By creating an integrated and communicative hiring experience, you can ensure you are hiring from the best pool of candidates available.
The candidate experience you provide doesn’t just impact your ability to hire talented people. Jobseekers are more likely than ever to share reviews of their experiences with your company online.
If they aren’t impressed, that could negatively affect your ability to attract other candidates in the future. That’s why you must design a seamless candidate experience.
In today’s recruiting ecosystem, that means building a virtual experience that is intuitive, engaging, and informative. If you are successful at this, you will attract quality candidates and improve your employer brand.
Gather Information About Your Candidate Experience
Before you do anything else, take a look at the candidate experience you are currently offering. If you haven’t moved much of this process online, use your in-person experience.
The idea is to map the process as it is, taking note of each touchpoint. Your goal is to identify where successes, failures, and opportunities exist at each point. Later, you can use this information to build improvements into your virtual processes.
Here’s a brief example: Imagine that your current system doesn’t keep applicants updated with the status of their application. Instead, they are left waiting and frustrated to learn whether they are being called for an interview, if their background check has been completed, or when a hiring decision is being made.
This process is leading to negative feedback from applicants and even current employees.
Your new virtual recruiting experience might include a candidate portal that allows applicants to check on the status of their application or an interface with an email tool that sends regular notifications to candidates. This type of feedback leads us to the key factor in any digital recruiting effort.
Make Communication a Top Priority
You can’t create a good candidate experience on any level without good, consistent communication. Lack of communication is the top issue cited by frustrated job seekers.
Consider that many people will be unfamiliar with an entirely digital recruiting process and that searching for jobs post-COVID is already stressful. When you fail to communicate effectively, you make the process even worse.
You can automate some of the communication processes. For example, it’s simple enough to automate emails. There are recruiting tools that include the ability to communicate with candidates over a variety of automated channels.
With that being said, any communication strategy should also include person-to-person communication between hiring decision-makers and candidates.
If you move your recruiting online, you also have to rethink how you communicate with candidates. Do you have the tools and resources to conduct video interviews? What about document sharing or private messaging?
Build the Experience Around Your Career Site
Whether you build a dedicated website for recruiting, use a page on your company website, or use a third-party platform, your career site is the flagship of your recruiting efforts. This site is where most job seekers are going to engage with your brand.
It should be easy to navigate your career site, learn about your company culture, and apply for jobs. The content should be relevant and engaging. Ideally, your career site will foster a sense of trust and privacy. Allow users to create password-protected jobseeker portals where they can share relevant documents and track their progress.
Create a Positive Experience on Other Channels
Job seekers are going to engage with your brand on social media channels in addition to your chosen career site. To create a successful digital presence, you have to determine which channels they are going to use. Then, you must create a positive experience there as well. Some things you can do include:
- Linking to your career site
- Creating dedicated social media pages for recruiting
- Sharing employee-generated content
Even better, recruit happy employees to be brand advocates for you on your social media channels. Their words will often carry more weight than your branding efforts.
Provide and Collect Feedback
Designing a great candidate experience is an ongoing process. You’ll need to make improvements over time, and those should be based on reliable data that you collect from candidates and new hires.
You can do this by using surveys and other tools to gather information from vetted employees and candidates. This data retention is also a great way to get insights into how your company culture is perceived. Here are some questions to ask:
- Was the job description that we provided you adequate?
- Did you feel as though you learned enough about the company culture?
- Would you recommend that your friends or family members apply here?
- How would you rate the online interview process?
- Were you satisfied with the amount and quality of communication?
You can’t say that you have created a satisfactory candidate experience if people end the process feeling frustrated or written off. Your communication strategy isn’t just about keeping active applicants in the loop. You must provide clear, empathetic feedback to the people you choose not to hire as well.
When you offer that kind of communication to applicants, they’ll appreciate that you were forthcoming and that they know where they need to improve.
Integrate the Candidate and Onboarding Experiences
When you do hire a candidate, they should move smoothly from the hiring process to onboarding. This transition is especially true if you are hiring remote employees. Make sure to communicate the next steps and provide new hires with the information they need to successfully start in their roles.
