Candidate experience DOES matter - 3 Results to look forward to

Picture this. You’ve been actively seeking opportunities and one job posting in particular stands out. Excitedly, you apply. The second you hit ‘Submit,’ your application gets sent off into cyberspace. A week passes. Two, three weeks, and you finally hear back for an interview. Great! You go, kill it, and a week later, you’re stuck in the same waiting game with no updates—even though they said they’d get back to you by now. You can’t help but wonder if you’re just wasting your time, so you write up a follow-up email and again, no response. Suddenly, it’s 2.5 weeks since you’ve interviewed and you receive an email saying the position has been filled. You’re not exactly pleased—in fact, you’re feeling bitter. How did something that started off so right, that you were so excited for, go so very wrong?

Now, there are many reasons why you’d be angry. You didn’t receive the right communication, and at no point did you feel informed. You were not aware of timelines, you didn’t get replies to follow up and your rejection was a standard template of a decline.  Many times, reviewing your candidate experience may be as simple as just putting yourself into the candidates’ shoes.

From an HR perspective, you’re only human. You’re likely on a lean team, and you’re strapped for time. Why focus on candidate experience, of all things, when you can focus your time and energy on doing something for your current employees’ experience?

True. You’ve got a point. But there’s so much more to candidate experience than just providing others with their well-deserved follow-up email after they’ve put time and effort into meeting with you. What exactly is the ROI of going above and beyond for your candidates?

Employer Branding
Employer branding in a competitive candidate-driven market is your game-changer. You’ll find that more and more candidates are excited at the idea of working with you when you have a great brand, putting your organization on the radar for even more great candidates. Have an amazing employer brand, and you’re known to treat people well, right from the very beginning. This is absolutely your competitive advantage in why people would want to join you instead of any other organization.

How you treat your candidates is a reflection of your organization
How much thought you put into your candidate experience and recruitment processes will be a direct reflection of how much your organization values people. It’s simple; at Mogo, we aim to treat all of our people, our customers with respect and utmost transparency, but why stop there? Any potential candidate should also be treated with respect and be shown true authenticity, which will shine through during the recruitment process. This ultimately carries a reflection of how we treat our people.

Pipeline candidates, pipeline customers.
Great first impressions are crucial, but creating both a positive and lasting impression is even better. If a candidate’s entire experience is a positive one, not only will they be more willing to apply again, but they’ll be even more likely to become one of your customers. According to the 2015 CandE reports, 70 percent of candidates say they are more likely to apply to the same employers again if they had a great employee experience. Another 70 percent had disclosed that they’d be likely to refer a friend to that same employer whom they had a great experience with!

So often our minds go into auto-pilot when we deal with recruitment that we forget what it’s like to be on the receiving end. Not sure where to start? Block off some time with your team (even better—include a recent new hire!) and walk through step-by-step what a candidate sees through their eyes on your careers page to their first steps through the door on their first day. Challenge yourself by even going above and beyond how you yourself would expect to be treated as a candidate.  Spending a day or two to collaborate with other business partners to solely focus on candidate experience can better prepare you to receive future candidates. Establish where you’d like your candidate experience to be and identify the steps needed to get there. Often times, it’s allocating and setting aside those days for planning that deters or hinders others from getting the process started.

It sounds like a lot of work—I’ll admit that. At Mogo, we are dedicated to reviewing our candidate experience as part of our goals for 2016, and we challenge you to do the same. Not everything will be achievable right away, but getting in the right mindset to improve each candidate’s experience will already put you in a better place than you were yesterday.

Oh, and that ROI? You’ll see it in more ways than you could even imagine. It’ll pay off—I promise!

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Jasmine Leong, People and Culture Specialist at Mogo