates to candidates that you value their opinion, and are continually striving to do better.?

Bel identified a number of ways to make the hiring process more personal, including:

1. Have multiple points of contact and make yourself accessible to candidates throughout the process so they can ask questions
2. Make it clear who’s in the interviews, what they’re going to ask about, and what the interview involves
3. Give candidates time to ask questions, because the hiring process goes both ways
4. Be honest about the role and what it involves – don’t sell a dream
5. Set time aside during the week (Bel prefers Fridays) to give feedback to everyone who’s interviewed that week

And don’t forget to tailor your approach based on the candidate’s needs.

4. Make use of automation

Personalisation is all well and good —?but it takes time, effort and resources that strapped TA teams often don’t have.?

Whether it’s your ATS or tools you integrate with, there are easy ways to help you give personalised feedback, analyse candidate sentiment, or remove unconscious bias from your process. These tools not only enhance the candidate experience but also lead to more satisfied employees.????

Platforms like Zinc can help speed up your time to hire and make background checking simpler. Learn more about using Zinc to improve your candidate experience.?

Plus, check out our list of the six best platforms for candidate experience.

Remember, when it comes to automation and metrics, one size does not fit all. Which tools you choose depends on the hiring needs of your company at the time. Ensure that the tools you use will collect the right kind of data that will help inform the kinds of decisions you need to make.

5. Ask other people to chip in

A common problem when growing your business is that processes that were fine when you had a small team can suddenly become impractical when hiring to scale.

If your Head of People is conducting all the culture interviews and you’re only hiring a few candidates a week, that’s fine. But as the numbers tick up, the process becomes unsustainable.

You’ve hired good people, trust them to make good decisions. When you empower your hiring managers to drive the culture of the company, they will be able to make the right call on candidates they interview.?

Final thoughts: What not to do for a good candidate experience

“Good candidate experience gets talked about,” said Bel. “But bad candidate experience gets talked about more.”

Today, more than ever, candidates speak to each other — whether that’s on social media, Glassdoor or another review site. So candidate experience really matters.

We asked Bel what the easiest ways were to improve. Her insights:

1. Listen to your new joiners. They’ve just been through the process, and probably have thoughts to share.
2. Understand what you’re up against and get a clear picture of your candidate’s situation to avoid any unexpected surprises.
3. Have thorough job descriptions of what’s actually expected in the role and during the interview process, so there are no surprises for candidates.
4. Give candidates reasonable timelines and expectations, even if it’s just an automated email after they’ve been in the pipeline for a couple weeks.?

“Every candidate is a person with a life and a story,” said Bel. “You have to respect other people. That's the main thing that drives me — I genuinely care about people that are in the process.”

What changes will you make in 2025 to help improve your candidate experience??