3 Reasons Why Candidate Experience is Important

At times, candidate experience isn’t at the top of the list for talent acquisition professionals. They are either focusing their time and energy on helping their employees adapt to their remote environment or implementing new organizational practices to boost the employee experience. For organizations that are hiring, they are still struggling to fill their job position with the right talent. 

So, why bother investing in your candidate experience? Not only will it help you hire top talent, but it will boost your organization’s reputation and help you cut costs in the process.

A Good Candidate Experience Will Boost Your Reputation

Do you know what happens when a candidate has a particularly frustrating application experience? They share that experience with others! Maybe they tell their friends and family, or maybe they share this publicly through social media. It has never been easier to share poor experiences – there are so many social media platforms available including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit that candidates can use. According to CNBC, one in three people turn down job offers because of a company’s poor online reviews. 

You can make your candidate experience more positive by providing a beautiful career site, a user-friendly apply flow, and following up with candidates after they submit their applications. Candidates will certainly take note if you show them consideration at a time when they are particularly stressed.

What’s more, many candidates believe that companies who treat their candidates well also treat employees with that same level of respect. In fact, a study from CareerBuilder noted that 68% of employees believe that their experience as a job candidate reflects how the company treats its employees. There is no doubt that a candidate will view an organization in a more positive light if they provide a delightful candidate experience. 

A Seamless Experience Allows Your Organization to Cut Costs

Many candidates will abandon an apply flow if they have a poor experience. No one wants to contend with a process that is time-consuming, dated, or confusing. They will move on to other organizations where the experience is better. This means that the money (and time) you spent on marketing activities to attract them to your career site and job application ends up going to waste. 

What's the financial consequence of losing candidates? Well, organizations often feel compelled to increase spending when they realize they are losing candidates early in the process. After all, they have critical roles to fill and targets that need to be met. According to Glassdoor, the average U.S. employer spends about $4,000 and 24 days in the process of hiring new employees. Recruitment technology, job sourcing, and referrals are just some of the costs associated with this.

By investing in your candidate experience upfront, you can reduce costs over the long term as you boost your candidate conversion.

It Will Help You Attain Top Talent

There will always be top talent open to new employment. They won’t think twice about leaving their current job if they are frustrated or looking for further career development. Since they are consistently in demand by employers, it’s not hard for them to find a new job. 

However, recruiters need to be extra thoughtful about the application experience that they provide to these professionals. These individuals are less likely to contend with frustrating, time-consuming, or confusing application processes. They will simply turn to another company if this is the case. After all, they are the ones in demand – they have plenty of opportunities. 

If you want to attract the best talent, then make sure that you have a streamlined application process. This includes having a beautiful career site, avoiding redundant data entry during the application, and having good follow-up practices with candidates. One of the reasons InFlight partnered with RChilli was to ensure its candidate experience overlay was able to leverage the best resume parsing in the world because if the most in-demand candidates experience frustration at any point, they will abandon their job application.

Final Thoughts

Investing in your candidate experience is a good practice, regardless of the market conditions. Your company will have a better reputation, cut costs, and obtain higher quality talent. 

Fortunately, providing a good candidate experience doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. With an Employee Experience Platform, such as InFlight, you can create a world-class candidate experience using your current ATS and career site investments – you don’t have to migrate to new platforms. 

An Employee Experience Platform will make your existing applications user-friendly, in line with your employer brand, and optimized for use on any device, in any location. This will help your company provide the best candidate experience with the least amount of effort.