What is Candidate Experience and Why is it Important?

Attracting top talent and fostering excellence within your company starts from the beginning: the hiring process. Find out everything you need to know about how your company can excel with a great candidate experience.  

2020 has seen some of the hardest times for everyone with every part of businesses being affected, from the stock market crash, all the way to job losses. In fact, it is estimated that as many as 4 million jobs have disappeared in the wake of COVID-19.

Both figures demonstrate how times are tough for everyone right now, both workers and businesses. Most people, regardless of the industry, have felt its effects in their profits, their workload, or in the morale of their team.  

It is because of this changing and uncertain times that perfecting a great candidate experience is more crucial than ever. Hiring during hard times is no joke, and you need to protect your company’s reputation and finances.

The wrong fit can stall your workflow and damage your financial planning. On the contrary, a great talent that has received a pleasant candidate experience will be key to the growth of your company.  

In the next article of Talent2Win, we will tell you more about the importance of a great candidate experience during your hiring processes. 

The importance of Candidate Experience 

Candidate experience is how a person experiences their time in your company. For employees, this experience ends when they leave, and for candidates, when their interaction with your company as a potential employee comes to an end, either with a success or unsuccessful application. 

Candidate experience begins before the identified candidates. In fact, it begins with you, the employer, and how you choose to advertise your company to potential employees. The chart below demonstrates a positive candidate experience and all the points in which an impression is made on the candidate.

One of the most integral aspects of ensuring that this process is executed successfully is to ensure that you are open, honest, and sincere about you and your company at every step. 

Perfecting your candidate experience will benefit your company in several ways, from protecting the investment you have made in the hiring process to making the average lifecycle of your employees longer and more productive. Candidate experience also has a big influence on candidate satisfaction, Employer Branding and job offer acceptance rate. 

Its benefits are not only felt in the choices of who to hire but also who not to hire. If you have a candidate who, regardless of being unsuccessful in obtaining the position, had a pleasant candidate experience, they may feel free to reapply for a different, more suitable position, or simply advocate your business to their friends and colleagues. However, if your company has a poor candidate experience, it can suffer as a detriment to you and your business. 

The Candidates Perspective of Recruitment Today 

Perspective differs depending on the candidate’s industry. In the world of tech, IT candidates are regularly bombarded with options, and many professionals work on a ‘gig basis’, moving from project to project dependent on their skill set, what they enjoy doing, and what the company can offer them.

A great candidate experience when it comes to IT recruitment will show a candidate whether or not your company resonates with them, their needs, and their career trajectory in the initial message. 

Unfortunately, recruitment is not as simple as it was 10 years ago. You can no longer simply post a job on a recruitment board and wait for the right candidate to roll up and read it. The key is to be proactive in your Talent Acquisition strategies.

This means that not only you need to network in order to access the best talent available, but also to answer candidates’ questions before they have been asked. The right talent no longer looks for simply who is hiring, but asks several questions along the way, such as: 

• What do I know about this company? 
• How do I find the company online? 
• Do my friends / colleagues know the company?
• What do my friends know about them?
• What does a trusted senior colleague know about this company and what is it like working for them? 

As you can see, the fact that these questions are being asked means that you need to guarantee a great candidate experience. Perfecting your candidate experience process is not just for successful candidates, but for those who may give advice or recommendations to other prospective employees.

A great candidate experience reflects in the professionality of the relationships you hold with potential candidates, and how you present yourself and your business in the market. 

Can a Talent Acquisition Company Help You Achieve a Great Candidate Experience? 

Absolutely! A Talent Acquisition company has a lot more time and resources available to cultivate a great candidate experience, coupled with an existing network of active and passive candidates. This can help you speed up the application process and ensure that all candidates have a positive experience, which has become even more crucial during uncertain times. 

At Talent2Win, we differentiate ourselves by truly engaging with your company’s culture. We want to learn everything about your firm, so we know exactly what talent your workforce requires.

By considering your values as a company, as well as the mission and the vision of the role that you wish to fill, we can combine the three elements in order to ensure that the candidate has a positive experience and that you get the best talent for your company.  

We actively listen to everything your company needs and use specialized knowledge to search on your behalf, offering support and advice throughout the process. We use your insights to improve relationships, solutions, and services. Based on our understanding of the recruitment world, we actively adopt and develop best practices worldwide. 

At Talent2Win, we strive to align your company’s business objectives with the best Talent Acquisition strategies available. If you want to learn more about the services we offer, do not hesitate to contact us.