Eight Tips to Build A Better Candidate Experience

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How candidates perceive your organization impacts who you attract, who you can hire, and how engaged they are when they serve your customers. Guess what? If your candidate experience is amazing, you’ll be able to deliver amazing candidates who are engaged and once hired, will be “wowing” your customers. The candidate experience is the foundation to a healthy, profitable bottom line.

So what are some practical things HR can do to enhance and supercharge the candidate experience?

1. Stop using résumés as the barrier to entry for your recruiting process. Great recruiters and hiring managers know that passive (and yes, active) talent recruiting is all about the relationship and the candidate experience. When all we really need is an e-mail address or a phone number (better yet a cell phone number so we can text) to initiate that relationship, why are we still poland phone number library requiring a résumé so early in the process? Many passive candidates will immediately fall out of your process simply because they don’t have an updated résumé. Although an up-to-date résumé is likely required to complete the hiring, more and more companies are accepting other means for candidates to engage, such as Social Media (LinkedIn) profiles as an alternative.

2. Eliminate the black hole of recruiting by adopting the position that all candidates are people, have applied to your organization and deserve to be updated as to the status of their application. In a word: communicate. Candidates may not be thrilled that you elected to move forward with other candidates, but in this world of immediate gratification and instant feedback, candidates have come to expect follow-up beyond “we will contact you if you are chosen for an interview”.

3. Explore and adopt the use of social media, mobile technology and gamification in the recruitment process. Social media, mobile technology and gamification are not fads:

Social media has made it very easy for candidates to share their experiences (good and bad) with the world, hence the need for a solid candidate experience. Utilizing social media to drive candidate excitement, interest and to solicit referrals is not only smart recruiting, it’s essential. Many organizations are driving candidate activity through Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn among others, and using these venues to market their employment brands.
Mobile Technology directly reflects how many professionals are communicating these days. E-mail is passé while texting is not. To stand out, to be a game-changer, look no further than mobile to begin the conversation. Imagine being at a networking event and meeting a great potential candidate. A quick scan of a QR code takes them to a career page that’s optimized for their smart phone. A quick text link and you’ve got their cell phone number. To use a fishing analogy, that’s a solid nibble.
Gamification: The use of games, simulations, and other multimedia-rich applications in hiring, selection, and assessment processes has increased dramatically over the past decade, particularly for companies that are hiring customer service, sales, or business professionals. Gamification aims to inspire deeper, more engaged relationships. Successful and sustainable gamification can convert customers into fans, prospects into candidates. The potential is enormous.