With each passing day, the competition for top-notch candidates gets fiercer. Recruiters and HR managers want to recruit stellar contenders, but first, they must know how to communicate with them effectively.
First impressions are important, and those first impressions are irreversible. Hence, if the initial communication with a candidate isn’t satisfactory, it can hurt their overall candidate experience with your company.
A lot of questions come to mind. For example, what kind of experiences do top candidates respond to best? Technology-driven experiences (which tend to ease the process for applicants and HR teams alike) usually come to mind.
Companies need to be progressive enough to align their communication practices with usable technology. HR leaders and recruiters need to take the initiative to improve their candidate experiences — and avoid some common communication missteps along the way.
In this comprehensive article, we will talk about:
- How negative candidate experiences can destroy your business.
- Benefits of a positive candidate experience.
- Excellent 8 strategies to improve candidate experience.
- And finally, best ats for enhancing the candidate experience.
Negative Candidate Experiences Can Destroy Your Business
A negative candidate experience can have a catastrophic effect on your recruiting process and on your company’s overall success. According to other research (Harris Interactive 2013, CareerBuilder Survey, 2015, 2014, 2015, and 2016 CandE Reports, etc.), companies who fail to deliver a quality candidate experience may likely suffer some severe consequences.
Disgruntled candidates are more likely to reject your job offering, will not reapply for your job openings, and encourage others to do the same, thus defeating the purpose of your hiring process.
But a negative candidate experience can cost you more than a few candidates – it can even lose your company big bucks! Moreover, these unhappy candidates are also more likely to boycott your company’s products and even tell others not to purchase your products or services. The most famous example of this is the case of Virgin Media, a company that calculated that a bad candidate experience costs them a shocking $5.4 million annually!
Benefits of Positive Candidate Experience
There are plenty of benefits of a positive candidate experience. Let’s name a few before we delve into detail:
- Attracting more applicants.
- Competing for top talent.
- Improving the quality of hire.
- Increasing brand awareness.
1. You will attract more applicants
If your application process is simple and precise, more job seekers will finish applying to your jobs. Appcast found that if you reduce the length of your application process to five minutes or less, you can boost your application conversion rates by up to 365 percent. Our data also shows that a mobile-optimized career site can help you attract more mobile applicants.
2. You can compete for top talent
If you streamline your candidate experience correctly, you might win over the best job seekers before your competitors do. According to Top Echelon Network, 40 percent of candidates reject offers because another employer gave them an offer faster. Furthermore, providing a superior candidate experience will also enable you to make a great first impression on top talent, increasing their desire to work for you.
