For almost a decade, The Talent Board has surveyed candidates and employers about the candidate experience and how it affects their behaviors and business. This information is valuable for making improvements to your candidate experience and potentially recovering revenue that would otherwise be lost due to a poor candidate experience. Enjoy eight takeaways from Talent Board’s “North American Candidate Experience Research Report.”
Seize The Opportunity For Feedback
Research shows feedback during the candidate journey differentiates a positive candidate experience from an average one. But most employers are only asking candidates for feedback after they’re hired. Only 14 percent reported asking candidates for feedback at every stage of the hiring process (i.e., before they apply, after they apply but before they interview, after they interview but before they’re hired, and after they’re hired) and a whopping 21 percent don’t survey candidates about their experience at all. Don’t miss the opportunity for honest feedback to improve your candidate experience. Pro tip: Ask rejected candidates their opinion on the hiring process as well.
Prevent Withdrawal From The Recruiting Process
The top three reasons candidates cited for dropping out of the recruitment process are all preventable: time disrespected during interviews (37 percent), poor rapport with recruiting professionals (32 percent) and the process took too long (29 percent). While there was a decrease from last year in candidates dropping out of the hiring process due to their time being respected, poor rapport with recruiting professionals saw a significant increase (from 11 percent last year to 32 percent this year). Be sure your recruiters are representing your company accurately and remaining professional.
Candidates Share Their Experiences – Good Or Bad
Despite anecdotes that candidates will more readily share their negative experience than their positive experience, research showed positive candidate experiences get shared with inner circles and publicly online more often. Seventy-eight percent of candidates shared a positive experience with their inner circle, compared to 65 percent of those who shared a negative experience. Fewer shared their opinions online, with 50 percent of those posting a positive experience and 35 percent posting a negative experience. Lesson here? Know that the candidate experience you provide will be shared – so make it good.
A Poor Candidate Experience Might Mean A Severed Relationship
The research shows about 11 percent of candidates globally are willing to sever their relationship with a business based on their candidate experience. This translates to a loss of employment interest and referrals, loss of customer acquisition and loss of revenue. The Talent Board has created a resentment calculator that HR professionals can use to estimate their potential losses due to poor candidate experiences. To give you an idea of the findings: With 1,000 annual hires, 100 applicants per hire and an average monetary customer value of $100, the potential lost revenue rings in at $2,178,000. This gives you the business case for investing in a great candidate experience.
Give Unqualified Candidates Feedback
Only 3.1 percent of employers require their recruiters to respond to all unqualified candidates with some feedback. By giving them pointers, you’ll not only potentially help them land their next job, but they’ll walk away with a more positive experience of your company. On an optimistic note, 48 percent of recruiters were required to respond to every candidate when rejecting them, which is an 8 percent increase from last year.
And Pick Up The Phone To Do So
Only 7 percent of candidates who were rejected reported receiving a personal phone call from recruiters or hiring managers to get the news. Automated email replies (63 percent) and personal emails from recruiters or hiring managers (21 percent) were more popular methods of rejection. But positive candidate ratings shoot upwards of 28 percent when they receive a phone call versus an automated email rejection. It’s worth the extra effort to give them a ring.
Phone Is Still The Most Common Medium For Interviews
Despite new technologies to conduct interviews and the increased importance of face-to-face communication, 68 percent of candidates reported experiencing a phone interview (an increase of 9 percent from last year!). Video interviewing occurred 13 percent of the time, which remained the same from last year. Of the video interviews, a recorded video interview without a live interviewer present was slightly more popular than one with a live interviewer present. Final interviews were reportedly almost always in-person, with nearly 90 percent of candidates saying so.
Outsourced Recruiting Model Increases Referrals
The outsourced recruitment model saw an increase from last year by 59 percent, and for good reason: Research showed candidates who were extremely likely to refer others based on their experience was up to 22 percent higher for those interacting with an outsourced model than an in-house centralized or decentralized recruitment model. It may be that service-level agreements encourage excellence among candidate relations, which is less common for in-house recruitment models.
