Why Candidate Experience should start with the Job Description — and continue well after the hire date
Larissa Souza
Senior Tech Recruiter | Talent Acquisition Specialist | Sourcing Expert | Building High-Performing Engineering Teams ??
To find the best talent, it’s time to broaden the candidate experience.
You’re doing your candidate experience a disservice if you’re not considering what the best candidates are thinking and feeling throughout the hiring process. This starts with your job descriptions and how and where you post them — if the most qualified and diverse people never even find or read your postings, the candidate experience will be irrelevant. Worse still, if the best applicants do find your postings but don’t take the time to apply because the words themselves are demeaning, biased, or exclusionary, they will be instantly turned away.
High turnover rates are a real problem in Brazil, so you should always be thinking about a candidate’s job satisfaction level long after they’ve been hired.
Here are seven tips for creating an extraordinary candidate experience:
- Implement a scarcity of talent strategy.
- Clarify the performance expectatioons for the job during the intake meeting. (Make sure you define the EVP by answering this question: “Why would a top person want this job over competing opportunities aside from the compensation?”
- Avoid job descriptions that are just a list of skills.
- Put duct tape over every button that says “Apply Now.” (I have a legal justification for this step)
- Show candidates that your opening is a worthy career move.
- Get to know your candidate’s intrinsic motivators and career aspirations. (the best candidates will be motivades by the job itself and what it can do for their career.)
- Listen and take action on candidate feedback
To hire the very best people, a company needs to offer exceptional jobs and provide a meaningful candidate experience that emphasizes high touch over high tech. Make sure it’s designed and implemented based on how top candidates find jobs, how they expect to be interviewed, and what information they need to make the best long-term career decision in comparison to other opportunities they’re considering. If done properly, job satisfaction and performance will soar long after the person has been hired. This should be the gold standard of a successful candidate experience — and one every company should strive to achieve.