The rise of candidate experience

Talk to any talent acquisition leader about their strategic priorities these days, and candidate experience is sure to come up.

While employers aren’t currently as desperate for workers compared to the “Great Resignation,” candidate experience remains a priority.

A quick history lesson. The hiring process before the internet and era of instant communication didn’t require employers to care about candidates’ feelings. Job seekers, who’d send in paper applications, were lucky if they received notice that they weren’t selected for a job, Gerry Crispin, principal and cofounder of CareerXroads and an expert on candidate experience, told HR Brew.

When Crispin worked at Johnson & Johnson in the 1970s, the company received upwards of 40,000 résumés annually, ”which is not a lot compared to what large companies get today, obviously,” Crispin noted. “But still, they were all coming in with paper.” Rejected candidates received a postcard or letter notifying them that they weren’t selected—an uncommon practice at the time.

“It wasn’t the norm because you had to go out of your way to communicate. It wasn’t like you could send a text back to somebody,” he said.

The rise of the internet. As computers and the internet became more commonplace, that changed. People could communicate with each other faster, and candidates started to expect potential employers to respond. And, the emergence of platforms like Glassdoor allowed applicants to air out their frustrations in a public setting.

“Companies began going, ‘Oh man, we’re getting a bad rap out there. And I thought we were doing a good job,’” Crispin said. “So the internet really allowed for a shift in the power distribution, if you will, that is now impacting your brand.”

AI has only further added to the issues. Candidates believe they’re not benefitting from automation tools the same way employers are, making their frustrations reach a boiling point and giving rise to trending topics like ghosting candidates.

“Where the pushback is coming, is they’re saying, ‘Hey, I thought automation was going to deliver efficiency for recruiting. We were going to hear real time the status of our applications’…but that’s actually not happening,” said Steve Knox, Dayforce’s global head of talent acquisition.

Keys to success. A good candidate experience isn’t about placating rejected job seekers. The number one thing applicants want is the job itself, said Kevin Grossman, VP of CandE Benchmark Research at Survale. CandE Awards survey data shows that, any time a candidate is told no, their perception of that employer automatically tanks.

“It’s not about a happy candidate, because I’m only going to be happy if I get the offer,” Grossman said. Instead, he said, the differentiator is, “Did I feel like it was a positive and fair experience, and am I willing to engage the business again? That’s what we try to impart on companies every single year.”

There are two primary focuses for improving candidate experiences: Branding and feedback. For branding, some factors to consider include:

• What are candidates hearing about companies before they apply, including what’s being said about the company on sites like Glassdoor?
• Are candidates getting a glimpse of what it’s like to work at the employer (either from information posted on the company’s career pages and social channels, or by bringing finalists on-site or to meet potential coworkers)?
• Is the hiring process consistent with employer branding?

“You could have five good experiences, one negative experience, and that one negative might leave the stronger lasting impression,” said Robert Ployhart, business administration and management professor at the University of South Carolina who has co-authored research about candidate experience. “So it’s really important to be consistent across the board with the messaging, not just with the talent acquisition part, but also consistent with the company’s brand, its marketing strategy, and so on.”

As for feedback, candidates expect timely communication and will expect more detailed information around why they were rejected.

“If you don’t hear anything and you’re ghosted as an applicant, which does happen, that’s one of the worst things I think an employer can do,” said Lynn McFarland, associate professor of management at the University of South Carolina, and Ployhart’s co-author.. “I think you have to give closure to the applicants in some way.”

Keeping up. Scott Redfearn, Protiviti’s executive VP of global HR, told HR Brew in a recent interview that companies are realizing that differentiating themselves from competitors is more important than ever.

“Creating this rich candidate experience is your first opportunity to showcase how we are different and why that would be good for you, and then the more people they meet, the better in a recruiting process,” said Redfearn. “But a smooth candidate experience will generate a big dividend and the caliber of employees that you’re able to attract.”

However, some experts worry that economic conditions could change company efforts surrounding candidate experience, particularly if hiring continues to slow.

“I am going to be curious and watching how the candidate experience fares in the next few years, because I do think the market is going to tighten up a bit where there are going to be even more applicants for each job,” McFarland said. “So I just wonder if organizations are committed to it, or will be as much in the future as they seek to be now, and they have been the past few years.”