Stick around long enough in the HR world and you will hear some buzz about candidate experience. There are tons of consultants, classes and technology that can help you figure out how to treat candidates during your company’s hiring process.
But why should you care? Perhaps you work in a very large company where you can’t possibly respond to every person. Or maybe you are working in a small company where you do recruiting, payroll, party-planning and just don’t have the time?
I mean, people either want your job or not. They either want to work at your company or they don’t. YOU don’t have time for the clamoring hordes. Right?
WRONG.
You still need to care about candidate experience (sorry for the buzzword usage) for a couple different reasons:
1. Short Time to Hire- when you treat people right (or wrong) your company gets a reputation. A good reputation means more candidates apply for your job. That should translate into an easier and quicker recruiting process. Quicker process = less time and money.
2. Social Media – it’s a lot easier for people to tell the world about their awful experience with your company. Any applicant looking at applying for a job at your company can go to Glassdoor and read about your hiring process, interviews and salaries.
If you aren’t on social media or you don’t have to worry about time-to-fill metrics you should still care about candidate experience. Why? Because candidate experience isn’t about being up-to-speed on the latest trends or creating a talent community Facebook page, it is much simpler: treating people with respect.
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Need Another Reason?
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Candidate experience is an easy way to highlight the good side of HR. How much bitchiness do we hear about how HR treated a candidate? Any of this sound familiar:
“The recruiter didn’t call me back.”
“I sent HR my resume and never heard back.”
“HR said I wasn’t a good ‘fit’ for the job…what does that mean?”
Creating and maintaining a positive candidate experience is simple:
If someone calls you, return their phone call.
When you turn down someone for a job, give them some concrete feedback or at least offer to provide feedback.
Communicate as clearly as possible the timeline and process.
If you use an ATS, apply for a job at your own company. How easy is it? How much time did it take? Hint: If you felt like you needed a drink after applying for a job, your ATS is probably over-complicated.
These are easy actions you can take today but how often do we forget or think we don’t have the time? None of the above is difficult to implement. You can start doing this tomorrow. You can make a positive impact on internal and external applicants right away. So what are you waiting for?