Candidate Experience: Are You Attracting Or Repelling Great Employees?
Good candidates are in short supply thanks to rising employment, lifestyle shifts, and skills shortages - so, the candidate experience you give to applicants can be make or break.
A positive candidate experience boosts your employer brand significantly.
However, a negative candidate experience sends great people elsewhere and damages your reputation on the jobs market.
In today’s jobs market, fantastic candidates have multiple offers on the table, so they’re choosing to work for the company that’s left the best impression.
If you’ve been struggling to recruit good people, now is the time to consider what sort of experience you’re giving to potential employees.
At Cummins Mellor Recruitment, we’re passionate about candidate experience because we’ve seen first-hand the impact of both excellent and poor experiences.
In our latest blog, we’re sharing insights into what makes a good (and bad) candidate experience, and how you can update yours to secure the best talent.
Why is there a short supply of candidates?
Many of our clients aren’t aware of the state of employment until they come to hire.
So much has changed about the jobs market - and the world in general. Here’s a snapshot:
The UK employment rate stands at 75.7% (April to June 2023)
The unemployment rate is 4.2%
15.7% of businesses had a staff shortage in 2022
87% of companies worldwide acknowledge that they have - or will soon have - a skills gap
There are huge skill shortages in all sectors for lots of different reasons, which means there are more jobs available than candidates to do them.
What do employees really want?
So, what do employees want from their employer in today’s candidate-driven market?
Salary - higher salary was the driving force behind 57% of job searches for 2023, with 74% of people concerned over their finances due to the Cost of Living Crisis
Flexibility - 72% of Gen Z employees, 69% of millennials and 53% of Gen X workers have left or considered leaving a job that didn’t offer enough flexibility
Job satisfaction - 72% of European employees are quiet quitting because they don’t feel engaged with their employer, according to Gallup’s State of the Global Workforce.
Culturally, there has been a shift in how we work, with an increase in hybrid and remote working and self-employment.
So, hiring someone into a traditional 9 to 5 role is harder than ever, as people don’t want to work that way, and often don’t have to anymore.
How to upgrade your application process to attract better people
Your candidate experience starts before you even advertise a job.
Here are five crucial ways to enhance your entire recruitment process to see better quality candidates come through the door.
conduct Process mapping
Process mapping means examining your entire hiring process from the candidate’s perspective, rather than what you want to get out of it as the employer.
Consider every single point a candidate interacts with your company and ask yourself what that individual experiences at each stage, for example:
Where do they land on your website?
How easy is it to apply?
How quickly can they get an impression of the company culture? And is it accurate?
Can they find information and statistics on diversity?
What’s your vision? Can they find out easily when they apply?
What message do they receive once they’ve applied for a job?
How quickly do you respond? Do they hear nothing for three weeks, causing uncertainty and anxiety, or is someone on the phone to them the next day?
It can be a painstaking process, but process mapping how you currently hire is 100% worth doing to change the way people experience your organisation and make sure it makes a good impression at every stage.
(Don’t have time? We can help).
offer flexibility and benefits
Before you even advertise a job, think about the package you’re offering and whether it’s relevant to people working today.
Consider things like:
Employee benefits - are they based on what people actually want or what you think they want, for example?
Flexibility - are you ticking a box or listening to the kind of options people really need to balance their professional and personal lives?
Holidays - is your offering competitive?
Salary - is it realistic in the current climate?
Job sharing - have you considered this as an option to widen the pool of potential candidates?
Agile working - do you provide the right environment and experiences for the work you expect people to do?
Inclusivity - could accommodations be made to open up this role to every potential job-seeker?
Often, a few simple switches can open up your vacancy to a much larger pool of candidates, so think creatively about what you can offer to attract more people.
Ditch the application form
It may sound controversial, but we strongly believe in ditching the application form.
People are busy and we all have short attention spans - particularly Gen Z employees, who will make up 30% of the workforce by 2030.
Nobody wants to fill out a lengthy application form and many simply won’t bother, especially if they’re not actively looking for a new job.
