A week ago on Monday the 22nd of October I attended #TruLondon 6 – the Recruiting Unconference. As usual a host of international professionals from across the recruitment spectrum had gathered to discuss, network and learn about all things recruitment.
Of the various tracks (tracks are like open group discussions around a topic) I participated in it was Gerry Crispin’s “The Candidate Experience” that sparked my interest the most given many companies are increasingly realising that the line between the candidate and the consumer is increasingly blurred.
Gerry is the Principle and Co-Founder of CareerXroads, a consulting practice that “facilitates peer-to-peer meetings between corporate staffing leaders to share, compare and innovate hiring practices”. Aside from this Gerry is also heavily involved in the Candidate Experience Awards (or CandE’s).
In a nutshell the CandE’s exist ‘to enable any company to benchmark and improve their candidate experience’. Part of this benchmarking process involves detailed surveys completed by actual candidates who have applied to corporate vacancies (regardless of whether they successfully got the job).
Gerry had some interesting knowledge to share regarding some of the research the CandE’s have generated. A couple of the main points that stood out were:
- Very few companies manage candidate expectations by explaining what to expect in the recruitment process up front.
- “50% of candidates surveyed, believed that once they made an application online they had a personal relationship with that company”
Now when you combine the latter statement with the results of other candidate surveys such as that from MysteryApplicant.com, which indicated that 38% of their surveyed applicants “were less likely to buy from or use the company’s products or services after their job seeking experience”, it’s clear that there is a pretty sound business case for improving the candidate experience.
Previous CandE reports can be downloaded on their website here. I’ve had a read through myself and unfortunately it was not surprising to see the “Black Hole Effect” being mentioned. Statistics highlighted that 30-40% of those candidates surveyed did not receive any status updates on their applications. It was also worth noting in the summary of the report that an “auto message receipt of submission does not count as a communication/response”
So what are other companies doing to improve the candidate experience? Well there were some simple ideas Gerry mentioned that a few had adopted. A simple one being generating an automated email to all applicants after a set time (20 days in the example he mentioned) asking candidates for feedback about their application experience. The point of this was that it built into the internal recruitment process a system that would result in invariable negative feedback if applicants were particularly frustrated. The internal team know this, and are motivated to provide a positive candidate experience.
If you are an in-house recruiter looking to learn more about the CandE’s or for ways to improve the candidate experience, then I would check out their website http://www.thecandidateexperienceawards.org . Although the CandE’s originated in the US there is a UK survey also, and you may find some of the research and insights beneficial to your organisation.
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