Candidate Experience: Definition, How to Do It, and Key Factors

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Contents

• Definition of "candidate experience": what is it exactly?
• Why does candidate experience matter?
• What are the phases of candidate experience?
• What impact does a positive candidate experience have?
• Improving the applicant experience with candidate experience management
• How do you measure candidate experience?
• Frequently asked questions

TL;DR

Candidate experience covers every experience and impression that applicants gather across the entire hiring process, from the first time they notice a company through application and selection all the way to onboarding and retention. The candidate journey has six phases: attraction, information, application, selection, hire and onboarding, and retention. Deliberate candidate experience management improves employer branding, the offer acceptance rate, and employee retention. You can measure candidate experience through the Net Promoter Score, drop-off rate, time-to-hire, and referrals, among other signals.

!An applicant moving through the phases of the candidate journey, from first contact through application and selection to onboarding. A visual for a positive candidate experience.

Author: Dominik Becker · Published: 15 September 2021

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Candidate experience is the phrase of the moment in HR. Yet many recruiters, and plenty of managers and department heads too, still underestimate how much it matters. A good application and onboarding experience is especially important today, and it often decides whether a candidate chooses your company at all. In this article we explain everything you need to know about candidate experience and how you can help your company benefit from it.

Definition of "candidate experience": what is it exactly?

Candidate experience covers all the experiences, perceptions, and impressions an applicant gathers during the hiring process. That includes the job search, the application process, job interviews, and even onboarding. In today's job market, a strong candidate experience is decisive if you want to stand out from competitors and recruit the best people.

Why does candidate experience matter?

The job market is far more competitive today than it was a few years ago. Skilled professionals are in demand and can usually choose between several employers. A good candidate experience helps your company stand out from competitors and leave a strong impression on applicants. They tend to carry those positive experiences with them and start the job noticeably happier and better prepared. In an age of constant information sharing, these experiences also spread quickly. On review platforms like Kununu or Glassdoor, applicants describe how their hiring process went. They also talk with their networks on a regular basis. A good candidate experience therefore has a positive effect on employer branding and helps you win new employees more easily and at lower cost.

On top of that, applicants are more likely to accept a job when they had a good application experience. Effective candidate experience management has a positive effect on the offer acceptance rate and can significantly lower cost-per-hire.

What are the phases of candidate experience?

Candidate experience begins with the very first contact between the candidate and your company. In total there are six phases, which together are known as the candidate journey.

1. Attraction

In the attraction phase, a candidate notices your company for the first time. That can happen through your public presence, a social media campaign, at a job fair, or in various other ways. The attraction phase has worked when candidates become interested in your company and decide to look for more information.

2. Information

Candidates in the information phase are actively researching your company. They usually visit the careers section of your website and try to gather as much information as they can. Many candidates also turn to review platforms, since the experiences of other applicants and employees tend to be seen as especially valuable. Your company's overall presence should feel professional and engaging in order to convince candidates to apply for an open role.

3. Application

The application phase only happens if the first two phases went well and motivated the candidate to invest more of their time. A lot can go wrong at this stage. Particularly high application hurdles, unnecessary follow-up questions, or a very long response time can all lead a candidate to change their mind or drop out of the process.

4. Selection

Interviews, the design of the selection process, and the welcome the candidate receives all belong to the selection phase. Since most applicants research you in advance on review platforms, they can compare what they found with their own experience. Here your company should place particular value on meeting the expectations and needs of applicants, or ideally exceeding them. That raises the chances that an applicant actually accepts an offered role.

5. Hire and Onboarding

The hire has to match the same values that guided the applicant through the process. A large share of departures in the first year happen because employees could not find the company culture they were promised during hiring in their day-to-day work. Successful onboarding, on the other hand, shows applicants that the friendly, respectful treatment was not just a recruiting tactic but something your company lives every day.

6. Retention

The retention phase is just as important for your company as the others. After all, you do not want to lose newly won employees right away. For employee retention to work, people need to feel welcome and sense that they receive just as much attention as they did during the hiring process.

What impact does a positive candidate experience have?

Companies that offer applicants a positive candidate experience benefit on many different levels. The effects run far deeper than happy applicants and can even lead to competitive advantages.

Less time spent

A positive candidate experience saves time on several fronts. Replies to applicants can be automated with mana HR, for example. And well-informed applicants mean the HR team spends less time answering questions.

Stronger employer branding

Applicants share information and insights from hiring processes publicly today. Positive experiences make companies more credible and more sought after, which means they receive noticeably more applications.

Stronger employee retention

Happy applicants are the foundation for strong employee retention. That, in turn, is the basis for lower talent acquisition costs and higher productivity. This naturally affects several other factors in your company. Sought-after companies usually receive more qualified applications and need to invest less capital in recruiting campaigns. Competitive advantages can also emerge from the fact that it becomes easier for a company to fill open roles with the right professionals and to grow in a predictable way. Today, candidate experience is one of the most important aspects of recruiting. Many candidates even expect it and react with disappointment if their application experience is lacking or poor. So what can you do to shape candidate experience?

Improving the applicant experience with candidate experience management

There is good news: your company can shape candidate experience without much effort. What matters is treating candidates like customers and giving them just as much appreciation and attention. The first steps do not require much theory and are surprisingly simple. Above all, you should ask yourself how to make the application experience as pleasant as possible. That means being honest with candidates, not keeping them waiting long for answers, and always keeping them up to date.

Not sure how best to put this into practice?

As a first step, you should analyze the touchpoints and ask yourself how candidates become aware of your company. Every single touchpoint gives your company a chance to shape candidate experience for the better. Often no big moves are needed. You get the first positive results through thoughtful micro-management.

Some of the important questions are:

• How easy is my company to find as an employer?
• Can your public presence already answer important questions and help candidates in their decision-making?
• How can you meet candidates in an even more open and positive way?
• Can you improve communication during the hiring process?
• Are there steps where candidates feel overlooked?
• How can you be even more honest and transparent with candidates?
• How do you bring your positive employee culture into the hiring process?

As a rule, a positive application experience is not created in a single day but through continuous candidate experience management. So it comes down to improving existing processes again and again.

How do you measure candidate experience?

Candidate experience can be measured in several ways. These include:

1. Net Promoter Score (NPS) / direct feedback

The most important factor in measuring candidate experience is direct feedback from applicants. You get it through surveys and direct communication with your applicants. Working out the Candidate Net Promoter Score (CNPS) can also help you form a quick and straightforward picture of the applicant experience.

2. Drop-off rate

A high drop-off rate points to a poor candidate experience. Beyond that, you should find out where candidates leave the process. That is how you identify unexpected hurdles standing in the way of a successful recruiting process. Companies that use their own website and software for the hiring process can record and analyze user behavior. This yields additional insights that explain the drop-off rate.

3. Time-to-hire

Nobody likes drawn-out hiring processes. A look at your own time-to-hire can help your company work out whether your process is efficient enough to meet applicants' expectations.

4. Offer acceptance rate

Candidates who receive an offer usually cost a company a lot of money. So you should aim for a high offer acceptance rate. If it is too low, that can point to surprises in the offer. Personal conversations with the applicants who decide against your company provide more detail.

5. Referrals

Referrals are an especially telling signal of a good candidate experience. You spot them best in direct conversation with candidates.

Good to know: Setting up a referral program often pays off financially for companies and usually has a positive effect on company culture.