In an age of endless job opportunities and abundant technology, it’s easy to think that hiring a candidate is simply a matter of finding the right person for the job. But even with all that information at your fingertips and tools like LinkedIn and Glassdoor at the ready, there’s one factor that remains essential to any successful hiring process: quality candidate experience.
Your candidates are your customers.
Candidates are people, and people have needs. Some of those needs are obvious: a job, the skills and experience to do that job well. Others might be more subtle, such as feeling like they’re part of a community or feeling appreciated for their contributions.
As employers, we’re continually working to meet these needs as best we can — and rightly so, because if candidates don’t feel like they’re being treated well, then they won’t want to work for your company. But when candidates treat you poorly in return? Well…we don’t want that either!
The candidate is the brand ambassador.
The applicant is the first impression of your company that people have, and he or she can influence their decision to work for you. A happy candidate will tell his friends about his experience at your company, which leads to more job applications, better retention rates, and more positive reviews from customers. A negative experience will hurt your brand’s reputation and turn away future candidates — not only from that position but also from other jobs within the company.
It’s good for the business.
As a business, candidate experience is good for you. Candidates are likely to refer their friends and family to your company, which means that they are more loyal and will stay longer. They may even become customers! If they had a great experience, they’ll be more likely to use your service again. And if they didn’t have a great experience? Well then maybe that’s not such a bad thing either — if someone doesn’t like your product or service, it means that there is room for improvement in your area of expertise!
Bad experiences will spread.
When a candidate has a bad experience with your company, they’ll probably tell their friends and family about it. They might post about it on social media. And if they’re particularly unhappy, they may even write reviews for sites like Glassdoor or Indeed (which are pretty helpful for job seekers).
The worst part is that the negative experiences of one candidate will be amplified by the many others who hear about them from their networks or from those review sites. If you’ve ever looked at Yelp while searching for restaurants in your area, you know how much power negative reviews can have to influence your decision-making process: “This place has terrible service — everyone else seems to agree! I’m not going to try it out.”
Recruiters need to prioritize candidate experience and make it a cornerstone of their business.
The reason for this is simple: candidates are the brand ambassadors. They tell their friends, family members, and colleagues about the recruiting process they experienced with your company. They will either praise or complain about how well you treated them during their job search.
That’s why many companies focus on improving the candidate experience as much as possible by providing multiple ways for candidates to engage with recruiters (such as chatbots), connecting with candidates through social media channels like LinkedIn and Twitter (when appropriate), and offering flexible interview scheduling options such as remote phone screens or in-person interviews at convenient times so that applicants don’t have to worry too much about travel costs while still making sure they’re available when needed most, etcetera…
Conclusion
We’ve covered a lot of ground in this post, but it boils down to one thing: candidate experience. It’s important because your candidates are your customers, and they care about how they are treated. What you do as an agency will affect your reputation and brand perception, so you need to treat candidates well if you want them to spread good things about you.
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