How to Deliver an Outstanding Candidate Experience

How to deliver an Outstanding Candidate Experience

Kelly Barcelos on January 7, 2020 in Employer Brand

The recruitment process has turned out to be more candidate-centric today. Experienced professionals are high in demand at all times.

There are numerous work opportunities available for these professionals, which places them in a better position. They are free to choose their employers. Therefore, great candidate experience has been placed on a higher priority in most companies.

Candidate experience has been one of the significant factors that lead to a strong employer brand. Poor candidate experience can impact an employer’s ability to hire top talent badly. Hence, companies must work on employer branding strategies so that they could effectively improve their candidate experience. This will, in turn, help the company gain a competitive edge in the job market.

What makes candidate experience crucial?

Candidates having a bad experience with a company often discourage their peers and friends from applying for jobs in that organization. Also, around 77% of the candidates prefer sharing positive reviews about their prospective employers with their network.

Candidates, today, enjoy more employment options, which makes it harder for employers to set themselves apart. Employers today find it difficult to ascertain how their company values and culture can contribute towards building their employer brand. However, they fail to value the same as an exclusive opportunity for the best talent out there.

With stronger and robust employer branding solutions, you can effectively distinguish yourself as an employer of choice in your niche. You must understand the significance of employer branding to work on delivering the best candidate experience.

With the help of outstanding employer branding, you can gain the loyalty and trust of the applicants. If your candidates enjoy and appreciate the experience you deliver, it is beneficial for strengthening your employer brand. They will most likely become the voice of your company and help you attract more candidates.

Remember that a candidate’s recruitment experience begins right from the moment they land on your job.

How To Deliver Outstanding Candidate Experience?

Every interaction a candidate makes with your company can impact his perception of your company. It depends on how amazing the experience has been throughout the hiring process. It can be positive as well as negative. Your candidate’s decision of accepting or rejecting your job offer is dependent on how you treat your candidates.

Every step of your recruitment process is important in this aspect. You should analyze it to understand how to improve your existing candidate experience efforts.

Here are six ways to deliver an outstanding candidate experience.

The First Impression Makes A Big Difference!

Studies indicate that around 57% of the candidates conduct their preliminary research about the company via the company’s official website. Therefore, you should design your career pages in such a way that they capture your candidates’ interest to the fullest. Your career site should provide job seekers with all the vital information they are looking for. You should convince your candidates that your company is a great place to work.

You should also put in your efforts at building your talent brand on social media. Social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn are also the best mediums to attract talented candidates. You must include social media recruitment in your talent acquisition strategies.

Using a recruitment software like Jobsoid helps you build attractive career pages in a jiffy. You can use the built-in HTML editor and other widgets to design your career pages according to your brand theme. Most importantly, you do not have to update your jobs on your website manually when using Jobsoid. Every job opening you publish in your ATS will be automatically shown on your website when you connect it with Jobsoid.

Jobsoid helps you deliver an outstanding candidate experience by helping you make the right first impression on your candidates.

Clear and Concise Job Descriptions

Job descriptions are one of the most crucial aspects of your hiring process. A job description is what your candidates will read when searching or applying for your jobs. Ensure that your job descriptions are engaging, accurate, and precise. They should explain the job role, responsibilities, benefits, or perks offered, and company values really well.

You should make sure you write a job description that attracts top talent. Jobsoid has compiled a Job Description Library of over 500+ job descriptions for professional cover recruiters as well as hiring managers. Being written by HR Experts from all industries, these job descriptions have everything you need to attract the best talent.

You can also customize these job descriptions according to your hiring requirements. Jobsoid allows you to publish your jobs on leading job boards in just one click.

Easy Job Application Process

It is found that around 43% of your candidates are using their smartphones for job search. A poorly designed, outdated mobile application experience can put off your candidates. Similarly, lengthy job application forms also contribute majorly to the candidate experience. Design your job application process in such a way that it offers a seamless experience to your candidates.

You can customize and redesign your entire job application process with Jobsoid. Jobsoid allows you to create job-specific questionnaires with conditional branching features.

In other words, you can customize your questionnaires to show or hide questions based on candidate’s answers to previous questions. This feature allows your candidates to answer only those questions which are relevant to them. In addition to this, Jobsoid also enables you to add a ‘Quick Apply’ button on your application forms.

Timely Recruitment Updates

Every candidate who applied for a job in your company deserves a response, even if they are not selected. Your HR Department can send a response via an automated email or a phone call. Your applicants will appreciate your gesture as long as you send it. For your employer branding strategies to succeed, ensure that you do not leave your candidates in the dark.

Sending out regular recruitment updates to your candidates will create a sense of understanding and trust in them. Jobsoid helps you notify your candidates about their recruitment progress with emails and text messages.

You can also configure your recruitment workflow in Jobsoid to send out these updates automatically. Your candidates will be notified about their recruitment status as they progress through various stages of your hiring workflow. It is always best practice to let your candidates know the status of their job application.

Easy Interviewing Process

Scheduling interviews is something that takes away the energy of the hiring teams as well as that of candidates. This interview scheduling process gets more tedious when you call-in your candidates for multiple interview rounds. You need to ensure that you deliver a good interview experience to your candidates.

You must introduce a solution that would consume less time and effort from your candidates as well as your recruiting team. The best approach would be using Jobsoid’s smart interview scheduler to schedule interviews for your candidates. You can connect your Microsoft or Google calendar with your Jobsoid account and check the availability of your interviewing team.

You can also create interviews with time slots and allow your candidates to choose a convenient slot for their interview. In addition to this, you can send out video screening tests to your candidates. Thus, you no longer have to schedule preliminary onsite interviews for your candidates.

Candidate Rejection and Onboarding

Letting your candidates know about their selection or rejection is their right. Your feedback certainly helps candidates grow. You should send out personalized emails to your candidates about their rejection, and ask them for their feedback.

Candidate feedback will help you in rethinking your employer branding strategies to provide a fantastic candidate experience. You can also save their details in your talent pool and get in touch with them when a similar opportunity arises. Also, when you hire a candidate, get him in touch with his manager or colleague and make him feel welcomed.

Save your customized messages as email or SMS templates in Jobsoid. You can then quickly import these templates when communicating with your candidates. Jobsoid has also compiled an ebook about writing welcome emails for new employees.

To deliver an outstanding candidate experience, you should understand that it is not a one-step process. It is not something that you carry out only at the time of job application. It is an ongoing process and needs to be revamped over time.

Candidate experience plays a significant role in employer branding. Sign up for a free Jobsoid account and customize your candidate experience with Jobsoid.

Kelly Barcelos

Kelly Barcelos is a progressive digital marketing manager specializing in HR and is responsible for leading Jobsoid’s content and social media team. When Kelly is not building campaigns, she is busy creating content and preparing PR topics. She started with Jobsoid as a social media strategist and eventually took over the entire digital marketing team with her innovative approach and technical expertise.