Think about how many more people might potentially reach out to you if it was a matter of sending a quick email or having an initial five-minute chat to explore suitability.
When recruitment is proving to be a challenge, we highly recommend removing all barriers stopping great candidates from reaching out and expressing an interest in working for you.
Respect candidate time
At every stage of the process, you absolutely have to respect the candidate’s time.
Expecting someone to come to your premises for an interview is a big ask. They’ve likely booked time off work, prepped for hours on end and spent time and money choosing an outfit and travelling to your premises.
So, to show respect for their time and interest, think about:
Acknowledging all applications - successful or unsuccessful
Giving feedback at each stage
Reducing the number of stages in your interview process (we recommend a maximum of two)
Covering your candidate’s travel expenses and offering an allowance to thank them for their time
All of these factors create a great impression and elevate your company above competitors when it comes to the candidate making a decision.
Build talent pools
Building talent pools saves you significant time and money on recruitment.
When you recruit for a role, you may engage with several great candidates who didn’t get the job on this occasion.
We call these ‘silver medallists’.
Lots of companies are guilty of deleting CVs and losing contact forever, then spending time and money recruiting from scratch the next time they hire.
Instead of going down this route, consider putting your silver medallists into a talent pool.
This way, you can keep in touch, develop a relationship with them, and sustain a positive impression of your organisation - even if they didn’t get the first job they went for.
Imagine them telling a friend:
“I didn’t get the job but it was an amazing company! They treated me with so much respect, gave me some allowance for my travel, offered loads of good feedback I can implement - if they ever came to me with an opportunity again I’d love to work for them.”
Providing you’ve given that individual a positive candidate experience at each stage, they will likely engage with you in a secondary recruitment process and speak highly of your company to others - further building your industry reputation.
At Cummins Mellor, we have software to build and maintain talent pools to keep good candidates ‘warm’, so when you next come to recruit you can dip into your pool at no extra cost to your business.
The problem with the traditional interview
Now, let’s zoom in on the interview process for a moment.
The old-fashioned interview process - that’s still widespread - sees all the control lie with the hiring company.
There’s this sense the candidate is lucky to be interviewing at the company.
So, the (often, lengthy) interview process is all about asking the right questions to the candidate to make sure they can do the job and they’re the right culture fit.
In a market where there are plenty of candidates available to do the job, this works - to an extent. If there are lots of perfect people to choose from, and you can simply pick the person who’s the right fit.
However, that’s no longer the case.
There are more candidates than jobs available, so there’s been a role reversal: now, the candidate likely has three good offers on the table and is in a position to choose which company they work for.
With that in mind, you have to be mindful of how you interview and place a lot of importance on selling the job to the candidate, rather than the other way round.
How to improve your interview process to make candidates choose you
Your interview should always be a 50-50, two-way conversation. After all, you’re equals in this process and it should be handled with respect.
Yes, you want to glean the necessary information to pick the right employee for the company, so of course you want to ask questions that prove their experience, skill, and personality type.
Yet it’s equally important for the candidate to find out whether you’re right for them.
Therefore, the interview should also be about you selling the role and company, sharing your vision and purpose, talking about the benefits, and explaining what you have to offer the candidate.
So often, we see that this simply isn’t happening.
Candidates are going into an interview that’s completely weighted towards what the employer wants, leaving the candidate unsure if they even want to work there - and then the employer wonders why they turn down the job.
Get support to make the best candidates choose you
How do you feel after reading this blog post?
Are you feeling confident you’re striking the right impression on potential employees, or has it identified some areas for improvement?
If you feel you’re offering a fantastic candidate experience and you could benefit from some help with the logistics of hiring, we’d love to have a chat to see where we can support you.
If you’d like to evaluate and potentially improve your candidate experience so you can attract a better level of employee, we’re here to guide and advise you through that entire process.
Let’s start with an informal conversation about where you’re at and what you’d like to achieve as a business.
Contact our Managing Director, Katie Mellor, by calling 07939 223498 or emailing katie@cumminsmellor.co.uk