When we talk about the obstacles to providing a positive Candidate Experience (CX), we could simplify down to 3 factors.

1. Cost – “it costs too much for X system to improve our CX”
2. Time – “it takes time to provide quality feedback to candidates”
3. Resources – “we don’t have the people to communicate to candidates”

Notice anything? The above applies to every aspect of your business. These excuses are no more valid for not achieving your CX goals than they are for missing hiring or sales targets.

So, what is getting in the way of providing a good CX? In this article we will look at some key components that make a good CX process, we will address the impact of poor CX and some examples of good candidate experience.

Some tactics to offer a great candidate experience from LiveHire:

• Make researching your company easy for candidates – be sure to fill your personalised careers page with company related videos or testimonials, and encourage past and present employees to review your organisation on websites such as Glassdoor.
• Rely on candidate referrals and employee ambassadors – implement a recruitment process that allows you to create a personalised talent community so candidates can express interest in your organisation. Having the ability to express interest in an organisation removes application barriers for diverse candidates.
• Let candidates know where they stand – empower candidates by giving them power to track their application.
• Give candidates a mobile apply option and ensure your career page is simple to navigate – giving candidates the option of applying from anywhere, combined with the option of easy apply makes the application more accessible and improves their overall experience.
• Help candidates prep for the interview – by using a technology platform that allows for recruiters to easily connect with candidates through on-platform messaging and SMS, they’ll feel like they can ask you anything.
• Provide next steps and follow up with candidates – keep your candidates up to date with any changes in their hiring status. As per the above, cost, time and resources don’t cut it as excuses.
• Invest in creating engagement with new hires before their start date – use a platform that allows you to interact with candidates via SMS or on platform messaging.
• Increase communication with candidates and provide feedback – this one is such a given that we aren’t even going to explain further. Just do it.
• Focus on the business impact of candidate experience – 60% of your candidates are dropping out of the recruitment funnel due to lengthy applications and 64% state they will take their business elsewhere due to bad CX.

In our upcoming webinar, we look at the above and other ways to improve your CX.

The Statistics

Examples of Good CX

Rachel O’Connell, VP, Human Resources at Great Wolf Resorts, was featured in a recent episode of the Recruiting Futures podcast, where she shared how the chain of indoor water parks view CX. She stated they view candidates the same as they do their guests, which is evident in the Jobs section of their website, from where candidates can search for their new role with the same system as if looking at one of their lodges, to texting “Greatwolf” to a phone number to schedule an interview.

Some other examples of great CX moves made by organisations are:

• Bond University when they implemented Testgrid along with our proctoring service and achieved a 99% completion rate.
• Coles, thanks to Testgrid, created a short assessment process integrated into their application process that reduced drop off, is WCAG compliant, and provides an option for candidates to give feedback.
• Curtin University when they changed their candidate interview video review time to 30 seconds using Vieple, allowing candidates to re-record and ease candidate anxiety.
• Deloitte surveying 3,000 candidates to understand their career goals as part of their continuous improvement plan for their career website.
• Spectrum Health System setting up and preparing candidates for interviews, where they meet with hiring managers and are promised a decision that same day.
• Capital One launched a comprehensive metrics campaign, benchmarked on asking every single person who applies a series of questions about their treatment, with a 50 to 80% response rate.

Upcoming webinar

We will be discussing the above and much more in our next webinar, we have teamed up with LiveHire to discuss the Obstacles Impacting your Candidate Experience.