The candidate experience is how candidates feel about your company once they experience your hiring process. To attract top-of-the-market talent for your business, you want to create good feelings that inspire candidates to apply for vacancies and accept job offers. Find out how you can achieve this by checking out our four top tips below!
- Make sure you’re hiring to meet a real business need
Organisation is key to creating a good candidate experience. Before advertising a role, conduct a skills gap analysis to identify the skills you need to grow your team. Once you know what gaps you are looking to fill, you can come up with a job title and a list of responsibilities suited to those skills.
Taking a skills-first approach sets a clear goal, reduces the chance of delays, leads to better communication, and creates a better overall candidate experience.
- Write clear job descriptions
It’s not easy to write the perfect job description. The content has to be compelling enough to attract the kind of talent you’re looking for, but what’s going to make candidates click “Apply” is a clear, concise description of the role, responsibilities, and remuneration. The team at Jobseekers write JDs every single day. Here are our top tips for getting good engagement from candidates:
- Use simple language
- Separate “essential” and “desirable” criteria
- Outline key responsibilities, e.g. management duties, travel requirements, etc.
- Make it easy to read (bullet points, active verbs, and punchy sentences are your friends)
- Simplify your application process
Research shows companies miss out on top-quality talent because of long-winded application processes. 60% of applicants quit applications with popular online job boards without finishing them because the process is too long or confusing.
To avoid this, be upfront about what documents (CV, cover letter, portfolio, etc.) candidates need to submit before they start, and try to keep it to a single page. Having everything on one screen creates a sense of transparency and trust and helps applicants prepare their documents and answers to any additional questions ahead of time.
- Act quickly & communicate with candidates
There is nothing quite as disheartening for job seekers as filling out an application, attending multiple interviews, and expressing their interest in a role/company – only to sit on the backburner for weeks while the hiring managers make a decision.
Of course, delays happen, and it might be out of your control. In those instances, it’s important to communicate with candidates to let them know there’s a setback.
Otherwise, you have a business need to fill and candidates waiting for news. Getting back to them quickly, regardless of the outcome at any stage of the process, will improve their perception of your company as it demonstrates you value the time and effort they put into applying.
