More and more companies are realizing that there are huge benefits to be gained by measuring candidate experience. The list is long, but among the chief benefits of gathering and acting on candidate feedback are:
- Increased business results. Candidates are customers who are less inclined to purchase from you after a bad experience
- Better quality of hire. Honing a consumer quality experience based on candidate feedback makes it easier to hire best fit applicants.
- Faster time to hire. Measuring candidate experience to remove friction in the recruiting process reduces wasted time and speeds the process.
- …and much more
That said, most organizations only begin measuring candidate feedback process after the initial interview. This makes sense because you’ve now made contact with candidate and, ostensibly, they have much more feedback to give at this stage. It makes sense, but it’s dead wrong. Survale CEO Jason Moreau recently discussed the process of gathering feedback throughout the talent lifecycle on
The Talent Board’s CandE Shop Talk Podcast. There are several key stages where candidate feedback and proper analytics can transform your hiring effectiveness.
Stage One – Pre-Applicant
Candidates who haven’t applied have HIGHLY important feedback to give you. Why did they apply? How easy was it to navigate and search the career site? Were the opportunities showcased in a clear and compelling way? How was they apply process? What did they think of your employer brand as expressed on your site? This feedback, and your analysis and response to it, can have a dramatic impact on the quantity and quality of the applicants you can expect to convert in the future.
Stage Two – Applied and In Your ATS
Once the candidate has applied, their feedback continues to be important. Did they get an acknowledgment? Was it clear and effective? Do they understand the next steps? Did they go through a phone screen? If so, here is where your feedback needs to be a two way street. You should gather feedback from the recruiter and candidate. For the recruiter, was the candidate punctual? Did they understand the role? Did they meet the basic requirements? Do they seem like a fit? For the candidate, was the recruiter courteous, respectful and professional? Did they communicate the role effectively? What is your perception of the employer brand now vs. the pre-applicant phase?
Stage Three – Interviews
Again, in this stage, it is important to gather feedback from hiring managers as well as applicants. For hiring managers: Did the candidate meet the requirements of the position? Was the candidate prompt and professional? Are they a good fit? How do they rank against other candidates? For the candidate: Was the hiring manager prompt and professional? Did they fit your perception of the employer brand? Did the office and staff meet your requirements? Were the questions logical and professional? Did the interview line up with previous communications about the opportunity and company?
Gathering Feedback
As you can see, a comprehensive program to manage feedback at key phases of the hiring process is more than just a periodic survey of past interviewees and hired employees. It is a constant, highly orchestrated program that’s perpetually running in the background to identify opportunities for improvement and track results over time. The good news is that
a platform like Survale allows you to set up these automatic surveys in workflows that will automatically gather feedback year round and crunch the numbers in ways that produce meaningful improvements for your organization (
check out a demo here). The benefits of an active feedback program are significant. No longer will your recruiting organization wonder if they are properly aligned with hiring managers. Any misalignment becomes obvious, traceable and fixable. The mere act of asking candidates how you’re doing is a huge boost to your employer brand, and they’ll provide you with plenty of guideposts that will lead you down a path to providing world class candidate experiences. This translates into better business outcomes. Candidates are often customers, and if not, they are social media contributors whose opinions can affect your brand and your corporate revenues. Wouldn’t it be better to discover problems internally before they become black marks on sites like Glassdoor? More efficient and effective recruiting practices gained through candidate and hiring manager feedback result in faster time to hire and better quality of hire, which helps ensure that the right people are in the right seats with higher productivity for the organization.
Beyond Candidate Experience
Survale’s platform allows organizations to build feedback and analytics into all phases of the talent lifecycle, beginning with quality of hire. The same practices and tools used in monitoring and analyzing the hiring process can be extended to automatically gathering quality of hire feedback from managers and new hires at key stages of the talent lifecycle. Similarly, these same tools and processes can be extended to measure employee engagement, giving organizations a powerful dashboard of analytics and ideas for refining performance and engagement from initial candidate interaction through to hired employee to active contributor to exit feedback. Not measuring candidate experience at all phases of the hiring lifecycle? Lucky you! You stand at the gateway of a journey that can transform your organization. Wouldn’t that be a rewarding career journey for any HR professional?
