Nearly half of candidates cite a poor recruiting experience as a reason they’ve refused a job offer, according to PwC’s 2019 Future or Recruiting Survey.
Candidate experience is an integral part of a strong and successful recruitment engine, yet many organizations still struggle with it. From a lack of time and resources, to broken processes, there are a plethora of reasons that many employers have a tough time.
In this post, we’re going to offer some tips that can help business owners, recruiting teams, and HR departments with creating a positive candidate experience to attract better quality candidates and elevate their employer brand.
Why is the candidate experience important?
It’s not just the likelihood of accepting your offer that candidate experience affects; it can also impact how those outside of your existing pipeline perceive you. 56% of candidates indicate that they would discourage others from applying to your company due to a poor recruiting experience. And with features like interview process reviews on Glassdoor, bad experiences are out there for all job seekers to see, which can negatively impact your employer brand.
Creating a positive candidate experience also helps you to better build rapport with potential hires, reduce “ghosting”, and increase the likelihood of candidates accepting offers. In fact, an IBM Analysis found that those who are satisfied with their candidate experience are 38% more likely to accept a job offer.
Actionable tips for creating a positive candidate experience
1. Engage Early
Most candidates on your corporate careers page won’t apply for a role. Often, they are searching for information. What happens if they can’t find exactly what they are looking for? Being able to intervene with people who are actively on your careers page gives you a huge competitive advantage, but this can be logistically difficult to handle manually.
Enter technologies like AI chat, where you can prompt conversation with job seekers, manage and answer high volumes of frequently asked questions, and help guide candidates through job discovery — all without human intervention. By employing technology in a meaningful way, you can engage early and immediately with candidates when they are actively exploring your company.
2. Combine Technology With Human Interaction
While chatbots and automation technologies are valuable tools, creating a positive candidate experience can’t rely entirely on technology. Candidates still value human-to-human interaction in the job searching process. While 44% of candidates are open to using technology and automation options for routine touchpoints and gathering information, they still want to feel like the experience is personalized to them.
Options like combining chat technology with live, human recruiters can help streamline processes while keeping the human touch element at the center of the experience.
3. Manage Your Employer Brand, 24/7
According to IBM’s The Far-Reaching Impact of Candidate Experience , over half of candidates state they had a positive impression of an employer brand before applying, and less than 2% had a negative impression. This suggests that candidate experience begins before an application, with employer brand being a huge determining factor. Furthermore, 71% of candidates state that a good employer reputation is more important than working for a well-known brand.
Creating a positive candidate experience begins with managing and elevating your employer brand. This plays out in many ways, through culture, reviews on job sites, and importantly, the first impression that candidates have on your careers page.
With managed candidate engagement solutions like Live Recruiter, you can offer candidates immediate 24/7 interaction that combines chat technology and live human interaction to give them seamless experiences and help create positive impressions. Starting the candidate journey on the right foot is the first step in generating positive rapport.
To learn more about how Live Recruiter can help you elevate your employer brand and build a more positive candidate experience, request a demo today!